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Raffles and the Slave Trade at Batavia in 1812

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. R. C. Wright
H. R. C. Wright
Affiliation:
University of the Witwatersrand
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Extract

British opinion in the East became sensitive to propaganda against slavery and the slave trade surprisingly early. Thus in 1772 the Committee of Circuit in Bengal, when recommending the enslavement of the families of hereditary dacoits, thought it necessary to explain that slavery in India involved only a mild domestic subordination, since ‘the ideas of slavery borrowed from our American colonies will make every modification of it appear to our countrymen in England a horrible evil’. In 1789 Cornwallis prohibited the collection of slaves for export, and was contemplating a gradual abolition of slavery in Bengal.2 David Scott, a hard-headed East-India merchant and a Director of the East India Company, wrote in a private letter in 1796 that the salt workers in Bengal must be freed from compulsory labour, ‘for slaves cannot work so cheap as free men, besides we ought to give all our subjects liberty‘. In 1804 Wellesley ordered proposals to be made for the prohibition of slavery on Penang, since there could be no great difficulty about it on so recent a settlement.

Type
Communications
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 1960 , pp. 184 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

1 Firminger, W. K. (ed.), Fifth Report from Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, 1812 (Calcutta, 1917), 1 (Introduction), p. ccxxiv.Google Scholar

2 Forrest, G. W. (ed.), Selections from the State Papers of the Governors-General of India— Lord Cornwallis (1926), 11, 141.Google Scholar

3 Philips, C. H. (ed.), Correspondence of David Scott, Camden Soc. 3rd ser. lxxv (1951), 1, 76.Google Scholar

4 Prince of Wales Island Public Consultations, 4 Oct. 1805 (India Office, R. 428/69, pp. 85–90).

5 Wurtzburg, C. E., Raffles [of the Eastern Isles] (1954), 146, 153Google Scholar; Raffles, S., Memoir of the Life of Sir T. S. Raffles (1830), 78–80.Google Scholar

6 Bengal Civ[il] Col[onial] Cons[ultations], 16 Aug. 1813, no. 6.

7 Ibid. 17 Oct. 1812, no. 16.

8 Hansard (1st ser.), xxi, 141 (10 Jan. 1812).

9 Ibid, xix, 233–4.

10 Bengal Civ. Col. Cons., 17 Oct. 1812, no. 7.

11 Bengal Civ. Col. Cons., 17 Oct. 1812, no. 7.

12 Bengal Civ. Col. Cons., 5 Dec. 1812, no. 23.

13 Ibid. no. 24.

14 Ibid. no. 23.

15 Bengal Civ. Col. Cons., 5 Dec. 1812, no. 19.

16 Ibid. no. 18.

17 Wurtzburg, Raffles, 264.

18 Bengal Civ. Col. Cons., 5 Dec. 1812, no. 18.

19 Bengal Civ. Col. Cons., 5 Dec. 1812, nos. 20–1.

20 Ibid. no. 18.

21 Ibid. no. 16.

22 Wurtzburg, Raffles, 265–6. Boulger, D. C., Life of Sir Stamford Raffles (1899), 182. In 1813 Raffles made it a principle of policy that slaves whose masters had not duly completed the formalities of registration were entitled to emancipation (Java Public Cons., 17 Sept. and 15 Oct. 1813).Google Scholar

23 Bengal Civ. Col. Cons., 17 Oct. 1812, no. 15.

24 Ibid, 5 Dec. 1812, no. 25.

25 Letter from Bengal (Colonial), 31 July 1813.

26 Wurtzburg, Raffles, 613—14, 710–11.

27 Lloyd, C., The Navy and the Slave Trade (1949), 197Google Scholar; Cambridge History of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1940), ii, 110.Google Scholar

28 Quarterly Review, xxviii (no. lv), 1822–3, PP. 124–5, 137.

29 For a fuller discussion of Raffles's ‘sincerity’ see Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, xxviii (1955), 222–30.Google Scholar