Extraterritorial slaves: late Ottoman paternalism and the international debate on slavery

Abstract

The European mobilization to end the African slave trade in the nineteenth century was articulated in a language of philanthropy and sympathy. In this essay, I explore this history within the context of the Ottoman Empire. As the British pressured the Ottoman government to prohibit slavery, foreign consulates in the empire turned into places of refuge for captured and runaway domestic slaves. The extraterritorial nature of British interventions was repeatedly countered by Ottomans referring to international law and sovereign independence. Drawing on Ottoman and British diplomatic sources, I provide the debate on slavery and argue how it was about slavery as much as it was about paternalism and compassion. I propose to see international history as generative of larger questions about imperial subjectivity by focusing on connections between international law, domestic arrangements, and intimacy. To do so, I use diplomatic archives as a source of social history. My work shows how the cultivation of humanitarian sensibilities took place within an intricate network of colonial politics. Hence, it calls for attention to the converging histories of the Ottoman Empire and Europe to understand the historical development of humanitarianism and international law.