Table Of ContentSLAVE IN A PALANQUIN
Slave in a Palanquin
COLONIAL SERVITUDE AND
RESISTANCE IN SRI LANKA
Nira Wickramasinghe
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup . columbia . edu
Copyright © 2020 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Wickramasinghe, Nira, author.
Title: Slave in a palanquin : colonial servitude and resistance
in Sri Lanka / Nira Wickramasinghe.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2020] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020006925 (print) | LCCN 2020006926 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780231197625 (cloth) | ISBN 9780231197632 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780231552264 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Slavery—S ri Lanka— History. | Slaves—S ri Lanka— History. |
Sri Lanka— History— 1505– 1948.
Classification: LCC HT1315.S72 W53 2020 (print) | LCC HT1315.S72 (ebook) |
DDC 306.3/62095493—dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn. loc . gov / 2020006925
LC ebook record available at https://l ccn . loc . gov / 2020006926
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-f ree paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design: Julia Kushnirsky
Cover illustration: Charmaine Samarasinghe
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 A Dutch Fiscal’s Murder: Interrogating the Identity
of Slaves, Blacks, and “Kaffirs” 16
ii From Colombo to Galle: Enslaved Bodies in an Archive
of Violence 51
iii Slave in a Palanquin: Jaffna in the Early
Nineteenth Century 89
iv The Chilaw “Experiment”: Labor for Freedom 126
v The Plaint of an Emancipated Slave: A Play
in Two Acts 160
vi Eclipse of the Slave: Traces, Hauntings 189
[ v ]
Glossary 209
Notes 213
Bibliography 263
Index 291
[ vi ] CONTENTS
Illustrations
0.1. The Indian Ocean in the early nineteenth century 3
1.1. Slave Island, Colombo 20
2.1. Sri Lanka in the early nineteenth century 54
2.2. Ethnic distribution of proprietors 55
2.3. Deed of transfer of slave, June 30, 1809 63
2.4. Gender distribution of slaves in Colombo 71
2.5. Age of slaves in Colombo 71
2.6. List of prisoners, Supreme Court circuit for Colombo, February
1822 73
3.1. Jaffna and Vanni 92
3.2. Palanquin ca. 1820 93
3.3. List of prisoners accused of selling free persons as slaves 104
3.4. Slave certificate, Jaffna kachcheri, 1830 111
3.5. List of emancipated slaves under regulation of government no. 8 of
1821 113
3.6. Slave register, parish of Nallore, 1818– 1832 124
4.1. West coast of Sri Lanka 127
4.2. Number of slaves per caste 135
4.3. Register of slaves emancipated by government, September 24,
1824 148
6.1. Baptism record, Dutch Reformed Church, Colombo District,
1831 201
[ vii ]
Acknowledgments
I
am deeply grateful to individuals, friends, and strangers in various
institutions who contributed to this project by sharing their time and
experience. I benefited from the resources and the help of library staff
of the Sri Lanka National Archives (Colombo and Kandy branches), the
National Archives, the British Library, and the SOAS library in London,
the Bodleian library at Oxford and the National Archives in the Hague.
As a scholar whose career began in the precomputer age, I saw the way I
do research change completely with the technological surge of the 1990s.
I realize, in hindsight, that the digital age has made me less reflective in
my data collection but at the same time allowed me to gather information
quickly and efficiently. I am now a compulsive scan, file, and read-l ater
scholar! If not for scans and digital photography, this book might have
remained an idea and never been written. I composed it “in between,”
while teaching and grappling with heavy administrative duties, first as
chair of the program in South and Southeast Asian Studies and then as aca-
demic director of research at the Leiden University Institute for Area Stud-
ies (LIAS). Leiden University provided me with a peaceful and comfort-
able work space, enriched by interactions with wonderful colleagues. I
must also acknowledge a semester- long partial teaching release, a small
grant from the Digital Humanities Centre at Leiden University, a small
research grant from the Asian Modernities and Tradition (AMT) profile
area for travel to archives in London and for copyediting. Most of the
[ ix ]
archival research in Europe and Sri Lanka, however, was conducted in my
own free time, and writing happened during long and dark Leiden winter
days, when I had returned home after a full day’s work. Writing this book
felt like a reward to myself after I had finished looking after the work and
home fronts.
Except for chapter 3, which contains sections of an article I coauthored
with Alicia Schrikker—“ The Ambivalence of Freedom: Slaves in Jaffna,
Sri Lanka, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of Asian
Studies 78 (3): 497–5 19— none of the other chapters have appeared in print.
I thank Alicia and the Journal of Asian Studies for allowing me to use parts
of the article. A small portion of the introduction overlaps slightly with
the introductory chapter of my coedited volume, Being a Slave: Histories and
Legacies of European Slavery in the Indian Ocean, published by Leiden Univer-
sity Press in 2020. Early versions of the chapters have been presented and
discussed in various gatherings: at the LIAS Global History network meet-
ing (2016), the Amsterdam International Institute for Social History work-
shop on slavery (2017), the World History seminar (2017), the Center for
South Asian Studies at Cambridge University (2019), the Center for South
Asian Studies at Edinburgh University (2019), in Colombo as a keynote
for the Ibn Battuta Foundation launch event (2018), and at conferences and
workshops organized by the American Institute for Lankan Studies in
2017 and 2018. I drew from chapter 1 for a lecture I delivered at the Global
History and Culture Centre at Warwick University in 2019.
I am deeply indebted to my colleagues and friends who offered com-
ments and advice on various versions and helped me sharpen my project.
Among them— and I am sorry not to be able to name everyone— I must
single out Tsolin Nalbantian, Sanjukta Sunderason, Alicia Schrikker, John
Rogers, Jonathan Spencer, and Mahmood Kooria. Marina Carter and Rob-
ert Ross read the entire manuscript. Patrick Peebles generously shared
some archival material and notes. Michael Laffan, Ronit Ricci, Bhavani
Raman, Tom Hoogervorst, Sujit Sivasundaram, Bindu Menon, and Eva
Ambos offered comments at various stages, and Sanderien Verstappen
edited the bibliography. Yvette Ferdinands and Sanayi Marcelline did bril-
liant work as researchers in the Kandy and Colombo archives. Thisara
Perera drew the maps, and Koen Berghuis improved on them. Doreen
Bogaart and Harkirat Singh painstakingly compiled the slave registers. Peter
Verhaar created graphs and tables from the slave register data. Abhijit
Wickramasinghe provided the photograph of the palanquin, and Pratik
[ x ] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
