Forced labour, debt-bondage and slavery
Visiting British officials on tour requisitioned transport such as boats like this for their journeys through the local headman. They utilized the kerah system to obtain the necessary boatmen or, for overland journeys, porters.
Forced labour (kerah), debt-bondage and slavery enabled the ruling class, and also some well-to-do commoners, to obtain service or labour from members of the peasant class by compulsion and without payment of wages. Such forced labour sometimes had an economic value, but the main purpose of these exactions was often social or political. Debt-bondage, in particular, had significance as a means of enhancing the prestige of the creditor; this underlay the Malay resistance to British measures for the suppression of this practice.
- Information in the full article includes
- Forced labour
- Debt-bondage
- Slavery
- The end of forced labour