Revisiting violence, slavery and domestic authority in the Dutch empire

This article examines domestic authority as a central legal and social mechanism underpinning colonial governance in the Dutch East India Company empire. Existing historiography often characterizes domestic dependency as a condition in which enslaved individuals, deprived of property rights and legal autonomy, were subjected to private jurisdiction in the domestic sphere and subjected to the broad discretion of household heads. This study corrects this view based on an analysis of the Dutch East India Company empire. It argues that domestic authority was not an entirely secluded private sphere but rather a constitutive element of public colonial order, operating alongside – and interacting with – the discretionary application of law by officials across multiple social and legal spheres. Based on a survey of legal codes (the Statutes of the Indies and colonial by-laws), criminal court records from the Council of Justice and the Alderman’s Court from Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope, and other colonial reports, the article traces references to domestic authority and household disciplinary practices in relation to slavery. They challenge prevailing narratives portraying slavery in Asia as ‘mild’ or even ‘benign’, exposing households as spheres in which nominally limited ‘domestic correction’ frequently escalated into severe violence. We argue that these practices were not isolated abuses but deeply embedded in – and reinforced by – the broader colonial power structure, positioning domestic authority as a central instrument of state governance rather than a private domain.