Convenient Compromises: A History of Slavery and Abolition in the British East Indies, 1795-1841

Shawna Herzog

CONVENIENT COMPROMISES: A HISTORY OF SLAVERY AND ABOLITION IN THE BRITISH EAST INDIES, 1795-1841 Abstract By Shawna R. Herzog, Ph.D. Washington State University July 2013 Chairs: Heather Streets-Salter and Candice L. Goucher, Co-Chairs The following analysis of slavery and abolition in the British Straits Settlements looks at the British East India Company's efforts to implement anti-slavery ordinances in their eastern territories from the first ordinance passed in 1795 at Prince of Wales' Island to 1843, when Britain officially criminalized the status of slave throughout the Empire. I argue that real limits to colonial authority and legal disputes within many of the EIC's outposts, in addition to a dogmatic adherence to the protection of personal property complicated and prolonged efforts to eliminate the status of "slave" in its colonies. Moreover, British perceptions of race and class shaped the way colonial officials perceived eastern slave systems, while gendered understandings of a patriarchal domestic order and orientalist constructions of eastern sexualities shaped the way authorities understood and responded to the illicit trade they encountered. Ultimately, this dissertation will show that the EIC was not focused on the abolition of the slave trade in the East Indies at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the institution was allowed to persist under certain circumstances long after Britain claimed to have abolished it. Current research covering British abolitionism has generally revolved around the Transatlantic slave trade to the West Indies. However, during this period there was also a thriving and prosperous slave trade flowing to the east of Africa. This study joins an emerging discourse and investigates the EIC's efforts to abolish slavery in the Indian and Pacific Ocean worlds. Additionally, this research offers a detailed examination of slavery and abolition within the British Straits Settlements and provides micro histories for Malacca, Penang and Singapore. As this research illustrates, long residing, wealthy Chinese, Arab, and European businessmen depended on slaves for agricultural and mining work, as well as for domestic and sexual laborers. Ultimately, this project demonstrates that rather than eliminating slavery in the East Indies, the EIC's early nineteenth-century anti-slavery efforts simply pushed the existing slave traffic underground.

Convenient Compromises: A History of Slavery and Abolition in the British East Indies, 1795-1841

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