Abolition as a Racial Project

Erasures and Racializations on the Borders of British India

Bibliographic Data

ID20071541
AuthorsMishal Khan (0000-0002-8967-1761, corresponding author)
Year2021
Pages77-104
Publication date2021-09-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueGlobal Historical Sociology of Race and Racism (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherEmerald Publishing Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1108/s0198-871920210000038005
OpenAlexW3196591062
ISBN9781801172196
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited56

The abolition of slavery in the British Empire demanded a complete transformation of the global legal and political order. Focusing on British India, this chapter argues that this restructuring was, in and of itself, a vital racial project that played out on a global stage. Examining these dynamics over the nineteenth century, I trace how this project unfolded from the vantage point of the Bombay Presidency and the western coast of India, tightly integrated into Indian Ocean networks trading goods, ideas, and, of course, peoples. I show how Shidis – African origin groups in South Asia and across the Middle East – were almost the sole subjects of British antislavery interventions in India after abolition. This association was intensified over the nineteenth century as Indian slavery was simultaneously reconfigured to recede from view. This chapter establishes these dynamics empirically by examining a dataset of encounters at borders, ports, and transit hubs, showing how the legal and political regime that emerged after abolition forged novel configurations around “race” and “slavery.” Documenting these “benign” encounters shifts attention to the racializing dimensions of imperial abolition, rather than enslavement. Once “freed,” the administrative and bureaucratic apparatus that monitored and managed Shidis inscribed this identity into the knowledge regime of the colonial state resulting in the long-term racialization of Shidis in South Asia, the effects of which are still present today

Bureaucracy · Colonialism · Empire · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidency · Racialization · Sociology · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

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