Slavery and South Asian History

Despite its pervasive presence in the South Asian past, slavery is largely overlooked in the region's historiography, in part because the forms of bondage in question did not always fit models based on plantation slavery in the Atlantic world. This important volume will contribute to a rethinking of slavery in world history, and even the category of slavery itself. Most slaves in South Asia were not agricultural labourers, but military or domestic workers, and the latter were overwhelmingly women and children. Individuals might become slaves at birth or through capture, sale by relatives, indenture, or as a result of accusations of criminality or inappropriate sexual behaviour. For centuries, trade in slaves linked South Asia with Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The contributors to this collection of original essays describe a wide range of sites and contexts covering more than a thousand years, foregrounding the life stories of individual slaves wherever possible. Indrani Chatterjee is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University. Her book "Gender, Slavery, and Law in Colonial India" is considered a groundbreaking work on the subject. Richard M. Eaton is Professor of History at the University of Arizona and one of the foremost historians of Islam in premodern India.