ABSTRACT
The institution of slavery in mainland Southeast Asia has long been associated with its Atlantic counterpart, in which there was no regulation and abuse ran rampant. There has also been a tendency to understand any form of obligatory service as slavery, when in fact a range of contracts could compel labour from an individual, including sexual services. It may be simplest to explain slavery as the fixed form of obligated service, with debt bondage as its mutable counterpart – although permanent bondage had different permutations as well. This chapter is concerned with explaining how the institution of slavery, in the sense of fixed obligation from which manumission was all but impossible, allowed for the exploitation of individuals’ sexual labour, and how this institution was eradicated under the colonial project. Slavery is the only sexual contract that was successfully eliminated; understanding how this occurred may make it possible to apply the same approach to those contracts that have endured despite many attempts to abolish them.
