Chattel slavery existed in the area which was later to become Malaysia until it was abolished by the British in what was then the British Malaya and British Borneo (Brunei, Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan) in 1915.
From the 14th-century onward the area consisted of Islamic sultanate states, which enslaved non-Muslims. In the 19th-century, the territory successively came under the control of the British Empire, which started a process to gradually abolish slavery and slave trade from the 1870s until the final abolition in 1915.
Slavery in the territories of Malaysia are not well known until the arrival of Islam in the 14th-century. After the transformation of the area to Islamic sultanates and the conversion of the ruling elite to Islam in the 14th-century, slavery and slave trade came to follow Islamic law and take on the characteristics of slavery in the Muslim world, and more information are available about slavery in the Malay sultanates.[1]
After conversion to Islam, the enslavement of Muslims were prohibited, which resulted in non-Muslims becoming targeted for enslavement by Muslim slave traders.[2]
Slaves were supplied to the Malay sultanates by five main methods; by slave raids against non-Muslim hill peoples (bumiputra); by commercial slave traders who captured and sold non-Muslim people to both the Malay sultanates, the various states in Indonesia and the Philippines; by Muslim pilgrims who bought slaves during their Hajj and sold them on their return; by criminals who chose to exchange their corporal punishment for enslavement; and debt bondage.[3]
I significant reason for the use of slave labor in Malaya was the low population density, which made free laborers insufficient.[4]
Except for slaves used for servant positions in the private households of rich people and for sexual slavery such as concubinage, slave laborers were used for a number of different roles, such as agricultural laborers as well as craftsmen.[5]
A British report from the 1880s described slavery in Pahang and customs of "unlimited corvee, [and] the right of the Sultan to force women and children into his harem, were all abusers that had to be taken on, but only gradually and with sufficient civil servants, polic and military on the ground".[6]
In the 19th-century, the Malay sultanates gradually came under the control of the colonial British Empire. Britain abolished the British slave trade by the Slave Trade Act 1807 and slavery by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Officially the British pursued an abolitionist policy in all areas under their control after 1833, but in practice they avoided addressing the issue if they feared it could cause problems with local power holders, which was the case in Malaya, were the British for example avoided addressing the slave holding of the Sultan of Johor.[7]
From the 1870s, when the British felt their power was secure enough to introduce policies they felt would be unpopular, they actively started to pursue an abolitionist policy in Malaya, where slavery was progressively targeted and gradually abolished state by state. In 1875 the British forcibly introduced the abolition of slavery in Perak, and in 1887 they effectively undermined the institution of slavery in Pahang by providing slaves the same legal protection as free people.[8]
The British abolition policy met intense opposition. The British Resident J.W.W Birch of Preak was killed in 1875 after having assisted the escape of slaves from the Royal harem of the Sultan of Preak,[9] and the British' introduction of legal protection for slaves in Pahang resulted in a rebellion in 1891–1894.[10]
The British colonial authorities finally declared slavery abolished in British Malaya in 1915.[11]
