European Slave Trading in South India

For most of the 16th and 17th centuries Europeans on the Coromandal coast were extensively involved in the trading, brokering and shipment of slaves from India to Ceylon and the West Indies.

The Dutch were "the nexus of an enormous slave trade". Between 1621 and 1665 alone, the Dutch used 131 ships to transport 38,441 Indian slaves obtained mostly from Pulicat brokers. In Pulicat (it is immediately north of Madras on the Coramandel coast), the price of a slave ranged from 27 to 40 guilders in "expensive years" to as little as 4 guilders in "cheap years". The Dutch possessions in Java and Surinam were populated by slaves exported from Pulicat.

The English East India Company did most of its slaving in Bihar.

Indian historians tend to soft peddle the issue of slavery out of India by euphemistically calling it "indentured labour". The practice post independence began to be euphemistically termed bonded labour. The bond seldom gets paid and the labour was for the lifetime.

The slaves were brought from the hinterland by India brokers and was a trade welcomed by the local rulers.

Normally 150 – 400 slaves were shipped each year from central Coromandel ports, including Pulicat, Madras, Nagapatnam and Devanampatnam. This trade increased greatly during several famine periods. Between 1659 and 1661, eight to ten thousand slaves were shipped from central Coromandel ports including Pulicat. Domestic slavery was officially recognized by the English at Madras and run mainly by the Dutch at Pulicat. The Dutch look so benign now, but were avaricious slavers. In the two decades starting 1641 they shipped out as many as 38000 slaves.

Slave labour was a defining element of the high production levels and luxury standards of colonial settlements throughout the Indian Ocean. Slaves empowered the elite groups, and formed 25% – 66% of the total population of the major settlements.

The English East India Company gave up slavery only after it was ended in England in 1833.

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