# Resistance in the East Indies  
Unfortunately, the data necessary to document the resistance of enslaved Malagasy people in the East Indies and the Malay Archipelago, where their presence was more limited, are lacking. Little research has been done on the Afro-Malagasy diaspora in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean, much less on resistance by enslaved people there. According to De Silva Jayasuriya and Pankhurst (2003), enslaved Africans were sought-after commodities in India, and Alpers (2005, p. 55) notes that there were very few desertions in India. Although there is no evidence of any deserter communities in Dutch Ceylon, enslaved people are likely to have attempted to find refuge in the independent kingdom of Kandy (Ekema, 2012, p. 61; Vink, 2003). VOC slaving stations meted out severe punishments for desertion, ranging from corporal punishment in Salida and Batavia to capital punishment in Cochin and Colombo (Van Rossum, 2015, pp. 62 and 69; Ekema, 2012, pp. 35-36). In the French communities in the East Indies, severe punishments were also imposed as a means of preventing forms of resistance such as desertion and suicide (Gaudart, 1937, p. 186).  
In the gold mines of Sumatra in early August 1734, a dozen enslaved Malagasy males deserted within the space of two weeks. The same thing occurred some months later, this time involving a dozen Malagasy men and boys and one woman (Letter from Padang, 15 March 1735. NA, VOC/2347). There were also deserters in Batavia, the most famous of whom was Surapati, an enslaved Balinese person who succeeded in establishing a community of deserters that supposedly became an independent state in the western part of Java at the end of the seventeenth century (Vink, 2003, p. 174). Desertion also occurred among enslaved people who were not necessarily Malagasy - on other islands in the Malay Archipelago and in coastal East Africa, including the Swahili Coast and Mozambique. ${ }^{27}$  
[^0]