Language of Manumission: Negotiating Freedom in Local Realities and Imperial Memory in the early 20th Century Persian Gulf

Imperial archives are acknowledged curated and contested spaces. While a number of scholars have interrogated the role of memory and the archive, fewer interrogated the ability of one regional space to influence the archive and mnemonic production of another within the same archive. Politics in the capital of the empire produced different expectations of history in the designated peripheries; however, by the end of slavery in the Atlantic world, the memory of British imperial experience with slavery influenced the ways in which they approached, understood, and targeted slavery in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. As more scholars look beyond the traditional archive, this paper seeks to illuminate how regional memory can influence understanding in other parts of the archive and the world. Specifically, this paper analyzes the convergence of imperial memory and the reality of slavery on the ground in the Persian Gulf, and demonstrates that the interpretations of slavery placed on local Persian Gulf communities didn't conform to local understandings of slavery. 

As international anti-slavery pressure on the British increased in the 20^th century, officials in the Persian Gulf began to manumit a growing number of enslaved persons. Despite the imperial push to end the slave trade in the Indian Ocean, British officials lacked commitment in the Persian Gulf. After the 1926 Slavery Convention convened by the League of Nations, manumission for enslaved pearl divers in the Persian Gulf became commonplace as slaveowners, pearling captains, and enslaved divers sought new opportunities in the face of economic downturn. Enslaved divers needed to physically approach the British in order to start their manumission application. In this process, their memories and history would be typically condensed into a one-page document. This paper argues that not just imperial archival methods influenced these statements, but the memory of British slavery in the Atlantic manufactured English-language applications that corresponded with British conceptions of slavery. In the process of translation, local realities of enslavement were transformed into British understandings of freedom.