Date & Time: 29 January, Fri. 14:00-15:30
Place: Small Meeting Room II, Inamori Center, 3F
Abstract:
According to V. Lieberman, debt slavery was the main channel for the royal
service population (ahmudan) to escape from the royal control and
hide themselves under the patronage of powerful private families during
the Taungoo period. As a result, the loss of human resources in the royal
sector accelerated the fall of the dynasty.
However, a close inquiry into the debt-slave contracts in the 19th
century indicates that the debt slavery in the Konbaung period did not
maintain such historical significance any more. Quite different from
Taungoo kings, Konbaung kings rarely tried to intervene in private
contracts even though these contracts dealt with the most important
resources in the kingdom, i.e., human being and land.
This report is an effort to understand the direction and nature of
socio-economic changes in nineteenth-century Burma, basing upon 300
debt-slave contracts.
Prof.Teruko SAITO is Emeritus Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Tokyo
University of Foreign Studies. She has conducted extensive research on
socio-economic history of Burma. Her major publications in English include
"Rural Monetization and Land-Mortgage Thet-Kayits in Kon-baung Burma," in
_Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse
States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750-1900_edited by Anthony Reid
(MaCmillan, St.Martin's, 1997). She also co-edited with Lee Kin Kiong,
_Statistics on the Burmese economy: the 19th and 20th centuries_(Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies, c1999), and recently with U Thaw Kaung,
_Enriching the past: preservation, conservation and study of Myanmar
manuscripts: proceedings of the International Symposium on Preservation of
Myanmar Traditional Manuscripts_(Yangon, 2006).
Contact: Junko Koizumi, CSEAS.