The First Page: The Overseer State

THE FIRST PAGE

The Overseer State: Slavery, Indenture and Governance in the British Empire, 1812–1916

by Sascha Auerbach

27 March 2025

The First Page presents the first page of books that are launched as part of the IAS Book Launch Programme. On 3 April 2025 Sascha Auerbach will launch two new books; one of them is The Overseer State: Slavery, Indenture and Governance in the British Empire, 1812–1916. It offers a bold new historical interpretation of late-stage slavery, its long-term legacies, and its entanglement with the development of the modern state.

Introduction
Paper Chains for Iron Chains

The obligations of the slave are enforced by violence … while the obligations
of the indentured labourer, like those of the free labourer, are only to be
enforced by law, and his rights he is invited and encouraged to defend.
Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Treatment of
Immigrants in British Guiana, British Parliamentary Papers, 1871

To his slave workers from Africa the symbol of Massa’s power was the whip,
liberally applied; records exist showing that 200 lashes were not infrequent
and a tremendous howl was raised by Massa when British law tried to step in
and limit punishment to 39 lashes under supervision. To his contract workers
from India the symbol of Massa’s power was the jail. Massa’s slogan was: the
Indian worker is to be found either in the field or in the hospital or in jail.
– Eric Williams, “Massa Day Done,” 1961

In the face of today’s global migration crisis, yesterday’s laws are simply not
fit for purpose … this government must act decisively. Must act with
determination. Must act with compassion.
– Suella Braverman, Home Secretary of the UK,
Speech on the Illegal Immigration Bill, March 7, 2023

The statements excerpted above offer three different views on the character of
global migration and the British state’s involvement in it.¹ They were offered at crucial intervals, the first a little less than seventy years after the slave trade and a little less than forty years after slavery itself were both outlawed in the British Empire;² the second on the eve of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago achieving their formal independence from Great Britain; and the third amidst what the Tory government has described as an “invasion” of migrants from Continental Europe in the wake of Brexit. The oldest, from a parliamentary commission examining the “treatment of immigrants” in British Guiana in 1871, favorably compares indenture, a system of state-regulated and state-sponsored labor …

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SASCHA AUERBACH is Associate Professor of History at the University of Nottingham. He is the director of the Institute for the Study of Slavery (ISOS), the co-editor of the Cambridge University Press book series ‘Histories of Slavery and its Global Legacies,’ and regularly serves as an on-air historical expert for the BBC, Times radio, Discovery Science, The History Channel, and Curiosity Stream.

On 3 April 2025 Sascha Auerbach will not only launch The Overseer State but a second new book of his, Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture, and Local Courtrooms in London, 1860-1913, at the Institute of Advanced Studies. More information.

Lead Image: Illustration by an unknown Chinese artist, British Guyana, from John Edward Jenkins, The Coolie: His Rights and His Wrongs (1871)

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