Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:26:03.799Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ambivalence of Freedom: Slaves in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2019

Nira Wickramasinghe  and
Alicia Schrikker
Nira Wickramasinghe
Affiliation:
Nira Wickramasinghe (n.k.wickramasinghe@hum.leidenuniv.nl) is Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University.
Alicia Schrikker
Affiliation:
Alicia Schrikker (a.f.schrikker@hum.leidenuniv.nl) is Associate Professor of Colonial and Global History at Leiden University.
Get access

Abstract

This article discusses slavery and the lives of enslaved people in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka, under Dutch and British rule. It argues that by sanctioning and tapping into a perceived local practice of slavery and legally constituting slaves, Dutch colonial rulers further strengthened the power of the dominant caste Vellalar over their subordinates. This was done through processes of registration, legal codification, and litigation. For some enslaved people, however, bureaucratization provided grounds for negotiation and resistance, as well as the potential to take control over their individual lives. British rule that took over areas controlled by the Dutch East India Company or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie—first in the guise of the East India Company (1796–1802), then under the Crown (1802–1948)—introduced a number of measures, acts, and incentives to dismantle slavery as it was practiced on the island. This article draws from Dutch and early British period petitions, court records, commission reports, and slave registers to interrogate the discourse of freedom that permeated the British abolition of slavery from 1806 to 1844 and suggests that in Jaffna after abolition there remained bondage in freedom.

Keywords

abolitioncastecodificationCoviyaremancipationJaffnaNalavarPallarslaverySri Lanka
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 497 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Abeyasinghe, Tikiri. 1966. Portuguese Rule in Ceylon, 1594–1612. Colombo: Lake House Publishers.Google Scholar
Allen, Richard B. 2015. European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Arasaratnam, Sinnapah. 1981. “Social History of a Dominant Caste Society: The Vellalar of North Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the 18th Century.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 18(3–4):377–91.Google Scholar
Baldaeus, Philippus. [1732] 1996. A Description of the Great and Famous Isle of Ceylon. Delhi: Asian Educational Services.Google Scholar
Banks, Michael. 1960. “Caste in Jaffna.” In Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North-West Pakistan, ed. Leach, E. R., 61–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bastin, Rohan. 2002. The Domain of Constant Excess: Plural Worship at the Munnesvaram Temples in Sri Lanka. New York: Berghahn Press.Google Scholar
Brimnes, Niels. 1999. Constructing the Colonial Encounter: Right and Left Hand Castes in Early Colonial South India. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Brito, Christopher. [1879] 2007. The Yalpana Vaipava Malai or the History of the Kingdom of Jaffna, Translated from the Tamil, with an Appendix and a Glossary. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Indrani. 2005. “Abolition by Denial: The South Asian Example.” In Abolition and Its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, ed. Campbell, Gwyn, chap. 10. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Indrani. 2017. “British Abolitionism from the Vantage of Pre-colonial South Asian Regimes.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 4, AD 1804–AD 2016, eds. Eltis, David, Engerman, Stanley, Drescher, Seymour, and Richardson, David, 441–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Indrani, and Eaton, Richard M., eds. 2006. Slavery and South Asian History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Cody, Francis. 2009. “Inscribing Subjects to Citizenship: Petitions, Literacy Activism, and the Performativity of Signature in Rural Tamil India.” Cultural Anthropology 24(3):347–80.10.1111/j.1548-1360.2009.01035.xGoogle Scholar
Cordiner, James. 1807. A Description of Ceylon, vol. I. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme.Google Scholar
David, Kenneth. 1972. “The Bound and the Nonbound: Variations in Social and Cultural Structure in Rural Jaffna, Ceylon.” PhD diss., University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Denham, E. B. 1911. Ceylon at the Census of 1911, Being the Review of the Results of the Census of 1911. Colombo: H.C. Cottle, Government Printer.Google Scholar
De Silva, Chandra R., and Pathmanathan, S.. 1995. “The Kingdom of Jaffna up to 1620.” In University of Peradeniya History of Sri Lanka, vol. 2: c 1500 to c 1800, ed. de Silva, K. M., 105–20. Dehiwela, Sri Lanka: Sridevi.Google Scholar
De Silva, K. M. 1965. Social Policy and Missionary Organizations in Ceylon, 1840–1855. London: Longmans for the Royal Commonwealth Society.Google Scholar
De Silva, M. U. 1992–93. “Land Tenure, Caste System and the Rājakāriya, under Foreign Rule: A Review of Change in Sri Lanka under Western Powers, 1597–1832.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, n.s., 37:1–57.Google Scholar
De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan. 2010. The African Diaspora in Asian Trade Routes and Cultural Memories. Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellon Press.Google Scholar
Dewasiri, Nirmal Ranjith. 2007. The Adaptable Peasant: Agrarian Society in Western Sri Lanka under Dutch Rule, 1740–1800. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Guha, Sumit. 2013. Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Gunawardana, R. A. L. H. 1979. Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Harms, Robert, Freamon, Bernard K., and Blight, David W., eds. 2013. Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Heesterman, J. C. 1980. “Littoral et intérieur de l'Inde” [Coastline and interior of India]. Itinerario 4(1):87–92.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 1992. The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Hjejle, Benedicte. 1967. “Slavery and Agricultural Bondage in South India in the Nineteenth Century.” Scandinavian Economic History Review 15(1–2):71–126.Google Scholar
Hovy, L. 1991. Ceylonees plakkaatboek: Plakkaten en andere wetten uitgevaardigd door het Nederlands bestuur op Ceylon, 1638–1796, Vol. 1 & II [Ceylonese ordinance book: Ordinances and other laws issued by the Dutch administration in Ceylon, 1638–1796]. Hilversum: Verloren.Google Scholar
Kelly, David, and Reid, Anthony, eds. 1998. Asian Freedoms: The Idea of Freedom in East and Southeast Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kuganathan, Prashanth. 2014. “Social Stratification in Jaffna: A Survey of Recent Research on Caste.” Sociology Compass 8(1):78–88.Google Scholar
Kumar, Dharma. 1965. Land and Caste in South India: Agricultural Labor in the Madras Presidency during the Nineteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Luster, Robert Edward. 1988. “The Amelioration of the Slaves in the British Empire, 1790–1833.” PhD thesis, New York University.Google Scholar
Major, Andrea. 2012. Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Mbeki, Linda, and van Rossum, Matthias. 2017. “Private Slave Trade in the Dutch Indian Ocean World: A Study into the Networks and Backgrounds of the Slavers and the Enslaved in South Asia and South Africa.” Slavery and Abolition 38(1):95–116.Google Scholar
Mendis, G. C. 1957. The Colebrooke-Cameron Papers: Documents on British Colonial Policy in Ceylon, 1796–1833. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mohan, P. Sanal. 2015. Modernity of Slavery: Struggles against Caste Inequality in Colonial Kerala. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198099765.001.0001Google Scholar
Mooyaart, Anthony. 1910. Memoir of Anthony Mooyaart, Commandeur of Jaffnapatam for the Information and Guidance of His Successor Noel Anthony Lebeck, 1766. Translated by Pieters, Sophia. Colombo: H.C. Cottle, Government Printer.Google Scholar
Mukund, Kanakalatha. 1995. “Caste Conflict in South India in Early Colonial Port Cities—1650–1800.” Studies in History 11(1):1–27.Google Scholar
Nadaraja, T. 1972. The Legal System of Ceylon in Its Historical Setting. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 2015. “The Coming of the Brahmin Migrants: The Śudra Fate of an Indian Elite in Sri Lanka.” Society and Culture in South Asia 1(1):1–32.Google Scholar
O'Hanlon, Rosalind. 2017. “Caste and Its Histories in Colonial India: A Reappraisal.” Modern Asian Studies 51(2):432–61.Google Scholar
Pfaffenberger, Bryan. 1982. Caste in Tamil Culture: The Religious Foundations of Sudra Domination in Tamil Sri Lanka. Syracuse, N.Y.: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.Google Scholar
Prakash, Gyan. 1993. Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Raghavan, M. D. 1971. Tamil Culture in Ceylon: A General Introduction. Colombo: Kalai Nilayam.Google Scholar
Rasanayagam, C. [1926] 1984. Ancient Jaffna: Being a Research into the History of Jaffna from Very Early Times to the Portuguese Period. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services.Google Scholar
Rose, John Holland, ed. 1940. The Cambridge History of the British Empire, vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ryan, Bryce. 1953. Caste in Modern Ceylon: The Sinhalese System in Transition. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Schrikker, Alicia. 2015. “Op de dijk gezet’ Schuld, onrust en bestuurlijke onzekerheid in Jaffna in de achttiende eeuw” [Debt, social unrest and administrative anxiety in eighteenth-century Jaffna]. In Aan de overkant: Ontmoetingen in dienst van de VOC en WIC [On the other side: Encounters in service of the VOC and the WIC], ed. Wagenaar, Lodewijk, 145–64. Leiden: Sidestone Press.Google Scholar
Schrikker, Alicia, and Ekama, Kate. 2017. “Through the Lens of Slavery: Dutch Sri Lanka in the Eighteenth Century.” In Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History, eds. Biederman, Zoltan and Strathern, Alan, 178–93. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar
Schrikker, Alicia, and Lyna, Dries. 2019. “Threads of the Legal Web: Dutch Law and Everyday Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Asia.” In The Uses of Justice in Global Perspective, 1600–1900, eds. van der Heijden, Manon, Vermeesch, Griet, and Zuijderduijn, Jaco, 42–56. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Seshan, Radhika. 2012. Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast: Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries. Delhi: Primus Books.Google Scholar
Sharma, Yogesh, ed. 2010. Coastal Histories: Society and Ecology in Pre-modern India. Delhi: Primus Books.Google Scholar
Silva, Tudor K., Sivapragasam, P. P., and Thanges, Paramsothy. 2009. Casteless or Caste-Blind? Dynamics of Concealed Caste Discrimination, Social Exclusion, and Protest in Sri Lanka. Copenhagen: International Dalit Solidarity Network.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Hideaki, ed. 2016. Abolitions as a Global Experience. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press.Google Scholar
Van Rossum, Matthias. 2015. Kleurrijke tragiek: De geschiedenis van slavernij in Azie onder de VOC [Colorful tragedy: The history of slavery in Asia under the VOC]. Hilversum: Verloren.Google Scholar
Viswanath, Rupa. 2014. The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Wenzlhuemer, Roland. 2005. “The Sinhalese Contribution to Estate Labour in Ceylon, 1881–1891.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48(3):442–58.Google Scholar
Wickramasinghe, Chandima S. M. 2010. “The Abolition of Colonial and Pre-colonial ‘Slavery’ from Ceylon (Sri Lanka).” Cultural and Social History 7(3):315–35.Google Scholar
Wickramasinghe, Nira. 2006. “La petition coloniale: Object de controle, objet de dissidence” [The colonial petition: Object of control, object of dissent]. Identity, Culture & Politics: An Afro-Asian Dialogue 7(1–2):82–98.Google Scholar
Wickramasinghe, Nira. 2009. “Many Little Revolts or One Rebellion? The Maritime Provinces of Ceylon/Sri Lanka between 1796 and 1800.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 32(2):170–88.Google Scholar
Wickremaratne, U. C. 1996. The Conservative Nature of the British Rule of Sri Lanka with Particular Emphasis on the Period 1796–1802. New Delhi: Navrang.Google Scholar

Archival Sources

NA (National Archives, Kew). 1819. CO 416, Commissioners of Eastern Enquiry, Ceylon. CO 416/1, Proceedings held before the Supreme Court in Ceylon in 1819 in the case of a slave punished at Jaffna for using a Palanquin or Andol and correspondence between the judges and the Lieut. Governor arising out of those proceedings. Letter dated November 8, 1819. CO 416/17.Google Scholar
NA (National Archives, Kew). 1830a. CO 416, Commissioners of Eastern Enquiry, Ceylon. The Humble Petition of the Prisoner Weler Taanduven a Vellala of Carrewilly to the Commissioner of Enquiry, Jaffna, September 8, 1830. CO 416/32.Google Scholar
NA (National Archives, Kew). 1830b. CO 416, Commissioners of Eastern Enquiry, Ceylon. Petition of Cadireser Canagasawe, September 21, 1830. CO 416/32.Google Scholar
NA (National Archives, Kew). 1830c. CO 416, Commissioners of Eastern Enquiry, Ceylon. Petition of Poroijy Paulo et al., September 2, 1830. CO 416/32.Google Scholar
NA (National Archives, Kew). 1830d. CO 416, Commissioners of Eastern Enquiry, Ceylon. Petition of Renaldus Hendricks de Ortha, to Major Colebrook, Commissioner of Enquiry c. 1830. CO 416/32.Google Scholar
NA (National Archives, Kew). 1830e. CO 416, Commissioners of Eastern Enquiry, Ceylon. Petition of (illegible) Saeraa, Vellala, September 1830. CO 416/32.Google Scholar
NA (National Archives, Kew). 1818–32. Ceylon, Slave Registers, Domestic Slaves, 1818–1832. CO/T71.Google Scholar
SLNA (Sri Lanka National Archives). 1751–53. Minutes of sessions of the Jaffna Landraad, April 1751–August 1753. 1/6819.Google Scholar
SLNA (Sri Lanka National Archives). 1753–54. Minutes of sessions of the Jaffna Landraad, November 3, 1753–August 24, 1754. 1/6820.Google Scholar
SLNA (Sri Lanka National Archives). 1829. Letter dated November 23, 1829. 10/41.Google Scholar
SLNA (Sri Lanka National Archives). 1830. Letter from Sitting Magistrate, Point Pedro to Collector, Jaffna Cutcherry, April 14, 1830. 10/41.Google Scholar

Parliamentary Publications

Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons). 1838a. Slave Trade (East India) – Slavery in Ceylon, 687.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons). 1838b. Slave Trade (East India) – Slavery in Ceylon, 687. Copy of Despatch from Sir Robert Brownrigg to Earl Bathurst, August 17, 1818, p. 569.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons). 1838c. Slave Trade (East India) – Slavery in Ceylon, 687. Enclosure 3, in No. 3 – Letter from G. Lusignan Act Sec to Council, August 13, 1818, to the collector, the Provincial Judge, the Sitting Magistrate, the Assistant Collector at Jaffnapatam, p. 589.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons). 1838d. Slave Trade (East India) – Slavery in Ceylon, 687. Extract of a Despatch from Lieutenant General Sir R. Brownrigg to Earl Bathurst, September 16, 1816, CO May 16, 1838, p. 561.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons). 1838e. Slave Trade (East India) – Slavery in Ceylon, 687. Letter to Sir Alexander Johnston, July 14, 1816.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons). 1838f. Slave Trade (East India) – Slavery in Ceylon, 687. Regulation 9 of 1818, art. 24, p. 697.Google Scholar