Egypt’s Slaving Frontier: Environment, Enslavement, Social Transformations, and the Local Use of Slaves in the Sudan, 1780–1880

La Rue, George Michael

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70028-1_8

George Michael La Rue³

Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

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Abstract

La Rue uses new information on the lives of Sudanese slaves to analyse local social transformations and the impact of environmental factors on enslavement processes, forces deployed to gather slaves, the loci of their servitude, and the ramifications for the broader Indian Ocean world (IOW). Darfur and Kordofan (Kurdufan) frequently experienced drought and famine and supplied slaves to Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. Many enslaved Sudanese died of exposure and disease, including cholera and plague, while making the trans-Saharan journey or later while in Egypt. Slaves transported ivory and irrigated Egyptian cotton fields. Demand for slaves transformed regional societies as local populations moved to avoid raids or developed gradations of servility to serve slave raiders. Such transformations and environmental impacts had parallels elsewhere in the IOW.

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Notes

1.
For a sample of this, see G. M. La Rue, “‘My Ninth Master was a European’: Enslaved Blacks in European Households in Egypt, 1798–1848,” in Race and Slavery, ed. Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno (Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press), 99–124.
2.
J. Ewald, Soldiers, Traders, and Slavers (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). See also G. M. La Rue, “Land and Social Stratification in Dar Fur, 1785–1875: The Hakura System,” in The State and the Market, ed. C. Dewey (New Delhi: Manohar Press, 1987), 24–44.
3.
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4.
Muhammad ibn Umar al-Tunisi (Le Chaykh Mohammed Ebn Omar El-Tounsy), Voyage au Darfour, trans. Dr Perron (Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1845), 347.
5.
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6.
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7.
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9.
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10.
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11.
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12.
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13.
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14.
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15.
G. M. La Rue, “African Slave Women in Egypt, from ca. 1820 to the Plague Epidemic of 1834–1835,” in Women and Slavery, vol. 1, Africa and the Western Indian Ocean Islands, ed. G. Campbell, S. Miers, and J. C. Miller (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2007), 168–89; G. M. La Rue, “Treating Black Deaths in Egypt: Clot-Bey, African Slaves and the Plague Epidemic of 1834–35,” in Histories of Medicine and healing in the Indian Ocean World, ed. A. Winterbottom and F. Tesfaye (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
16.
R. Hill, Egypt in the Sudan, 1820–1881 (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 40.
17.
For more details, see G. M. La Rue, “The Hakura System: Land and Social Stratification in the Social and Economic History of the Sultanate of Dar Fur (Sudan), ca. 1785–1875” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1989), 116–18.
18.
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19.
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20.
G. M. La Rue, “The Capture of a Slave Caravan: The Incident at Asyut (Egypt) in 1880,” African Economic History 30 (2002): 102.
21.
G. Baer, Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 165.
22.
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23.
Baer, Studies, 165; R. Austen, “The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade: A Tentative Census,” in The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, ed. H. A. Gemery and J. S. Hogendorn (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 34; K. Cuno, “African Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Rural Egypt: A Preliminary Assessment,” in Race and Slavery, 77–98.
24.
J. C. McCoan, Egypt As It Is (New York: 1882), 306n.
25.
“Consul au Ministère d’Affaires Étrangères”, Le Caire, 16 July 1863; see also Consul de France au Caire à M. Drouyn de Lhuys, 27 July 1863. France: Archives du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Correspondance commerciales, Alexandrie, vol. 30.
26.
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27.
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28.
For the nizam al-jadid, see E. A. Helal, “Muhammad Ali’s First Army: The Experiment in Building an Entirely Slave Army,” in Race and Slavery, 17–42; for Sudanese in the Egyptian military, see R. Hill and P. Hogg, A Black Corps d’Elite (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1995).
29.
This discussion is based on al-Tunisi, Voyage au Ouaday, 466–95; R. S. O’Fahey, “Slavery and the Slave Trade in Dar Fur,” Journal of African History 14, no. 3 (1973): 29–43; G. M. La Rue, Land and Social Stratification in Dar Fur, 1785–1875: The Hakura System (Boston: Boston University, 1984).
30.
Al-Tunisi, Voyage au Ouaday, 468–69.
31.
O’Fahey, “Slavery,” 36.
32.
G. M. La Rue, “The Export Trade of Dar Fur, ca. 1785–1875,” in Figuring African Trade, ed. G. Liesegang, H. Pasch, and A. Jones (Berlin: Reimer, 1986), 636–38.
33.
O’Fahey, “Slavery,” 36.
34.
G. M. La Rue, “Khabir ^‘Ali at Home in Kubayh: A Brief Biography of a Dar Fur Caravan Leader,” African Economic History 13 (1984): 56–83; G. M. La Rue, “Land Documents in Dār Fūr Sultanate (Sudan, 1785–1875): Between Memory and Archives,” Afriques (2016), http://afriques.revues. org/1896
35.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 324, my translation.
36.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 324–25.
37.
On the mid-1860s drought, see G. Douin, Histoire du règne du Khédive Ismail, tome III L’Empire Africain (Cairo: Société Royale de Géographie d’Égypte, 1938), 1, 174; Nachtigal, Sahara and Sudan, vol. 1, p. 44; A. Bjorkelo, Prelude to the Mahdiyya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 93.
38.
For a classic introduction to this literature, see Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy 1770–1873 (London: James Currey, 1987).
39.
T. F. Buxton, The African Slave Trade and its Remedy (London: Cass, 1967), 96–97.
40.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 326.
41.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 327.
42.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 327.
43.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 327.
44.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 328.
45.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 329.
46.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 329.
47.
S. Aga, Incidents Connected with the Life of Selim Aga, a Native of Central Africa: Electronic Edition, 20–23, http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/aga/aga.html
48.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 329.
49.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 330.
50.
For his later life, see J. McCarthy, Selim Aga: A Slave’s Odyssey (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2006), 78–193.
51.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 330.
52.
J. Michaud and B. Poujoulat, Correspondence d’Orient, vol. 7 (Paris: Ducollet, 1835), 223.
53.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 330–31.
54.
De Laborde, “Chasse,” 329–30.
55.
For Tagali , one such kingdom, see Ewald, Soldiers, Traders, and Slavers.
56.
Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, vol. 2, pp. 420–26.
57.
J. Petherick and K. Petherick, Travels in Central Africa, vol. 1 (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1869), 62–63.
58.
W. Junker, Travels in Africa during the Years 1875[–1886], trans. A. H. Keane (London: Chapman and Halle, 1890) vol. 1, 481.
59.
R. Gray, A History of the Southern Sudan, 1839–1889 (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 147–48, 160.
60.
D. Cordell, Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 53–65.
61.
R. Austen, “The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade,” 23–76. See also G. M. La Rue, “The Export Trade of Dar Fur,” 636–38; and La Rue, “African Slave Women in Egypt,” 168–89.
62.
P. Lovejoy and S. Baier, “The Desert-Side Economy of the Central Sudan,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 8 (1975): 551–81.

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Clarion University, Clarion, PA, USA
George Michael La Rue

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Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Gwyn Campbell

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La Rue, G.M. (2018). Egypt’s Slaving Frontier: Environment, Enslavement, Social Transformations, and the Local Use of Slaves in the Sudan, 1780–1880. In: Campbell, G. (eds) Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70028-1_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70028-1_8
Published: 11 January 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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