Abstract
This book is about bondage at sea during the long nineteenth century (1750–1914). It challenges the romantic association between seafaring and freedom by exploring the labor relationships of seamen, slaves, and immigrants in the Indian Ocean. It also avoids the clear-cut distinction between crew and passengers or between free seamen and unfree slaves and indentured immigrants. It sharply contrasts the Indian Ocean World (IOW) from the Atlantic World, while stressing its connections with Europe. Finally, it proposes a new chronology and a different take on the relationship between labor, bondage, and modernization.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The best works on the relationships between seamen, convicts, and indentured immigrants across the oceans are: Janet Ewald, “Crossers of the Sea: Slaves, Freedmen, and Other Migrants in the North-Western Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1914,” American Historical Review , 105, 1 (2000): 69–91
Janet Ewald, “Bondsmen, Freedmen, and Maritime Industrial Transportation, c. 1840–1914,” Slavery and Abolition , 31, 3 (2010): 451–66. On convicts in the Indian Ocean: Clare Anderson, Convicts in the Indian Ocean: Transportation from South Asia to Mauritius, 1815–1853 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000). On these connections in the Atlantic:
Markus Rediker, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 ).
On the distinctiveness of the Atlantic compared to the Indian Ocean: William Gervase Clarence-Smith, ed., The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade (London: Frank Cass, 1989)
Gwyn Campbell, ed., The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia ( London: Frank Cass, 2004 )
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History ( New York: Longman, 1993 )
Edward Alpers, Ivory and Slaves: Changing Patterns of International Trade in East and Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century ( Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1975 )
Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1873 ( London: James Currey, 1987 ).
Michael Pearson, The Indian Ocean ( New York: Routledge, 2003 )
Edward Alpers, The Indian Ocean in World History ( New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 )
Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006 )
Donna Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, eds., Connecting Seas and Connecting Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s ( Leiden: Brill, 2011 ).
On the long history of the Indian Ocean, among the others: Janet AbuLughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)
André Wink, Al-Hind, The Making of Indo-Islamic World, 3 vols. ( Leiden: Brill, 2004 )
Philippe Beaujard, Les mondes de l’Océ an indien ( Paris: Colin, 2012 ).
Alain Testart, L’esclave, la dette et le pouvoir ( Paris: Editions errance, 2001 )
Claude Meillassoux, Anthropologie de l’esclavage ( Paris: PUF, 1986 )
Moses Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology ( New York: Viking Press, 1980 )
Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives ( Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977 )
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944 )
Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 )
Martin Klein, ed., Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia ( Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993 )
Stanley Engerman, ed., Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom, and Free Labor ( Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999 )
Michael Bush, ed., Serfdom and Slavery ( New York; London: Longman, 1996 ).
Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph Miller, eds., Children in Slavery through the Ages ( Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009 ).
Clarence-Smith, The Economics: Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa ( New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977 ).
James Watson, ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery ( Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980 )
Derick Scarr, Slaving and Slavery in the Indian Ocean ( London and New York: Macmillan, 1998 ).
Markus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, The Many-headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic ( Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000 ).
Ravi Ahuja, “Mobility and Containment: The Voyages of South-Asian Seamen, c. 1900–1960,” International Review of Social History , 51 (2006): sup: 111–41.
Seymour Drescher, Abolitions: A History of Slavery and Antislavery ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009 )
Gyan Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 ).
Utsa Chakravarti, “Of Dasas and Karmakaras: Servile Labor in Ancient India,” in Utsa Patnaik and M. Dingawaney (eds.), Chains of Servitude: Bondage and Slavery in India ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1985 ), pp. 40–54
Markus Vink, “The World’s Oldest Trade: Dutch Slavery in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of World History 14, 2 (2003): 131–77.
Robert Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350–1870 ( Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1991 )
Michael Postan, “The Chronology of Labor Services,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , 20 (1937): 169–93
Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labor: The Debate Continues ( Berne: Peter Lang, 1997 ).
Alain Dewerpe, “En avoir ou pas. A propos du livret ouvrier dans la France du XIXe siècle,” in Alessandro Stanziani (ed.), Le travail contraint en Asie et en Europe, XVIIe-XXe siècles (Paris: MSH é ditions, 2010), pp. 217–40.
Alessandro Stanziani, Bondage. Labor and Rights in Eurasia, from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century ( Oxford and New York: Berghahan, 2014 )
Alessandro Stanziani, ed., Labour, Coercion, and Economic Growth in Eurasia, 17th–20th Centuries ( Leiden: Brill, 2012 ).
Copyright information
© 2014 Alessandro Stanziani
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stanziani, A. (2014). Introduction. In: Sailors, Slaves, and Immigrants. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137448446_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137448446_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49644-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-44844-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)