The Overseer State with Sascha Auerbach

Join NACBS to celebrate the publication of Sascha Auerbach’s recent book The Overseer State: Slavery, Indenture and Governance in the British Empire, 1812-1916. Jonathan Connolly will join Sascha in discussion.

January 15 at 12pm EST/ 11am CST/ 10am MST / 9am PST / 5pm GMT

“In this compelling work, Sascha Auerbach offers a bold new historical interpretation of late-stage slavery, its long-term legacies, and its entanglement with the development of the modern state. In the wake of abolition, from the Caribbean to southern Africa to Southeast Asia, a fusion of government authority and private industry replaced the iron chains of slavery with equally powerful fetters of law and regulation. This 'overseer-state' helped move, often through deceptive and coercive methods, millions of Indian and Chinese indentured laborers across Britain's imperial possessions. With a perspective that ranges from Parliament to the plantation, the book brings to light the fascinating and terrifying history of the world's first truly global labor system, those who struggled under its heavy yoke, and the bitter legacies left in its wake.”

The Overseer State: Slavery, Indenture and Governance in the British Empire, 1812-1916 (Cambridge University Press) 2026.

Dr. Sascha Auerbach, FRHistS, is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Nottingham, where he also serves as the director of the Institute for the Study of Slavery.  Prior to arriving in the UK, he held a permanent post at the University of Northern British Columbia, and has held visiting positions at King’s College London, the National University of Singapore, the University of Melbourne, and Adelaide University.  He is the author of three books, The Overseer-State: Slavery, Indenture, and Governance in the British Empire, 1812-1916 (Cambridge, 2025), Armed with Sword and Scales: Law, Culture and Local Courtrooms in London, 1865-1913 (Cambridge, 2021), and Race, Law, and “the Chinese Puzzle” in Imperial Britain (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009) as well as more than a dozen articles in major academic journals, including History Workshop Journal, Comparative Studies in Society in History, the English Historical Review, and Past & Present. A former Fulbright scholar and Leverhulme Trust Fellow, Sascha is the co-editor of the Cambridge University Press book series “Histories of Slavery and its Global Legacies,” and his current project examines race and the colonial origins of modern public health.

Jonathan Connolly is an associate professor of history at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is the author of Worthy of Freedom: Indenture and Free Labor in the Era of Emancipation (University of Chicago Press, 2024). A scholar of emancipation, labor, and migration in the British Empire, Connolly has also published in Past & Present, Slavery & Abolition, and the Law and History Review, and is a past winner of the Walter D. Love Prize. His book Worthy of Freedom was awarded the Stansky Prize for the best book by a North American scholar on any aspect of British studies since 1800.