Carrying Away the Unfortunate from India and Southeast Asia, 1500–1800
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Carrying Away the Unfortunate from India and Southeast Asia, 1500–1800 Richard B. Allen Early in March 1793, Lieutenant Thomas Riddell, the commander of an East India Company detachment of sepoys stationed at Coringa on India’s Coromandel Coast, received a letter from Pierre Sonnerat, commandant of the French factory at nearby Yanam. In his letter, Sonnerat informed Riddell that although he had done everything in his power to prevent slave trading at Yanam, “I was not able to prevent many of the people at the time from search- ing, and taking advantage of the misery which reigned to the Northward, to carry away the unfortunate from their Country and from their families.” While he asserted that his orders to punish slave traders severely would prevent fu- ture exports from Yanam, Sonnerat added that unless the British adopted the same measures elsewhere in India that they had implemented at Coringa to suppress this trade, “there will always be found some private people with- out delicacy, greedy and allured by the prospect of gain, who will go into the Country to carry on that disgraceful traffick.”1 Company officials dismissed Sonnerat’s claims about suppressing slave trading at Yanam because of the reports they received from Matthew Yeats, their agent at Ingeram, also near Yanam. Early in February 1792, Yeats informed his superiors in Madras that there were hardly any Europeans at the French factory “from the Chief downwards” who were not involved in slave trading, and that almost every French vessel sailing from Coringa or the Dutch factory at Jaggernatpooram [sic] had slaves on board.2 The following month, Yeats advised Madras that the French at Yanam “now send off their slaves in small parties by night, to avoid detection, which, when they have passed the English settlements in this area, unite and proceed by land to Pondicherry” and that while he had intercepted three such parties containing a total of 19 slaves, Source: Allen, Richard B., “Carrying Away the Unfortunate from India and Southeast Asia, 1500– 1800,” in Richard B. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014, 108–140. © 2014, Ohio University Press. This material is used by permission of Ohio University Press, www.ohioswallow.com. 1 IOR: P/241/38, pp. 1229–30, Sonnerat to Thomas Riddell, 7 March 1793. 2 IOR: P/241/31, p. 562, Matthew Yeats to Maj.-Gen. William Medows, 3 February 1792. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi ��.��63/97890043466��_046 1420 Allen other groups shepherding a total of about 30 slaves had eluded capture.3 Later that same year, he reported the discovery of 6 women and a child confined in a warehouse less than twenty yards from Sonnerat’s house, a discovery that was followed by the hasty departure from Coringa of two French ships carrying as many as 900 slaves.4 Shortly thereafter, the governor at Madras advised the governor-general in Calcutta that this traffic was tolerated, if not actually car- ried on, by “persons of authority” at Yanam and that the inability of the French governor at Pondichéry to redress this problem meant that the British would probably have to deal with it themselves.5 While Riddell’s instructions to lead a detachment of troops to Coringa diplomatically downplayed official French and Dutch involvement in slave trading near Coringa, they noted that “many” Indian slaves had been exported from Yanam and Jaggernatpooram and di- rected him accordingly “to employ such means as circumstances may require” to suppress this traffic.6 Madras also dispatched troops to Bimilipatnam for the same purpose following the discovery of 565 “young persons” being held for export there.7 This was not the first time that the exportation of slaves taken from British territories by other European nationals had come to the attention of company officials in India. Eight years earlier, Matthew Day, Collector at Dacca (Dhaka) in Bengal, had reported that “many hundreds” of enslaved children from his district had been “landed in the Foreign Settlements [near Calcutta] from whence … they are embarked in Vessels to different Parts.”8 The magnitude of this traffic, Day continued, was illustrated by the Hon. Mr. Lindsay’s report that he had encountered more than a hundred boats loaded with such children while traveling between Dacca and Calcutta. Nor was such trafficking confined to Bengal and the Coromandel Coast. In May 1792, W. G. Farmer reported from Calicut on the “very extensive” trade carried on by the French at Mahé on the Malabar Coast to supply Mauritius and Réunion with slaves.9 Several months later, Farmer informed his superiors that although the French government in 3 PP 1828 XXIV [125], 491, Matthew Yeats to Maj.-Gen. William Medows, 12 March 1792. 4 IOR: P/241/36, pp. 16, 19, Matthew Yeats to Sir Charles Oakeley, 22 December 1792. 5 IOR: P/241/36, pp. 249–50, Charles Oakeley to Earl Cornwallis, 18 January 1793. 6 IOR: P/241/37, pp. 503–5, Anthony Sadleir to Lt. Thomas Riddell, 14 January 1793. 7 PP 1828 XXIV [125], 477–78, Governor-in-Council at Fort St. George to Court of Directors, 2 May 1793. 8 IOR: P/50/60, M. Day to William Cowper, 2 March 1785, following L.R. No. 311, Wm Cowper to the Hon. John Macpherson, 14 March 1785, in Fort William proceedings of 9 September 1795. 9 IOR: P/E/5, Report of W. G. Farmer, Calicut, 17 May 1792..