The law relating to slavery among the Malays (with extracts from the Perak Code of Laws relating to slavery: the original text with transliteration and translation
W.E. Maxwell, then Assistant Resident of Perak, published this article in 1890 in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, drawing on his 1882 official minute to Parliament and a newly prepared translation of the Perak Code of Laws. The work documents the dual system of servitude—true slavery (‘abdi) and debt-bondage (kawan)—that persisted in Perak under Malay customary law, and argues that the debt-bondage system, far from being a product of Islamic jurisprudence, was a native Malay custom that had been perverted into a tool of aristocratic oppression.
Summary
Maxwell’s central analytical move is to separate the institution of slavery into two legally distinct categories: the ‘abdi, a true slave acquired through war, capture of infidels, criminal surrender (hulur), or birth, and the kawan, a debt-bondsman who remains a free man (mardahika) in principle but is compelled to serve his creditor in menial labour. He demonstrates that the debt-bondage system was wholly opposed to Islamic law, which the Quran explicitly renders lenient toward debtors, and was instead sustained by Malay custom (hukum adat) in its perpetual tension with religious law (hukum syara). The article then traces how, in practice, the Perak system had degenerated well beyond even customary limits: creditors claimed the wives and children of debtors for the full amount of the debt, daughters were given in marriage by their masters with the dower accruing to the creditor rather than reducing the original obligation, and in the Kinta mining district a form of compound interest calculated in tin at the Penang export price could reduce a small debt to hopeless lifelong bondage within a year.
The second half of the article presents Maxwell’s translated extracts from the Perak Code of Laws (Undang-undang ka-Raja-an), covering chapters on the return of defective slaves, the harbouring of runaways, the redemption scale for recaptured slaves by distance, the special privileges of royal slaves (hamba Raja), and the penalties for theft, assault, and homicide involving slaves. These legal texts are supplemented by extracts from the Johor code published in 1855. Together they provide an authentic native-source picture of the slave’s legal condition in a Malay kingdom, showing both the formal protections that existed on paper and the extraordinary privileges accorded to the royal household, where striking a hamba Raja to death carried the penalty of death for a freeman or strangulation and beheading for a slave.
Maxwell situates the article within the broader context of British protectorate administration in Perak after 1874, noting that the arrival of the Resident and the Perak campaign of 1875–6 had already begun to erode the system, with many slaves and debt-bondsmen quietly assuming free status. He proposes a graduated emancipation scheme—redemption at the customary price of a free man ($25), government-backed labour reimbursement for those unable to pay, and unconditional release after three years for the aged, women, and children—though he acknowledges that the liberation of slaves and debtors in Perak had by the time of publication “long since been effected.”
Key Findings
- The customary value of a free man in Perak was fixed at $25 (100 bidor), which theoretically capped any fine and entitled the offender to release upon payment of that sum, regardless of the nominal fine imposed by a Chief (p. 249).
- Approximately 3,000 slaves and debt-bondsmen remained in Perak at the time of writing, representing about one-sixteenth of the Malay population (p. 249).
- In the Kinta mining district, a debt of one bahara of tin (worth approximately $30 locally) that went unpaid for six months was recalculated at the Penang export price—roughly three times the local value—creating a compounding mechanism that could enslave a debtor for life (pp. 251–252).
- The Perak Code prescribed a graduated redemption scale for recaptured runaway slaves ranging from 2 kupang (within the town) to half the slave’s full value (beyond Sedili and Trengganu), with the captor also entitled to seize small articles of trifling value carried by the fugitive (pp. 269–271).
- A freeman who killed a hamba Raja was required to surrender himself as a hostage to the Raja; a slave who committed the same act was to be strangled and beheaded, and if done with the master’s knowledge the master was fined one kati and five tahils of silver (p. 273).
- The Johor code stipulated that a free man who killed a slave of the king was fined seven times seven-fold the slave’s value, or alternatively put to death or made a slave to the king for himself and his family (p. 296).
Conclusion
Maxwell’s definitive historical takeaway is that Malay slavery, particularly in its debt-bondage form, was not an Islamic institution but a native custom that had been systematically exploited by Perak’s aristocracy to create a hereditary underclass, and that its abolition was less a matter of imposing foreign moral standards than of enforcing the Malays’ own customary and religious law against the excesses of their rulers. The legal code he translates serves as both a historical record and a practical instrument for the British administration’s emancipation policy.
Context
- Maxwell was serving as Assistant Resident, Perak, and the article was prefaced by his 1882 official minute to Parliament (Parliamentary Papers, C.—3429, p. 16), making this a work of colonial administrative documentation as much as legal scholarship.
- The primary source material consists of the Perak Code of Laws (Undang-undang ka-Raja-an), described as “the laws of Perak, Pahang and Johor,” supplemented by extracts from the Johor code translated and published in 1855 in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago (Vol. IX). The Menangkabau laws (Undang-undang dua-belas) yielded nothing of value on the subject of slaves (p. 256).