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Fugitive women: Slavery and social change in early modern Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2007

Eric A. Jones*
Affiliation:
Eric A. Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Northern Illinois University.
*
Correspondence in connection with this paper should be addressed to [email protected].

Abstract

Female slaves in VOC-controlled Southeast Asia did not fare well under a legal code which erected a firm partition between free and slave status. This codification imposed a rigid dichotomy for what had been fluid, abstract conceptions of social hierarchy, in effect silting up the flow of underclass mobility. At the same time, conventional relationships between master and slave shifted in the context of a changing economic climate. This article closely narrates the lives of several eighteenth-century female slaves who, left with increasingly fewer options in this new order, resorted to running away.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2007

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