Erasure of Maldivian Identity in Indian Ocean Slavery

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Author: Pen for Rights – Research & Documentation
Affiliation: Maldivians for Chagos
A custodian-led civic research initiative and an Indian Ocean decolonisation initiative

Abstract

Indian Ocean slavery was characterised not only by coerced mobility and forced labour, but by systematic practices of administrative misclassification that erased the identities of many enslaved populations. While African slavery in the western Indian Ocean has been extensively documented, enslaved peoples from smaller South Asian island societies, including the Maldives, are largely absent from colonial slave registers. This absence has frequently been interpreted as evidence of non-involvement. This article challenges that assumption. Drawing on Indian Ocean slavery historiography, scholarship on colonial naming and racial classification, documented Maldives–Africa connectivity, and a concrete British seizure and transfer of enslaved persons from Diego Garcia to Ceylon in 1810, the article argues that Maldivian identity was structurally vulnerable to erasure at colonial administrative hubs. The article does not claim to identify named Maldivian individuals in slave registers; rather, it demonstrates that archival silence is a predictable outcome of documented colonial practices of renaming, racial flattening, and bureaucratic convenience. The article concludes by outlining the relevance of this structural erasure for contemporary consideration under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

Keywords

Indian Ocean slavery; Maldives; misclassification; archival silence; colonial hubs; Diego Garcia; Ceylon; racialisation; ICERD

1. Introduction

The historiography of Indian Ocean slavery has expanded considerably over the past two decades, challenging Atlantic-centric narratives and foregrounding the diversity of coerced labour regimes across Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia (Schrikker & Wickramasinghe, 2020). Yet this expansion has also exposed a persistent asymmetry. While African origins are foregrounded, enslaved peoples from smaller South Asian island societies remain marginal or entirely absent from colonial slave archives. Among the most conspicuous of these absences is the Maldives.

The near-absence of Maldivians from colonial slave registers has often been read as evidence that Maldivians were not meaningfully involved in Indian Ocean slavery. Such reasoning presumes that colonial archives accurately preserved ethnic origin. This article rejects that presumption. Instead, it examines how colonial systems of classification, renaming, and registration produced archival silence, and argues that Maldivian identity was particularly susceptible to erasure within these systems.

2. Maldivians within Indian Ocean Slave Circuits

The inclusion of Maldivians within Indian Ocean slave circuits is supported by existing scholarship. Perret (2011) identifies the Maldives as one of three major South Asian regions supplying enslaved persons to maritime Southeast Asia, alongside Bengal and the Coromandel Coast. This identification places Maldivians squarely within recognised slave-sourcing zones of the Indian Ocean world.

This conclusion is consistent with broader regional evidence. Forbes and Ali (1980) document sustained, multi-century human movement between the Maldives and the East African coast, including Maldivian voyages, African settlement in the Maldives, shipwreck survival, and intermarriage. Ibn Battuta’s fourteenth-century account further records the presence of enslaved Africans in the Maldives, confirming that enslavement was embedded within Maldivian society itself (Forbes & Ali, 1980).

Taken together, this evidence undermines any assumption that Maldivians were peripheral to Indian Ocean systems of coerced labour. The critical question is therefore not whether Maldivians were involved, but how their identities were recorded once absorbed into colonial administrative systems.

3. Colonial Hubs and Administrative Misclassification

Colonial slave registers were not compiled at points of origin. Instead, registration occurred at administrative hubs such as Goa, Batavia, Colombo, Galle, Cape Town, and Mauritius, where enslaved persons were processed, renamed, and redistributed (Schrikker & Wickramasinghe, 2020). These hubs functioned as bureaucratic bottlenecks rather than ethnographic recording centres.

Scholarship on Indian Ocean slavery demonstrates that enslaved persons were routinely assigned new names, often Christian, and recorded under broad racial or regional categories. Marina Carter’s work, as discussed in Being a Slave, shows that terms such as Indien in French usage or generic “Indian” in British records often referred to ports of embarkation rather than actual origin, leading to systematic conflation of identities (Schrikker & Wickramasinghe, 2020).

Perret (2011) similarly notes that South Asian origins frequently “disappeared completely” within colonial documentation, as administrative convenience outweighed any concern for ethnographic precision. These practices disproportionately affected smaller island populations whose identities carried little bureaucratic utility once detached from their place of origin.

4. Archival Silence as a Produced Outcome

Indian Ocean historians have repeatedly cautioned against reading colonial archives as transparent repositories of social reality. Schrikker and Wickramasinghe (2020) emphasise that enslaved persons “survived in the paper archive by default rather than by design,” describing enslavement as a history of “erasure, absence and forgetting.”

This insight is methodologically crucial. Where systems of renaming, racial categorisation, and hub-based registration are known to operate, absence from the archive cannot be treated as proof of non-existence. Rather, archival silence must be understood as a product of power. For small island societies such as the Maldives, whose populations were numerically limited and geographically mobile, the likelihood of disappearance within colonial records was structurally high.

5. The 1810 Diego Garcia Seizure: A Concrete Mechanism of Erasure

The British seizure of Diego Garcia in 1810 provides a rare, concrete illustration of these processes in operation. As documented by de Silva Jayasuriya (2025), enslaved persons were seized from Diego Garcia and transported aboard HMS Sir Francis Drake, Cornelia, and Diana to Ceylon, where they were processed through the British Admiralty system at Galle.

The surviving records list these individuals as “sundry slaves” or “Negros,” with no systematic recording of origin. Many were recorded with single names; children were often unnamed; ethnicity was assumed rather than documented (de Silva Jayasuriya, 2025). The author explicitly notes that renaming practices led to the loss of heritage and rupture of kinship ties.

This incident demonstrates, in operational detail, how enslaved populations from Indian Ocean islands were stripped of origin identity at colonial hubs. While the record does not specify Maldivians, it establishes the precise administrative mechanism through which Maldivian identity-if present-would have been erased.

6. Maldives-Africa Connectivity and Identity Drift

Long-standing Maldives-Africa connectivity further reinforces the likelihood of misclassification. Forbes and Ali (1980) document reciprocal human movement, intermarriage, and cultural exchange between the Maldives and the East African coast over many centuries. Under conditions of enslavement and forced relocation, such interactions could produce identity drift, particularly when colonial racial categories were applied visually or administratively.

The 1810 Diego Garcia case illustrates how enslaved populations of diverse origins could be subsumed under African racial labels through colonial practice. Maldivians caught in similar circuits would have been subject to the same processes of misclassification and erasure.

7. Implications for Racial Recognition under ICERD

The consequences of colonial misclassification extend beyond historical reconstruction. Contemporary legal and political frameworks continue to rely on historical narratives shaped by colonial archives. Under ICERD, States are obliged to address not only overt discrimination but also structural and historical forms of racialised exclusion.

The erasure of Maldivian identity within Indian Ocean slavery systems raises serious questions regarding recognition, participation, and remedy. Where colonial misclassification has rendered a people invisible within the historical record, the continuing reliance on that record perpetuates discriminatory outcomes. This warrants examination by CERD as a matter of ongoing concern under Articles 1, 2, and 5 of the Convention.

8. Conclusion

This article does not claim to identify named Maldivian individuals misclassified within colonial slave registers. What it demonstrates is that the absence of Maldivians from those registers is historically intelligible, predictable, and consistent with documented colonial practices of misclassification and administrative erasure. The 1810 Diego Garcia seizure provides concrete evidence of how such erasure operated in practice.

By reframing archival silence as a produced colonial outcome rather than proof of non-existence, the article establishes a robust foundation for further archival research and for contemporary consideration under international anti-discrimination mechanisms, particularly CERD.

References (APA)

Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya (08 Aug 2025): From Plantations to Military: Heritage of Galle Fort in Sri Lanka, Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, DOI: 10.1080/21619441.2025.2524956.
Forbes, A., & Ali, H. (1980). The Maldive Islands and their historical links with the coast of Eastern Africa.
Perret, D. (2011). From slave to king: The role of South Asians in maritime Southeast Asia. Archipel, 82, 159–178.
Schrikker, A., & Wickramasinghe, N. (Eds.). (2020). Being a slave: Histories and legacies of European slavery in the Indian Ocean. Leiden University Press.
Wickramasinghe, N. (2016). Slave in a palanquin: Colonial servitude and resistance in Sri Lanka. Columbia University Press.