Kate Jean Ekama

Slavery and Bondage in Asia, 1550–1850: Towards a Global History of Coerced Labour - Dependency and Slavery Studies Kate Jean Ekama

The study of slavery and coerced labour is increasingly applying a global perspective. And yet, a dual Eurocentric bias remains: Slavery primarily brings to mind the images of Atlantic chattel slavery, and studies of work have either outright or implicitly been based on a model of northern European wage labour. This book constitutes an attempt to re-centre that story to Asia.

With studies spanning the western Indian Ocean and the steppes of Central Asia to the islands of South East Asia and Japan, and reaching from the 16th to the 19th century, this book follows coercion in diverse forms. That makes it possible to trace both similarities and differences - as well as connections - between systems of coercion, from the early regulation of sales to post-abolition labour contracts.

Deep empirical case studies, as well as comparisons between the chapters, all show that while coercion was entrenched to a number of societies, it was so in different and shifting ways. This book thereby not only makes the history of slavery and coercion in Asia a connected story, but also offers steps for how to carry out global studies of a phenomenon as varying, manifold and subject to debate as coercion.
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