[2][3] Bhutan abolished slavery as part of modernization reforms at the behest of the Third Druk Gyalpo Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, who ascended to the throne in 1952 at the age of 25.
In breaking with slavery and feudalism, King Jigme Dorji enacted legal reforms, awarding citizenship and outright ownership of land to former slaves.
This class of slave was the most common, however many others were aboriginal or indigenous tribal peoples originally living in scattered villages throughout Bhutan.
The position adopted by Britain was to allow enslaved British subjects to return of their own free will, but refrain from repatriating escaped Bhutanese slaves back to Bhutan.
Outside Bhutan proper, various ethnic groups of the Assam Duars including the Mechi were subject to taxation and slaving such that entire villages were abandoned when the British government surveyed the region in 1865.
[8][10][11] Culturally and linguistically part of the populations of West Bengal or Assam, these slaves were mostly caste Hindus and practiced wet-rice and dry-rice agriculture.
[12] Although slaves had no personal or professional liberty, they filled military and administrative ranks within the government, including high posts, a silver lining of upward mobility.
[3][14] Slaves and servile classes attached to land grants were regularly traded as a showing of goodwill among rulers of neighboring states.
[6] As part of King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck's modernization efforts, land reform was accompanied by the abolition of slavery and serfdom.
[5] Rural slaves including many Lhotshampa, who had developed malarial jungles into productive agricultural lands, feared eviction and deportation.
In part because the manumission of slaves and serfs was accompanied by land redistribution awarding them outright ownership, slavery left no legacy in Bhutan comparable to that of African Americans in the United States and Brazil.