Abstract
Slavery persists in the Southern Red Sea Region (SRSR). Encompassing parts of modern-day Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia (Somaliland), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan, the SRSR was historically home to a regional slave system structured by large-scale raiding, slave caravans, open markets, and, often though not exclusively, domestic service. Over the past century and a half, this system has transformed. It is now defined primarily by the enslavement in Saudi Arabia of vulnerable impoverished migrant workers from elsewhere in the region. This chapter demonstrates that the modern SRSR slave system grew directly out of the traditional system because states in the region consistently failed to follow through on their public commitments to abolition. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British, French, Italian, Ottoman, and Egyptian imperial officials refused to build up a rigorous policing mechanism capable of combatting the slave trade and bringing about an end to slavery. Post-independence states, backed by their American and Soviet allies, similarly ignored the practice of slavery in their respective territory and continued to use the rhetoric of abolition for short-term diplomatic goals. As a result, those who were invested in slavery and the slave trade could easily outmanoeuvre poorly developed anti-slavery institutions. With few legal impediments, they were able to adapt their practices to meet the changing regional economic situation.
Researching and writing this chapter was made possible by grants from the Social Studies and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the VolkswagenStiftung, the Andre W. Mellon Foundation, and Harvard University’s Weatherhead Initiative on Global History.
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Notes
- 1.
British Military Authority (Eritrea), Slave Trade Red Sea, 4 November 1947, FO371/68774, National Archive, London (hereafter NA).
- 2.
For a concise history of the Saudi-British diplomatic exchanges regarding slavery, see Suzanne Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade in Saudi Arabia and the Arab States on the Persian Gulf, 1921–63,’ in Abolition and its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, ed. Gwyn Campbell (New York: Routledge, 2005), 120–36.
- 3.
Clarke to Foreign Secretary, 2 September 1947, FO371/62109, NA.
- 4.
British Military Administration (Eritrea), Slave Traffic Interim Report, December 1947, FO371/68774, NA.
- 5.
Jeddah Chancery to Foreign Office, 9 March 1949, FO371/75034, NA.
- 6.
Direzione Generale degli Affari Politici. Ministro dell’Africa Italiana, L’Italia E Le sue colonie prefasciste (Rome: Ministro dell’Africa Italiana, 1947) 34; Convention relative à la répression de la traite des esclaves dans le Sultanat de Tadjourah, 28 October 1889, FM, SG CFS//6, Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer, Aix-En-Provence (hereafter ANOM).
- 7.
This general logic informed not just the treaty regime in the SRSR, it also underpinned the international institutional architecture established in the nineteenth century by European officials to bring about the end of slavery in the world. For a more detailed analysis of the origin of this general logic and of these international institutions, see Suzanne Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2003), 1–46.
- 8.
For details of the British diplomatic pressure and their limited effects, see Ehud Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840–1890 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Gabriel Baer, ‘Slavery in Nineteenth Century Egypt,’ Journal of African History 7, no. 3 (1967): 417–41.
- 9.
William Ochsenwald, ‘Muslim-European Conflict in the Hijaz: the Slave Trade Controversy, 1840–1895,’ Middle Eastern Studies 16 (1980): 120.
- 10.
Lord Noel-Buxton, ‘Slavery in Abyssinia,’ International Affairs 11, no. 4 (July 1932): 517; Richard Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800–1935 (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University Press, 1968), 111.
- 11.
Philip Zaphiro, Memorandum on the Slave Traffic between Abyssinia and the Coast of Arabia, November 1929, IOR/R/20/1/1560, British Library, London (hereafter BL).
- 12.
J. B. Eustace, Senior Naval Officer (Aden Division) to the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, 1 September 1905, IOR/R/20/A/1300, BL.
- 13.
James McCann, ‘“Children of the House”: Slavery and Its Suppression in Lasta, Northern Ethiopia, 1916–1935,’ in The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 347–50.
- 14.
M. Rochet d’Héricourt, Second Voyage sur les Deux Rives de la Mer Rouge Dans le Pays des Adels et le Royaume de Choa (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1846), 19.
- 15.
Renato Paoli, Le condizioni commerciali dell’Eritrea (Novara: Istituto Geografico de agostini, 1913), 27.
- 16.
Government of Côte Française des Somalis, ‘Rapport sur la Traite des Esclaves à la Côte Française des Somalis,’ 16 February 1923, FM, 1AFFPOL/402, ANOM.
- 17.
Captain E. B. C. Dicken to Senior Officer, Red Sea Sloops, 3 April 1931, IOR/R/PS/12/4088, BL.
- 18.
Secretary to the Admiralty to Lister, 8 June 1881, FO84/1597, NA. British naval officers repeatedly requested permission to acquire and operate a fleet of dhows, but this request went unfulfilled. Jones to Hay, 20 October 1885, FO407/67/165, NA.
- 19.
Alice Moore-Harell, Gordon and the Sudan: Prologue to the Mahdiyya, 1877–1880 (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 126–43, 169–77.
- 20.
R. Wingate, ‘Memorandum by the Governor-General, 1904,’ in Reports on the Finances, Administration and Conditions of the Sudan, 1904, vol. 2 (1904): 35, Sudan Archive Durham University (hereafter SAD).
- 21.
E. B. C. Dickson, Captain, Senior Officer, Red Sea Sloops, Note, 2 March 1931, L/PS/12/4094, BL.
- 22.
Senior Naval Officer, HMS Fleetwood, to Admiralty, 22 April 1938, FO905/61, NA; Senior Naval Officer, HMS Fleetwood, to Admiralty, 10 July 1938, FO905/61, NA.
- 23.
Jackson, Commanding Officer HMS Dajlia, to the Commander-in-chief, Mediterranean, 9 June 1930, IOR/R/20/1/1560, BL; B. R. Reilly, Resident Aden to SSC, 18 March 1931, IOR/R/20/1/1560, BL.
- 24.
Alexander Naty, ‘Environment, Society and the State in Western Eritrea,’ Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 72, no. 4 (2002): 574.
- 25.
Residente del Sahel to Governor of Eritrea, 26 June 1905, PACCO454, Archivio Eritrea of the Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome (hereafter AEMAE).
- 26.
Elenco degli Schiavi Liberati dalla Autoriza della Colonia dal 1905 al 1913, PACCO193, AEMAE.
- 27.
L’Agente Italiano in Tigre to Governor of Eritrea, 31 August 1913, PACCO580, AEMAE.
- 28.
Jordan Gebre-Medhin, Peasants and Nationalism in Eritrea: A Critique of Ethiopian Studies (New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 1989), 50.
- 29.
J. B. Eustace, Senior Naval Officer, Aden Division, to the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, 1 September 1905, IOR/R/20/A/1300, BL.
- 30.
Henry Berger to Governor of Côte Française des Somalis, 24 February 1930, Fonds Territorieux, 1E6, ANOM; Le Chef du Poste administratif d’Obock to the Governor of Côte Française des Somalis, 18 February 1939, Fonds Territorieux, 3G3, ANOM.
- 31.
Merly to le Ministre des Colonies, 15 April 1925, FM, 1AFFPOL/696, ANOM.
- 32.
Jonathan A. Grant, Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 65–77.
- 33.
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, ‘Quarterly List of the Sudan Government Showing Appointments and Stations for the Quarter Beginning 1st July, 1928’ (1928), SAD.
- 34.
Abdi Ismail Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1884–1986 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 29–55.
- 35.
Steven Serels, Starvation and the State: Famine, Slavery and Power in Sudan, 1883–1956 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 66.
- 36.
Serels, Starvation and the State, 122.
- 37.
Serels, Starvation and the State, 119.
- 38.
Government of Côte Française des Somalis, ‘Rapport sur la Traite des Esclaves à la Côte Française des Somalis,’ 16 February 1923, FM, 1AFFPOL/402, ANOM.
- 39.
Maxwell to Baxter, 8 August 1936, CO 732/74/1, NA.
- 40.
Article 7, Treaty of Jeddah, United Kingdom – Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, 20 May 1927, Treaty between His Majesty and His Majesty the King of the Hejaz and of Nejd and its Dependencies (cmd. 2951, 1927), 3.
- 41.
General Assembly, United Nations, Article 4, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948.
- 42.
General Assembly, United Nations, Article 6, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16 December 1966.
- 43.
Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade in Saudi Arabia,’ 130.
- 44.
Department of State, United States, ‘Saudi Arabia,’ Trafficking in Persons Report (Washington D.C.: Dept. of State, 2014), 332–3.
- 45.
For studies of similar forms of slavery elsewhere in the Indian Ocean World, see Gwyn Campbell, ed., The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. (London: Routledge, 2003).
- 46.
Serels, Starvation and the State, 135–43; R. J. Gavin, Aden Under British Rule, 1839–1967 (London: C. Hurst, 1975), 335.
- 47.
Helmut Kloos, ‘Development, Drought and Famine in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia,’ African Studies Review 25, no. 4 (1982): 21–48; Gunnar M. Sørbø, ‘Economic Adaptations in Khashm el Girba: A Study of Settlement Problems in the Sudan,’ in Some Aspects of Pastoral Nomadism in the Sudan, ed. Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed (Khartoum: The Sudan National Population Committee, 1976), 113–24; Tony Barnett, The Gezira Scheme: An Illusion of Development (London: Frank Cass, 1997); Ayalew Gebre and Getachew Kassa, ‘The Effects of Development Projects on the Karrayu and Afar in the Mid-Awash Valley,’ in Moving People in Ethiopia: Development, Displacement and the State, ed. Alula Pankhurst and Francois Piguet (Rochester, NY: James Currey, 2009), 66–80.
- 48.
Mulatu Wubneh, ‘Population Distribution and Urbanization in the Horn of Africa: An Analysis of Colonialism and Government Policy,’ Regional Development Policies and Planning in Africa (1998): 120–54; Roman Stadnicki, ‘The Challenges of Urban Transition in Yemen: Sana’a and Other Major Cities,’ Journal of Arabian Studies 4, no. 1 (2014): 115–33.
- 49.
T. P. Creed, ‘Record of All Sudanese Cases Heard in Berber Merkaz since 20th October 1923,’ November 1923, CIVSEC 60/1/2, National Records Office, Khartoum (hereafter NRO).
- 50.
Diggle to District Commissioner Berber, 29 January 1924, CIVSEC 60/1/2, NRO.
- 51.
Most frequently, this privilege translated into desirable working and living conditions. At times, it could develop into an existential challenge to the established political orders. For example, slave soldiers seized control of Egypt in the thirteenth century and founded the Mamluk dynasty. Though the Mamluks eventually lost the reins of power, they were able to hold onto their elite position in Egypt until the early nineteenth century. Nonetheless, armies of slave soldiers were maintained by nineteenth-century Egyptian rulers, as well as by the Mahdist state in Sudan in the 1880s and 1890s, and various southern Arabian rulers up to the mid-twentieth century.
- 52.
The last rulers to maintain a standing slave army were in the Aden Protectorate. When British officials began actively participating in the administration of this territory in the 1930s, they confirmed the status of local chiefs and gave them key positions within a system of indirect rule. These chiefs no longer had to fear local rivals because they could call upon state protection. Therefore, they disbanded their slave armies, emancipating the soldiers often against their will. Suzanne Miers’ study of the emancipation of A’aiti slave soldiers is particularly illustrative of this dynamic: Suzanne Miers, ‘Slave Rebellion and Resistance in the Aden Protectorate in the Mid-Twentieth Century,’ in Slavery and Resistance in Africa and Asia, ed. Edward Alpers, Gwyn Campbell, and Michael Salman (New York: Routledge, 2005), 99–108.
- 53.
Pelham to Churchill, 17 May 1953, FO371/133169, NA.
- 54.
Antoinette Vlieger, Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates: Trafficking Victims?’ International Migration 50, no. 6 (December 2012): 180–94.
- 55.
Somaliland was not ranked. See Development Program, United Nations, Human Development Report 2015: Work for Human Development (New York: United Nations, 2015).
- 56.
Françoise De Bel-Air, Demography, Migration and Labor Market in Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia: Gulf Research Institute, 2013), 5–6.
- 57.
International Monetary Fund, Saudi Arabia: Selected Issues, IMF Country Report no. 13/230, June 2013.
- 58.
De Bel-Air, Demography, Migration and Labor Market in Saudi Arabia, 5–6.
- 59.
Department of State, United States, ‘Saudi Arabia,’ 295–6.
Select Bibliography
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———. Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2003.
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Vlieger, Antoinette. “Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates: Trafficking Victims?” International Migration 50, no. 6 (December 2012): 180–94.
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Serels, S. (2019). The Persistence of Slavery in the Southern Red Sea Region in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In: Campbell, G., Stanziani, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Bondage and Human Rights in Africa and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95957-0_12
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