Open chattel slavery existed in Kuwait until 1949. Slavery was formally abolished in Kuwait in 1949. In practice, slavery was not actually abolished as such, but the law no longer recognized it after 1949, which meant that every slave who applied for manumission was guaranteered to be freed.Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, pp. 340–42 Many members of the Afro-Arabian minority are descendants of the former slaves. Slavery of people from Africa and East Asia was succeeded by the modern Kafala system of poor workers from the same region were slaves had previously been imported.
History
In the 1890s, the British Empire gained control over the area. However, the British did not interfere with the inner policy of the state, but was content with keeping peace with the indigenous power holders, protecting British citizens, and managing the contacts with the international community, in which they assured that Kuwait obeyed the same international treaties signed by the British themselves.
Slave trade During the Omani Empire (1692–1856), Oman was a center of the Zanzibar slave trade. Slaves were trafficked from the Swahili coast of East Africa via Zanzibar to Oman. From Oman, the slaves were exported to the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and Persia, including the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. The Omani slave trade from Africa started to shrink in the late 19th century.
A second route of slave trade existed, with people from both Africa and East Asia, who were smuggled to Jeddah in the Arabian Peninsula in connection to the Muslim pilgrimage, Hajj, to Mecca and Medina. Victims were tricked to perform the journey willingly in the belief that they were going on the Hajj pilgrimage or employed as servants and then sold upon arrival. The method of kidnapping was also used. These slaves were then exported from the Hejaz to Oman, the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
In the 1940s, a third slave trade route was noted, in which people from Balochistan were shipped across the Persian Gulf, many of whom had sold themselves or their children to escape poverty.Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, pp. 304-06 In 1943, it was reported that girls from Balochistan were shipped via Oman and the Trucial States to Mecca, where they were popular as concubines, since Caucasian girls were no longer available, and were sold for $350–450.Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, pp. 304-07
The price of slaves was higher in Kuwait than the rest of the Gulf, and slaves used to be kidnapped to Kuwait. Children were kidnapped from Yemen, and girls from Armenia, Georgia and Iraqi Kurdistan where trafficked to the slave market to be sold for marriage.ZDANOWSKI, J. Slavery and Manumission. Garnet Publishing Ltd., 2012, p. 12.
After 1924, when the import of white slave girls was prohibited, Kuwaiti people who wanted to purchase a white slave (white slaves were normally girls), defined the cost as a "dowry" in order to avoid any charge brought against them by the British, and made it possible for them to get their money back in case the girl applied for a manumission, which had become a possibility by that point.Zdanowski J. Slavery in the Gulf in the First Half of the 20th Century : A Study Based on Records from the British Archives. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Askon; 2008. In the 1920s, white slave girls in Kuwait were often brought to Kuwait from Iraqi Kurdistan by Kurdish merchants, who bribed the custom officials and sold the girls to Kuwaiti slave-brokers.
In the 1920s, slaves in Kuwait were held in cramped conditions in slave shops where the prospective customers came to view them and haggle over the price.ZDANOWSKI, J. Slavery and Manumission. Garnet Publishing Ltd., 2012,
Function and conditions
Female slaves were primarily used as either domestic servants, or as concubines (sex slaves), while male slaves were primarily used within the pearl industry as pearl divers.Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, pp. 265-66 Slave servants were called often cammí (uncle) and cammat (aunt). Male slaves where used in a number of tasks: as soldiers, pearl divers, farm labourers, cash crop workers, maritime sailors, dock workers, porters, irrigation canal workers, fishermen, and domestic servants, while women functioned as domestic servants or concubines.Zdanowski J. Slavery in the Gulf in the First Half of the 20th Century : A Study Based on Records from the British Archives. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Askon; 2008
In 1904, there were about 4,000 Africans in Kuwait out of a total population of 35,000, two-thirds of whom were slaves and the rest former slaves.ZDANOWSKI, J. The Manumission Movement in the Gulf in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Middle Eastern Studies, 47:6, 2011, p. 863.
There were estimated to have been twice as many female as male slaves in Kuwait.Jerzy Zdanowski: Speaking With Their Own Voices: The Stories of Slaves in the Persian Gulf p. 91 Non-African female slaves were sold in the Persian Gulf where they were bought for marriage; these were fewer and often Armenian, Georgian, or from Baluchistan and India. In the 19th century, Indian girls from the Malabar coast were trafficked for sexual services to the Gulf coast.
Black African women were primarily used as domestic house slaves rather than exclusively for sexual services, while white Caucasian women (normally Circassian or Georgian) were preferred as concubines (sex slaves), and when the main slave route of white slave girls was reduced after Russia's conquest of the Caucasus and Central Asia in the mid 19th-century (reducing the Black Sea slave trade and the Kazakh Khanate slave trade), Baluchi and "Red" Ethiopian (Oromo and Sidamo) women became the preferred targets for sexual slavery.Women and Slavery: Africa, the Indian Ocean world, and the medieval north Atlantic. (2007). Grekland: Ohio University Press. p. 13 Non-African female slaves were sold in the Persian Gulf where they were bought for marriage; these were fewer and often Armenian, Georgian, or from Baluchistan and India. In 1924, the law prohibited the enslavement of white girls (normally Armenian or Georgian) on Kuwaiti territory, but in 1928 at least 60 white slave girls were discovered.ZDANOWSKI, J. The Manumission Movement in the Gulf in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Middle Eastern Studies, 47:6, 2011, p. 871.
Female slaves were often used for sexual services as concubines for a period of time, and then sold or married off to other slaves; the slave owners would arranged both marriages and divorce for their slaves, and the offspring of two slaves would become slaves in turn.ZDANOWSKI, J. The Manumission Movement in the Gulf in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Middle Eastern Studies, 47:6, 2011, p. 864. It was common for slave owners to claim sexual services of married female slaves when the slave husband was away for long periods of time, to hunt for pearls or fish or similar labor, and sexual abuse was a common reason given when female slaves applied for manumission at the British Agency. It was common for Arab men to use the sexual services of enslaved African women, but a male African slave who had sexual relations with a local "pure blood" Arab woman would be executed to preserve tribal honor and social status, regardless if the couple had married or not.THESIGER, W. The Marsh Arabs. Penguin Classics, London, 2007, p. 69.
The number of female slaves in the Gulf was as high or higher than that of male slaves, but the number of female slaves who made applications for manumission at the British Agencies in the Gulf was significantly lower (only 280 of 950 documented cases in 1921–1946), likely because in the Islamic society of the Gulf, were women were excluded from wage labour and public life, it was impossible for a freedwoman to survive without a male protector.Magdalena Moorthy Kloss, « Jerzy Zdanowski, Speaking with their Own Voices. The stories of Slaves in the Persian Gulf in the 20th Century », Arabian Humanities [En ligne], 5 | 2015, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2015, consulté le 20 août 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cy/2971; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cy.2971
In 1924, the law prohibited the enslavement of white girls (normally Armenian or Georgian) on Kuwaiti territory, but in 1928 at least 60 white slave girls were discovered.
In 1930, the British official report claimed that there were two thousand slaves in Kuwait, mostly house slaves born in captivity, and 100 pearl divers.Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 265-66
Activism against slave trade
The British Empire, having signed the 1926 Slavery Convention, was obliged to fight slavery and slave trade in all land under direct or indirect control of the British Empire. Since Kuwait were formally under British control, the British were expected to enforce this policy in the region. Officially, the British declared that they did just that, but in reality, the slavery and slave trade was tolerated by the British.
The British considered their control over the region insufficient to do something about the slavery and the slave trade. The British policy was therefore to assure the League of Nations that Kuwait followed the same anti slavery treaties signed by the British, but in parallel prevent any international observations of the area, which would disprove these claims.Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, pp. 164-66
In the 1920s Sheikh Ahmad of Kuwait declared that slavery was an obstacle for progress; while there was no anti slavery treaty in Kuwait, the sheikh bought and manumitted slaves not treated well, and started to pay his slave servants wages.ZDANOWSKI, J. Slavery and Manumission. Garnet Publishing Ltd., 2012, pp. 26-27.
In both 1932 and 1935, the British colonial authorities refused to interfere in the slavery of the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, since they were afraid that they could lose control over the area if they should attempt to enforce a policy against slavery, and they therefore prevented all international observations of the area which could force them to take action.Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 265 In 1932, the official report of the India Office to the Committee of Experts on Slavery that while Kuwait had no British agent to assist in the manumission of slaves, as was the case in the Trucial states, the British officially claimed that slavery in Kuwait was limited to house slaves.Miers, S. (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. USA: AltaMira Press. p. 204
In 1935, the British authorities assured the League of Nations that with the exception of Kuwait, all the British controlled states by the Persian Gulf, such as the Trucial States, Qatar and Bahrain had banned the slave trade due to treaties with the British, but while at the same time, the British refused any international inspections in the region which would have revealed that a substantional slave trade was in fact going on, especially within the pearl fish industry, were the slaves were particularly harshly treated.
In 1936, the British finally acknowledged in their report to the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery of the League of Nations that there was still ongoing slavery and slave trade in the Trucial States, Oman and Qatar, but claimed that it was limited; that all slaves who sought asylum at the British Agents Office in Sharjah were granted manumission and that the slave trade had stopped entirely in Kuwait and Bahrain.Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, pp. 265-67