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Environment and Enslavement in Highland Madagascar, 1500–1750: The Case for the Swahili Slave Export Trade Reassessed

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Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World

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

Abstract

This chapter argues that recent claims by Thomas Vernet of a major export in slaves to Muslim markets in the western Indian Ocean world (IOW) from 1500 to 1750 from the highlands of Madagascar are highly problematic given the environmental, economic, and demographic factors affecting the Malagasy highlands during the period concerned. It argues that the evidence indicates that most slave exports from north-west Madagascar during the period concerned were from the hinterland, rather than highland interior, and that total Malagasy slave exports were much lower than Vernet asserts.

I wish to acknowledge the support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Thomas Vernet for his comments on this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Thomas Vernet, “Le commerce des esclaves sur la côte swahili, 1500–1750,” Azania 38, no. 1 (2003): 69–97.

  2. 2.

    Richard B. Allen, “Satisfying the ‘Want for Labouring People’: European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850,” Journal of World History 21, no. 1 (2010): 68; Gwyn Campbell, “Madagascar and the Slave Trade, 1810–1895,” Journal of African History 22, no. 2 (1981): 208; see also Alfred Grandidier and Guillaume Grandidier, Histoire physique, naturelle et politique de Madagascar: ethnographie de Madagascar (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1908), 310, 325, footnote 2.

  3. 3.

    James C. Armstrong, “Madagascar and the Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” Omaly sy Anio 17–20 (1983–1984), 216.

  4. 4.

    Thomas Vernet, “Slave Trade and Slavery on the Swahili Coast (1500–1750),” in Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, ed. Paul Lovejoy, Behnaz A. Mirzai, and Ismael M. Montana (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press 2009), 56–57.

  5. 5.

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  6. 6.

    Vernet , “Le commerce des esclaves”; Vernet, “Les réseaux de traite de l’Afrique orientale: côte swahili, Comores et nord-ouest de Madagascar (vers 1500–1750),” Cahiers des anneaux de la mémoire 9 (2006): 67–107.

  7. 7.

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  8. 8.

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  17. 17.

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  18. 18.

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  22. 22.

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  23. 23.

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  24. 24.

    R. P. Callet, Histoire des rois: Tantaran’ Ny Andriana (Tananarive: Éditions de la Librairie de Madagascar, 1974), 296–97; Gwyn Campbell, An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750–1895: The Rise and Fall of an Island Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 24.

  25. 25.

    Willie Soon et al., “Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal,” Energy & Environment 14, no. 2–3 (2003): 254; Verschuren, “Decadal and Century-Scale Climate Variability,” 153; Tyson, Karien, Holmgren, and Heiss, “The Little Ice Age,” 121.

  26. 26.

    Stephen Codrington, Planet Geography (Sydney: Solid Star Press, 2011), 401.

  27. 27.

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  28. 28.

    René J. Barendse, Arabian Seas, 1700–1763, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 58; George McCall Theal, History and Ethnography of Africa South of the Zambesi, vol. 3 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 17.

  29. 29.

    Candace Gudmundson, “El Niño and Climate Prediction,” in El Niño: Overview and Bibliography, ed. A. M. Babkina (New York: Nova Science, 2003); Campbell, Economic History, 121.

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    R. P. Malzac, Histoire du Royaume Hova depuis ses origins jusqu’à sa fin (Tanananarive: Imprimerie Catholique, 1912), 18; David A. Burney, “Late Holocene Vegetational Change in Central Madagascar,” Quaternary Research 28, no. 3 (1997): 141; Gasse and Campo, “A 40,000-Yr Pollen and Diatom Record,” 307; Henry T. Wright, “Early State Dynamics as Political Experiment,” Journal of Anthropological Research 62, no. 3 (2006): 313–14; M. Virah-Samwy, K. J. Willis, and L. Gillson, “Evidence for Drought and Forest Declines during the Recent Mega Faunal Extinctions in Madagascar,” Journal of Biogeography 37, no. 3 (2010): 516; Robert E. Dewar and Henry T. Wright, “The Culture History of Madagascar,” Journal of World Prehistory 7, no. 4 (1993): 426, 439, 447–48, 454; Raombana, “Histoires” (Archives de l’Académie Malgache, Antananarivo ), 18–19; Gerald M. Berg, “Riziculture and the Founding of Monarchy in Imerina,” Journal of African History 22, no. 3 (1981): 306; Anneli Ekblom, Paul Lane, Chantal Radimilahy, Jean-Aime Rakotoarisoa, Paul Sinclair, and Malika Virah-Sawmy, “Migration and Interaction between Madagascar and Eastern Africa, 500 BCE–1000 CE: The Archaeological Perspective,” in Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World, ed. Gwyn Campbell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 195–230; Campbell, Economic History, 121.

  31. 31.

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  32. 32.

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  33. 33.

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  38. 38.

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  39. 39.

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  40. 40.

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  41. 41.

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  42. 42.

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  43. 43.

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  47. 47.

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  48. 48.

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  50. 50.

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  51. 51.

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  54. 54.

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  55. 55.

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  56. 56.

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  58. 58.

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  60. 60.

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  65. 65.

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  69. 69.

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    Domingos do Espírito Santo, Breve relaçam das christandades que os religiosos de N. Padre Sancto Agostinho tem a sua conta nas partes do Oriente, & do fruyto que nellas se faz, tiradas principalmente das cartas que nestes annos de lâ se escrevem; em que se contem cousas muy notaveis (Lisbon: por Antonio Alvarez, 1630); John Flannery, The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and Beyond (1602–1747) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 197–222.

  71. 71.

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  72. 72.

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  73. 73.

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    Axelson , Portuguese in South-East Africa, 101–02.

  75. 75.

    C. H. Stigland, The Land of Zinj: Being an Account of British East Africa, its Ancient History and Present Inhabitants (London: Frank Cass, 1966), 20; Axelson, Portuguese in South-East Africa, 114; see also Grandidier, Histoire (1908), 519, footnote 1; Vernet, “Slave Trade and Slavery,” 44–46.

  76. 76.

    George McCall Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa, vol. 5 (London: William Clowes, 1901), 144–45, 156–57.

  77. 77.

    Quoted in Barendse, Arabian Seas, 1700–1763, vol. 3, 1242–43.

  78. 78.

    Manuel Barreto, “Moçambique e Madagascar: informação do estado e conquista dos rios de Cuama vulga e verdadeiramente chamados rios de Ouro,” Boletim da Sociedade de Geographia de Lisboa 4, no. 1 (1883): 33–59; see also George McCall Theal, History of Africa South of the Zambezi, vol. 1 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1916), 433–34.

  79. 79.

    Manuel Barreto, “Moçambique e Madagascar,” 55.

  80. 80.

    Axelson , Portuguese in South-East Africa, 134.

  81. 81.

    Axelson , Portuguese in South-East Africa, 132.

  82. 82.

    Luis Mariano , letter, “Sadia, c. July 1616,” in Grandidier and Grandidier, ed., Collection, vol. 2 (1904), 214.

  83. 83.

    Augnet.

  84. 84.

    Vernet, “Slave Trade and Slavery,” 43.

  85. 85.

    Armstrong, “Madagascar and the Slave Trade,” 214.

  86. 86.

    “A voyage in ye ship Frances from Mossambique for St. Lawrence,” in Stephen Ellis, “Un texte du XVIIème siècle sur Madagascar,” Omaly sy Anio 9 (1979), 157.

  87. 87.

    Foster, English Factories, xxiii–xxiv, 226, 294–95; see also Axelson, Portuguese in South-East Africa, 121.

  88. 88.

    Malyn Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400–1668 (London: Routledge, 2005), 191.

  89. 89.

    Fursland and Brockedon to Fitzherbert, Batavia, 6 Oct. 1621, quoted in Foster, English Factories, 290; Anon., “Early Notices of Madagascar from the Old Voyagers, Part III: Hamilton’s description of Madagascar, 1744,” Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine 16 (1892), 497; see also Newitt, History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 207.

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    “Le mémoire de Parat sur Madagascar (1714),” ed. J. C. Hebert, Bulletin de l’Académie Malgache 56, no. 1–2 (1978): 50.

  91. 91.

    W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., “East Indies and Persia, 1630–34,” Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1892), 4, 6; Foster, English Factories, 310.

  92. 92.

    Foster, English Factories, 39.

  93. 93.

    Foster, English Factories, xxiii–xxiv, 226, 294–95.

  94. 94.

    Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of J. Eliot Hodgkin, Esq., F.S.A., of Richmond, Surrey (London: printed by Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1897), 8.

  95. 95.

    Report, 15 July 1663, in Nicholas Buckeridge, Journal and Letter Book of Nicholas Buckeridge 1651–1654, ed. John R. Jenson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973), 45–46.

  96. 96.

    Vernet, “Slave Trade and Slavery,” 44.

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    Grandidier, Histoire (1908), 498.

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    Gwyn Campbell

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Campbell, G. (2018). Environment and Enslavement in Highland Madagascar, 1500–1750: The Case for the Swahili Slave Export Trade Reassessed. 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_3

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