The current work can be considered as the companion volume to Debt and Slavery in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds (2013) by the same editors. It examines the relationship between financial indebtedness and human bondage in the ‘parallel Mediterranean’ of the Indian Ocean World. Indebtedness was central to both the process of enslavement and to slavery, and, besides war, slave-raiding, and conquest, arguably constituted the most important route to slavery as the majority of people enslaved through nonviolent means in the Indian Ocean became so as a result of debt.
Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean World consists of an incisive introduction by the two editors and twelve essays based on original research by some of the senior scholars in the field. Using varying lenses ranging from individual close-ups to wide-angled panoramas, the chapters portray various components of the modern Indian Ocean region: two on the Dar al-Islam, four on Africa, one on South Asia, two on Southeast Asia, and three on East Asia.
William Clarence-Smith's survey points to the dichotomy between the Islamic legal tradition on debt peonage and actual practice, most notably on the periphery of the ‘Abode of Islam’, while Matthew Hopper focuses on the correlation between debt and slavery among Arabian Gulf pearl divers in the early twentieth century. Edward Alpers exposes the nexus between debt, pawnship, and the changing character of slavery in nineteenth-century East Africa. Gwyn Campbell's comparative essay provides the historical context of the codification of regulations governing debt in central highland Madagascar during the imperial Merina era (1790–1861). Susan Newton-King examines the harsh realities of survival of the freed slave Arnoldus Koevoet (1697–1735) in the unforgiving economic environment of the Dutch Cape Colony, whereas Alessandro Stanziani compares the institutions and practices of debt and labour among ‘free’ English servants in Britain and indentured immigrants in Mauritius from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century.
Isabelle Guérin studies the political economy of debt bondage among marginalized communities – Paraiyars and Irulars – in several areas of production in contemporary Tamil Nadu, South India, facilitated by the prevalence of hierarchy and caste. James Frances Warren surveys the origin and relationship of debt and emancipation in the Sulu Zone centered on the slaving port of Jolo between the mid-eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries, while Michael Salman's microstudy zooms in on the family narrative of the ‘comfort woman’ Maria Rosa Henson (1927–97) in the Philippines during the Pacific War.
Ei Murakami discusses the nineteenth-century coolie trade and emigration from southern China, most notably the port of Amoy (Xiamen), to Southeast Asia. Bok-rae Kim describes the phenomenon of debt slavery in Korea under the Choson dynasty (1392–1910), the slaves mostly belonging to the social category of chonmin (literally ‘despised people’). Yoko Matsui examines the human trafficking and debt-servitude of prostitutes and the societal form of a ‘prostitution society’ in Edo Japan (1600–1868), particularly the port-city of Nagasaki.
The geographic spread of this volume reflects, as the editors somewhat wishfully declare, a ‘growing consensus that the history of servitude in the IOW [Indian Ocean World] can no longer be limited to that of the East African slave trade and the African diaspora’ (pp. 19–20). Despite the wide spectrum of systems of bondage in the Indian Ocean World, it differed in some important ways from its Atlantic counterpart: chattel slavery was confined to only a few European-supervised plantation economies, black Africans only formed a minority of slaves, and most of those enslaved and trafficked in the Indian Ocean World were women and children (pp. 1–2).
Though human trafficking in the Indian Ocean World has taken place since at least 2000 BCE, the main focus of this work is on the ‘demand-led acceleration’ of the modern period from the mid-eighteenth century onwards when there was considerable continuity, as well as change, in the forms of debt-related bondage and financial indebtedness. The growth on the demand side resulted from the commercialization associated with the emergence and development of a ‘truly international economy’, especially in the heavily labour-intensive preindustrial economies of the Indian Ocean World, and the indigenous and European empire-building projects involving large numbers of soldiers, administrators, and workers. The supply of labour, on the other side, failed to keep pace for two main reasons: comparatively low and uneven demographic growth, most notably ‘demographic stagnation’ in Africa resulting from both manmade and natural causes, and the tying up of the potential workforce in large indigenous systems of bonded labour. Putting a great structural chain on the labour market, abolitionist pressures, in contrast to the Atlantic, remained muted in the Indian Ocean World until after 1945. In fact, the practice, although outlawed in many countries, is still entrenched and with globalization exploitation of traditionally servile groups has increased rather than diminished.
As the editors readily acknowledge, it is impossible in a brief volume to comprehensively evaluate the historical relationship between financial indebtedness and bondage in all Indian Ocean World societies from early times to the present in all its complexities. Though one would have wished for some focus on the earlier history of what has been fashionably described as the ‘world's oldest trade’ in the ‘world's oldest ocean “world”’, the concerted effort to apply a ‘greater Mediterranean’ perspective is highly commendable and the overall results and level of expertise by and large impressive.
