Slavery and Fort St George: Does Madras under the East India Company have a Slaving Past

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Reynolds Painting

The Black Lives Movement in the US and across the white world has drawn attention to the enduring legacy of involuntary servitude or Slavery. In Madras, Forst St. George built on a strip of land acquired from the last ruler of the Vijayanagara Empire even as it was losing its elan to the might of the Mughals and their surrogates, remained along with Pulicat under he Dutch, Tanquebar under the Danes and Karaikkal under the French as important centres of Slave Trade in the Indian Ocan Region. The history of the Slave Trade is obviously not a pleasant subject and even the foremost authority on the Europeans Companies in India, Professor S Arasaratnam makes passing references to the prevalence of the Slave Trade. However even a cursory gkance through the Consultaions of the East India Company, Vestiges of Old Madras and of course Madras in Olden Time gives us enough material to begin a detailed study. Of these the last named compiled by James Talboys Wheeler is the most reliable and provides several insatnces of Slave Trade. Even as the debate over abolition was gaining ground in the English House of Parliament, the Court of Directors wrote that the financial problems of the Company stemmed from a "want of labouring people"and the same document states that the Company Officials in Madras were able to procule slaves for their Sumatarn outpost, Benkulen ( Richard Allen, Euroean Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, p1)..

In Love's Vestiges of Old Madras there are a few documents relating to the prevalence of teh Slave Trade and efforts made to bring the notorious trade under some legal framework:
1 An Agreement was signed between the English and the Portuguese authorities to restore slaves who had escaped from the teritories of the contracting parties
2 An Office was opened under the Town kanakkapillai to register slaves at the Choultry Building located on Market Street of Fort St George
3 A document from the Company to Elihu Yale published in Volume I of Vestiges p 546 refers to a need to ascertain the number of Slaves in Fort St George and the Black Town
4 Times of famine and they were frightfully common were times of distress and Children were sometimes sold into slavery with the connivance of Indian middlemen
5 Reference exists of young men and women sold to the Dutch at Pulicat for a bribe of 5 pagodas and the document hints that the Governor Henry Greenhill was aware of the trade and was conniving at it
6 A document registering the affadavit of John Leigh against Kannppa accusing him of procuring children for slavery and sold to "Hollenders" at Pulicat
7 Slaves had to be registered according to a document on p 80, Vestiges of Old Madras
8 "In 1687 the trade was sanctioned under regulation a duty of one pagoda exacted for each slave sent from Madras by sea". Vestiges Vol I p 545

The Slave Trade from Madras perhaps was not on the same scale and extent as the Atlantic Slave Trade but that does not absolve the various European Companies from bearing the responsibility for this Obnoxious Commerce. There were sporadic attempts on the part of Indian rulers to put an end to this menace just as the nayaks of Tanjavur who intervened to check the French Slave Trade at Karaikkal but given the superior military force at the command of the Europeans did not always succeed and also the invasion of Shvaji created extreme conditions of famine in the region and periodic shortages of foodgrain were opportune moments for the Slaving sharks, both white and Indian.

In the interest of Historical Truth it must also be mentioned that after the famous Mansfied Judgment an attempt was made to suppress the Slave Trade, However given the fragmented nature of legal jurisdiction and contesting interpretations of what constituted Slavery, the attempts to suppress Slavery had to wait the Passage of the Slaveru Abolition Act in 1834. After that the Royal Navy dployed a ship, an old Steamer for search and seizure of Arab and other ships involved in the Slave Trade. A series of treaties were signed with the sultans of Muscat, Zanzibat, Oman, the Immam of Mecca and a number of local chiels along the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to ensure compliance of the treaties. The Jeddah Massacre of Europeans in 1858 may be linked to the resntment felt against what the Arabs regarded as legitimate commerce.

Take a close look at the painting above. It was painted by Reynolds and depicts Clive with his daughter. You will find a dark Indan face in the painting. Such traces do exist in addition to the documents ; It is high time for Indian historians to wean themselvs away from the garbage of Post Colonial theories and adopt rigorous time tested methods of Historical Research,

Charles Umpherston Aitchison Administrator, Diplomat Historian (1832-1896)

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Victorian Age was replete with monumental historical projects like the History of the Parliament, Calendar of State Papers, Victoria History of the Counties of England and witnessed prodigious publication of Historical records. Stubbs and Maitland were keen investigators of Anglo Saxon political institutions, particularly in the two centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066 AD. In India too the British adopted a similar policy either to fends off challenges to their regime in the post Mutiny era when India was taken over by the Crown or as a intervention in preservation of Historical Documents and this project is associated with Charles Umpherston Aitchison. He was the Foreign Secretary of India, the first "President" of the Public Service Commission, the precurson of the UPSC and he was appointed to the Covenanted Civil Service soon after the Compettitive examinations were introduced and so was a pioneering competition wallah. Apart from these disctinctions, he was also the Lt. Governor of the Punjab and was closely associated with Sir John Lawrence.

C U Aitchisons

Charles Umperston Aitchison was born in Scotland in 1832 and was educated in the University of Edinburgh like the others we have studied in this series: William Roxburgh. He graduated with a Masters' degree in what was then quaintly described as Moral Philosophy and he was the only candidate selected from Scotland for appointment in the Covenenated Civil Srvice in India. His first appointment was inHissar in May 1857 but was providentially transferred to the Punjab and hence escaped the massacre that followed the Mutiny in May 1857, He was in Lahore when the Mutiny began. After the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, Aitchison was sent to Calcutta where he worked as an Under Secretary in the "Political Department".

The Mutiny was a turning point in Indian History in that it represented a significant movement towards national aspiration, although in an incohate fashion. For the English it was a moment of reckoning in that the violence that they had seen expereinced at the hands of their beloved "natives" was on a scale that shook the foundations of the political order that bound India to England or Great Britain as it styled itself then. And it is here that the work of C U Aitchison is reembered.

Historians have seen the rise of the East India Company to politcal and military power as a consequence of the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Treaty of Allahabad signed in 1765 merely ratified an pre existing reality. But in the "Narrative" part of his XIII volume Treaties, Sanads and Engagemets, a different and more sophisticated understanding of the process of territorial conquest of India is developed. We can call that process: Conquest by Treaty. Nearly 2500 individual documents are found over the XIII volumes that for some strange reason continued to be published under the editorship of C U Aitchison even after his death. The conflict between Paramountcy and So vereignty  lay at  the heart of this gigantic venture. Was the status of the East India Company in India until its takeover by the Crown in 1858 that of a Sovereign or the Paramount Power. The East India Company like any corporate body derived its charter to trade from the English Parliament but by the middle of the eighteenth century had transformed itself into a major political and military power largely on the strength of its huge land army and deft diplomacy. And the net result were Treaties which were signed by the Company with major political powers of the indigenous people like the Nizam, the State of Mysore, the states of Rajputana, the states of Central India etc. In most of these cases the Subsidiary Alliance from the time of Warren Hastings meant the accptance of a "Resident" and a detachment of Company forces which were o be maintined by the states in hih they were deployed.  Sannads were of a different order. They were documents issued by the Paramount Power in reply to or in response to an existing situation or dispute on the ground. The right of succession to the Gaddi was usually recognized through the grant of a sannad bearing the seal and signature of the Company. Engagments is a dubious category. Salt manufature, fishing and custom duties, forest grazing rights, native customs and practices were all governemed by the term Engagement. The English Administration both during the reign of the Company and the Viceroys communicated with "Native Chiefs" through the Political Department and it raises the question whether the Administartion then considered Natice chiefs to be "sovereign" entities. This question also has bearing on the later political history of India in that when the Transfer of Power took place in 1947 all the 616 entities that constituted the fabric of India became at one fell stroke "Independent"'.

C U Aitchison collected the documents which were widely dispersed in various territories and offices of the then regime and published them in order to demonstrate the legal validity of English authority to govern. The English Administration was particular that they nested and varying degrees of Sovereignty did not clash with the authority to governern India. And the Administration was based on consent in the strictly political sense in that it rested on the Treaty signed between the Native States and Princely States. The latter was a category that emerged only after the 1911 Durbar.

In the late nineteenth century, a major shift took place in the strategic thought that influenced the British policy in India. The security of India resided not only in the capability of defence on land but also the ability to intervene in the wide maritime worls stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Mlacca, a vision most eloquently articulated in Lord Curzon's celebated Address to the Royal Geographical Society, London and a vision whose wisdom in only now being understood after 70 years of neglect. Hence the Engagments with the Sultans of the decaying Ottoman Empire on the Gulf were brought into the imperial horizon: Muscat, Aden, Zanzibar and host og Arab sultans signed agreements including the Emir of Kuwait, a document they used to demonstrate their Independence when Saddam Hussein invaded the territory.

C U Aitchison was appointed President f the Public Service Commission in 1886 and he reccomended the establishment of the Imperial Civil Service, the nomenclature of which was changed to the IndianCivil Service. He also took interest in establishing educational insitutions in the Punab and the Aitchison College in Lahore is a good example. Upon his return to England he was created Knight Commander of the Star of India and he died in 1896.

Indian diplomats who have to answer challenges from a vaiety of different sources have to dpend heavily on Sir Aitchison's monumnetal work including the challege over Sir Creek.