Session 118: Gender and Law: Religious Decrees, Cultural Mores, and Colonial Courts in Early Modern Asia and Southeast Asia

Organizer: Eric Alan Jones, Northern Illinois University

Chair and Discussant: Jean Gelman Taylor, University of New South Wales

Keywords: gender, law, history, Southeast Asia, early modern.

The papers on this panel aim to provide a better understanding the interaction of Asian and Southeast Asian women with the law, rule, and regulatory systems of the past. State codes, company edicts, and religious decrees all sought, in their own way, to enumerate a legal space for the women under their respective mandates. While clarification of these juridical positions remains an important endeavor, this panel also aims to balance the articulation of those mandates from on high with the lived experiences and the daily realities of women on the ground.

States, Law, and the Regulation of Marriage and Sexuality in Early Modern Southeast Asia

Barbara Watson Andaya, University of Hawaii, Manoa

It is generally accepted that the alliances between state and religious/philosophical interests in early modern Southeast Asian states were a major factor in redefining and regulating appropriate roles for men and women. Whether indigenous or European, these alliances placed a high priority on settled communities, which could be more easily tapped for labor and for tribute, and where approved beliefs and values could be promoted. Because enforcement of any overarching authority relied so heavily on the metaphor of family hierarchies, regulation of marriage through the promotion of correct sexual relations between men and women became a major preoccupation of the legal-religious codes that are so characteristic of this period. As elsewhere, however, the processes by which Southeast Asian states sought to tighten the links between subjects and government also endorsed new scripts for male dominance as the relationship between husband and wife was projected as the template for a more patriarchal social and political order.

The Dharma of Women’s Work: Gender, Labor, and Law in the Textile Industry of Early Modern South India

Ian C. Wendt, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Women were central participants in the early modern South Indian textile industry. As spinners, warpers, washers, cotton cleaners and agrarian laborers, their work contributed the majority of the value added to a textile during its transformation from cotton to cloth. The detailed activities and economics of women’s labor were thoroughly recorded within the documentation of the textile industry during the 17th and 18th centuries. Much of the evidence of their labor is contained within the cloth itself, if only we take it seriously as a historical artifact. This paper utilizes archival Dutch and English East India Company records and various ethnographic sources to understand the economic and social implications of women’s labor in early modern South Asia.

The economics of labor and gender lead to a study of several related cultural-legal gender issues. First, the ‘culture of commerce’ had broad repercussions for women, including their property and inheritance rights, and their participation in markets. Second, the caste customs of laboring groups related to gender and reproduction reflected fascinating values about labor and production. Additionally, these caste groups had intriguing ritual, religious practices regarding goddess worship and temple dancers. Finally, the rise of English Company State power in the late 18th century had numerous gendered effects on textile producers. These issues are at once cultural, legal and religious, all of which are captured within the concept of dharma.

Bilateralism Reconsidered: The Endowment of Local Succession in Early Modern Dai Viet

Nhung Tuyet Tran, University of Toronto

The literature on Southeast Asia generally highlights the practice of cognatic kinship as a defining feature of regional identity. Although Viet Nam has long been considered as a peripheral state in this region, the presumed practice of bilateral succession categorically ties it to the Southeast Asian region. This paper challenges assertions that the principles of bilateral succession characterized Vietnamese code and custom through analysis of legal codes, case records, and stele inscriptions from early modern Dai Viet. It explores how state code, village custom (through local regulations), and judicial magistrates excluded women from the material and spiritual benefits of succession. Some local women, however, negotiated these structures to gain prominent roles in local economic and religious life. Through a gendered analysis of legal code and local practice, this paper seeks to introduce an alternative model of succession in early modern Vietnamese society.

Once a Slave: Southeast Asian Social Systems and Colonial Slave Law

Eric Alan Jones, Northern Illinois University

Slavery constituted a cornerstone of the social fabric of pre-nineteenth-century Southeast Asia and its continuance and regulation was essential to the survival and success of colonial regimes in the region, especially the Dutch East India Company or VOC. However, VOC-Batavian statutory law fundamentally redefined the institution of slavery, collapsing what was a complicated network of Southeast Asian vertical bonding into the simple dichotomy of slave versus free. It concretized what had been fluid, temporary social arrangements and closed off avenues for social mobility. My paper examines, on the one hand, early modern colonial statutes dealing with women and slavery and, on the other, the lived experiences of Southeast Asian women with the law through actual criminal proceedings. As a social yardstick and a reflection of daily reality, the Dutch colonial, civil law code was a particularly blunt and unresponsive instrument. Juxtaposing edicts from the Batavian Statutes and examples from criminal cases, I hope to highlight the disjuncture between legal theory and criminal practice.