Research candidate

Michael Reidy

Research topic 

The Role of Intermediaries in the Contestation of VOC Power During the Company’s Slave Trading Voyages in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Indian Ocean

This thesis investigates the operation and contestation of United East India Company (VOC) power through intercultural mediated exchange during the VOC’s slave trading voyages in the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I shall analyse VOC power and the power relations that arose between VOC slave traders and their intermediaries (interpreters or tolken) and free and enslaved Indigenous oceanic peoples at various localized sites of contact on the island of Madagascar and along the coastlines of South-East Africa. The aim of this thesis is to establish how VOC power operated through commissioners and interpreters and Indigenous intermediaries during the Company slave trade and how it was negotiated and contested by enslaved people. My thesis will illustrate through concrete examples and cases the causes behind slave revolts and how they destabilised VOC power during the Company’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century slave voyages in the Indian Ocean.

Supervisory team

Principal supervisor: Professor Susan Broomhall

Co-supervisor: Dr Kristie Flannery

Projects

Mobilising Dutch East India Company collections for new global stories