Slavery and Post-Slavery in South Yemen under British rule

The global history of slavery remains under-researched. This is especially true for the Arabian Peninsula: although enslaved people and their descendants strongly shaped the region for centuries, they remain largely unmentioned in the academic literature. This project sheds light on the history of slavery in Yemen and its lasting repercussions. During the British protectorate in South Yemen (1872 - 1963), Western and local concepts and practices of slavery and its abolition collided, with complex societal consequences. The aim of this project is to analyse how categories of (un)freedom, social hierarchy and race were formed and reinterpreted, and how these processes affected (formerly) enslaved people and their descendants. The interdisciplinary approach of this project combines methodological and theoretical tools from anthropology and history, as well as research on slavery, gender, and race. Intersectionality is central to my analysis of different factors of inequality in (post-)slavery experiences. An innovative combination of partly unexplored sources (British and Yemeni archival documents, Yemeni literature and newspaper reports, Western travel literature, interviews with experts and contemporary witnesses) enables a multi-layered analysis. The project reconstructs individual life stories and examines three central systems of inequality - law, labour, and race - and their role in maintaining and legitimizing power structures. This first in-depth study of slavery and its aftermath in modern Yemen will enable a more nuanced understanding of persistent social inequalities in the country. Since previous research has foregrounded male perspectives, this project focuses on female experiences of slavery. It examines how enslaved people used competing legal systems to defend their interests and analyses the complex effects of British abolitionism in Yemen. The project also furthers cutting-edge research on the connection between slavery and the environment and contributes to recent debates on coercion and dependency in global labour history.