Slavery in Dutch Colombo a Social History

Slavery in Dutch Colombo A social history Submitted for the degree Research Masters in History of European Expansion and Globalisation, Department of History, Universiteit Leiden. by Kate Ekama s1077295 [email protected] Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter One 8 In Bondage and Freedom: Tracing slave numbers, provenance, labour, ownership and manumission patterns in Dutch Colombo Chapter Two 30 The legal foundation of slavery in Dutch Colombo Chapter Three 43 Kinship and Sexual Relations Chapter Four 53 Social, Cultural and Religious Connections Conclusion 72 Appendix 75 Bibliography 79 ii Acknowledgements I am fortunate to have been given the fantastic opportunity to study at Universiteit Leiden by the Encompass Programme, for which I am most grateful. The History department is a stimulating and dynamic research environment of which I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part over the last two years. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from Encompass not only for living and studying in Leiden, but also for two research trips to the Sri Lanka National Archive, without which this thesis could not have been written. I am grateful to Dr. Saroja Wettasinghe, Director of the National Archive and to the staff of the search room for their assistance while conducting research in the archive in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Special thanks to Dr. Lodewijk Wagenaar for his endless patience and for giving of his time and insight so generously. His infectious enthusiasm and inspiration have been a great encouragement to me. I am deeply indebted to my supervisors, Dr. Schrikker and Prof. Ross, for their guidance, suggestions and comments on various stages of this thesis from developing the ideas to drafts of the chapters. I gratefully acknowledge their help and input. All errors, oversights and omissions of course remain my own. iii Ceylon NA Kaartenafdeling, P.A. Leupe, MCAL 4260 iv Fort, town and suburbs of Colombo by P. Elias, late eighteenth century. NA Kaarten afdeling, VEL 980B ‘View of Colombo over the lake seen from the so-called Slave Island, 1784. In Ceylon, copied by me 5 December, 1785.’ Watercolour, J. Brandes, 1785, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Reproduced in R.K. de Silva and W. G. M. Beumer, Illustrations and view of Dutch Ceylon 1602-1796:A comprehensive work of pictoral reference with selected eye-witness accounts (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 234-235. v Introduction Slave Island, the suburb and its railway station of the same name, is a physical reminder of Colombo’s slave past in the heart of the bustling city. During the Portuguese and Dutch periods, slaves were housed on the island in the hopes that the crocodile-infested waters surrounding it would deter any would-be absconders. In contrast to this physical presence of the past, the history of slavery in Ceylon is characterised by near silence. This is, at least in part, symptomatic of the state of scholarship on Indian Ocean slavery in general. But as Gerbeau wrote some 30 years ago, “[t]he specialist in the slave trade is a historian of men not merchandise, and he cannot accept the silence of those transported.”1 Limited progress has been made since to ‘unsilence’ the history of the men, women and children shipped across the Indian Ocean; much research remains to be undertaken, not least on Dutch Ceylon. Indian Ocean Slavery Slavery and bonded labour are enduring marks of numerous societies. In fact, Marcus Vink comments that slavery “has deep and far-reaching roots, stretching back at least to the beginnings of historical times in many parts of the world.”2 This is true of the Indian Ocean basin where slaves were traded long before the dawn of European maritime power in the region. But the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century, first the Portuguese and later their rivals, the Dutch, occasioned a number of changes in the mechanics of the trade, not least increased demand. Labour was needed in large quantities to build and maintain fortifications as well as to work in the port settlements which grew up around them; the solution was found in purchasing slaves.3 Portuguese power on the east coast of Africa facilitated the purchase of enslaved Africans to fulfil the labour requirements of the Estado da India. Moreover, the unofficial slaving activity of the Portuguese in the Bay of Bengal resulted in expansion of the trade in the northeastern Indian Ocean.4 In the early seventeenth century the Dutch also sourced slaves from this area to work in the maritime settlements established under the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Over time, Africa, South India and Southeast Asia were to become the major circuits through which the Dutch obtained slaves, always by indirect means. The Dutch tapped into existing slave trade networks, purchasing slaves from indigenous traders.5 Slavery in the Indian Ocean region is a significantly under-researched subject in the historiography of slavery, Indian Ocean commerce, the major European Companies which were active in the region for centuries, urban history of colonial cities established under the Companies, and in social history. In comparison to the very well-developed scholarship and matured historiography on the Atlantic slave trade, the study of Indian Ocean slavery is in its infancy.6 The last decade or so has seen the publication of a handful of studies on slave-trading patterns in the Indian Ocean region. In his work on the seventeenth century, Arasaratnam 1 H. Gerbeau cited in Markus Vink, “‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch slavery and slave trade in the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth century,” Journal of World History 14:2 (2003): 135. 2 Vink, “The World’s Oldest Trade,” 132. 3 Sinnappah Arasaratnam, “Slave trade in the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth century,” in Mariners, Merchants and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History, ed. K. S. Mathew (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), 198. 4 Arasaratnam, “Slave trade,” 197, 201. 5 Vink, “The World’s Oldest Trade,” 139, 153. 6 Oostindie states: “Although for the Atlantic region much research has been undertaken on this subject, this is not the case for the operational sphere of the VOC” that is, the Indian Ocean region. Gert Oostindie, “Migration and its legacies in the Dutch colonial World,” in Dutch Colonialism, Migration and Cultural Heritage, ed. Gert Oostindie (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2008), 9. 1 points out that the trade in slaves has not received “the intensive attention that the other high- profile commodities such as pepper, spices, textiles and bullion have.”7 Arasaratnam examines the interaction of supply and demand factors and ways in which the arrival of European maritime powers in the Indian Ocean reshaped the preexisting trade in slaves. In his survey of European slave trading in the Indian Ocean from the sixteenth to mid-nineteenth century, Allen proposes answers to a number of pertinent questions regarding the magnitude, nature and dynamics of the slave trade, as well as considering the impact of the entry of European traders in the region on local polities, societies and economies.8 In so doing Allen reinforces the historical significance of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean region. On British, Dutch, French and Portuguese slave trading in the Indian Ocean he comments: Their activities warrant our attention not just because Europeans traded hundreds of thousands of slaves far beyond the confines of the Atlantic world, but also because these forced migrations were major components in the creation of the imperial networks that spanned the region, and ultimately facilitated the rise of an increasingly integrated global movement of migrant labor.9 One of the main contributions on Dutch activity is Markus Vink’s article ‘The World’s Oldest Trade’. Covering the whole Indian Ocean basin, his article provides illuminating detail of the volume, directions and mechanics of the Dutch slave trade and covers questions of slave origins, occupations and resistance in the seventeenth century. He describes his article as a “first step to ‘unsilence’ the history of the world’s oldest trade and to correct or ‘re- Orient’ the historiographical imbalance.”10 Rik van Welie’s work must also be noted. Unlike Arasaratnam, Allen and Vink who take the Indian Ocean basin as the region of analysis, van Welie focuses on slave trading in the Dutch colonial orbit encompassing west and east and thereby connecting the Dutch East and West India Company realms.11 Yet these remain general studies in the form of overviews, characterised by vast temporal and geographical spans. While recent publications are evidence of our blossoming knowledge on forced labour systems in the Indian Ocean, detailed studies remain imperative.12 The growing literature on Indian Ocean slavery is characterised by a number of imbalances. Allen points out four. Firstly, Allen points out the ‘Africa-centric’ nature of the literature. Focus has tended to fall on the export of slaves from east Africa, but as a corrective Allen comments that slaves were shipped to the continent as well as away from it. The corollary is the limited research undertaken on the shipment of slaves from South and Southeast Asia. Secondly, Allen comments that histories of the charter Companies—French, Portuguese, Dutch and British—which operated in these regions are not forthcoming on the topic of slavery. In the case of surveys and regional studies of the Dutch East India Company, Vink attributes the near silence to the insignificance of the slave trade in economic terms.13 The third imbalance which Allen highlights concerns knowledge of European slaving activities. With sweeping strokes, Allen comments that for the seventeenth century more is known about the Portuguese slaving activities than any of their rivals. For the eighteenth century, it is the French who are most prominent in the literature as a result of research on the 7 Arasaratnam, “Slave trade,” 195.

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