DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

380 SLAVERY IN THE XIXTH CENTURY [10.4
About 1800, North Canara district had an estimated 16,201 slaves
against 146,800 free persons (BJ. 2.442). South Canara, 47,358 slaves in
a total population of 396,672 (BJ. 3.2-6); Malabar 16,574 slaves, 106,500
free (BJ. 2.362). This included women and children, yet these
proportions are usually high. Slaves had also a wage scale but in
Malabar were abominably treated (BJ. 2.371). The reason for this
brief period of late slavery was in part historical and partly the high
relative incidence of commodity production at the time and place.
Muslim conquest had broken, up the village communes, except in form
over a small portion of the land, to leave a series of middling
landowners. None of them had a large plantation, nor a sizeable gang
of slaves ; a couple of field slaves (and their families) seems to have been
the norm. These landlords, freed from previous restrictions of the
commune, were not a feudal hierarchy because the Muslims generally
contented themselves with revenue collection from a distance, the
settled Moham-medans being traders. Transport along the coast and by
estuary was unusually good. External demand for local produce, primarily
the coconut, was high. So it paid the landowner, debarred by caste and
inclinations from serious manual labour, to maintain a few slaves
from tribesmen whom famine and the clearing of tribal lands had
driven into debt and perpetual servitude. The same careful observer,
Francis Buchanan, noted that in feudal Bihar (MEI) the lesser masters
were only too glad to have the slave abscond, thus saving them the
price of his maintenance. The greater northern landholders generally
maintained larger groups of slaves, mostly for prestige and housework.
In Goa, adjoining North Kanara, where the primitive commune
survived, there was no slavery ; the ostentatious baronial type * did exist
in the “ New Conquests”. There was no law that compelled their
servitude, no way of selling nor of dismissing them. They had to be
addressed and treated with some respect by the young children of the
house,
* For example, when my inept great-grandfather signed away considerable lands held
by feudal right and migrated to a deserted village in the “ Old Conquests “, two older
hereditary bande house-slaves followed him into exile, worked in the fields to
supplement the meagre houshold income, shared “the thatched adobe dwelling, and the
thin fare.