Resisting Bondage in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (Routledge Studies in Slave and Post-Slave Societies and Cultures)

This important collection of essays examines the history and impact of the abolition of the slave trade and slavery in the Indian Ocean World, a region stretching from Southern and Eastern Africa to the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and the Far East. Slavery studies have traditionally concentrated on the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. In comparison, the Indian Ocean World slave trade has been little explored, although it started some 3,500 years before the Atlantic slave trade and persists to the present day. This volume, which follows a collection of essays __The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia__ (Frank Cass, 2004), examines the various abolitionist impulses, indigenous and European, in the Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It assesses their efficacy within a context of a growing demand for labour resulting from an expanding international economy and European colonisation. The essays show that in applying definitions of slavery derived from the American model, European agents in the region failed to detect or deliberately ignored other forms of slavery, and as a result the abolitionist impulse was only partly successful with the slave trade still continuing today in many parts of the Indian Ocean World. Resisting Bondage in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia is the companion volume to Slavery and Resistance in Africa and Asia which was published by Routledge in 2005. This second volume, as implied by the title, recognizes the complexity of forms of bondage in the Indian Ocean world - incorporating regions running from East Africa to the Middle East, to South and Southeast Asia to the Far East - and of resistance to them. Slavery, in the conventional sense of the word, was in the region covered one of many, often overlapping, forms of unfree labor that included, in addition, various types of forced or corve;e labor, debt bondage and indentured or contract labor. This volume examines resistance to forms of bondage in a variety of precolonial, colonial and postcolonial regimes, from revolt against slavery in South Africa, to resistance to colonial forced labor schemes in Somalia, the Indian Ocean islands of Mayotte and Madagascar, India, Indonesia and Indochina, and the fight of Aborigines for human rights on the cattle ranches of Northern Australia. Just as the companion volume Slavery and Resistance in Africa and Asia revealed that reactions to slavery in Africa and Asia were far more complex than the conventional historical emphasis on forms of 'revolt' implies, this collection of essays reveals an unexpectedly wide range of often very subtle forms of resistance to a variety of repressive labor regimes in the Indian Ocean world. In so doing, it will appeal to all those interested in exploring the wider debate over the structure of unfree labor regimes and resistance to them Introduction : Resisting Bondage In The Indian Ocean World / Gwyn Campbell, Edward A. Alpers And Michael Salman -- Revolt In Cape Colony Slave Society / Nigel Worden -- Unfree Labour, Forced Labour And Resistance Among The Zigula Of The Lower Juba / Francesca Declich -- Forced Labour And The 1856 Revolt On Mayotta / Isabelle Denis -- Unfree Labour, Slavery And Protest In Imperial Madagascar / Gwyn Campbell -- Forced Labour In Madagascar Under Vichy, 1940-42 : Autarky, Forced Labour And Resistance On The Red Island / Eric Jennings -- Sugar And Servility : Themes Of Forced Labour, Resistance And Accommodation In Mid-nineteenth-century Java / G. Roger Knight -- Forced Labourers And Their Resistance In Java Under Japanese Military Rule, 1942-45 / Shigeru Sato -- 'unfree' Labour On The Cattle Stations Of Northern Australia, The Tea Gardens Of Assam And The Rubber Plantations Of Indo-china, 1920-50 / Robert Castle, Jim Hagan And Andrew Wells. Edited By Edward Alpers, Gwyn Campbell And Michael Salman. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 6 Copyright......Page 7 Contents......Page 8 Contributors......Page 10 1 Introduction: Resisting bondage in the Indian Ocean world......Page 14 2 Revolt in Cape Colony slave society......Page 23 3 Unfree labour, forced labour and resistance among the Zigula of the Lower Juba......Page 37 4 Forced labour and the 1856 revolt on Mayotta......Page 53 5 Unfree labour, slavery and protest in imperial Madagascar......Page 62 6 Forced labour in Madagascar under Vichy, 1940–42: Autarky, forced labour and resistance on the ‘Red Island’......Page 73 7 Sugar and servility: Themes of forced labour, resistance and accommodation in mid-nineteenth-century Java......Page 82 8 Forced labourers and their resistance in Java under Japanese military rule, 1942–45......Page 95 9 ‘Unfree’ labour on the cattle stations of Northern Australia, the tea gardens of Assam and the rubber plantations of Indo-China, 1920–50......Page 109 Index......Page 127 This volume examines the various abolitionist impulses in the Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and assesses their efficacy within a context of a growing demand for labour resulting from an expanding international economy and European colonisation.