Richard B Allen
Biographic Data
| ID | 78724 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard B Allen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard B |
| FAMILY NAME | Allen |
| SIGNATURE | ALLEN R B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Framingham State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1671-8493 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 270 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
A New System of Slavery at Age Fifty
Merchant capital and labor migration in the colonial Indian Ocean world
Objective/Context: Historians have long acknowledged the importance of merchant diasporas and trade networks in Indian Ocean history but paid little attention to merchant capital’s role in transoceanic labor migration in and beyond this part of the globe. Research on slave trading in the Indian Ocean during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries highlights the need to pay closer attention to the complexities of economic life in thi…
The Indentured Archipelago
There is a pressing need in indentured labor studies for new approaches to examining and conceptualizing the nature and dynamics of the global migrant labor system that scattered some 2.2 million indentured Asian laborers, two-thirds of whom were Indians, throughout and beyond the colonial plantation world between the 1830s and 1920s. In this revised version of his dissertation, published as part of Cambridge University Press's Global South Asian…
Slavery and Bonded Labor in Asia, 1250–1900
Slavery and Bonded Labor in Asia, 1250–1900 is the first collection of studies to focus on slavery and related forms of labor throughout Asia. The 15 chapters by an international group of scholars assess the current state of Asian slavery studies, discuss new research on slave systems in Asia, identify avenues for future research, and explore new approaches to reconstructing the history of slavery and bonded labor in Asia and, by extension, elsew…
Plantation Economy and Slavery in the Mascarene Islands (Indian Ocean)
The social and economic history of the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius, Réunion, and Rodrigues must be viewed in the context of regional and global developments including the African diaspora of slave origin and European colonialism in both the Indian Ocean and Atlantic worlds. Mauritius and Réunion’s transformation into plantation colonies during the 18th and early 19th centuries was a complex process shaped by the cultivation of coffee, cloves, …
Exporting the Unfortunate
Recent research highlights the need for historians to include India in discussions about the global traffic in chattel labour that developed after 1500. Hitherto ignored archival sources permit a more detailed understanding of enslavement in India and the nature, dynamics, and legacy of the British, Danish, Dutch, French, and Portuguese trades which transported hundreds of thousands of enslaved Indian men, women, and children throughout and beyon…
Merchant Capital and Slave Trading in the Western Indian Ocean, 1770–1830
The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan
The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan: Merchants, Jesuits and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Slaves. Lúcio de Sousa. Studies in Global Slavery 7. Leiden: Brill, 2019. xiv + 594 pp. €180. - Volume 74 Issue 2
The Poverty of Archival Riches
Being a Slave
Africans in the Indian Ocean World
The African diaspora in the Indian Ocean is inextricably intertwined with slavery and slave trading in an oceanic world that encompasses southern and eastern Africa, the Red Sea, the Persian (or Arabian) Gulf, South Asia, the Indonesian archipelago, and parts of East Asia. A combination of factors, including the cost of free labor, high morbidity and mortality rates from diseases such as malaria and smallpox, and the perceived attributes of diffe…
Slave, Convict, and Indentured Labor and the Tyranny of the Particular
In Slave, Convict and Indentured Labor and the Tyranny of the Particular, distinguished historian Richard B. Allen draws on forty-five years of research on slavery and indentured labor in the Indian Ocean world and Asia to challenge scholars to look beyond the chronological, conceptual, and geographical confines of the specialized case studies that characterize research on slavery and related forms of migrant labor and situate their studies in mo…
History, Historical Archaeology, and the “History of Silence”
Slavery in a Remote but Global Place
Histories of the British East India Company usually ignore the company’s use of slave labor. Records from its factory at Bencoolen in Sumatra provide an opportunity to examine company attitudes and policies toward its chattel work force in greater detail. These sources reveal that the company drew slaves from a global catchment area to satisfy the demand for labor in its far-flung commercial empire, shed light on policies and practices regarding …
Slave Trading, Abolitionism, and “New Systems of Slavery” in the Nineteenth-Century Indian Ocean World
Ending the history of silence
Thirty-eight years ago, Hubert Gerbeau discussed the problems that contributed to the “history of silence” surrounding slave trading in the Indian Ocean. While the publication of an expanding body of scholarship since the late 1980s demonstrates that this silence is not as deafening as it once was, our knowledge and understanding of this traffic in chattel labor remains far from complete. This article discusses the problems surrounding attempts t…
Asian Indentured Labor in the 19th and Early 20th Century Colonial Plantation World
The period between the mid-1830s and early 1920s witnessed the migration of some 3.7 million Africans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Melanesians, and other peoples throughout and beyond the colonial plantation world to work as laborers under long-term written and short-term oral contacts. Studies of this global labor migration over the last forty years have been heavily influenced by Hugh Tinker’s 1974 argument that the indentured labor system was …
Vagrancy in Mauritius and the Nineteenth-Century Colonial Plantation World
Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean World
The now classic collection of articles on debt, slavery and bondage edited by Anthony Reid more than 30 years ago established the important role that debt played in the enslavement of men, women an
Slaves, Convicts, Abolitionism and the Global Origins of the Post-Emancipation Indentured Labor System
The origins of the indentured labor system which flourished in the post-emancipation colonial plantation world must be understood in terms of the development of increasingly interconnected free and forced labor trades within and beyond the Indian Ocean during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Recent research reveals that this system took shape a quarter of a century earlier than previously believed, that Chinese rather than Indi…
Walking on Eggshells
Eggshell is a potentially common archaeological resource, but it tends to be ignored. The recent development of ZooMS (zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry) as a rapid and robust system for taxonomic identification of preserved eggshell fragments has facilitated new insights into patterns of egg use in the past. This paper presents a case study of egg use at two sites in Anglo-Scandinavian York (Hungate and Coppergate). The results described below…
Slave Trading, Abolitionism, and “New Systems of Slavery” in the Nineteenth-Century Indian Ocean World
This chapter points out the difficulties in distinguishing “free” and “unfree” laborers in the Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It chronicles the development of a “new system of slavery” that led to the migration of millions of indentured African and Asian laborers throughout the region. It explores the origins of the indentured labor system and points out that there is a connection between pre-emancipation …
Indian Ocean transoceanic migration, 16th–19th century
The movement of millions of slave, forced, and free laborers was the most important feature of transoceanic migration in the Indian Ocean world between 1500 and 1900. As the centuries‐old traffic in slaves from eastern Africa to the Middle East (especially Arabia and the Persian Gulf) and India, and from India to the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia attests, long‐distance labor migration was well established in this region long before 1500. Inform…
ZooMS
European Slave Trading, Abolitionism, and “New Systems Of Slavery” in the Indian Ocean
Recent scholarship on British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese slave trading in the Indian Ocean highlights the need to explore structural connections between pre- and post-emancipation migrant labour systems in the colonial world. Europeans purchased and transported a minimum of 431,000-547,000 slaves of African, Indian, Malagasy, and Southeast Asian origin to destinations in the Indian Ocean world between 1500 and 1850. These data, coupled with r…
Satisfying the “Want for Labouring People”
A review of published scholarship on British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese slave trading in the Indian Ocean indicates that between 1500 and 1850, Europeans shipped a minimum of 431,000 to 547,000 slaves of African, Indian, and Southeast Asian origin to destinations within this oceanic basin. These data and available information about the nature and dynamics of European slave trading in the Indian Ocean region point to the development of an incr…
Slaves, Freedmen, and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius
The Mascarene Slave-Trade and Labour Migration in the Indian Ocean during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
(2003). The Mascarene Slave-Trade and Labour Migration in the Indian Ocean during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 24, The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, pp. 33-50
Slaves, Convicts, Abolitionism and the Global Origins of the Post-Emancipation Indentured Labor System
The origins of the indentured labor system which flourished in the post-emancipation colonial plantation world must be understood in terms of the development of increasingly interconnected free and forced labor trades within and beyond the Indian Ocean during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Recent research reveals that this system took shape a quarter of a century earlier than previously believed, that Chinese rather than Indi…
The Constant Demand of the French
Analysis of an inventory of 641 slaving voyages involving Mauritius and Réunion between 1768 and 1809 reveals that the Mascarene Islands were at the center of a substantial and dynamic regional slave trading network that also reached into the Americas in ways that raise questions about the relationship between the ‘worlds’ of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. The fact that colonial, as well as metropolitan, merchant capital underwrote Mascarene-…
ZooMS
Modern Mauritius
Capital, Illegal Slaves, Indentured Labourers and the Creation of a Sugar Plantation Economy in Mauritius, 1810–60
Previous studies of British plantation colonies, including the island of Mauritius in the south-western Indian Ocean, have paid little attention to the economic dimensions of the transition from slave to free labour that occurred during the early nineteenth century. Reports by Mauritian colonial officials make it possible to reconstruct the transformation of the island's economy between 1810 and 1860 from one oriented towards trade and commerce t…
Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean World
The now classic collection of articles on debt, slavery and bondage edited by Anthony Reid more than 30 years ago established the important role that debt played in the enslavement of men, women an
Imagining Women
Part I Themes and Issues: Readings from: Richard Allen, Catherine King, Dinah Birch, Joan Swann, and Frances Bonner Part II:Literary Representations - Self as Subject: Readings from: Elaine Showalter, Maria Lauret, Lizbeth Goodman, Alicia Ostriker, Carol Rumens, Nicole Ward Jouve and Wendy Webster Part III Visual Images - Making Things Mean: Readings from: Catherine King, Michelle Cliffe, Felicity Edholm Part IV Film and Television: Readings from…
Ending the history of silence
Thirty-eight years ago, Hubert Gerbeau discussed the problems that contributed to the “history of silence” surrounding slave trading in the Indian Ocean. While the publication of an expanding body of scholarship since the late 1980s demonstrates that this silence is not as deafening as it once was, our knowledge and understanding of this traffic in chattel labor remains far from complete. This article discusses the problems surrounding attempts t…
Maroonage and its legacy in Mauritius and in the colonial plantation world
Studies of fugitive slaves have frequently failed to ask important questions about maroonage, and especially about the extent to which and why maroon activity changea through time. Similar problems characterize much of the work on the " new system of slavery " that developed during the nineteenth century as indentured laborers from India and Asia replaced slaves asfield hands in much of the colonial plantation world. The Mauritian case study allo…
Lakshmi's Legacy
The slender, sweet thread
(1988). The slender, sweet thread: Sugar, capital and dependency in Mauritius, 1860–1936. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 177-200
A traffic repugnant to humanity
Research on the Mascarene slave trade affords an opportunity to examine the exportation of enslaved children to the southwestern Indian Ocean from India, Southeast Asia, and eastern Africa from 1770 to circa 1830. Growing concern among British East India Company officials during the 1780s and 1790s about stemming the slave trade from India to Mauritius and Réunion, and ending the exportation of children in particular, raises questions about the e…
Free women of colour and socio-economic marginality in Mauritius, 1767–1830
Modern Studies of free populations of colour emphasize the extent to which these gens de couleur libre were an ‘unappropriated’ or marginal people in slave plantation societies, and have focused largely on the legal and quasi-legal dimensions of their existence. The activities of free women of colour in Mauritius highlight the role that gender, ethnicity and class, as well as race, played in shaping the free coloured experience during the late ei…
A Modern Economic History of Africa. Volume 1
Asian Indentured Labor in the 19th and Early 20th Century Colonial Plantation World
The period between the mid-1830s and early 1920s witnessed the migration of some 3.7 million Africans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Melanesians, and other peoples throughout and beyond the colonial plantation world to work as laborers under long-term written and short-term oral contacts. Studies of this global labor migration over the last forty years have been heavily influenced by Hugh Tinker’s 1974 argument that the indentured labor system was …
Walking on Eggshells
Eggshell is a potentially common archaeological resource, but it tends to be ignored. The recent development of ZooMS (zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry) as a rapid and robust system for taxonomic identification of preserved eggshell fragments has facilitated new insights into patterns of egg use in the past. This paper presents a case study of egg use at two sites in Anglo-Scandinavian York (Hungate and Coppergate). The results described below…
European Slave Trading, Abolitionism, and “New Systems Of Slavery” in the Indian Ocean
Recent scholarship on British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese slave trading in the Indian Ocean highlights the need to explore structural connections between pre- and post-emancipation migrant labour systems in the colonial world. Europeans purchased and transported a minimum of 431,000-547,000 slaves of African, Indian, Malagasy, and Southeast Asian origin to destinations in the Indian Ocean world between 1500 and 1850. These data, coupled with r…
A Serious and alarming daily evil
Bible et pouvoir a Madagascar au XIX e siecle
Economic marginality and the rise of the free population of colour in mauritius, 1767–1830
(1989). Economic marginality and the rise of the free population of colour in mauritius, 1767–1830. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 126-150
Marronage and the maintenance of public order in Mauritius, 1721–1835
(1983). Marronage and the maintenance of public order in Mauritius, 1721–1835. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 214-231
The Poverty of Archival Riches
Modern Mauritius
Marronage and the maintenance of public order in Mauritius, 1721–1835
(1983). Marronage and the maintenance of public order in Mauritius, 1721–1835. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 214-231
The slender, sweet thread
(1988). The slender, sweet thread: Sugar, capital and dependency in Mauritius, 1860–1936. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 177-200
Economic marginality and the rise of the free population of colour in mauritius, 1767–1830
(1989). Economic marginality and the rise of the free population of colour in mauritius, 1767–1830. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 126-150
Lives of neither luxury nor misery
L'existence d'une sous-population distincte d'origine indienne parmi la population de couleur libre de l'Ile de France de 1767 à 1810 soulève plusieurs questions, non seulement au sujet de l'expérience coloniale mauricienne, mais aussi de l'histoire des gens de couleur dans les autres colonies esclavagistes. La présence indienne dans l'Ile de France conteste plus précisément la supposition commune que les populations de couleur libres étaient les…
The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex
Slavery and African Life
Bible et pouvoir a Madagascar au XIX e siecle
Imagining Women
Part I Themes and Issues: Readings from: Richard Allen, Catherine King, Dinah Birch, Joan Swann, and Frances Bonner Part II:Literary Representations - Self as Subject: Readings from: Elaine Showalter, Maria Lauret, Lizbeth Goodman, Alicia Ostriker, Carol Rumens, Nicole Ward Jouve and Wendy Webster Part III Visual Images - Making Things Mean: Readings from: Catherine King, Michelle Cliffe, Felicity Edholm Part IV Film and Television: Readings from…
Breaking the Chains
Lakshmi's Legacy
Indian Immigrants and the Legacy of Marronage
Even before the abolition of slavery on 1 February 1835, planters on Mauritius had begun to look for free agricultural labourers to work their estates. By the early 1830s, it had become apparent that the local slave population was inadequate to meet the labour needs of the colony's rapidly expanding sugar industry, and the long-term availability of this soon-to-be emancipated work force was also increasingly open to question as the decade progres…
A Modern Economic History of Africa. Volume 1
Slaves, Freedmen, and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius
Licentious and Unbridled Proceedings
Census and other demographic data are used to estimate the volume of the illegal slave trade to Mauritius and the Seychelles from Madagascar and the East African coast between 1811 and c . 1827. The structure and dynamics of this illicit traffic, as well as governmental attempts to suppress it, are also discussed. The Mauritian and Seychellois trade is revealed to have played a greater role in shaping Anglo-Merina and Anglo-Omani relations betwee…
Slaves, Freedmen, and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius
Maroonage and its legacy in Mauritius and in the colonial plantation world
Studies of fugitive slaves have frequently failed to ask important questions about maroonage, and especially about the extent to which and why maroon activity changea through time. Similar problems characterize much of the work on the " new system of slavery " that developed during the nineteenth century as indentured laborers from India and Asia replaced slaves asfield hands in much of the colonial plantation world. The Mauritian case study allo…
The Mascarene Slave-Trade and Labour Migration in the Indian Ocean during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
(2003). The Mascarene Slave-Trade and Labour Migration in the Indian Ocean during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Slavery & Abolition: Vol. 24, The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, pp. 33-50
A Forgotten Corner of the Indian Ocean
A Serious and alarming daily evil
Free women of colour and socio-economic marginality in Mauritius, 1767–1830
Modern Studies of free populations of colour emphasize the extent to which these gens de couleur libre were an ‘unappropriated’ or marginal people in slave plantation societies, and have focused largely on the legal and quasi-legal dimensions of their existence. The activities of free women of colour in Mauritius highlight the role that gender, ethnicity and class, as well as race, played in shaping the free coloured experience during the late ei…
On Social Traps and Lobster Traps
A traffic repugnant to humanity
Research on the Mascarene slave trade affords an opportunity to examine the exportation of enslaved children to the southwestern Indian Ocean from India, Southeast Asia, and eastern Africa from 1770 to circa 1830. Growing concern among British East India Company officials during the 1780s and 1790s about stemming the slave trade from India to Mauritius and Réunion, and ending the exportation of children in particular, raises questions about the e…
Capital, Illegal Slaves, Indentured Labourers and the Creation of a Sugar Plantation Economy in Mauritius, 1810–60
Previous studies of British plantation colonies, including the island of Mauritius in the south-western Indian Ocean, have paid little attention to the economic dimensions of the transition from slave to free labour that occurred during the early nineteenth century. Reports by Mauritian colonial officials make it possible to reconstruct the transformation of the island's economy between 1810 and 1860 from one oriented towards trade and commerce t…
The Constant Demand of the French
Analysis of an inventory of 641 slaving voyages involving Mauritius and Réunion between 1768 and 1809 reveals that the Mascarene Islands were at the center of a substantial and dynamic regional slave trading network that also reached into the Americas in ways that raise questions about the relationship between the ‘worlds’ of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. The fact that colonial, as well as metropolitan, merchant capital underwrote Mascarene-…
History (42 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (40 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (36 works) · History (33 works) · Political science (29 works) · Ancient history (24 works) · Geography (24 works) · African history and culture studies (21 works) · Law (21 works) · Archaeology (20 works)