The Hustler and the Mooch: Slavery in Late Eighteenth-Century Bombay

ABSTRACT

How did property in persons manifest itself in late eighteenth-century Bombay? This article uses judicial records to explore how the master-slave relationship could be inverted: a woman sued a man who claimed to ‘own’ her for the money she spent on maintaining him. These records provide a unique insight into the biography and everyday life of an urban slave in this period and the intertwining of domesticity, caste, religion and kin-building. Jaffer Mahomed claimed that Assa was a slave and collateral on a debt and produced a deed of sale and a mortgage bond. Assa claimed she had maintained him and produced an itemized account of everyday expenditure and a manumission document. Through an analysis of the documents produced in court, interrogations, complaints and rejoinders, this article demonstrates how judicial sources can help understand the strategic choices and horizon of possibilities available to urban slaves in this period.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• kinship
• manumission
• agency
• judicial archives

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Mayor’s Court Vol. 27, 1771, Maharashtra State Archives, India, henceforth MSA.

2 Edoardo Grendi, cited in, Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It’, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi, Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993): 10–35.

3 Carlo Ginzburg, Threads and Traces: True False Fictive, trans. Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 57.

4 Titas Chakraborty and Matthias Van Rossum, ‘Slave Trade and Slavery in Asia – New Perspectives’, Journal of Social History 54, no. 1 (2020): 1–14; Indrani Chatterjee and Sumit Guha, ‘Slave-Queen, Waif-Prince: Slavery and Social Capital in Eighteenth-Century India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 36, no. 2 (1999): 165–86; Hans Hägerdal, ‘Introduction: Enslavement and the Slave Trade in Asia’, Slavery & Abolition 43, no. 3 (2022): 445–59; Nitin Sinha and Pankaj Jha, ‘Tracing Historical Forms of Servitude: Introductory Remarks and Elementary Reflections’, South Asian History and Culture 13, no. 4 (2022): 433–44; Ramya Sreenivasan, ‘Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines: Female Slaves in Rajput Polity, 1500–1850’, in Slavery and South Asian History, ed. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

5 Lubna Irfan, ‘Nature of Slavery and Servitude in Mughal India’, South Asian History and Culture 13, no. 4 (2022): 466–80; Sreenivasan, ‘Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines’; Hägerdal, ‘Introduction’; Michael Mann, ‘Slaving, Slavery and Abolition: A View from the Indian Ocean (Review Essay)’, Südasien-Chronik – South Asia Chronicle 5 (2015): 451–79; Indrani Chatterjee, ‘Colouring Subalternity: Slaves, Concubines and Social Orphans in Early Colonial India’, Subaltern Studies 10 (1999): 49–97; Matthias Van Rossum, Alexander Geelen and Merve Tosun, ‘Enslaveability, Slavery and Global Micro Histories: Reflections through the Case of Cali’, Slavery & Abolition 43, no. 3 (2022): 482–98.

6 Into the seventeenth century, during periods of war or desperation, the prices of slaves could be very low. Even families of ‘mean fortune’ might own several slaves. Shadab Bano, ‘Slave Markets in Medieval India’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 61, no. 1 (2000–2001): 365–73, 368.

7 Richard B. Allen, ‘Exporting the Unfortunate: The European Slave Trade from India, 1500–1800’, Slavery & Abolition 43, no. 3 (2022): 533–52; Indrani Chatterjee, ‘Renewed and Connected Histories: Slavery and the Historiography
of South Asia’, in Slavery and South Asian History, ed. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Hägerdal, ‘Introduction’.

8 Alexander Geelen, Bram Van Den Hout, Merve Tosun, Mike De Windt and Matthias Van Rossum, ‘On the Run: Runaway Slaves and Their Social Networks in Eighteenth-Century Cochin’, Journal of Social History 54, no. 1 (2020): 66–87; Carlo Ginzburg, ‘Checking the Evidence: The Judge and the Historian’, Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (1991): 79–92; Van Rossum et al., ‘Enslaveability, Slavery and Global Micro Histories’; Sylvia Vatuk, ‘Bharattee’s Death: Domestic Slave-Women in Nineteenth-Century Madras’, in Slavery and South Asian History, ed. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

9 For more details see Gagan D.S. Sood, ‘Sovereign Justice in Precolonial Maritime Asia: The Case of the Mayor's Court of Bombay, 1726–1798’, Itinerario 37, no. 2 (2013): 46–72; Leonard Hodges, ‘Between Litigation and Arbitration: Administering Legal Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Bombay’, Itinerario 42, no. 3 (2018): 490–515.

10 Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013 [1989]).

11 Farge, Allure of the Archives; Hägerdal, ‘Introduction’; Sinha and Jha, ‘Tracing Historical Forms’; Van Rossum et al., ‘Enslaveability, Slavery and Global Micro Histories’.

12 Farge, Allure of the Archives, 14.

13 Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory: Two or Three Things’, 24; see also Vatuk, ‘Bharattee’s Death’.

14 For example, see proceedings of 24th February 1772, Petition of Lt. William Brickell. Mayor’s Court, 29, 1772, MSA.

15 Petition of 31st May 1778. All documents for this case are from Mayor’s Court, 45, 1779, MSA.

16 Geelen et al., ‘On the Run’; Van Rossum et al., ‘Enslaveability, Slavery and Global Micro Histories’.

17 Holly Brewer, ‘Creating a Common Law of Slavery for England and Its New World Empire’, Law and History Review 39, no. 4 (2021): 765–834.

18 For land transactions and witnessing, see also Christopher A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770–1870, 3rd ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012).

19 Chatterjee and Guha, ‘Slave-Queen, Waif-Prince’, 171.

20 Chatterjee, ‘Colouring Subalternity’.

21 ‘[A] native captain or headman of some sort’, Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, a Glossary of Anglo-India Colloquial Words and Phrases (London: John Murray, 1903 [1886]), 614.

22 Chatterjee, ‘Colouring Subalternity’, 68; Sumit Guha, ‘Slavery, Society, and the State in Western India, 1700–1800’, in Slavery and South Asian History, ed. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 169. A third point in support of Casbin being a descriptor and not a last name is that women at this time did not usually have last names. The last name Bebe / Bibi is an honorific used for Muslim women.

23 Chatterjee, ‘Colouring Subalternity’, 67.

24 Sukriti Issar, ‘Property, Custom and Religion in Early Nineteenth-Century Bombay’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 52, no. 33 (2021): 401–21.

25 Hodges, ‘Litigation and Arbitration’.

26 Brewer, ‘Creating a Common Law’.

27 Ibid., 775.

28 Reply of 4th July 1778. S.T. Sheppard, Bombay Place-Names and Street Names: An Excursion into the By-Ways of the History of Bombay City (Bombay: Times Press, 1917). Tod was Lieutenant of Police from 1779–1790 when he was dismissed for corruption. He was also a Grand Master of Freemasons, and a street was named after him.

29 Mayor’s Court Vol. 27, 1771, MSA.

30 Geelen et al., ‘On the Run’.

31 Allen, ‘Exporting the Unfortunate’; Hägerdal, ‘Introduction’; Igor Kopytoff, ‘Slavery’, Annual Review of Anthropology 11 (1982): 207–30; Sreenivasan, ‘Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines’; Vatuk, ‘Bharattee’s Death’.

32 Geelen et al., ‘On the Run’.

33 I did not find a convincing translation. One meaning describes poyal or pial as a raised platform, including a verandah. It also signifies steps or bench (Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, a Glossary of Anglo-India Colloquial Words, 703).

34 See Register of Causes. Mayor’s Court, 28, 1771, MSA.

35 Sinha and Jha, ‘Tracing Historical Forms’.

36 Chatterjee and Guha, ‘Slave-Queen, Waif-Prince’; Sreenivasan, ‘Drudges, Dancing Girls, Concubines’.

37 Chatterjee and Guha, ‘Slave-Queen, Waif-Prince’, 184.

38 Chatterjee and Guha, ‘Slave-Queen, Waif-Prince’; Johanna Ransmeier, ‘Body-Price: Ambiguities in the Sale of Women at the End of the Qing Dynasty’, in Sex, Power, and Slavery, ed. Gwyn Campbell and Elizabeth Elbourne (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014).

39 Chatterjee, ‘Colouring Subalternity’; 52, calls it ‘consensual cohabitation’.

40 Kate Ekama, ‘Precarious Freedom: Manumission in Eighteenth-Century Colombo’, Journal of Social History 54, no. 1 (2020): 88–108; Kopytoff, ‘Slavery’.

41 Irfan, ‘Nature of Slavery’.

42 See Chatterjee, ‘Renewed and Connected Histories’, on the discursive boundaries for how slavery could be talked about.

43 On naming, see Chatterjee, ‘Colouring Subalternity’; Van Rossum et al., ‘Enslaveability, Slavery and Global Micro Histories’.

44 Ranajit Guha, ‘Chandra’s Death’, in Subaltern Studies Reader 1986–1995, ed. Ranajit Guha (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1997), 34–62, 47.

45 By cross-checking different Indian calendars, 1189 either refers to 1779 (after the proceedings took place) or 1775 (which corresponds to the first rather than the second instalment). It is possible the document was backdated.

46 See also Ekama, ‘Precarious Freedom’.

47 Reply dated 28th September 1778.

48 See Register of Causes. Mayor’s Court, 28, 1771, MSA.

49 On enslaved persons as legal agents, see also Nicole N. Aljoe, ‘“Going to Law”: Legal Discourse and Testimony in Early West Indian Slave Narratives’, Early American Literature 46, no. 2 (2011): 351–81.

50 For the logic behind writs of trover in England at this time, see Brewer, ‘Creating a Common Law’.

51 Igor Kopytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 65.

52 See also Aljoe, ‘Going to Law’; Chatterjee, ‘Colouring Subalternity’; Ekama, ‘Precarious Freedom’; Kopytoff, ‘Cultural Biography of Things’.

53 Aljoe, ‘Going to Law’; Ekama, ‘Precarious Freedom’; Ransmeier, ‘Body-Price’.

54 Proceedings of 1st April 1771. Mayor’s Court Volume 27, 1771, MSA.

55 Samuel R. Lucas, ‘Beyond the Existence Proof: Ontological Conditions, Epistemological Implications, and In-Depth Interview Research’, Quality & Quantity 48, no. 1 (2014): 387–408.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sukriti Issar

Sukriti Issar is an Associate Professor, CRIS (Centre for Research on Social Inequalities), CNRS, Sciences Po Paris, 1 Place St Thomas d’Aquin, 75007, Paris, France. Email: [email protected]