Our ancestors , exported as slaves !

 FB   , 19.10.19  

Our ancestors , exported as slaves !                                 

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I have received from our friend and researcher Mr . Vinil Paul the link to one praiseworthy thesis authored by two foreign scholars , Linda Mbeki and Matthias van Rossum on the slave trade in the Dutch Indian Ocean world of 18 th century . And from there I went online to the full text of the same , to which the link is pasted here ( http://www.tandfonline.com/…/…/10.1080/0144039X.2016.1159004 ) . The thesis , titled as " Private slave trade in the Dutch Indian Ocean world . . . " and published online on 13 Apr . 2016 , deals with , among other valuable documents , the same records I have noted in my current FB post of 15 th Oct. as kept at the Chennai Archives ( and being verified by me ) all in 27 files . Even though the authors have been studied only one from the said 27 files , I must say that the work is highly admirable , especially for the Keralites since it give us a wonderful picture of Cochin State as the main " production and export centre " of slaves for the Dutch colonists . ( I got an email reply from Matthias van Rossum last day clearing some of my doubts . )

The real wonder lies but with another information got from my present reading which claims the value of an all-time news : the unusual fact I gathered both from the above thesis and my personal verification of the Dutch Records related to one of the ruling castes of that time ; several slaves sold in Cochin under the Dutch colonists were belonged to Nair caste ! I don't know , at least for the present , how can we tackle with this unbelievable truth comes from the old Kerala society . ( Though the members of the native untouchable castes like " Poelia " , " Parea " , " Chego " are numerous in the said records , that generates no wonder to us because of the inhuman treatment under which they had been suffering until the beginning of the democratic era . )

Here the professional researchers and journalists , especially from Kerala , are facing a challenge to unearth the hidden facts of their ancestors who were sold and exported as slaves to unknown continents within a half century beginning from 1753 to 1801 according to the historical records . As a first step we must read again our old native writings of all kinds and the " untouched " documents kept in the four centres of our Kerala State Archives .