Enslaveability, Slavery and Global Micro Histories: Reflections through the Case of Cali

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the questions how enslavement and enslaveability were shaped in early modern southwest India and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Empire. Through the example of the slave woman Cali in the 1740s, the article demonstrates how a careful micro-study based on legal court records can shed light on the ways in which individuals entered, experienced, and left slavery in eighteenth-century South India, and also suggests how different manifestations of slavery co-existed and interacted in a colonial contact zone. The fate of Cali moreover shows that an enslaved actively tried to better their position by taking independent action and challenge their treatment as a slave.