Table Of ContentSLAVERY, ABOLITIONISM AND
EMPIRE IN INDIA,
1772–1843
LIVERPOOL STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL SLAVERY,
SLAVERY, ABOLITIONISM AND
EMPIRE IN INDIA,
1772–1843
Andrea Major
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
First published by
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Copyright © Andrea Major
Copyright © Andrea Major
The right of Andrea Major to be identified as the author
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Glossary xii
Some Prominent Figures in the British Parliament, the Abolitionist
Movement and the East India Company xiv
Part I. Other Slaveries
Introduction
. ‘To Call a Slave a Slave’: Recovering Indian Slavery
Part II. European Slaveries
Introduction: Slavery and Colonial Expansion in India
. ‘A Shameful and Ruinous Trade’: European Slave-trafficking
and the East India Company
. Bengalis, Caffrees and Malays: European Slave-holding and
Early Colonial Society
Part III. Indian Slaveries
Introduction: Locating Indian Slaveries
. ‘This Household Servitude’: Domestic Slavery and Immoral
Commerce
. ‘Open and Professed Stealers of Children’: Slave-trafficking and
the Boundaries of the Colonial State
. ‘Slaves of the Soil’: Caste and Agricultural Slavery in South India
(cid:85) v (cid:85)
Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India
Part IV. Imagined Slaveries
Introduction: Evangelical Connections
. ‘Satan’s Wretched Slaves’: Indian Society and the Evangelical
Imagination
. ‘The Produce of the East by Free Men’: Indian Sugar and Indian
Slavery in British Abolitionist Debates, –
Conclusion: ‘Do Justice to India’: Abolitionists and Indian Slavery,
–
Select Bibliography
Index
(cid:85) vi (cid:85)
Illustrations
‘Hindoostan’ in , from C. Cruttwell, Atlas to Cruttwell’s
Gazetteer, .
Sir David Ochterlony (–) in Indian dress, smoking a
hookah and watching a nautch in his house at Delhi. Watercolour,
c.. By permission of the British Library.
Eliza Fay, in Egyptian dress, with unnamed female attendant.
From Eliza Fay, ed. E. M. Forster, Original Letters from India
(–) (London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth
Press, ).
The Festival of Juggernath, CMS Quarterly Missionary Papers, ,
.
Indian holy men, . Engraving by J. Chapman, Encyclopaedia
Londinensis, or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature,
published in London, –. Photo by SSPL/Getty Images.
Hook-swinging, CMS Quarterly Missionary Papers, , .
Charak-puja, a Hindu ceremony involving swinging. Drawn by
J. J. Crew, c.. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
A Negro hanged alive by the ribs to a gallows. A skull and
bones on the ground. Image taken from Narrative of a five years
expedition against the revolted Negroes of Surinam, from the year
to . Originally published by J. Johnson (London, ).
By permission of the British Library.
‘A Suttee: Or the Burning of a Hindoo Widow with the Body of
her Husband’: Frontispiece, James Peggs, India’s Cries to British
Humanity (London, ). Courtesy of the British Library.
James Gillray (–), ‘Barbarities in the West Indies’
(hand-coloured etching), published by Hannah Humphrey, .
© Courtesy of the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford/
The Bridgeman Art Library.
(cid:85) vii (cid:85)
Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India
James Gillray (–), ‘Anti-Saccharites, or John Bull and
his Family leaving off the use of Sugar’ (hand-coloured etching),
published by Hannah Humphrey, . © Courtesy of the Warden
and Scholars of New College, Oxford/The Bridgeman Art Library.
Workers crushing sugar cane, c.. In the background, workers
are boiling down the juice. First Appendix to Report on East India
Sugar, . Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Anti-slavery sugar bowl promoting East India Sugar (ceramic),
English School (nineteenth century). © Museum of London, UK/
The Bridgeman Art Library.
George Cruikshank (–), ‘John Bull taking a Clear View
of the Negro Slavery Question’ (colour lithograph), published by
G. Humphrey, . © Wilberforce House, Hull City Museums
and Art Galleries, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library.
(cid:85) viii (cid:85)
Acknowledgements
Research for this book has been carried out at various institutions in
both Britain and India, and many people have contributed, directly and
indirectly, to its production. I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust
for seeing potential in this project and funding it with one of their Early
Career Fellowships. Without them it is unlikely that it would ever have been
completed and I am extremely grateful not only for their financial support
but also for the opportunity for professional development that the Fellowship
has provided. Work on this project began at the University of Edinburgh,
my alma mater, and has been completed at the University of Leeds, and I
would like to thank my colleagues at both these institutions. The past and
present members and associates of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre
for South Asian Studies all contribute, in their own ways, to the collegial
interdisciplinary environment enjoyed by those studying the subcontinent
there. In particular Roger and Patricia Jeffery, Markus Daechsel, Clare
Anderson, Ian Duffield and especially Crispin Bates have been invaluable
sources of advice and guidance, not just with this project, but throughout
my academic career. Likewise the warm welcome and kind support I have
received since joining the School of History at the University of Leeds has
been unparalleled and I would particularly like to thank Richard Whiting,
William Gould, Kate Dossett, Alex Bamji, Shane Doyle and many, many
others for this. I must also express my deep gratitude to Marina Carter,
Caroline Lewis and Esther Breitenbach for their comments on early drafts
of chapters, and to Sean Creighton for the extensive and useful references
he gave me relating to abolitionist materials in the northeast. I have enjoyed
discussing this project with the members of the Wilberforce Institute for the
study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull—Joel Quirk,
Nick Evans, David Richardson—and have benefited a great deal from their
insights. The staff of the Asia and Africa room at the British Library have,
as always, made researching there a pleasure, and I am likewise grateful to all
those who have helped me at the National Library of Scotland, the National
Archives of India, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Library, the Council for
(cid:85) ix (cid:85)
