The Indian Slavery Act of 1843 delegalized slavery in the territories controlled by the British East India Company.  Courts could still hear suits for freedom, but suits to enforce slavery would no longer be heard.  On one scale of analysis, this can be seen as the culmination of a long-term activist program led by the Clapham Sect to abolish slavery across the British Empire. On a smaller more intimate scale, the Act can be seen as the application of a solution that had earlier been developed for a small and obscure corner of the Indian Himalaya—Kumaon.

Kumaon was an Extra-Regulation province where the strict letter of the regulations did not apply.  Using this freedom to respond to a dispute over slaves with the Raja of Tehri Garhwal in the 1830s, the Company-Government had directed the courts in Kumaon to stop hearing suits for slavery.  Aware of this earlier solution, the British Parliament rejected the recommendations of the Indian Law Commissioners that legally recognized some aspects of slavery and directed that the Kumaoni model be extended to all of the Company’s territories.

This paper brings to light the process of change around slavery in Kumaon that led to this unexpected outcome.