Calendar
Events Calendar
Kalyani Ramnath: Rutgers British Studies Center
Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 12:00pm - 01:30pm
The Rutgers British Studies Center
presents
The Maidin Baksh Incident: Law, Enslavement and the Making of Maritime Sovereignty in 19th century India
A lecture by Kalyani Ramnath
(Assistant Professor, Columbia University and author of Boats in a Storm Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962)
Wednesday, April 16, 12:00-1:30 pm
Van Dyck Hall, Rm 301
A light lunch will be served
In 1839, a sailing ship named Maidin Baksh from Calcutta on its way to ports in Southeast Asia, was detained in Madras. Thirty-two children between the ages of four and ten were onboard the ship. East India Company officials suspected that the nakhoda of the ship had
kidnapped the children to sell into slavery across the Bay. The Maidin Baksh incident sparked an extensive investigation of slave trading by sea, which ended with unexpected consequences for seafarers across the Indian Ocean. This talk explores the Maidin Baksh incident as a new
phase of intensified legal regulation that negotiated the tension between maritime space and coastal livelihoods in south India, and offers some reflections on the making of maritime sovereignty in the region.
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