Abstract
Over the course of the eighteenth century, French East India Company ships carried numerous sailors, soldiers, passengers and unfree labourers to and from various ports of trade in the Indian Ocean. Although European merchant companies developed extensive documenting systems, certain elements received little attention in the records. When it came to tracking unfree labourers, Company employees used terminology with ambiguous meanings and categories that were codified in the Atlantic context and therefore not initially applicable in the Indian Ocean. In order for historians to interpret these records more accurately, this article reviews specific terminology and pertinent French legislation about racialized labourers. This contextual information helps to uncover previously overlooked groups of unfree labourers working for – and, at times, trying to escape from – the French East India Company in the Indian Ocean and beyond.
When the French sailed into the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth century, their primary goal was to participate in the lucrative Asian trade in luxury goods. To support this objective, they developed a network of ‘trading posts’ (comptoirs) at strategic locations around the Indian Ocean world, each of which required a workforce. The French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes) was soon involved in the international trade in people, as well as goods. Notwithstanding its focus on India, the Company was inextricably connected to other regions of French imperial expansion. As the Crown's geographic priorities shifted over time, the Company outfitted voyages to West Africa, as well as westward to the Caribbean, Louisiana and Brazil. With Company ships sailing to all these destinations over the course of the eighteenth century, the boundaries blurred between Asian and transatlantic trade. The institutions that developed around chattel slavery in the Atlantic ‘triangle’ also shaped French commercial practices elsewhere; however, the categories that were codified in the Atlantic slave trade did not necessarily have clear analogues in the Indian Ocean world. As this Forum emphasizes, the maritime practices and cultural conventions within the Indian Ocean world are significantly different from those in the Atlantic world. 1 Most of what is known about European activity in the former region comes from the records of monopoly companies, but these records must be interpreted carefully, taking into consideration the original purpose and specialized vocabulary of the documents, as well as the incomplete and sometimes subjective nature of what was recorded. Analysing the Company records with these factors in mind allows us to find evidence of many different types of unfree labourers working for, and carried by, the French East India Company in the Indian Ocean world and beyond.
In order to gain a clearer understanding of the unfree people on French East India Company ships, this article offers a preliminary analysis based on a database of the Company's 1,300 eighteenth-century voyages. 2 In these records, the term esclave appears 181 times, referring to 352 individuals. However, a closer reading of the records reveals that the French transported – and put to work – on board their ships considerably larger numbers of enslaved individuals than is initially apparent. Camouflaged under terms that did not always connote unfreedom, such as noir or domestique, the identities of labourers who ‘belonged to the Company’ were often elided in the ledger pages.
After introducing the Company's record-keeping practices and the French legislation that, in turn, shaped its records, this article highlights several terms that had multiple meanings during the eighteenth century. With this background on how and why the Company clerks produced their records, it becomes possible to identify considerable numbers of unfree men and women who laboured on board French ships within the bounds of the Indian Ocean. These archives also record moments when unfree individuals attempted to reach freedom on French ships. By tracking how Company officials applied geographical and racial descriptors to labourers and passengers in these records, we can gain a clearer understanding of French attitudes towards racialized labour forces in the Indian Ocean world.
The French East India Company and its record-keepers
The French East India Company experienced wildly variable fortunes over the century of its existence. First chartered by Louis XIV in 1664 and granted a monopoly on French trade in the Indian Ocean, it soon ran into financial trouble. Merchants from St. Malo took over the monopoly until John Law interceded in 1719. For the ensuing 50 years, the Company (based in Lorient, Brittany) was once again funded by the Crown. 3 In addition to textiles and spices, it traded in wood, coffee, tea and gomme arabic. The Company also participated in the slave trade; of the more than 4,200 enslaving voyages undertaken by French ships during the period of the slave trade, the Company initiated 137 expeditions, approximately three per cent of French voyages. 4 The French Crown sought to develop Louisiana in the 1720s and then Île de France (now Mauritius) a decade later. The War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) and the Seven Years War (1756–1763) were detrimental to international commerce, with shipping blockades and privateering affecting voyages, and thus the price of commodities. 5 After 1769, the Company was gradually liquidated, although expeditions continued until the 1780s. 6
As part of its efforts to discipline long-distance agents and maximize profit, the Company developed an elaborate record-keeping system. Historians of bureaucracy and information have analysed the considerable documentation produced by this and other European merchant companies. 7 Their careful records were an attempt to render even distant transactions trustworthy. 8 The Company ‘clerks’ (écrivains) produced meticulous rôles – records of the crew members, soldiers and passengers – which were kept in triplicate for each of the more than 1,300 voyages. 9 After each man signed on with a vessel, the clerk noted his age, place of origin and parent’s name. The Company took note of the job titles, wages, advances and debts of all their employees. On a number of occasions, the notary added de gré (‘voluntary’) to indicate that the person was working on board of his own volition. Physical characteristics – height and hair colour – were noted not only to distinguish individuals if they should die, but also to identify a person if he should cause problems or desert. 10 For individuals from places other than France, the records are much less detailed. They almost never mention height or complexion, and only occasionally age. 11 The emphasis is on place of origin, as will be discussed below, and whether the individual had transferred from another vessel, which was part of the general practice of tracing the movement of Company personnel.
The underlying purpose of the clerks’ regimented ledgers was to keep close track of shipboard decision-making and also to help the Company avoid wasteful expenditures, especially the overpayment of wages. In addition to noting when men moved from one ship to another, the clerks were expected to document additional mariners hired in foreign ports and any passengers, making note of who authorized those individuals to be on a particular ship and who paid their way. It is here that traces of racialized and unfree labourers are sometimes preserved. 12
The clerks were expected to maintain the rôles throughout the multi-year voyages, recording details about hundreds of individuals, some of whom boarded in large groups and did not speak French. This made it challenging to record identities accurately. Few clerks could spell unfamiliar, non-French names; the terms used to categorize certain individuals varied by region and evolved over the period, and only after several voyages might a clerk become competent at assessing an individual's geographical origins. The reasons vary for the absence of details such as name or complexion. The lacunae may indicate that the clerk did not see the individuals when they boarded; there was a language barrier; there was no time to write down a full description; or – in contrast to the regular practice for crew of European origin – such demographic information was deemed unimportant for individuals who were not on the Company's payroll.
Legislation and conventions
The Company records were shaped not only by financial concerns, but also by legal ones. The French state developed extensive legislation based on its experience in the Atlantic world. The Code Noir (first promulgated in 1685 and revised and adopted in Louisiana and Île de France in 1724) was issued to regulate relations between colonists and enslaved individuals. Among its many restrictions, the Code Noir stipulated that the enslaved had no right to a last name. 13 However, in Company records, a significant minority of individuals who were described as esclaves did have last names, demonstrating the limited application of the Code Noir in the Indian Ocean world. At times (as will be discussed below), an individual appeared with a single name in one ship's rôle but with a last name on a different voyage.
Additional legislation governed enslaved individuals in France, specifically regarding the length of time they were allowed to reside in the metropole. While the claim that there were ‘no slaves in France’ was only notional, the Edict of 1716 and the Declaration of 1738 stipulated that enslavers needed to register Black enslaved individuals and could only bring them to France for two purposes: religious instruction and training in a profession. 14 How were the individuals transported by the Company affected by this legislation? The records show that more than 700 individuals from the Indian Ocean world, many of whom travelled on Company ships, were registered in Lorient over the course of the eighteenth century. 15 The Company records almost never indicate whether the enslavers completed the expected registration. 16
It is important to note that South Asians were considered to fall in a different category to enslaved persons of African origin. Sue Peabody describes the landmark case of a young boy named Francisque who had been purchased by a French merchant in Pondicherry. He arrived in France in 1747 and then, a decade later, sued for his freedom. His lawyers successfully defended him on the grounds that French slavery laws did not apply to him, because he was South Asian and not a nègre or African. 17 This rationale may have led enslavers of South Asians to refrain from registering their property in port notarial offices, or perhaps to import more enslaved individuals from the region after the 1759 verdict. 18
Unstable terminology
To interpret the Company records, we must also recognize the historical nuances of standard terms. Words in the records such as esclave or libre are, for the most part, clear: ‘enslaved’ or ‘free’. However, other terms had competing valences during the period. It is necessary to carefully analyse terms such as ‘Black’ and créole, the meanings of which had been previously codified in the context of the transatlantic triangle trade. The term noir was at once a description of skin colour or complexion and a racial category, and the term shifted significantly over the course of the eighteenth century. The closely related terms nègre and négresse also related to both skin colour and place of origin (and were applied to African individuals of varying skin tones). 19 By the eighteenth century, noir was also applied to individuals from South Asia: noir indien, nègre Bengali. Some record-keepers aimed to be more precise about specific places of origin, adding geographical descriptors such as Bambara or négresse congo; they were somewhat more likely to note non-African places of origin in these records, perhaps because they were more unusual. 20
Terms that signified racial identity were then paired with indicators of the individual's status as enslaved or free: noir indien libre, domestique de Mr Jouanne. The majority of men from Bengal who are identified as noir/nègre have first and last names, and more than half of those names are European. (Was there an expectation that they choose a westernized name to work for the Company?) 21 Women from Bengal, even those who are specified as ‘free’ (libre), usually have only first names.
The legal landscape for racialized individuals in French colonies shifted again only a few years after Francisque's lawsuit. By 1762, certain administrators had become concerned that too many racialized individuals had taken up residence in France. The Admiralty thus introduced additional legislation that would see any Blacks, including nègres libres, regardless of their origin, deported from France to Saint-Domingue. 22 While there is no evidence of widespread deportations, there are several instances where South Asians or free Blacks with no connection to the Antilles were sent to Saint-Domingue. 23 In those instances, the French authorities did not distinguish between ethnicity or geographical origin, but used skin colour as the primary identifier.
The term créole, which occurs in 256 entries in the database, is another significant category for this analysis, and one with blurred boundaries that evolved over time. 24 In the eighteenth century, it had two meanings for the French. It could indicate a geographical origin – a (white) European born overseas. The term might also mean that the individual was ‘mixed race’ (un sang mêlé), without any indication of whether they were free. 25 To assess whether the créoles in the Company records were from European families living in the Antilles or other French outposts, or if they were mixed-race people, it is necessary to rely on indicators of unfreedom such as diminutives (négrillon), or signs of wealth and respect (paying to dine with the captain or honorifics including Sieur or Mme). 26 The phrase de gré might be added to clarify that a racialized person was travelling of their own volition. The term marron, meaning a ‘runaway slave’, had originated in the Caribbean context and was used very infrequently in the rôles. 27 The term evidently had a narrower, more severe meaning than ‘deserter’, which was applied to sailors and soldiers.
Specialized terms, like ‘lascar’ (a South Asian sailor) and ‘caffre’ (originally used for African military conscripts) saw their original meanings expand from being solely a professional identity into a racial or geographical category. 28 Other common terms, such as ‘servant’ (domestique), were applied very broadly, ultimately serving to camouflage certain forms of exploitative labour. Additional categories of workers problematize the distinction between free and unfree labour. A ‘peon’ (pion, 70 in the data set), a term now associated with coercive economic practices, had a standard rate of pay in the Indian Ocean world during this period, and people willingly took this position. 29 Similarly, cooli, coolie or couli (37 in the data set) now has the connotation of indenture but was also a term for men who worked as porters. 30
Unfree at sea
The rôles record the presence of hundreds of racialized and unfree individuals beyond just those labelled esclave. Many dark-skinned individuals are described as ‘belonging to’ (appartenant) someone. These enslavers might be French passengers with no connection to the Company, who brought their property with them or took the risk of sending the individuals unaccompanied. Due in part to the strict regulations discussed above, the large majority of the esclaves in the Company ledgers were not travelling to mainland France. Most of them were transported from India to the Mascarenes or back, or in a few cases from the Antilles to the Indian Ocean world. Company vessels were used as intra-island ferries. The Crown also used Company vessels to move individuals around the Indian Ocean world. 31
Company employees also trafficked in people. In the later decades of the eighteenth century, it became more frequent for Company officers not only to travel with servants but also to own them. Scant evidence survives of when and how officers acquired their slaves. The Company attempted to limit private trade by officers and crew, offering certain allowances for petty trade – the pacotille. On occasion, small groups of Company employees would not only invest in textiles or coffee, but would split the costs of purchasing one or more enslaved individuals, and similarly split the profits from the sale. These transactions do not appear in the Company rôles, but Jean Mettas has transcribed details of this human pacotille, itemizing the number of enslaved people who were privately owned on certain voyages. 32
The most common category of unfree individuals in the rôles was enslaved individuals performing domestic service. Occasionally, they had travelled from distant regions (China, Greece, North America), and therefore may have operated under different labour regimes. Still, it was more typical for enslaved servants to be owned by wealthy French men, women or their children. Certain clerks recorded the servants with considerable attention. On the Maurepas, one Mme d’Eguerty had with her a ‘Chinese nanny (nourrice), a Black female servant, a large Black servant and two small Black children’. 33 However, other clerks did not deem such details worth noting, causing the identities of enslaved people to come and go.
In some cases, the clerks made choices about how to record identities based on previous experience or bias, or may simply have rushed and omitted standard details. These idiosyncratic assessments distort the surviving records. For instance, on 3 March 1749, two enslaved individuals from India, Pedre Collas and Nanette, boarded the Dauphin in Lorient. They were entered in the rôle as an esclave indien and a négresse, esclave indienne. Their enslaver, Mr Courtin, paid the captain for passage and food for them both. Mr Courtin, a counsellor of the Company, and his wife also made the voyage. On 24 August at Île de France, the four of them switched to the Maréchal de Saxe to continue to Pondicherry. In that second rôle, Pedre and Nanette lost their names, race and unfree identity; the clerk recorded them simply as two anonymous domestiques passagers. 34
Finally, there were several hundred individuals who, according to the records, were the property of the Company itself (appartenant à la Compagnie). 35 The captain set these men to work in a range of positions – not only on ships but also in ports outside of mainland France. Some of these individuals earned wages from the Company, but most did not; they were listed as ‘without pay’ (sans solde) or ‘without salary’ (sans appointements/salaire). A few of these men had very specialized skills, like interpreters and, in one instance, an expert in indigo dye. 36 The rôles also indicate that the Company owned at least two enslaved women, but there is no indication of what labour they performed. 37
Most of the Company's other human assets served as a low-cost workforce that was expected to carry out manual labour in various locales. 38 This included offloading cargo, particularly at Île de France, where the shallow harbour required rowing smaller boats to shore. In the 1730s, the Company found it difficult to find men to carry out this task, 39 but evidently deployed unfree labourers there in the 1760s: 10 men worked for several months on the Comte d’Artois as matelots du port, port-based sailors, who probably worked to maintain vessels and move cargo. The clerk recorded the names and origins of these men (Madagascar, Mozambique and Guinea), but made no mention of wages. 40
The Company owned a number of men with expertise in specific trades: blacksmiths, tanners or those skilled in aspects of maritime work, such as caulkers. 41 The largest number seems to have been put to work as ‘able seamen’ (matelots), for which there was an ongoing demand. A typical 600-ton Company ship required a crew of close to 140 men and officers. The standard voyage from Lorient to India and back took approximately 24 months, while adding a stop in China or Brazil could add another year. Company vessels made multiple lengthy stops within the Indian Ocean, taking the seasonal monsoons into account. Some ships were converted from interoceanic trade to ‘coasting vessels’ (vaisseaux de côte), meaning they would limit their voyages to within the Indian Ocean. During many voyages, outbreaks of disease would reduce the number of able-bodied crew, so it was almost always necessary to hire replacements at ports along the way. The Company frequently hired crews of lascars before leaving India for Europe to bolster the crew complement. However, this new analysis of the rôles reveals that on other occasions, the Company seems to have used unfree labourers to carry out similar work within the Indian Ocean arena.
‘Belonging to the Company’: Supplemental crews and bids for freedom
With a clearer understanding of the practices of the record-keepers, including what information was centrally prescribed and what had regionally specific meanings, it becomes possible to identify additional groups of individuals who were providing unwaged labour for the Company. The practice of recording just first names, or the notation of race (such as Black), would not be sufficient on its own to assert that these men were unfree. However, the presence of these two indicators in a group of men embarking at Île de France, as well as – perhaps most obviously – the absence of pay, provides strong evidence that the Company was relying on enslaved mariners to sail its ships. For instance, the rôle for the Ajax listed 15 ‘Malagasy sailors without pay’. 42 While the clerk on that ship recorded the first names of each man, the record-keeper on the Digue noted only an anonymous group of ‘40 Blacks, sailors, wage absent’. 43 Notably, not all supplemental crews were unwaged. In 1748, the captain of the Lys added 14 Black sailors for the two-and-a-half-month leg of the voyage from Île de France to Madras. These men, recorded by first name only, were paid 18 livres a month, which compared favourably to the wage of common seamen, who earned 19 livres. 44 This unusual practice requires further analysis to understand why these racialized men of unclear status received compensation for their labour.
Another voyage rôle highlights the rootless lives of unfree Company sailors. During the Seven Years War, when labour demands were higher than usual, the Centaure arrived at Île de France from Brazil. The ship took on 76 Black sailors in July 1758. The clerk did not document the wages or names of the individuals in the group, but when 24 of the men died over the next three years, the clerk saw fit to record their names at the moment of their deaths. The majority of these names were of African origin. Twenty-four more noirs joined the Centaure on 15 July 1759; these were identified as passagers, but they may have been replacement labourers. In December 1759, 36 of the surviving Black men transferred from the Centaure to the Duc d’Orléans, and then 22 went on to the Zodiaque in June 1760 and 11 to the Comte d’Artois that November. 45 It is not always possible to trace these individuals in the subsequent ships’ rôles, despite the clerks’ notes; these discrepancies reveal shortcomings in the Company’s personnel-tracking apparatus. Still, the mobility of these men is striking: Company officials in the Mascarenes sent them from voyage to voyage according to need, with little break in between and – even if a place of origin is mentioned – no home port.
The database reveals patterns in how the Company managed its labour needs. Île de France had developed into an effective staging point. During the Seven Years War, the Company had amassed a substantial group of enslaved sailors there. Often, these men carried out work similar to the crews of lascars, but without compensation. It was a simple matter for the sizeable vessels to absorb additional crew, 20–25 men at a time. As for when the Company deemed it worth bringing on additional crew, this happened on coasting vessels making short inter-island trips as well as those heading east to China and other East Asian ports on more lengthy expeditions. The practice does not seem to correlate with outbreaks of illness or high death rates.
It is noteworthy that unfree Black sailors were put to work on short-distance, less-profitable voyages and on older, less seaworthy vessels. Scholars have asserted that the Company did not allow Malagasy sailors to have access to ships in the Mascarenes, given the proximity to their home island and the possibility that they might abscond to freedom on a ship's boat. 46 The evidence here belies that argument; many of the men enslaved by the Company were Malagasy, and there are no reports of them escaping on smaller craft to attempt the 700-kilometre journey home to Madagascar.
In general, the challenging conditions on long-distance voyages prompted many individuals to run away or desert. For at least some, ships offered potential avenues to a better life. ‘Stowaways’ (clandestins travelling furtivement) appeared on many ships. Unfree labourers felt the same impulses, although they had fewer opportunities to slip away from the Company's record-keeping apparatus. For example, the rôle of the Comte d’Artois documents the attempts of two enslaved individuals owned by the Company. A man named Maka ran away from Île de France on 28 December 1762, but the ship he travelled on returned to the island in May 1763, at which point Maka was turned in to the fort. Dominique, another individual enslaved by the Company, tried his luck the following week, stowing away clandestinely at Île Bourbon. His bid for freedom also ended at Île de France later in May. Although there is no note that he was turned in, the clerk's awareness of his itinerary suggests so. 47 In 1766, five Malagasy sailors enslaved by the Company made an ambitious bid for freedom. Bernard aka Mars, Martin, César, Chilava and Charmant Faiémathé were part of the replacement crew on the Duc de Praslin in November 1764. 48 While they were supposed to have disembarked at Île de France in March 1766, they next appear in the Company documents in September 1766, at the moment they boarded the Saint-Louis in Lorient. Somehow, they had remained concealed on the Duc de Praslin when it left the Mascarenes, and all reached Brittany in July. On the rôle of the Saint-Louis they are no longer identified as sailors, simply passengers who were ‘Black, belonging to the Company.’ (The second clerk recorded them as Mars, Martin, César, Sotroval and Sermat). 49 They definitively disembarked at Île de France in October 1767, at which point César earned one additional note: he was described as a noir marron. What earned him, alone of the five, the label of ‘runaway’?
Conclusions
Despite the French East India Company’s serious efforts to control everyone who set foot on its ships, not even strict regulations and meticulous record-keeping could prevent enslaved sailors or passengers from making bids for freedom in Indian Ocean ports. And, as extensive as they are, the Company records remain frustratingly incomplete. Ledgers omit the names of individuals, others fail to mention wages, while still others use the same words for domestic service as for enslaved labour. We are unlikely to be able to find out why César was singled out among the Duc de Praslin stowaways as a marron. Furthermore, since French expectations around record-keeping were shaped by the conventions of the Atlantic world, not all of the complex, pre-existing structures in the Indian Ocean world are recorded clearly.
However, because the structure of these records prioritizes parentage, place of origin and type of labour, they do in fact shed fresh light on the diverse individuals who travelled on these vessels. With an awareness of the financial purpose of these documents, a suitable glossary, and knowledge of the background and biases of the authors, it is possible to glean valuable insights. They contain data about domestic service, including evidence of positions, such as valet and cook, that were more open to (free and enslaved) racialized individuals. The records also offer hints about religion: passengers who declined the standard rations of beer or other alcohol were most likely Muslim or Brahmins. 50
Given the French legislation designed to circumscribe and exploit racialized individuals, we might expect the Company clerks to be meticulous about documenting race, but, in fact, they used only a few generic words. The infrequent use of specific terminology suggests that the French Company employees in the Indian Ocean world were less focused than bureaucrats in the Atlantic world on categorizing individuals based on parentage or variants in skin colour.
The haphazard approach to documenting this labour force has led scholars to underestimate the extent to which racialized labourers assisted in the day-to-day operations of the Company’s ships. They were clearly important contributors to both short and longer voyages within the Indian Ocean world. At the same time, the Company carefully limited the sphere where they worked: given the evolving legislation in the metropole, it may not have wanted to risk bringing them back as employees, passengers or stowaways. The Company documents illuminate the near-constant mobility of these unfree mariners. The records weave a story over time, tracing the trajectories of these labourers as they transferred from one ship to another, either in a group or singly. Future research will aim to determine how much time these men had between being assigned to a new ship, the geographical range of their travels and the multilingual nature of the crews, as well as how much freedom Black labourers would have had on board and in port.
We can see that the Company clerks had a lot of power when creating these records, noting certain details and omitting others, making unfree labour appear or disappear with a line of ink. Clerks were more likely to name the enslaver than the unfree passenger – a practice that aligned with the Company's desire to keep track of payments. But to what extent were the clerks aware of the Code Noir and its stipulation that enslaved individuals could not have last names? We should probe the biographies of the clerks who used particular racial terms such as mulâtre or marron to see if they spent time in the Caribbean. This serves to caution us not to rely exclusively on these internal records, but also to recognize the blind spots and preoccupations of the clerks who shaped the stories of the Black sailors they did not take time to name. Used with care, these records documenting myriad interactions among Europeans, Asians and Africans in the Indian Ocean world will lead to more nuanced understandings of French expectations about coerced labour, especially as we move beyond the traditional structures of the transatlantic slave trade into the diverse and evolving Indian Ocean world.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received financial support from a SSHRC Insight Grant for the research of this article.
