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The Ambivalence of Freedom: Slaves in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2019

Nira Wickramasinghe  and
Alicia Schrikker
Nira Wickramasinghe
Affiliation:
Nira Wickramasinghe ([email protected]) is Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University.
Alicia Schrikker
Affiliation:
Alicia Schrikker ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of Colonial and Global History at Leiden University.
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Abstract

This article discusses slavery and the lives of enslaved people in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka, under Dutch and British rule. It argues that by sanctioning and tapping into a perceived local practice of slavery and legally constituting slaves, Dutch colonial rulers further strengthened the power of the dominant caste Vellalar over their subordinates. This was done through processes of registration, legal codification, and litigation. For some enslaved people, however, bureaucratization provided grounds for negotiation and resistance, as well as the potential to take control over their individual lives. British rule that took over areas controlled by the Dutch East India Company or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie—first in the guise of the East India Company (1796–1802), then under the Crown (1802–1948)—introduced a number of measures, acts, and incentives to dismantle slavery as it was practiced on the island. This article draws from Dutch and early British period petitions, court records, commission reports, and slave registers to interrogate the discourse of freedom that permeated the British abolition of slavery from 1806 to 1844 and suggests that in Jaffna after abolition there remained bondage in freedom.

Keywords

abolitioncastecodificationCoviyaremancipationJaffnaNalavarPallarslaverySri Lanka
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 497 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2019 

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