Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean

150 journal of world history, june 2003
dependency. 44 Indigenous sources in the Indian Ocean prescribing the
“peculiar institution” originated from three major traditions: Hindu,
Muslim, and Southeast Asian. Throughout the Indian Ocean basin,
however, there were significant geographical and chronological variations
within each of these traditions.
The normative texts circumscribing routes to slavery in Hinduism
were the law books (dharmasastras or smritis) of Manu and Narada.
Manu “the Lawgiver” (third century b.c.e.), author of the prototypic
dharma text, recognized seven types of slavery: persons (dasas) captured
in battle; those enslaved in return for food; those born in the
house of the master; those who are bought; those inherited as part of
patrimony; those who are given away by their parents; and those
enslaved for not paying a fine or in execution of a judicial decree. In
one of the latest of the major dharmasastras, Narada (c. 300 c.e.) subdivided
and added categories to bring the number up to fifteen, including
a child whose adoption was defective, while another resulted from
a lost wager. In addition, bondage for debt and nonpayment of taxes
were introduced as separate categories. 45
In Islam, the authoritative sources, the Qur’an, Shari’a, and (to
Sunni Muslims only) the innumerable hadiths (traditions), recognized
four main ways of recruitment of slaves (‘Abd): capture of infidels in
holy struggle (jihad) against the “Abode of War” (dar al-Harb), tribute
(bakt) required from vassal states beyond the Islamic frontiers, offspring
from or birth to slave parents, and purchase by slave merchants
known as “importers” or “cattle-dealers.” Raids and petty warfare by
Muslims could at best be interpreted as a genuine jihad or holy war to
extend the faith. In 1669, for instance, the Pangeran Dipati of Jambi,
a Muslim port city on the east coast of Sumatra, justified the equipping
of armed vessels for a slave raid against Ujang Salangh on the Malaysian
Peninsula arguing that the inhabitants “were heathens, and hence
[the raiding] could not be considered an injustice.” At worst, however,
44 For the problematic nature of the term “slave” in an Indian Ocean context, see note
12. Though the term “slave” is used in the text, relations of dependency and inequality normally
ran across a continuum from freedom to slavery with permeable boundaries between
various categories or population groups.
45 The Laws of Manu, Vol. 8, G. Buhler, trans., The Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 25
(Oxford, 1886), p. 415; The Minor Law-Books, Part I: Narada, Vol. V, J. Jolly, ed., The sacred
books of the East, Vol. 33 (Oxford, 1889), pp. 26–28, 29, 31–36; B. Stein, A History of India
(Malden, Mass., 1998), pp. 216–20; U. Chakravarti, “Of Dasas and Karmakaras: Servile
Labour in Ancient India,” in U. Patnaik and M. Dingawaney, eds., Chains of Servitude:
Bondage and Slavery in India (New York, 1985), pp. 40–42, 51–54.