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Chattel slavery existed in the colonies that make up present dayMalaysia until it was abolished by the British in what was collectively then theBritish Malaya andBritish Borneo (Brunei,Sabah,Sarawak andLabuan) in 1915.
From the 14th-century onward the area consisted of Islamic sultanate states, which enslaved non-Muslims. In the 19th-century, the territory successively came under the control of theBritish Empire, which started a process to gradually abolish slavery and slave trade from the 1870s until the final abolition in 1915.
Slavery in the territories of Malaysia is not well known until the arrival ofIslam in the 14th-century. After the transformation of the area to Islamic sultanates and the conversion of the ruling elite to Islam in the 14th-century, slavery and the slave trade came to follow Islamic law and take on the characteristics ofslavery in the Muslim world, and more information is available about slavery in the Malay sultanates.[1]
After conversion to Islam, the enslavement of Muslims were prohibited, which resulted in non-Muslims becoming targeted for enslavement by Muslim slave traders.[2]
Slaves were supplied to theMalay sultanates by five main methods; by slave raids against non-Muslim hill peoples by commercial slave traders who captured and sold non-Muslim people to both the Malay sultanates, the various states inIndonesia and thePhilippines; by Muslim pilgrims who bought slaves during theirHajj and sold them on their return; by criminals who chose to exchange their corporal punishment for enslavement; and debt bondage.[3]
After theconquest of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1511, the slavery system underwent changes. The Portuguese adopted the existing labor remuneration system, but implemented it in a different way, which caused many slaves and workers to fall into poverty and lose their social status.[4]
The development of the slave trade in the region was a powerful factor influencing the fate of theOrang Asli. The enslavement ofNegrito tribes commenced as early as 724 CE, during the early contact of the MalaySrivijaya empire.Negrito pygmies from the southern jungles were enslaved, with some being exploited until modern times.[5] Because Islam prohibited taking Muslims as slaves,[Sahih al-Bukhari148] slave hunters focused their capture on the Orang Asli, explaining the Malay usesakai to mean "slaves" with its present derogatory connotation.
In the early 16th centuryAceh Sultanate, located in the north of the island of Sumatra, equipped special expeditions to capture slaves in the Malay Peninsula, and Malacca was at that time the largest center of theslave trade in the region. Raids on slaves in the villages of Orang Asli were common in the 18th and 19th centuries. During this time, Orang Asli groups suffered raids by theMalay forces fromSumatra and Pahang who perceived them to be of lower in status. Orang Asli settlements were sacked, with adult males being systematically executed while women and children were taken captive and sold into slavery.[6][7]
Hamba abdi (meaning, bondslaves) formed the labour force both in the cities and in the households of chiefs and sultans. They could be servants andconcubines of a rich master, and slaves also did labour work in commercial ports.[8] The situation prompted many Orang Asli to migrate further inland to avoid contact with outsiders.
The slave raids against theBatek people was preserved in memory, and during the writer Endicott's visit in Batek inKelantan in 1981, Batek people commented on the slave raids many decades before:
Bone remains and cave paintings were found in Sireh Cave withinSerian located more than 60kms southeast ofKuching which indicated it as a place of refuge and retreat forBidayuh from attackingBruneian enslavers in the early 1800s before the arrival ofJames Brooke.[10]
A significant reason for the use of slave labor in Malaya was the low population density, which made the supply of free labor insufficient.[11]
Slaves served in a variety of different roles, such as servants in private households of the rich, as sex slaves inconcubinage, or as agricultural laborers as well as craftsmen, among other roles.[12]
Female slaves were used as house slave servants, or as sex slaves (concubines) in the harems. The SultanAbu Bakar of Johor (r. 1886-1895) was given two girls from theCircassian slave trade, the sisters Rukiye Hanim and Hatice Hanim (Che Khatijah Hanum), as a diplomatic gift by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, of which the first became the wife of Prince Ungku Abdul Majid bin Temengung Ibrahim and the later to the Sultan of Johor himself.[13]Snouck Hurgronje noted that "the Circassian slaves" in the royal harem had come there from Constantinople and were much more expensive than other slaves, and that "the female Circassian slaves are pretentious concubines".[14]
In the 19th-century, the Malay sultanates gradually came under the control of the colonialBritish Empire. Britain abolished the British slave trade by theSlave Trade Act 1807 and slavery by theSlavery Abolition Act 1833. Officially the British pursued an abolitionist policy in all areas under their control after 1833, but in practice they avoided addressing the issue if they feared it could cause problems with local power holders, which was the case in Malaya, where the British for example avoided addressing the slave holding of the Sultan of Johor.[15]
From the 1870s, when the British felt their power was secure enough to introduce policies they felt would be unpopular, they actively started to pursue an abolitionist policy in Malaya, where slavery was progressively targeted and gradually abolished state by state. In 1875 the British forcibly introduced the abolition of slavery inPerak, which was finalized underHugh Low's residency on 31 December 1883.[16] In 1887, they effectively undermined the institution of slavery in Pahang by providing slaves the same legal protection as free people.[17]
The British abolition policy met intense opposition. The British ResidentJ.W.W Birch of Perak was killed byLela Pandak Lam in 1875 after having assisted the escape of slaves from the royal harem of theSultan of Perak,[18] an assassination that resulted in the outbreak of thePerak War.
A British report from the 1880s stated that it was necessary for the colonial British authorities to interfere in certain indigenous customs in thePahang Sultanate, such as "unlimited corvee, [and] the right ofthe Sultan to force women and children into his harem, were all abusers that had to be taken on, but only gradually and with sufficient civil servants, police and military on the ground".[19] The British' introduction of legal protection for slaves in Pahang resulted in a rebellion in 1891–1894.[20]
The British colonial authorities finally declared slavery abolished in British Malaya in 1915.[21]
Despite the British legislation, slavery still continued to exist illegally among indigenous people in Malaya andBritish Borneo in the 1920s.[22] The law against theMui tsai slave trade introduced inHong Kong was introduced by the British also in theStraits Settlements and theFederated Malay States in 1925, but the law was not enforced.[23]
In the 1930s theCommittee of Experts on Slavery andAdvisory Committee of Experts on Slavery (ACE) of theLeague of Nations conducted an investigation on slavery underGeorge Maxwell and demanded reports from the colonial powers, among the British.[24] Maxwell did not trust the British, since he was aware of the colonial British policy to avoid interference in issues that could cause unrest, and he forcefully campaigned against the common custom in the region to sell Chinese andTeochew children as slaves under the guise of adoption, as well as to classify the mui tsai trade as slavery, which was done in Straits Settlements in 1933.[25] The mui tsai trade of Chinese children in the form of adoption, which often resulted in girls being sold to brothels, was effectively banned in Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States in 1937 via the introduction of stricter adoption laws.[26] The new legislation introduced by the British in the 1930s was deemed more effective than prior legislation and led to slavery in Malaya being finally entirely abolished.
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