Slave in a palanquin
id: https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/300307150
type: CreativeWork
about:
  id: https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/320132057
  type: DefinedTerm
  alternate name: slavenhandel
about:
  id: https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/320132058
  type: DefinedTerm
  alternate name: slavernij
about:
  id: https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/320126562
  type: DefinedTerm
  alternate name: koloniale geschiedenis
about:
  type: DefinedTerm
  alternate name: Slavery--Sri Lanka--History
about:
  type: Place
  alternate name: Sri Lanka
about:
  id: https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/320132913
  type: DefinedTerm
  alternate name: verzetsbewegingen
about:
  type: DefinedTerm
  alternate name: Slaves--Sri Lanka--History
abstract: "From the very early days of the Western colonial project, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopping point in the Indian Ocean. For four hundred years, Sri Lanka transferred from the Portuguese, to the Dutch, to the British, serving for all of them as a crossroads in transnational trade in the imperial period. Often overlooked is the extent to which this island became a waystation in colonists' Indian Ocean slave trade, with enslaved Africans coming to work on island plantations there and Sri Lankans exported to other colonies as forced labor 'coolies.' Recovering the individual voices of enslaved people in this unique locale, Slave in a Palanquin explores how slavery in the Indian Ocean world was just as embedded in the fabric of everyday life and in transnational encounters as it was in its far more prominent Atlantic Ocean cousin. Scholars have argued that the fact that there were fewer slaves in places like Sri Lanka than in the Americas, and that the region had a tradition of temporarily bonded labor, means no real slave trade activity of any consequence existed there, but Nira Wickramasinghe draws upon archival sources to dispute these false memories and false equivalencies. Further, the book demonstrates that even though the official end of slavery in Sri Lanka and the surrounding region came early, in 1844, and without devastating revolutions like those in Haiti and the United States, the transition was by no means painless. Instead of leading to real emancipation, she argues, the end of formal slavery led to an ambivalent freedom filled with bonded plantation labor and indentured servitude, with lasting negative consequences. A true subaltern history, this book rethinks not only the local history of colonial Sri Lanka but also the history of the Indian Ocean world"--
creator:
  id: https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/310206861
  type: Person
  alternate name: Wickramasinghe, Nira
language: English
  id: http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/languages/eng
  type: Language
  name: Engels @nl
temporal coverage: 1505-1948
work example:
  id: https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/301307150
  type: ProductModel

type: PropertyValue
property ID: NL-AmRIJ
value: 307150