Slavery
Most of the last month has been taken up with writing up historical
research—dealing with India and China in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries—and has not left much time for blog writing.
It
struck me, however, that it is always salutary to bring to the
attention of those alive in the present (yourself, dear reader) some of
the attitudes that prevailed in the years now gone.
Then again,
when I hear and read of what is still going on regarding the affairs of
the human species, I'm not sure that anything has changed.
Slavery
still flourishes in Europe, Africa, the Middle and Far East, in
particular, but some form of it is to be found everywhere (and you don't
have to search too hard. [The news today of 13,000 cases of slavery in
Britain); the internet full of furious comment.]
It exists in
attitudes, particularly among males, outlooks that have been enshrined
and pleated into creeds and rituals that don't have much in the form of
reasoning to back them up. Slavery exists from the earliest times and
riddled all the empires that have risen and fallen from time immemorial.
The
little bits of information I have just been dealing with refer to the
prevalence of slavery, and the casual manner and attitude towards it
that prevailed, in the British East India Company settlements in the
mid-eighteenth century, such as Bombay, where concubines and
housekeepers were looked upon as slaves.
Meanwhile, in Bengal in
the 1790s, a British gentleman, referring to the production of salt
said, in all seriousness: 'Salt people must be free at last, for slaves
cannot work so cheap as free men. Besides, we ought to give all our
subjects liberty.'
Among the Chinese the situation was the same or
worse. At Chupchow, a Chinese woman could be purchased for three
dollars, and for one dollar at Foochow, when the price of a bullock was
seven dollars.
When will the enslavement of women stop —and I am a male, in case anyone wants to know.
Of
course Bunce Island, also in Sierra Leone, was a British slave trading
post in the 18th century. From its shores, tens of thousands of Africans
were forcefully shipped to the American colonies.
Anti-Slavery
Meanwhile, back in Britain in 1791, perhaps spurred by the great
insurrection of slaves in French St. Domingo, some members of the
British Establishment were rustling up a 'Society for forming a
settlement on the coast of Africa', with the intention of doing
something to stop the slave trade. They were seeking to form a company
for this purpose, under royal charter, for development of a settlement
on the island of Bulam and its neighbourhood, on the West African coast
of present day Sierra Leone—at present hit by the ebola epidemic.
This
enterprise actually went ahead and by 1794 a ship full of settlers had
arrived there, where a great many were murdered by locals; and they
found the whole area came under Portuguese domination.
In fact, it
was a great centre for gathering captured natives together and
despatching them by ship to the Western Hemisphere. A large Dutch
EastIndiaman ship sitting in Bulam harbour was used by the Portuguese to
'store' the slaves. It was overseen by a 'Factor' who at any one time
had around 'six hundred slaves between decks' prepared for embarkation
to the West Indies.
The Bulam Company would appear to have tried
to emulate the Sierra Leone Company, whose settlement, already set up,
lay on the river of that name. The intention of this company was also to
abolish the slave trade. It consisted of upwards of two hundred
settlers. A hospital and school were set up; and whether or not the
locals wanted it, the Christian religion preached; wrongdoers punished
with whipping or imprisonment.
See: Joshua Montefiore, 'An Authentic
Account of the Late Expedition to Bulam on the Coast of Africa: With a
Description ...'(1794).
