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ENGLISH by Katherine A. Bowie "Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Northern Thailand: Archival Anecdotes and Village Voices," which appeared in Monograph 44 of the Yale Southeast Asia Studies series. This monograph is entitled "State Power and Culture in Thailand" and was edited by E. Paul Durrenberger (1996). |
Strong centralized states had the power to regulate the trade in slaves within their territories, both the sale of indigenous slaves and those imported from elsewhere. Thus, for example, the central Thai king Rama I set up regulations to control the sale of slaves within his kingdom. In his edict of March 1784, he complained that there were unscrupulous and greedy people who were intriguing "with rogues in order to set up [slave-selling] rackets." The king continued, "They take children, wives, siblings, grandchildren and servants and, having sold them at one place, they take them to be sold at one or two other places...Such shameless and fearless rogues are more numerous now than in the past, and they need to be punished" (Terweil 1983:79). The king was not opposed to the sale of slaves as such, but sought to regulate the market by declaring such rackets illegal. The state was also complicit in the commerce in kidnapped states from other territories. As Virginia Thompson writes, "The State in those days either condoned or actually furthered the slave trade" ([1941]1967:599). Thus Colquhoun writes of kidnapping in the Shan States, "The officers of the King of Burmah, when the Shan states were ruled by them, did nothing to protect the people, and even accepted presents from the Red Karens, as a bribe to stop their ears against all complaints" (1885:40). Similarly Hallett writes (1890:23): |
State complicity in, if not outright sponsorship of, slave-trading is further revealed in the fact that it was members of the elite themselves who purchased the kidnapped victims. According to oral histories gathered in northern Thailand, lower ranking members of the elite were more likely to buy slaves than the higher ranking elite. Ruling lords appear to have obtained their slaves more through the military power of the state directly; however archival sources indicate that the ruling lords themselves also purchased slaves. Thus O'Riley tells the story of a poor woman with two children:
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Similarly Crawfurd observes:
That the elite were the primary market for slaves is not surprising given the cost of a slave compared to the income of the ordinary villager. In northern Thailand, both oral histories and archival sources for the latter part of the nineteenth century concur that slaves were priced between 54-72 rupees (Hallett 1890:130-131; Bock [1884] 1986:159; see also Colquhoun 1885:257). Although very few archival statistics on northern Thai wage labor rates survive, I was able to find figures for better-paying positions such as porters, oxen caravan owners, and elephant mahouts. According to the British Trade Report of 1894, porters were paid 12-15 rupees/month for carrying loads weighing some 50-75 lbs (RGWB:28 June 1895). |
According to Hallett, Khamu and other teak workers "are brought by their masters from their homes in the neighbourhood of Luang Prabang and hired to our foresters at from 60-100 rupees a year" (1890:21), or approximately 5-8.3 rupees/month. Caravan men with eight to ten oxen were paid 30 rupees (food not included; 20 rupees with food provided) for the month-long roundtrip between Chiang Mai and Maulmain (Hallett 1890:66). The wages of porters, oxen caravan owners and forest workers were hardly typical of ordinary village wages. Porters were not ordinary villagers, but rather were amongst the strongest and fittest of poorer village men. J. Stewart Black, a British consular official, commented that the wages paid to forest workers were considered a "small fortune" (1899). Oxen caravan owners were amongst the wealthiest of villagers, evidenced in the number of oxen they owned. Furthermore, both portering and oxen caravan trading were seasonal activities, most such villagers rarely making more than a few trips each dry season. According to oral histories, normal agricultural wages were much lower. Describing wages at the turn of the twentieth century, many villagers gave rates of 1 win/day for agricultural labor. Since a win equals 12 satang, agricultural wages were about 4.24 rupees/month. Given the usual figure of the cost of slaves in northern Thailand, it would take an oxen caravan owner, already an extremely wealthy villager, 1.8 months to earn the cost of a male slave and 2.4 months to earn that of a female slave, assuming no other expenses. A porter, assuming full-time employment, would need 3.6 to 4.5 |
months to earn the price of a man and 4.8 to 6 months to earn the price of a woman. A forest worker would need 6.5 to 10.8 months to earn the price of a man and 8.7 and 14.4 months to earn the price of a woman. An ordinary villager working as an agricultural laborer, itself a seasonal form of employment, would need 12.7 months of solid work to earn the equivalent cost of a man and 17 months for a woman. These figures help to put the cost of a single slave in broader perspective and give some idea of the economic position of those able to afford to buy a slave. The high cost of a slave relative to the wages of ordinary villagers also helps to understand why kidnapping slaves was such a flourishing form of commerce in nineteenth century Thailand. The traffic in kidnapped slaves was clearly lucrative. As Garnier explained, a slave who cost 100 or 150 francs at Attopeu will resell at about 500 francs in Pnom Penh (1873:276). Some of these slaves apparently were exported internationally. Alfred R. Wallace notes slaves from Siam being sold at the flourishing slave market in the Sulu Islands (Peoples of Malaysia (Lasker 1950:39). Captives from upper Burma are mentioned in Tibet (Lasker 1950:44). Kidnapped slaves were clearly an important commodity of nineteenth century trade, in both northern and central Thailand, as well as the surrounding regions where the slaves originated. Chiang Mai was one of the nodes on the slave trade network and Siam was one of the principal destinations for kidnapped slaves. |
Richardson, writing in the 1830s, notes that the Chiefs of Chiang Mai bought and sold an average of 300 slaves each year, buying them from the Red Karennis in Burma and selling them to buyers in central Thailand (Ms:121). O'Riley, writing in 1865, estimated "about 1,200 souls are annually captured" and sold to the Chiang Mai buyers (Mangrai 1965:180-181). Similarly, Colquhoun writes that various of the tribal populations to the northwest of Chiang Mai "all doomed to a hopeless state of slavery, in which, priced like beasts of burden, they are sold to the Zimme Shans, by whom they are re-sold to the Siamese" (1885:70). Crawfurd writes that "a good number" of slaves kidnapped from Laos and Cambodia are to be found in Bangkok, adding "The Siamese make no scruple in kidnapping them whenever they can find an opportunity" ([1828] 1987:177). Given the magnitude of the slave trade, it is remarkable that so little attention has hitherto been paid to it and the hardships suffered by its victims. PART THREE: On the State and Debt Slavery: Arguments regarding the benign character of Thai slavery have rested on the assumption that debt-slavery was the predominant form of slavery, a condition into which villager entered apparently voluntarily and exited easily. Although scholars have recognized that the obvious overt cause of debt slavery is the need for money, they have minimized the significance of debt by suggesting the amount was minimal and easily repaid--if not by the slaves themselves then by others. As Bowring writes: |
Colquhoun writes, "You hear of people selling themselves for as small a debt as twenty rupees, or about thirty-six shillings" (1885:257); nonetheless twenty rupees was equivalent to four months of steady work for an agricultural wage laborer. As I have shown in the first section of this essay, my research in northern Thailand has shown that debt-slavery was not the predominant form of slavery in this region. However, to the extent that debt was a factor in enslaving villagers, debt slavery was not a state which villagers entered freely and without coercion. With a better understanding of the economic condition of the peasantry, particularly the extent of poverty and the interest rates, it is possible to shed light on the broader context of debt slavery in Thailand. Economic conditions illuminate both the reasons why villagers may have been forced to enslave themselves or members of their families and why, once enslaved, it was difficult for them to regain their freedom. Furthermore, these economic factors cannot be understood without an understanding of the role of the state in creating and maintaining social inequality.
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Due to the prevailing characterization of the traditional peasant economy as self-sufficient or subsistence-oriented (see Bowie 1992 for critique), the extent of poverty and class stratification in nineteenth century Thailand has been minimized. I have documented the extent of class stratification and poverty in another paper (see Bowie n.d.), however inequality in land holdings was one of the primary factors contributing to the significant degree of poverty. Lords and members of the rural elite owned much of the best land. Consequently the elite had large surpluses of rice, while most ordinary villagers fell short (see Bowie 1988). Natural vicissitudes exaggerated this social disparity. Just how devastating natural disasters could be is dramatically related in a moving account of the effects of a drought in 1892 by Hugh Taylor, a missionary in the northern Thai kingdom of Lampang. The preconditions for the drought in Lampang were established as early as 1890, with the destruction of irrigation dams by foreign teak logging companies (the decision to award teak logging concessions was the result of decisions made by the ruling lords). That year was followed by a shortage of rain in 1891, which resulted in "the worst of three rice failures in succession" (Taylor Ms:110-1). By 1892, famine had hit the region. The shortage of food was so severe that villagers were even begging for coconut husks to chop up and mix with whatever rice they had in order to fill their stomachs. Taylor, who had organized some relief work, said "We had to post a guard to keep the people from crowding in on us too hard...sifting the starving from the merely hungry (Taylor Ms:113)." As Taylor continues: |
While famines of this severity were not the norm, evidence for the more general extent of agrarian poverty is provided by oral histories. In the course of my interviews in 1984-86, I routinely asked elderly villagers throughout the Chiang Mai Valley if people in their villages fell short of rice in the past (generally defined as during their childhood or earlier), and if so, for how many months out of the year. The data are dramatic. Of a total of 273 villages about which I have information, only nine villages or 3.3 per cent claimed to be "self-sufficient." The remaining 96.7 percent of villages had at least some households who fell short of rice for at least two or three months each year. In nearly half (48.7 per cent) of the villages, the majority of households fell short of rice at least two or three months each year. Given inequality in landholdings and pervasive rural poverty, it is not surprising that so many villagers had to borrow rice or money with which to buy rice to see their households through to the next harvest. Bowring informs us that the master is under obligation to
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