Slavery in the Trucial States facts for kids

Slave market 1907

The Pearl Fishery in the Persian Gulf - The Graphic 1881. At the time, the pearl industry was dominated by African slave labor.

Pearl divers in the Persian Gulf. At the time, the pearl industry was dominated by slave labor.

Oil field 1932. The British Foreign Office unsuccessfully asked the Iraq Petroleum Company not to use slave labor in the Gulf.

Slavery existed in the Trucial States (1892-1971), which later formed the United Arab Emirates. The Trucial States consisted of the Sheikdoms Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Fujairah, and Ras Al Khaimah. The region was mainly supplied with enslaved people from the Indian Ocean slave trade, but humans were also trafficked to the area from Hejaz, Oman and Persia. .....

The year that the Trucial States officially abolished slavery is unclear. Some say that bondage was officially outlawed in 1963, when the Trucial rulers signed an agreement decreeing the abolition of slavery. Others say that it was in 1971, when the Trucial States joined the UN as the United Arab Emirates and accepted the UN's Conventions against slavery. However, the legislation around slavery remained unclear because the 1963 decree was never actually issued, and the UN law of 1971 was not obligatory.

History

Slavery and slave trade had been an issue of tention between Britain and the Gulf states since the abolition of slavery in Britain in 1833. While the British abolition of slavery never applied in the Trucial States because they were never colonies, the British fleet did oppose the Indian Ocean slave trade and prevented slave ships from Zanzibar to reach their destination in the Gulf. The British and the Trucial rulers signed treaties against the slave trade in 1839, 1847 and 1856, but the treaties was not respected in the Gulf states and British reports noted that Dubai was a big slave route for the trafficking of slaves to Saudi Arabia.

In the 1890s, the British Empire gained control over the area. They established the Trucial States in 1892. The British power over these states were managed via the India Office and their foreign policy and contact with the outside world through the Foreign Office. However, the British did not interfere with the inner policy of the Trucial States, but was content with keeping peace with the indigenous power holders, protecting British citizens, and managing the contacts between the Trucial States and the international community, in which they assured that the Trucial States obeyed the same international treaties signed by the British themselves. The British met a substantial slave trade in the area with old historic roots.

Slave trade

During the Omani Empire (1692-1856), Oman was a center of the Zanzibar slave trade. Slaves were trafficked from the Swahili coast of East Africa via Zanzibar to Oman. From Oman, the slaves were exported to the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and Persia, including the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. The Omani slave trade from Africa started to shrink in the late 19th-century, but a second slave trade from Africa via Hejaz continued. The historical records show that most slaves in the pearl industry of the Persian Gulf were shipped from either the East African Swaihili Coast or the Horn of Africa.

A second route of slave trade existed, with people from both Africa and East Asia, who were smuggled to Jeddah in the Arabian Peninsula in connection to the Muslim pilgrimage, Hajj, to Mecca and Medina. These slaves were imported from the Hejaz to Oman, the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Victims were tricked to perform the journey willingly in the belief that they were going on the Hajj pilgrimage or employed as servants and then sold upon arrival. The method of kidnapping was also used.

In 1927 a trial reveal a slave trade organization in which Indian children of both sexes were trafficked to Oman and Dubai via Persia and Gwadar.

In the 1940s, a third slave trade route was noted, in which Balochis from Balochistan were shipped across the Persian Gulf, many of whom had sold themselves or their children to escape poverty.

The vast majority of slaves were of African origin, but there were also a minority from Asia and Europe. Of 283 female slaves who applied for manumission from their Arab owners at the British Agency in Sharjah, 151 was African (25 from Eastern Africa, 8 from Sudan, 2 from Somalia, and 126 born in Arabia by African slave parents), and of the remaining number, 46 were from Baluchistan, all of them having been captured and trafficked in their own lifetime and not born in slavery.

Function and conditions

Slaves were given a new name on arrival. Men's names symbolized affluence and power, and women were given vibrant names that conveyed femininity. They gradually integrated in to the local culture, gradually forgetting their past; freed slaves normally by culture stayed in the household or in a clientship of their former owners.

Male slaves where used in a number of tasks: as soldiers, pearl divers, farm labourers, cash crop workers, maritime sailors, dock workers, porters, irrigation canal workers, fishermen, and domestic servants, while women functioned as domestic servants or concubines.

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Male slaves

..... In the 1950s, a high percentage of oil workers in Abu Dhabi were slaves.

In the 17th and 18th centuries European travelers frequently noted African slave soldiers and African eunuchs at the royal courts.

In the 19th-century, the slave trade experienced the greatest peak since the 9th-century a thousand years earlier, because of the great growth of the pearling industry in the international world trade, which relied heavily on African slave labor.

The British urged the Trucial states not to use slave labor in the Oil industries, but the Trucial rulers answered that it would be difficult to find labor to the oil industry unless slave labor was used, and the British had difficulty in controlling whether the laborers in the oil industry were slaves or free workers.

The British Foreign Office repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked the Iraq Petroleum Company not to employ slaves, but was met with the reply that it was the responsibility of the shaykhs to supply the workers.

Female slaves

..... Non-African female slaves were sold in the Persian Gulf where they were bought for marriage; these were fewer and often Armenian, Georgian, or from Baluchistan and India. In 1943, it was reported that Baloch girls were shipped via Oman and the Trucial States to Mecca, where they were popular as concubines, since Caucasian (Circassian) girls were no longer available, and were sold for $350–450.

The Temporary Slavery Commission (TSC) of the League of Nations in 1925 had particularly specified that concubines also had the right to freedom, but the British where particularly reluctant to enforce anti slavery legislation when it came to the harem concubines of the muslims since they did not which to arouse anger by interfering in such sensitive domestic issues and often avoided adressing the emancipation of slave concubines by defining the concubines as wives and thus not in fact slaves.

The number of female slaves in the Gulf was as high or higher than that of male slaves, but the number of female slaves who made applications for manumission at the British Agencies in the Gulf was significantly lower (only 280 of 950 documented cases in 1921-1946), likely because in the Islamic society of the Gulf, were women were excluded from wage labour and public life, it was impossible for a freedwoman to survive without a male protector.

Female slaves were also given as gifts between rulers: in Novemer 1948, for example, the ruler of Dubai gifted a number of female slaves to king Ibn Saud and his sons for a car and 10,000 ryals.

Activism against slave trade

1892-1950

The British Empire, having signed the 1926 Slavery Convention, was obliged to fight slavery and the slave trade in all land under the direct or indirect control of the British Empire. Since the Trucial States were formally under British control, the British were expected to enforce this policy in the region. Officially, the British declared that they did just that, but in reality, the slavery and slave trade in the Trucial States were tolerated by the British.

As was the case with the rest of the Gulf states, the British considered their control over the region insufficient to do something about the slavery and the slave trade. The British India Office advised the British authorities that any attempts to enforce any anti slavery treaty in the region could cause economic and political unrest, since slavery was "deeply rooted in religious and political history". The British policy was therefore to assure the League of Nations that the region followed the same anti slavery treaties signed by the British, but in parallel prevent any international observations of the area, which would disprove these claims.

The British India Office, responsible also for the Gulf region, officially reported that the British agents had anti slavery treaties with the indigenous rulers of all the Trucial States, Muscat and Bahrain, except for Kuwait.

The British publicly burned a slave dhow in Dubai as a warning in 1928 and the shaykhs, particularly the shaykh of Qatar, expressed themselwes willing to enforce the formal treaty obligations; but in reality, this was impossible, and the British reported that the indigenous authorities were "fanatical, backward, and intensely suspicious of any European interference, which they regard as a threat to their liberties".

In both 1932 and 1935, the British colonial authorities refused to interfere in the slavery of the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, since they were afraid that they could lose control over the area if they should attempt to enforce a policy against slavery, and they therefore prevented all international observation of the area which could force them to take action.

As late as 1935, the British authorities thus assured the League of Nations that the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait had banned all slave trading in the region in treaties with the British, while at the same time, the British refused any international inspections in the region which would have revealed that a substantial slave trade was in fact going on, especially within the pearl fishing industry, where the slaves were particularly harshly treated.

In 1936, the British finally acknowledged to the League of Nations that there was still ongoing slavery and a slave trade in the Trucial States, Oman and Qatar, but claimed that it was limited, and that all slaves who sought asylum at the British Agents Office in Sharjah were granted manumission. In reality, the British reports were deliberately playing down the size of the actual substantional slave trade going on in the region. In the 1940s, there were several suggestions made by the British to combat the slave trade and the slavery in the region, but none was considered enforceable.

1950-1970

After World War II, there was a growing international pressure from the United Nations to end the slave trade. After the Independence of India in 1947, the British Foreign Office secured direct control over the Trucial States and for the first time considered itself to have sufficient control to enforce the laws against slavery and slave trade, particularly since a bigger international presence in the Gulf States attracted more attention to the slavery, and a stronger international condemnation against it.

In 1948, the United Nations declared slavery to be a crime against humanity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, after which the Anti-Slavery Society pointed out that there were about one million slaves in the Arabian Peninsula, which was a crime against the 1926 Slavery Convention, and demanded that the UN form a committee to handle the issue.

In 1951 the British founded the Trucial Oman Levies or Trucial Oman Scouts in Sharjah to fight the slave trade.

When slavery in Qatar was abolished in 1952 the British asked the Trucial Council assembly of Trucial rulers to follow their example and abolish slavery, but they refused, stating that slavery was legal in Islam, and that they lacked the funds to pay compensation to slave owners.

The 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention differed between "non-self-governing terrotires" and "other non-metropolitan territories" such as the Persian Gulf states, and the British stated that the Convention did not apply to the Trucial states, but engouraged the Trucial rulers to abolish slavery and apply the Convention voluntarily.

In 1957 the British pressured the Gulf rulers to accept the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention in accordance with the Colonial Application; this was accepted by Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, but the rulers of the Trucial coast stated that such a law could not be enforced. When the Trucial rulers did accept the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention, they did not follow it up with issuing the necessary edicts, and the British regarded the issue as too sensitive to pressure them to do so.

In 1958 the British Political Agent in Dubai John Peter Tripp urged the Trucial rulers to issue a decree, a'lan, to prohibit slavery and fullfill the obligations of the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention. The Trucial rulers claimed that slavery was already defunct but that they would issue such a decree if the British government wished them to. In 1963, the British Political Resident Sir William Luce reported that the Trucial rulers had finnally signed an agreement to issue a decree to follow the 1956 Supplementary Slavery Convention; they claimed that they had indeed issued such a decree, but the British could find no evidence to confirm that such a decree had ever been issued.

After independence

The 2 december 1971 the Trucial States became independent under the new name United Arab Emirates and was accepted as a member of the United Nations. As such, they also accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibiting slavery, however this carried no obligations to follow the Declaration, and there was a lack of clarity as to whether slavery was actually legally prohibited in the Emirates.

Former slaves were given citizenship in 1971, and genetic studies reveal that the population of certain regions of the Persian Gulf have e significance of West African haplotypes.

In the United Arab Emirates the labor previously performed by slaves were now performed by poor migrant workers employed under the Kafala system, which has been compared to slavery.

Kafala system in the Trucial States

The United Arab Emirates has a work visa sponsorship system to issue work permits for foreign nationals who wish to migrate for work in the UAE. Most of the visas are sponsored by institutions and companies. A person looking to enter the UAE for work obtains a work permit, valid for two months, from the Ministry of Human Resources. The sponsor is responsible for medical testing and obtaining identity cards, documents and stamps. The employee can then sponsor his or her family members and bring them into the UAE. Per Article 1 of Ministerial Decree No. 766 of 2015, an employee whose contract expires can obtain a new permit and may remain in the UAE on a 6-month job seeker visa. A new work permit is also issued if the employer fails legal and contractual obligations such as not paying wages for 60 days. A worker may request his contract to be terminated after at least 6 months of employment. A worker whose employment is terminated unfairly has the right to receive a new work permit without the six-month condition.

See also