Posted on 02/17/2009 6:55:50 PM PST by DBCJR
The Indian Ocean from the early Islamic conquests (8th century) to the European voyages of discovery (15th century) was essentially an Arab lake dominatd by armed Arab traders, contested at times by the Persians. One of the important commodities transported over the Arab-controlled Indian Ocean was enslaved Africans. The principal port of embarcation for Afrians taken by Arab slavers was entrepôt Zanzibar. Not a lot is known about Zanzibar and the slave trade until the 19th century. By the time the Royal Navy moved against the Arab Indian Ocean slave trade, it was largely in the hands of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. The Sultanate's expanding plantation operations in the early 19th century were worked mostly with slave labor. The profits fom the East African plantations induced the Sultan of Oman, Sayyid Said, to relocated his capital from Oman to the east African island of Zanzibar (1840). The Sultan's sovereignty at the time extended from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. One source estimates that 1850 when the British Royal Navy was just beginning to turn its attention to the Indian Ocean slave trade that Arab traders were shipping about 20,000 Africans to slave markets annually. An even larger number of Africans would have been killed in the attacks taking slaves and on the sad columns of Africans that winded their way from the interior to the Indian Ocean coast. The mortalities in the Eastern slave trade were especally high because the Arabs wre primarily after women and children which meant the men had to be killed. This was not, however, a largely naval problem. The Arab slave trade had once been focused on bringing slaves to Middle Easten markets. Now with the growth of palm oil and spice plantations, there was a need for large number of slaves in East Africa itself.
Naval Dominance The Arabs from an early point expanded their land campaigns to the Sea. The first such operations were in the Mediterranean aand the Arabs seized Sicily (652) and defeated the main Byzantine fleet (655). The Byzantines managed to stave off total defeat at the battke of Syllaeum (678), employing greek fire to destroy an Arab fleet beseiging Constantinople. The Arabs also ventured into the Indian Ocean with their increasing naval capability. At times the Indian Ocean was an Arab lake. At other times the Arabs had to contest or share the Indian Ocean sea lanes.
China Chinese naval activities in the Indian Ocean were at times significant, probably greater than revealed by avaoilable documentation. The Tang Dynasty had maritime ties in the Indian ocean as far west as what is know Sri Lanka, India, Islamic Persia, Arabia, and Somalia in East Africa. The Somali contacts may have been because the Arabs were well established in Somalia and not the rest of East Africa. Tere are also reports of Arab sea trade with China dating from the Tang Dynasty.
Persia
India Indian naval power seems to have been oriented more to the east than west. The Chola Dynasty of medieval India was the most maritime kingdom in India. It for a time was a dominant force in the Indian Ocean. The Chola conducted maritime trade and had diplomatic trade with Song China. Rajaraja Chola I (985 to 1014) and his son Rajendra Chola I (1014-42) of the Dravidian kingdom (southern India), despatched a notable naval expedition to the east. They occupied substantial parts of southeastvAsia (Burma, Malaya, and Sumatra). The Cholas are sometimes noted as the first Indian rulers to build a major fleet, there are some earlier references. Narasimhavarman Pallava I reported has a naval force to convoy his army to Sri Lanka to help an ally, Manavarman, reclaim his lost the throne. Shatavahanahas were known to persue operations in Southeast Asia. Sea operations seem to have been more mercantile than military. Very little is known about Indian naval battles. Vessels were, however, protected by armed crews because of piracy. Some historians believe that they would have been armed to a similar degree as the Arabs.
Europeans The European voyages of discovery (15th century) resulted in new naval forces entering the Indian Ocean. The decisive naval for the Indian Ocean occurred at Diu (1509), an Indian port. The Portuguese fleet confronted a combined Muslim fleet for control of the Indian Ocean. The Muslim fleet was composed of naval vessels from the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, Ottoman Empire, the Zamorin of Calicut and the Sultan of Gujarat. The Republic of Venice and the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) aided the Muslims with technical assistance. Venice benefited with the trade through the Middle East and was completely bypassed with the Portuguese opening the Indian Ocean.) The Portuguese had rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Indian Ocean earlier. This threatened the valuable Islamic trade mononopoly with the East. The Portuguese victory was the beginning of Western naval dominance. The battle preceeded Lepanto (1571) in which Ottoman naval power in the Mediterranean would be broken by several decades. An Ottoman Muslim victory would have prevented European colonization of India and could have lead to expanded Ottomon/Muslim influence on the sub-continent.
Economics Basically by controlling either the Indian Ocean or ports on the Arabian Sea, the Arabs and Ottomons were able to monpolize trade with the East. If the Europeans wanted luxury goods from the East (porcelin, silk, spice, and others), they had to trade with the Arabs and Ottomons. This was an extremely profitable trade for the Muslim powers. Notice that the bulk of the goods were products from the East and not products the Ottomand Arabs were producing themselves. One product that did not come from the East was slaves--almost entirely enslaved Africans.
Arab Penetration of Africa Arab traders brought Islam to East Africa soon after the success of the religion in Arabia. Islam did not, however, at first penertate beyond coastal trading settlements. The Sudan and Somaliland did gradually become both Arabized and Islamized, primarily through the influence of Arab traders. At a much slower pace Islam entered West Africa. Here rather than maritime tradersas in East Africa, it was Arab merchants traveling with camel caravans that crossed the Sahara. Muslim sultanates were established in Mali and Timbuctu in the West and Harar in the East. These trading centers also became important centers of Islamic leaming. The Arabs were the first to enter the African slave trade. Arab traders gradually established trading posts along the African Indian Ocean ports. Slaves could be sold to the Arab traders operating from Indian Ocean ports. As the powers of the Arabs increased they began actual raids on villages to seize blacks that could be sold in Middle Eastern slave markets.
Poorly Studied Subject Much more is known about the European segment of the African slave trade, in part because records are much more readily available. And there is much more human evidence of the Atlantic slave trade--namely the large Afro-American populations in Brazil, the United States, and other Western Hemisphere countries. Much less is known about the Arab segment of the African slave trade.
Controversy The history of the slave trade has focused on the European Atlantic slave trade. Much less attention has been given to slavery in the Muslim world. There are several reasons for this. One, the long history of Muslim slavery dating from the very early years of the Arab expansion. Few records are availabe from the early historical periods which bega in the early medieval era. This makes it especially difficult to assess the dimensions of slavery in early Muslim society. Two, the fact that slavery is firmly rooted in the Koran means that it cannot be question and thus Islamic scholars have tended to avoid the question. Three, slavery is not something Muslim historians want to honestly address. Western scholars now address a range of historical issues (colonialism, war, racism, nationalism, religion, ect.) with often brutal honesty, even if reflects poorly on their society/country. Thi is not a common practice among Muslim scholars. Nor isf it a safe practive. Muslim writers who publish books which reflect poorly on Islam or even Muslim society can be putting their lives in danger. Another fator here is that some in West see work on Arab/Muslim slaveryas an attempt to lessen the onus placed upon the Atlantic slave trade. Here another facror is the extensive documentary evidence available on the Atlantic slave trade compared to the must more limited information available on the Arb slave trade. Historians in paticular have widely different estimates on the dimensions of the Arab African slave trade.
African Political Structure The African political structure is difficukt to describe over the very long period in which the Arab slave trade in Africa took place. The rade was conducted over 12 centuries, riughl;y from 650-1900. It is important, however, to roughly sketch the political structure to understand the ebvironment in which both Europeans and Arabs conducted the slave trade. North Africa was conquered by the Arabs from a very early stage of the Islamic expansion. Arab traders penetrated into sub-Saharan Africa through desert caravans, the Nilr River, and by estanlish trading postas along the Indian coast of the continent. The black African kingdoms they encountered as they moved into the interior varied over time. Europeans had little access to Africa, blocked for centuries by Arab control of North Africa. This only began to change in the 15th cenntury with the European voyages of discovery with the Portuguese edgeing their way down the African coast. Like the Arabs along the Indian Ocean coast, European influence along the Atlantic coast was first limited to coastal regions.
Arabs in East Africa The Arabs during the Islamic expansion began setting up trading posts along the Indian Ocean coast of Africa. One of the most prominant of these posts was Zanzibar. Zanzibar (including Pemba and othr small islands) wasttractive for a number of reasons. One it was an island and for Arab traders with naval vessels this provided an elment of security that no coastal port could offer. Two spices (especially cloves) flourished on the island and these spices were valuable trade goods. The history of Zanzibar is a major story in itself. It hasbeen controlled by Arab and Persina Muslims, Muslim Africans, and the Portugese. At the time the British began to move against the Indian Ocean slave trade, Zanzibar was controlled by an Arab sultan and ws the center of the Indian Ocean slave trade.
Capture Areas Arab slavers would capture Africans in the interior where there were no political units able to safeguard people. Also they obtained captives from African states engaged in war or captive taking. Some of the important areas where slaves were captured included: the lake Nyasa area of the Great Lakes region, the Bahr el Ghazal region, and Ehtiopia. This of course fluctuated over the 12 centuries the trade was conducted.
Obtaining African Captives The slave trade in East Africa was carried out by agents of the Sultanate of Zanzibar in cooperation with some African tribes. The Arab slavers had various ways of obtaining Africans. Armed gangs of Arabs and Muslim Africans would conduct raids and simply seize Africans. This might be done surrepticiously or by outright attacks on villages. Slaversould often raid villages at night and simply killthose who resisted or tried to run away. The Arab slavers might also use trade goods such as cloth trinkets and metal goods to barter for captives from local chiefs. African tribes and kingdoms were not uncommonly involved in warfare with neighboring groups. Thus they often had captives taken in war. In some cases knowing that there was a eady market for these captives helped to promote raids and attacks among African groups. Arab slavers would play African tribes against each other. The tribal wars helped to weaken the Africans kindoms and made it asier for the slavers to operate.
Routes The Indian Ocean slave trade consisted of two primary routes. There was a northern route, part of the Arab slave trade, and a southern route dominated by the Portuguese in Mozambique. We of course know most about the 19th century when the British began their effort to end he slave trade. The nature of the trade in the 19th century was significantly different because many of he captive Afriucans were employed in Africa itself rather than being transported to North Africa and the Middle East.
The Indian Ocean--Northern Route The Indian Ocean from the early Islamic conquests (8th century) to the European voyages of discovery (15th century) was essentially an Arab lake dominatd by armed Arab traders, contested at times by the Persians. One of the important commodities transported over the Arab-controlled Indian Ocean was enslaved Africans. The principal port of embarcation for Afrians taken by Arab slavers was entrepôt Zanzibar. Not a lot is known about Zanzibar and the slave trade until the 19th century. By the time the Royal Navy moved against the Arab Indian Ocean slave trade, it wasargely in the hands of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. The Sultanate's expanding plantation operations in the early 19th century were worked mostly with slave labor. Theprofits fom the East African plantations induced the Sultan of Oman, Sayyid Said, to relocated his capital from Oman to the east African island of Zanzibar (1840). The Sultan's sovereignty at the time extended from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. One source estimates that 1850 when the British Royal Navy was just beginning to turn its attention to the Indian Ocean slave trade that Arab traders were shipping about 20,000 Africans to slave markets annually. An even larger number of Africans would have been killed in the attacks taking slaves and on the the sad columns of Africans that winded their way from the interior to the Indian Ocean coast. The mortalities in the Eastern slave trade were especally high because the Arabs wre primarily after women and children which meant the men had to be killed. This was not, however, a largely naval problem. The Arab slave trade had once been focused on bringing slaves to Middle Easten markets. Now with the growth of palm oil and spice plantations, there was a need for large number of slaves in East Africa itself.
Indian Ocean--Southern Route The 19th century East African slave trade actually had two destinct parts. There was a northern slave trade discussed above and a southern trade. The southern trade centered on the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. [Beachey, p. 13.] The Portuguee trade supplied sugar plantations in Brazil, Cuba and the French Indian Ocean Islands (Reunion and Mauritius). Slavers would capture Africans in the interior of the colony and march them to ports like Quelimane. The French demand for slaves outstripped the supply available in Mozambique. This caused the French to move into th Arab northern trade. One source suggests tha the French needed about 3,000 slaves annually in the 1770s. A French slave trader, Morice, signed a treaty with the Sultan of Kilwa to obtain a 1,000 slaves annually (1776). The French slave trade decined with the onset of the Napoleonic Wars because of the Royal Navy's control of the seas. After the Napoleoniv Wars ended, the French slave trade gradually revived. One estimate suggests that after the Napoleonic Wars about 10,000 Mozambique Africans were transported to Brazil and about 7,000 to French Indian ocean teritories (1815-30). [Beachy, p. 13.]
Chronology The Indian Ocean slave trade predates the Islamic era. The trade must have existed in antiquity, but nothing is known about the trade before tghe Common Era. There are written records mentioning the trade that date back to the 2nd century AD. The earliest knon reference is noted in "Pleriplus of the Erythraean Sea". A small trade is described. With the rapid Aran conquest of the Middle East (7th century), the Indian Ocean became an Arab, set contested at times by the Persians. It is known that the Arabs condusted a slave trade into the 20th century. Very little is known about the dimensions of that trde, especially during the early years. Some authors described substantial shipments into southern Iraq duing the 8th and 9th century. We also know that there were substantial numbers involved in the 19th century when the Sultan of Zanzibar opened palm oil and spice plantations in East Africa.
Ports The principal port of embarcation for Afrians taken by Arab slavers was entrepôt Zanzibar, Kilwa, and Quilimane. Not a lot is known about Zanzibar and the slave trade until the 19th century. Another important port was Mombassa.
Transport The Arabs often transported captive Africans on "dhows". A dhow is the traditional Arab sailing vessel used in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean. They were sailing ships with one or more lateen sails. A typical dhow had crews of about 12 men. Larger dhows would have crews of to 30 men. An average dhow could carry 10 to 25 slaves. There were larger 80 to 100 ton dhows. These might be able to carry 100 to 150 slaves. During the 19th century when large numbers of Africans were enslaved, there seem to have been dhows specifically devoted to slaving. In other years it seems likely that many dhows might have carried a variry of cargo, including a few slaves. As many of the captive Africans seem to have been women and children, the security oroblem was not as great as in the Atlntic slave trade.
Markets Indian Ocean slavers had a range of markets in which to sell their captives. The markets varied over time. Is it generally thought that the primary market was the Arab world (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and Iraq). Limited documentation makes this only a probability at this time. We are less sure about Persia. Such shipments may at times have been substantial. There appear to have been sales to India, but these seem to have been limited. The Ottomans were another market, but weare unsure as to the dimensions of this trade and here the desert caravan routes throughthe Sahara may have been more important. The French Indian Ocean islands seem to have been important in the 18 and 19th century. Brazil also seems to have been an important market. The market shifted significantly in the 19th century with East Africa and Indian Ocean islands becoming more important than ever before (Pemba, Madagascar, Reunion, and Zanzibar).
Dimensions Quantifying the numbers involved is much more difficult than the Atlantic slave trade. This is because the Arab slave trade began much earlier, about the 8th century and few if any records exist for this early period. The slaves taken by the Arabs were for the most part not worked on plantations or other institutions for which records were kept. Estimating the dimensions of the Eastern slave trade is difficult because of thge scarcity of documentation. Some estimates that the Arab Indin Ocean slave trade over the 12 centuries it operated may have totaled about 4 milliom people. They estimated that annual shipments wee normally at arelatively low level, perhaps 500-700 people, but much higher numbers during the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 19th centuries when the demand for agricultural labor spiked. For most of tge tears the trade was conducted, estimated should betaken as highly speculative educated guesses. We do, however, know much more about the 19th century. Historians estimate shipmenrs of 3,000 to 20,000 captive Africans annually. There are much higher estimates. Most come from British anti-slavery groups during the 19th century. They must be viewed with considerable caution. They were working to enspire more aggressive action by the British Government and aactic in this effort was to exagerate the poroblem. One British report suggested 63,000 slaves annually. [Anti-Slavery Reporter, October 15 1867, 231.] Other reports from abti-slavery groups were higher, substantially higher. One more reliable source estimates that 1850 when the British Royal Navy was just beginning to turn its attention to the Indian Ocean slave trade that Arab traders were shipping about 20,000 Africans to slave markets annually. An even larger number of Africans would have been killed in the attacks taking slaves and on the the sad columns of Africans that winded their way from the interior to the Indian Ocean coast. The mortalities in the Eastern slave trade were especally high because the Arabs wre primarily after women and children which meant the men had to be killed. Some estimate of the Africans who were enslaved by Arab slavers could be as high as 14 million people. Other estimates are substantially lower.
Intra-African Trade This was not, however, a largely naval problem. The Arab slave trade had once been focused on bringing slaves to Middle Easten markets. Now with the growth of palm oil and spice plantations, there was a need for large number of slaves in East Africa itself. Some of the slaves were moved by sea, from northern Mozambique and Tanganika to the plantations in Kenya ans Somalia.
Demand for Slaves The Eastern slave trade differed from the Atlantic slave trade in that there were many more women involved. The reason for this was that the sex trade was an important part of the Muslim market for slaves. The use of slaves, however, depended upon the chronological era and the country wherethey were enslaved. They were also used for labor, largely agricultural labor. This was especially true in the 19th century. During this last period of the slave trade, the gender disparity shifted and the Indian Ocean slave trade became more like the Atlantic slave trade with men in demand for agricultural labor.
Women and girls The sex trade was an important part of the Muslim market for slaves. For that reason not only women were in large demand, but young girls as well. It is difficult to say just what proportion of women and girls were usd in the sex trade. Given the perpondarance of femnale slaves thatiseemso have been a very important part of the demand. There were other uses for female slaves, including domestic servants.
Boys The African boys taken by the slavers were often castrated before puberty (at the ages of 8-12 years). Th purpose was to fill the demand for eunuchs. No one knows the numbers involved. Estimates suggest that hundreds of thousands of boys suffered castration. It is believed that a very large number of those castrated bleed to death or died of infection because of the unsanitary conditions involved.
Men Men were involved in the Eastern Slave Trade to a much lesser degree than the Atlantic slave trade. There was not the demand for agricutural labor in the Middle East as was the case in the Western Hemishere. As a result, the Arab slavers seemed to have killed the men in large numbers, knowing that there was relatively little demand for them. The men had to be killed because otherwise they would attempt to free thier captive wives and children. This is not to say that men were not also enslaved. There were requirements for labor, especially agricultural labor. Many slaves never left Africa and were employed on date palm and spice plantations in East Africa, especially in Somalia and on Zanzibar. In the Persian Gulf region slaves were used as soldiers, concubines, pearl divers and domestic servants, and enuchs. Slaves in southern Iraq they worked mainly as farm laborers. [Ricks, p. 65.]
Africans in the Arab World Most historians of the slave trade believe that more Africans were captured and sent the Muslim world (primarily Arab countries and Persia) than were shipped to the entire Western Hemisphere by Europans. The Eastern Trade began earlier and lasted much longer than the Atlantic slave trade. Yet the human evidence of the slave trade is not readily apparent in Arab countries and Iran. Given the number enslaved one is attempted to ask what happened to these people. One assessment claims, "Yet the near east today has almost no descendants of these slaves. Their treatment – obviously so for the thousands who were made harem guards but apparently also for the rest – seems not to have been of a kind to favour it. The much greater ease of obtaining fresh slaves, relative to any part of the western hemisphere, seems highly pertinent to this." We know tha huge numbers of Africans were killed by Arab slavers in the process of obtaining and transporting slaves. The question now becomes what happened to the large number of slaves that reached the Arab slave markets. And also what hapened to their descendents.
Slave Market Operations We have only limited information at this time on how slave markets were operated. The slaves were displayed naked or nearly naked so they could be inspected by potential buyers. Muslim buyers (usually men) would inspect the human merchandise. African women and young girls were probed in a demeaning fashion by male buyers to determine the sexual worth of their potential purchases. Some sources suggest that these more intimated inspections were dine in more seclude locatiins than the oopen market. Muslim women also had slaves. I believe the actual purchases, however, were usualy done by heir husbands or other male representative. But here we still have very limited information. Slave who did not sell were killed. African slaves by the 19th century were bing sold in large numbers in African markets (especially Zanzibar and Mombassa). Thisshift was the result of the development of plantations along the coast of what is now modern Somalia and Kenya and on Zanzibar and slave labor was needed for these plantations.
Arab Role in the European Slave Trade The Arabs were not only involved with the Eastern Slave Trade, but also played an important role in the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Comparison with the European Atlantic Slave Trade There was a major difference between the European and African slave trade and that was the purposes for which the slaves were to be used. The Europeans did not bring the slaves back to Europe. There was no need for a working class in Europe. Europe had more than a sufficent population. In fact the European population at the time of the slave trade was emigrating to the Americas and other areas. What was needed was workers in the largely unpopulated New World. This was especially important after European diseases had dramatically reduced the Native American population. The Arabs on the other hasnd did bring Africa slaves back to their countries. Here there was a well established peasant class. As a result, the Africans brought to Arab countries were less intended for field labor. A major purpose was sexual pleasure which is why so many of the Africans taken by Arab slavers were women and children.
Dr. David Livingstone The evils of the Atlantic slave trade was well publicised by the work of Abolitionists in both Britain and America. And because of the work of the British Royal Navy and the Civil War in America, the Atlantic slave trade while not ended was dramatically reduced by the 1860s. Very little, however, was know about the Eastern or Arab slave trade. This changed with the reports submitted by Dr. David Livingstone from East Africa. The reports of Arab atrocities while enslaving Africans caused considerable revulsion among the British public. They helped enegize the abolitionist movement. Many abolitionist had thought that with the Royal Navy's success in the Atlantic and President Lincoln's Emacipation Proclamation (1862) that their job was done. Livingstone made it all too clear that this was not the case.
The Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean The Royal Navy's task in East Africa and the Indian Ocean was even more difficult than in the Atlantic. This was in part because of the support for slavery among Muslim powers (both Arabian and Persian). The Royal Navy for the first half of the 19th century focused its resources on the Alantic slave trade. This was the portion of he slave trade most known to Europeans. It was an enormous undertaking, taking the even subatantial resources of the Royal Navy. It was only after mid-century that the Royal Navy began to address the slave trad in the Indian Ocean. The Royal Navy at first focused its efforts in the Indian Ocean on Zanzibar (1870s). There were notable ahievements. The Royal Navy capturing Arab slave ships and liberating thei enslaved cargo. The Arab adjusted o the Royal Navy's operations around Zanzibar and bgan operating out of other ports. The Royal Navy's answer was set up a 'waiting net' along the northern coast of the Arabian Sea. The Royal Navy assessment that the bulk of the slavers were headed toward markets in Arabia. This also proved successful in capturing many Arab slavers and freeing those enslaved. The task of intercepting small, fast Arab dhows in the often short passages off of Africa’s Indian Ocean coast proved to be a more difficult task than stopping the Alantic trade.
British Diplomatic Challenge As with operations in the Atlantic, the Royal Navy anti-slavery operations in the Indian Ocean ceated many diplomatic challenges which the Foreign Office had to address. Sir Bartle Frere headed a diplomatic mission to the area (1873). He succeeded in signing treaties with the sultans of Muscat and Zanzibar. These treaies considerably strengthened the Royal Navy's ability to persue its anti-slavery operations. Frere suggested that a Royal Navy guardship be permanently stationed along the Zanzibar coast.
Muslim Abolitionist Movement I know of no abolitionist movement in the Arab or wider Muslim world. There is nothing in the Arab or Muslim world comparable to the largely Christan-based Abolitionist Movement in England and America that brought about an end to slave trade and slavery itself. I am not sure why there was no Islamic abolitionist movement. I assume it was because the Holy Koran clearly scantions slavery. Thus Islamic clerics and theologians, unlike their Christian counterparts, never challenged an institution so clearly scantioned by the Koran. Hopefully our Muslim readers can provide us more information about this. Slavery was gradually abolished in the Middle East although legal abolition was not always fully observed. Abolition in many countries was taken under pressure from European countries (mostly the British) or after the creation of European protecorates and colonies.
Scramble for Africa: East Africa Slavery It was the European "Scramble for Africa" in the late 19th century that finally put an end to the Arab slave trade though vestages have persited in the Sudan and other Countries. The 19th century Indian Ocean slave trade had centered on the Sultan of Zanzibar. Briatain used both diplomacy and naval power. Eventuallu Zanzibar was made a protectorate. The British, French, and Italians seized the Somali coast. The Ehiopians managed to remain independent, defeating an Italian Army (1896). It was the only Europan army to be defeatd by Africans. Britain colonized Kenya and Tanganika. The French colonized Madagascar. The Portugese retained control of Mozamnbique. Actions against slavery varied from colony to colony.
Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty (1890) Germany finally obtained possession of Heligoland (1890). The British and Germans negotiated the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty. The Scramble for Africa created all kinds of territorial issues between the major colonial countries, especiallyEngland, France, and Germany. Britain transferred Heligoland to Germany and ceeded claims to Madagascar to France. In exchange France and Germany ceeded thair claims to Zanzibar off East Africa to Britain. The primary British interest was the continuing slave trade from Zanzibar. Britain at the time was working to end the Indian Ocean slave trade. There was a provision in the Treaty to protect the interests of the Heligolanders.
Black Americans and Islam Since World War II, quite a number of black Americans have embraced Islam. Many apparently do so because they associate slavery with white Christian Europe. As far as I can tell, many that do so are unaware of the nature and dimnsions of the Arab slave trade. It seems understandable that many African-Americans would want to shed their white Anglo-Saxon Protestant "slave" names. Yet what most seem to be doing is to adopt Arab names rather than actual African names. They are in effect giving up one set of slave names for another set. Embracing African names and culture seems unsderstandable. Many Americans of European ancestry are fascnated by their European heritage. What seems difficult to understand is why American blacks are so eager to embrace both the Arab names and the Islamic faith of the slavers who wreaked such havoc throughout Africa for 12 centuries and even today are involved in both slavery and a genocide against Africans in Darfur.
Sources Barnard, Frederick Lamport. A three years cruize in the Mozambique Channel for the suppression of the slave trade(London: R.Bentley, 1848). Reprinted 1969.
Beachey, The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa.
Ricks, Thomas. “Slaves and Slave Traders in the Persian Gulf,” in William Gervase Clarence-Smith, ed., The Economic of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the 19th Century (London: Frank Cass, 1989).
Anti-Slavery Reporter. This was a British abolitionist newspaper
Europeans, including Americans, were purchasers but African Muslim, primarily from Kenya (Obama’s heritage) were the perpertrators.
Thanks for good article. This kind of information is useful in answering the “revisionism” of the socialists.
Articles like this are the reason I keep coming back to this website.
Thanks.
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