‘The Slavery of East and West’: Abolitionists and ‘Unfree’ Labour in India, 1820–1833

Abstract

This article explores abolitionist treatments of East Indian slavery in the 1820s. It argues that rather than resulting from a lack of information or a conception of the qualitative difference between East and West Indian slavery, ambivalent and muted abolitionist responses to this issue prior to 1833 were conditioned by the wider imperatives of the anti-slavery campaign. Abstentionist substitution of ‘free-grown’ East India sugar for morally tainted West Indian produce, together with wider economic arguments about the equalisation of the sugar duties and the potential of India to provide a free labour alternative to the West Indian slave system, marked points of intersection between abolitionist and East India economic interests that relied on the assumption that labour in India, however cheap, was fundamentally ‘free’. As a result, rather than engaging with the various forms of slavery in India, abolitionists focused on discursively distancing them both from sugar production and from their campaign. This response suggests that abolitionist ideology was intersected by pragmatic political, economic, and discursive imperatives that precluded the universal application of humanitarian anti-slavery ideals.

Acknowledgements

Research for this article has been carried out under the auspices of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship held at the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds. I would like to thank Leverhulme for their financial and other support during this time.

Notes

Adam, Law and Custom, 10–11.

Davis, ‘James Cropper … 1823–1833’, 169.

Davis, ‘James Cropper … 1823–1833’, 155.

Adam, Law and Custom, 6.

Drescher, ‘Abolitionist expectations’, 45–6.

See Bender and Ashworth (eds), The Antislavery Debate, for an extended debate on the role of hegemonic class interests.

Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, 187–8. See Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, for a critical discussion of class in the abolitionist movement.

See Kale, Fragments of Empire, Tinker, A New System of Slavery, Carter, Voices from Indenture.

See Baak, ‘About Enslaved Ex-slaves’.

See, for example, Halhed, Code of Gentoo Laws (1776), Tennent, Indian Recreations (1805), and Buchanan Journey from Madras (1807).

Additional volumes in this series appeared in 1834, 1838, and 1844.

Peggs was a Baptist missionary to India, not, as Mark Naidis suggests, a West Indian planter! Naidis, ‘The Abolitionists and Indian Slavery’, 148.

The Anti-Slavery Reporter noted their publication in a short, one-page article, but claimed that their contents did not alter their view of East Indian slavery. Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, 2, no. 41 (October 1828).

Temperley, ‘Delegalization of Slavery’, 171.

One important exception is Marika Sherwood, who mentions both Indian slavery and the treatment of ‘free’ workers on the cotton plantations in the 1840s, noting that the latter were run by ‘rather a rough set of planters, some of whom had been slave drivers in America and carried unfortunate ideas and practices with them’. Although she questions how much radicals such as John Bright knew about conditions in India, she does this only in the context of cotton production and does not mention the relationship between Indian slavery and the sugar debates. Sherwood, After Abolition, 155–7.

Davis, ‘James Cropper … 1823–1833’, 155.

Stanley Engerman refers to Indian slavery as a social ‘safety-net’. Engerman, ‘Comparative Approaches’ 293.

Temperley, ‘Delegalization of Slavery’, 169.

Macauley, Letter to W. W. Whitmore, 4.

Sen, ‘Liberal Empire’, 136.

See Sen, Empire of Free Trade.

See Ratledge, Competing for the British Sugar Bowl for more on EIC and private investment in the sugar industry.

Marshall, ‘Moral Swing’, 79.

Marshall, ‘Moral Swing’, 70.

E.g. Scarr, Slaving and Slavery; Campbell, The Structure of Slavery; Campbell, Abolition and its Aftermath; Watson, Asian and African Systems of Slavery; Clarence Smith, The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade; Klein, Breaking the Chains.

See Chatterjee, Gender, Slavery and Law; Chatterjee and Eaton, Slavery and South Asian History; Prakash, Bonded Histories; Kumar, Land and Caste; Patnaik and Dingwaney, Chains of Servitude.

Sarkar, ‘Bondage in the Colonial Context’, 97.

Prakash, Bonded Histories, 1–11.

For more on domestic slavery in India, see Chatterjee, Gender, Slavery and Law; Chatterjee and Eaton, Slavery and South Asian History; Major, ‘Enslaved Spaces’.

Temperley, ‘Delegalization of Slavery’, 173.

See Kumar, Land and Caste; Baak ‘About Enslaved Ex-Slaves’.

See Prakash, Bonded Histories.

Temperley, ‘Delegalization of Slavery’, 177.

Parliamentary Papers on East Indian Slavery, 1837, 56.

See Major, ‘Enslaved Spaces’.

Sarkar, ‘Bondage in the Colonial Context’, 100.

Sarkar, ‘Bondage in the Colonial Context’, 100.

Sarkar, ‘Bondage in the Colonial Context’, 107.

For the history of sugar as a commodity, see Mintz, Sweetness and Power.

Midgley, Women against Slavery, 35.

Sussman, ‘Women and the Politics of Sugar’, 51.

Midgley, Women against Slavery, 40.

Cited in Midgley, Women against Slavery, 35.

See Morton, The Poetics of Spice, 177.

Midgley, Women against Slavery, 36.

Morton, The Poetics of Spice, 175.

Morton, The Poetics of Spice, 173.

Peckham Ladies, Reasons for Using East India Sugar.

Peckham Ladies, Reasons for Using East India Sugar.

Cited in Sussman, ‘Women and the Politics of Sugar’, 57.

See Sussman, ‘Women and the Politics of Sugar’, 57.

Midgeley, Women against Slavery, 37.

Midgeley, Women against Slavery, 62.

Midgeley, Women against Slavery, 62.

Drescher, Mighty Experiment, 115.

The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, 9 January 1792.

The failure of efforts to set up European-run sugar plantations in India using West Indian technology has been blamed on ‘climactic and geographic problems’, high capital costs, and ambivalent EIC attitudes and policy, which provided at best, episodic support for potential sugar barons. For EIC and private British and Anglo-Indian forays into sugar production and the sugar trade, see Ratledge, ‘Competing for the British Sugar Bowl’. For Indian sugar production, see Shahid Amin, Sugar Cane and Sugar in Gorakhpur; Donald Attwood, Raising Cane.

The Morning Chronicle, 13 February 1792.

Midgeley, Women against Slavery, 39.

Peckham Ladies, Reasons for Using East India Sugar.

Midgeley, Women against Slavery, 61. As Jane Webster points out: ‘In the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, tea services, rolling pins, sugar bowls, jugs and many other household objects were produced bearing mottos distancing the user from slave-made produce (‘East India sugar not made by slaves’). These objects … were put on show in domestic arenas – kitchens, parlours, dining rooms – presided over by women.' Webster, ‘The Unredeemed Object’, 316.

Davis, ‘James Cropper … 1823–1833’, 169.

Midgeley, Women against Slavery, 40.

Midgeley, Women against Slavery, 62.

Sussman, ‘Women and the Politics of Sugar’, 51.

Drescher, ‘Abolitionist Expectations’, 55.

In parliament, planters, Caribbean merchants, and MPs for ports such as Bristol and Liverpool, with close connections to the West Indian trade, made up the West Indian ‘interest’, while EIC Directors, shareholders, and returned employees made up the East India ‘interest’. In the abolitionist period the West Indian lobby had between 20 and 40 MPS, the East Indians about 100. As Marshall points out, however, this is not necessarily an indication of voting strength as although both were internally fractured, the West India lobby was more cohesive, while the East India lobby was far from a unified pressure group. Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 76–7.

Marshall, ‘Moral Swing’, 76–7. For more on attitudes to EIC actions in India, see Nechtman ‘Nabobs Revisited’; Lawson and Phillips, ‘Our Execrable Banditti’; Dirks, The Scandal of Empire.

See Dirks, The Scandal of Empire.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 70.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 70.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 73.

Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 4 August 1821.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 88.

Drescher, ‘Abolitionist Expectations’ 47.

Drescher, Mighty Experiment, 114.

Drescher, Mighty Experiment, 115.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 74.

Drescher, ‘Abolitionist Expectations’, 47.

See, for example, Anon, East India Sugar; Cropper, Relief from West Indian Distress.

Drescher, The Mighty Experiment.

Midgeley, Women against Slavery, 60.

Sherwood, After Abolition, 152.

Cropper, The Impolicy of Slavery.

Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, 116.

Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, 116.

Davis ‘James Cropper … 1821–1823’, 244.

Liverpool Mercury, 18 May 1821.

The idea that free labour was more efficient than slave labour was a longstanding, but problematic part of abolitionist discourse. During the campaign against the slave trade, abolitionists refrained from calling for immediate emancipation because they could not be sure that Africans would be willing to work as free men. Some historians assume the general dominance of a universalised 'free labour ideology' in Britain in 1833, but this was still subject to race, class, and gender distinctions, as well as ideas about labour in high and low density conditions. See Drescher, The Mighty Experiment.

Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, 116.

Liverpool Mercury, 18 May 1821.

Liverpool Mercury, 18 May 1821.

Davis ‘James Cropper … 1821–1823’, 241.

Davis ‘James Cropper … 1821–1823’, 241.

Davis ‘James Cropper … 1821–1823’, 244, 249. Cropper himself founded the Liverpool Society for the Amelioration and Gradual Abolition of Slavery and was involved in the formation of the London Anti-Slavery Society in 1823.

Davis ‘James Cropper … 1821–1823’, 254.

This was in contrast to the 1790s, when abolitionists consistently emphasised moral over economic arguments. Drescher, ‘Public Opinion’.

Davis ‘James Cropper … 1821–1823’, 256.

See Correspondence between John Gladsone, Esq., M.and James Cropper, Esq.

See reply to Cropper in the Liverpool Mercury, 8 June 1821.

See reply to Cropper in the Liverpool Mercury, 8 June 1821.

See reply to Cropper in the Liverpool Mercury, 8 June 1821.

Sussman, ‘Women and the Politics of Sugar’, 52.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 80.

The idea of the super-exploitation of the Indian peasantry has informed much subsequent historiography, although recent scholars now emphasise the dynamism and potentials for growth in the pre-colonial Indian peasant economy. See Washbrook, ‘India in the Early Modern World Economy’.

Liverpool Mercury, 17 August 1821.

Liverpool Mercury, 17 August 1821. ‘The authors of the ruin of these poor creatures’ Joseph Marryat declared ‘are now endeavouring to find new employment for them, by starving some hundred thousand slaves in the West Indies’. Marryat, A Reply, 26–7.

Liverpool Mercury, 17 August 1821.

Liverpool Mercury, 17 August 1821.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 80.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 80.

The Oracle and Public Advertiser, 16 April 1796.

Marshall, ‘Moral Swing’, 80.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 81.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 81.

Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, 34.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 81.

Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 4 August 1821.

Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, 4 August 1821.

Marryat, ‘A reply’, 32.

Marryat, ‘A reply’, 33.

Macauley, Letter to W.W. Whitmore.

Macauley, East and West Indian Sugar, 89–95.

Saintsbury, East India Slavery.

Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, 3, 1831, 79.

Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, 3, no. 52 (September 1829).

Anti-slavery Monthly Reporter, 2, no. 41 (October 1828).

Chatterjee, ‘Abolition by Denial’, 151.

Macauley, Letter to W.W. Whitmore, 2.

Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, 2, no. 41 (October 1828).

See Chatterjee, ‘Abolition by Denial’; Major, ‘Enslaved Spaces’.

Major, ‘Enslaved Spaces’. See also Baak, ‘About Enslaved Ex-slaves’.

Macauley, Letter to W.W. Whitmore, 4.

Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, 2, no. 41 (October 1828).

See Kale, Tinker, etc.

Drescher, The Mighty Experiment, 118.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 69.

Marshall, ‘The Moral Swing’, 79.