Hideaki Suzuki, a visiting researcher at McGill University’s Indian Ocean World Centre, will deliver the next talk in the Tubman Speaker Series.
The talk, “To Listen to Them: Bondage, British Informal Empire, and Diasporas through the Narratives of Bonded Population in the Persian Gulf, 1906-1950”, will take place Thursday, Oct. 24, from 3:30 to 
5pm, at 305 Founders College, Keele campus.
Hideaki Suzuki
Suzuki’s talk will focus on bonded people in the first half of the 20th century in the Persian Gulf. Historically, labour-intensive pearl fishery and date cultivation have been the major industries in this region, and in the second half of the 19th century, they were the driving forces to connect it to the global economy.
Suzuki is currently collecting and analyzing testimonies of bonded population that were recorded by the British representatives during the first half of the 20th century. These testimonies were recorded when the bonded fled to the British representatives to receive their manumission certificates. He regards these testimonies as valuable sources of information, enabling exploration of their individual lives and even glimpses into their inner emotional lives.
The testimonies also show several trends when analyzed by factors such as age structure, sex ratio and occupation. During his talk, Suzuki will explore the potential of these testimonies for further research and scholarship, and he will discuss the methodology involved in handling these testimonies. He will also trace the life-cycle stages of these bonded population to observe general trends and illustrate several individual experiences.
Suzuki is a postdoctoral research Fellow at the Japan Society for Promoting Science. His interest is mainly on Indian Ocean history, including slave trade, merchant network and merveilles literatures in medieval Arabic and Chinese. He has published several articles in academic journals as well as book chapters in Japanese and English.
For more information, visit the 2013-2014 Tubman Speaker Series website and the Working Paper Series website.