Thank you, Cliff, for your post. Thefollowing was written before I read
your post.
This is a continuation of my previous postson the topic of having slaves
in the city of Goa, later called “Velha Goa” or“Old Goa. My previous posts and
what follows are a brief comment, not intendedto be a detailed review of this
topic. Slavery in Portuguese India has beenextensively studied by M. N.
Pearson, Cliff Pereira, Jeannette Pinto, CelsaPinto, P. P. Shirodkar, Patricia
Souza de Faria, and others. For a moredetailed discussion, the reader is
referred to their writings. Also, myprevious posts were about having had
slaves, not about the slave trade. Iam comparing Goans and non-Goans about
having had slaves. People who had slaves contributed to theslave traffic and
the slave trade by acquiring them, but not everyone who hadslaves engaged into
slave traffic and slave trade.
Here is what I said (now for the thirdtime) about the Portuguese
(Europeans) having had slaves in the city of Goa: Ifboth Goan Christians and
Goan Hindus, and all Catholic religious orders in thecity of Goa had slaves,
then the Portuguese were doing in the city of Goa whateverybody else was doing,
i.e., following the custom of the land (buying and retainingslaves). I asked
the following question: If the Goans, Christians and Hindus,had slaves, what
grounds have the Goans to criticize the Portuguese for havinghad slaves?
Slavery existed in ancient and medievalIndia. Rules about slavery were
complex, at times contradictory, with certainrules being more consistent than
other rules (such as, for example, that Brahmanscould not be enslaved, even by
other Brahmans). Those rules have been describedin the book “History of
Dharmaśastra”, a multivolume masterpiece written byProfessor Pandurang Vaman
Kane, a distinguished Indian historian and judge.1Vasistha Dharmasutra, for
example, stated that the parents have the powerto make a gift or sale of the
son or abandon him.
Slave trade existed in Goa and WesternIndia before the arrival of the
Portuguese. Indian, Arab, and Muslim merchantswere actively involved in this
trade in which millions were kidnapped or boughtin East Africa, India, and
other ports and cities around the Indian Ocean,huddled in ships, and sold like
chattel all over the world. The Muslims usedslaves as soldiers. Seeing this as
an opportunity to enrich themselves, some (butnot all) Portuguese merchants
inserted themselves into this trade. Manyprofited handsomely from this trade.
The Dutch, English, and Dansh merchantsfollowed the footsteps of the Portuguese
merchants in this multidirectional andmultinational slave trade.
Others, including Europeans and North Americansof European ancestry, were
adamantly opposed to this human trafficking. Many protestedand fought
tirelessly to end slavery. Many had their lives ruined or lost foropposing
slavery. By contrast, no evidence has surfaced thus far of Goanscomplaining or
protesting against slavery or fighting for its abolition.Available evidence
suggests that in the 16th and 17thcenturies, when slave trade was booming in
the city of Goa, Goans who boughtand sold slaves viewed their behavior as
legitimate and morally justified. Goansfought for other things, such as laws or
behaviors they viewed as abusive, attimes successfully, but not against
slavery. Unless future research provesotherwise, this silence strongly suggests
that slavery in the city of Goa thosedays had been “normalized.” Buying slaves
was the cultural norm, the custom ofthe land.
As Patricia Souza de Faria noted, thedichotomy “being free” and “being a
slave” is too simplistic to describe themultiple forms of mutual dependency and
slavery in India and other South Asiansocieties. 2 She cites the following
definition of slavery given byRichard Eaton: ““the condition of uprooted
outsiders, impoverished insiders –or the descendants of either – serving
persons or institutions on which theyare wholly dependent.” 3 According to this
definition, the Indian caste system would be anexample of “immobile slavery.”
It is likely that the “normalization” of slaverythat took place in Goa was
facilitated by the Goan society having been primedby its local system of mutual
dependency, the caste system, a systemChristianization could not completely
erase, and also by the slave trade thathad been taking place in Goa for decades
or centuries before the arrival of thePortuguese.
Earlier I had stated that the medievalDharmasastras allowed the sale of
oneself ore one’s dependents, especiallyduring famines. In the abstract, the
connection between these rules of theDharmaśastras and slavery may appear to be
remote and irrelevant. Not so if weplace the buying of slaves in the city of
Goa in the context of space and time.The city of Goa, where slaves were
auctioned, sold, and bought in the market,was bounced by an onslaught of
epidemics of infectious diseases, seasonalflooding of the monsoons, poor
sanitary conditions, malnutrition, poverty,corruption, hunger, crime, fear of
the Inquisition, and the constant threat offoreign invasions. In short, the
city was in a constant state of emergency. “Normal time” in that city meant
“being incrisis”, and eventually the city was abandoned.
Given this scenario, and the immense humancapacity for rationalization,
the presence of such rules in the Dharmaśastra,though contradictory, at times,
and interpreted in different ways, could giveGoan Hindus, consciously or
unconsciously, a pass to justify the ownership ofslaves, just as the so-called
doctrine of “just slavery”, accepted and promotedat that time by the Vatican
and the Catholic religious orders, could give GoanChristians a rationale to do
the same. “Just slavery” meant that the slavecould be justly retained if born
of a slave woman, or freely self-sold, orcaptured in a just war, or sold by a
parent because of severe poverty, orsentenced to be sold as a slave by a court
of law.
To conclude, those who say that all Goans wholived in the 16th and 17th
centuries in the city of Goahad a higher moral stand on slavery than non-Goans
who lived in the same cityat the same time should pause and look at the
historical record before makingsuch claims. By owning slaves, non-Goans (such
as the Portuguese) who lived inthe city of Goa followed a well-established
custom of the land. Knowingly orunknowingly, Goans and non-Goans who bought and
retained slaves participated inthe slave trade, and perpetuated and expanded
that trade.
Today we understand that having slaves andtrading on slaves was morally
wrong even in those societies in which it was thecultural norm, but it should
not be considered more wrong and shameful for a non-Goanthan it was for a Goan.
From an ethical and historical perspective, and outsidethe legal arena, it is
immaterial if a person has one slave, many slaves, ortraffics on slaves.
Slavery is morally wrong, period, in all cultures, at alltimes, and under any
circumstances. In this sense, the moral absolutists arecorrect. The recognition
of this truth is the final triumph of reason overrationalization.
1 Kane PV. History ofDharmasastra, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute,
Poona 1941 Vol II, PartI, pp. 180-167
2 Souza de Faria P. Enslaved Children in Portuguese India, 1550-1760. Ler
História.84:159-180, 2024
3 Eaton, R. “Introduction”, in Chaterjee I, Eaton R (eds), Slaveryand South
Asian History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006 pp.1-16
THE END
On Friday, October 11, 2024 at 08:46:22 AM EDT, Cliff Pereira
<[email protected]> wrote:
Thank you for raising this point John. As many will know I have spent over two
decades researching Africans in Asia. Regarding pre-1500 I can say the
following:1) Slavery was endemic in the Indian Ocean World.2) There was
domestic/household, local/within one cultural sphere slavery and trans-oceanic
slavery.3) slavery was not limited to any denomination (Hindu, Buddhist,
Jewish, Christian or Muslim) but the nuances of treatment and manumission
varied.4) Those enslaved could be of any ethnicity, but Africans were the
majority in the western Indian Ocean, and there are records of Armenian slaves
into the 19th century.5) Enslaved people were a commodity and labour force and
the Iberian (and later Dutch, French and British) role was an extension of a
pre-existing system, enhanced by better military and shipping technology, and
the “discovery” of new areas of sourcing and application of the institution of
slavery. Pardon typos, I am travelling and sending this from my phone.
Sent from my iPhone
On 11 Oct 2024, at 10:54 AM, John de Figueiredo <[email protected]> wrote:
The medieval Dharmashastras allowed the sale of oneself or one’s dependents,
especially during famines. A case could be made that the Hindu caste system
reduced some people to things. In the 16th century in Goa and elsewhere it was
believed that in some cases, slavery was justified, the so-called “just
slavery”. Until 1569 every religious order in Goa had slaves. My question is
this: if the Goans, Christians and Hindus, had slaves, what grounds have the
Goans to criticize the Portuguese for having slaves? The Portuguese did not
introduce slavery in Goa and they were doing what everybody else was doing.
Even Pombal could not abolish slavery in Brazil.What is regrettable is that
centuries went by before slavery was viewed as it had been all along, an
abomination, and the evil of human trafficking continues to this date in
various parts of the world.John M. de Figueiredo
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 6, 2024, at 2:50 PM, 'Pedro Mascarenhas' via Goa-Research-Net
<[email protected]> wrote:
John( ..........In fact, the Island of Chorão, where many of them lived, was
known as “Ilha dos Fidalgos” (Island of Nobility........).
On the island of Chorão, the Portuguese colonizers had Goan and African slaves.
They were self-proclaimed aristocrats who left Portugal where poverty was
rampant. True aristocrats would never leave their land to go to Goa and lose
their lives and possessions knowing that the Mughals and Marathas would attack
whenever they could.
Nuno(............The Portuguese difference was the willingness of mixing with
other ethnic groups, from the casual sexual intercourse to marriage and to the
ability to "go native"...........)
The English did not mix in India because they were from the upper middle and
upper class. Most of the Portuguese were from the lower class and illiterate.
They raped many women and abandoned them and their mixed race children.
Here is a report that clearly explains what happened in a certain colony, where
even many Goans were settled:
https://acervo.publico.pt/mundo/noticia/quantos-milhoes-morreram-na-saga-do-colonialismo-1724884
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