Slavery And South Asian History

History | Asian Studies Contributors are Daud Ali, Indrani Chatterjee, Richard M. Eaton, Michael H. Fisher, Sumit Guha, Peter Jackson, Sunil Kumar, Avril A. Powell, Ramya Sreenivasan, Sylvia Vatuk, and Timothy Walker. Indrani Chatterjee is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University. Richard M. Eaton is Professor of History at the University of Arizona. Cover illustration: Portrait of Malik Ambar by Hashim, c. 1610. V & A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum. Used by permission. INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis http://iupress.indiana.edu & 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 of the category of slavery itself. Most slaves in South Asia were not agricultural laborers, 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 behavior. 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. Slavery “Indrani Chatterjee and Richard Eaton have produced an important edited volume that will be welcomed by students of comparative slavery. It enriches our knowledge of slavery in South Asia by providing a number of illuminating case studies and, in the process, makes us reconsider the significance of slavery in the subcontinent.” —Edward A. Alpers, University of California, Los Angeles Chatterjee and Eaton & Slavery south Asian History Edited by Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton ISBN-13: 978-0-253-21873-5 ISBN-10: 0-253-21873-X 1-800-842-6796 INDIANA Slavery and South Asian History Slavery & South Asian History Edited by Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington & Indianapolis This book is a