Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Nicholas Sy and Veronica. They are both academics from the Philippines and the meeting proved fruitful at least for me. For, I learnt of how there was an active slave trade from San Thome to Manila in Portuguese times.
That the Dutch and the British were involved in this racket in the 17th Century is an open fact. They were sending people as indentured labour to the West Indies, Fiji, and Surinam to work on sugar plantations. And while it is well known that the Portuguese were pioneers in the African slave trade, it was news to me that they were doing the same from India in the 15th Century, the destination being the Philippines. That was a Spanish colony, and the local population served the conquerors by farming and shipbuilding. Wood was cut in the mountains and sent down to build ships, and with the bulk of the populace involved in this lucrative trade, farmhands were needed, which is where Indians came in. The Portuguese were, therefore, shipping out people to serve the Spaniards through the Filipinos.
What a trade cycle!
Terrifying raids
The bulk of the people exported were from the Malabar Coast through Goa, the Coromandel Coast through San Thome, and Chittagong in Bengal (now in Bangladesh). In fact, it is as slave traders and pirates that they are remembered in Bengal even now. The word for pirate in Bengali is harmad, a corruption of armada, the Spanish and Portuguese word for a flotilla of warships. In that region, the Portuguese carried out terrifying raids, aided by tribes from Myanmar, and captured large numbers of people to be shipped out. Strangely, San Thome does not seem to have any records or memories. But Manila has plenty, according to Nicholas. The church records list people of Indian origin and the coasts from where they were shipped.
I was able to contribute one addition to Nicholas’ research — Malabar does not mean people from Kerala alone, for, in Portuguese times, Tamils were also referred to by that term. In fact, Tamil was known as Malabar to the Portuguese. To think peaceful San Thome once exported slaves! The slave trade dwindled owing to determined opposition from the Spanish crown, which felt evangelism, and not human trafficking, was its mission. Interestingly, it was the Filipinos who protested the ban! They had got used to Indian labour. The slaves gradually became traders and married into the local community. To this mix would come a fresh addition when in 1762, British troops from Madras, chiefly comprising Tamil and Telugu sepoys and led by Brigadier General William Draper, conquered Manila as part of the Anglo-French Seven Year War, in which Spain aligned with France. The town was sacked, and the local administration surrendered.
Our own Drake
The first British Governor to be appointed was Dawson Drake, born in Madras and working for the East India Company here. Among his first acts in Manila was the setting up of a Chottry Court, a corruption of the term Choultry Court, which dispensed justice to Indians in Black Town in Madras. Drake’s term in Manila was not edifying. He was tried on return to Madras, found guilty, dismissed, and then reinstated. The British returned Manila to Spain in 1764. But many of ‘our boys’ who had gone to wage war preferred to stay back, marry, and raise families. Most people of Indian origin in the Philippines apparently claim they are of this military, and not the earlier slave, stock.
(V. Sriram is a writer and historian.)
