Slavery in a Remote but Global Place: the British East India Company and Bencoolen, 1685-1825

Richard Allen

doi:10.17583/hse.2018.3374

Abstract

Histories of the British East India Company usually ignore the company’s use of slave labor. Records from its factory at Bencoolen in Sumatra provide an opportunity to examine company attitudes and policies toward its chattel work force in greater detail. These sources reveal that the company drew slaves from a global catchment area to satisfy the demand for labor in its far-flung commercial empire, shed light on policies and practices regarding the treatment of company slaves, and illustrate the company’s role in the development of increasingly interconnected free and forced labor trades during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Bencoolen case study also highlights the need to examine colonial migrant labor systems in the Indian Ocean and maritime Asia worlds in more fully developed contexts.

Highlights

Histories of the British East India Company usually ignore the company’s use of slave labor
Records from its factory at Bencoolen in Sumatra provide an opportunity to examine company attitudes and policies toward its chattel work force in greater detail. These sources reveal that the company drew slaves from a global catchment area to satisfy the demand for labor in its far-flung commercial empire, shed light on policies and practices regarding the treatment of company slaves, and illustrate the company’s role in the development of increasingly interconnected free and forced labor trades during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
The East India Company (EIC) had already set up a factory further north along the coast at Priaman (Pariaman) which was expected to be the center of its pepper trade on the island, an expectation underscored by the issuance of orders in January 1685 for the Pryaman to sail to Madagascar to purchase slaves and carry them to Priaman where they were to be trained as craftsmen capable of building and repairing all kinds of ships