Changing Masters in the Longue Durée: Slavery and Abolition in Egypt and the Sudan, 1798–1882

La Rue, George Michael

doi:10.1057/978-1-349-95957-0_9

George Michael La Rue³

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Abstract

Michael La Rue analyses the persistence of the trans-Saharan slave trade between Sudan and Egypt, despite dramatic changes in the structure of enslavement and human trafficking in these regions. Using a variety of sources, including travellers’ accounts, reports by French medical doctors, and biographic materials about individual slaves, La Rue differentiates three principal enslavement methods, suggests gradual shifts in the slaving frontier, and describes the hardships of the trans-Saharan journey, overland and by boat. Egypt’s plague epidemic of 1834–1835 brought to light the conditions of African slaves in Egypt and gave rise to first attempts by abolitionists to end slavery there. The effort was deflected to ending the slave trade from the Sudan, ironically leaving the sources of slaves to be cut off in the Mahdist era.

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Notes

1.
George 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: Kolner Beitrage zur Afrikanistik 11, 1986), 636–68; Janet Ewald, ‘The Nile Valley System and the Red Sea Slave Trade, 1820–1880’, Slavery and Abolition 9, no. 3 (1988): 71–92; Terence Walz, The Trade Between Egypt and Bilad as-Sudan, 1700–1820 (Cairo: Institut Francais d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1978); Ralph Austen, ‘The Mediterranean Islamic Slave Trade Out of Africa: A Tentative Census’, in The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, ed. Elizabeth Savage (London: F. Cass, 1992), 215–48. The longue durée is a concept used by Fernand Braudel and of the French Annales school. For a useful summary of Braudel’s work, see: http://indianoceanworldcentre.com/Braudel, date accessed 15 January 2018.
2.
For a brief summary, see W.G. Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 110–14. For more details, see G. Baer, ‘Slavery and Its Abolition’, in Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 176–89.
3.
This discussion is based on Muhammad ibn Umar al-Tunisi, Voyage au Ouaday (Paris: Duprat, 1851), 466–95; R.S. O’Fahey, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade in Dar Fur’, Journal of African History 14, no. 3 (1973): 29–43; and my own research in Dar Fur, George 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).
4.
For the zariba system, see Georg Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa, trans. by E.E. Frewer (New York: Harper and Bros., 1874), 2: 420–6; Douglas Johnson, ‘The Structure of a Legacy: Military Slavery in Northeast Africa’, Ethnohistory 36, no. 1 (1989): 72–88; Gérard Prunier, ‘Military Slavery in the Sudan During the Turkiyya, 1820–1885’, in The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, ed. Elizabeth Savage (London: F. Cass, 1992), 129–39.
5.
Sarga Moussa, Le Voyage en Égypte: Anthologie de voyageurs européens de Bonaparte à l’occupation anglaise (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2004); Paul Santi and Richard Hill, trans. and ed., The Europeans in the Sudan, 1834–1878 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). See George M. La Rue, ‘“My Ninth Master was a European”: Enslaved Blacks in European Households in Egypt, 1798–1848’, in Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan and the Ottoman Mediterranean, ed. Kenneth Cuno and Terence Walz (Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2010), 99–124.
6.
Janet Ewald, Soldiers, Traders, and Slavers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). See also George 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.
7.
Dennis D. Cordell, Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 17–19.
8.
Janet Ewald, ‘The Nile Valley System’, 71–92; La Rue, ‘The Export Trade’, 636–68.
9.
La Rue, ‘Export Trade of Dar Fur’, 636–68.
10.
al-Tunisi, Voyage au Ouaday, 484.
11.
John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia (London: John Murray, 1822), 283, 288, 290–1.
12.
La Rue, ‘My Ninth Master’, 104–6.
13.
Walz, The Trade Between Egypt and Bilad as-Sudan, 4; R.S. O’Fahey, State and Society in Dar Fur (London: C. Hurst and Co., 1980), 139.
14.
For the Kabbabish and Zaghawa, see William G. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, from the year 1792 to 1798, 2nd ed. (London: Longman Hurst Rees and Orme, 1806), 188; Mansfield Parkyns, ‘The Kubbabish Arabs Between Dongola and Kordofan’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 20 (1851): 254–75.
15.
Walz, The Trade Between Egypt and Bilad as-Sudan, 4.
16.
Browne, Travels, 202.
17.
Browne, Travels, 251.
18.
La Rue, ‘Hakura System’, 433.
19.
al-Tunisi, Ouaday, 484–5.
20.
Louis Frank, ‘Mémoire sur le Commerce des Nègres au Kaire, et sur les Maladies Auxquelles ils sont sujets en y arrivant’, in Mémoires sur l’Égypte, publiés pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte (Paris: Impr. de P. Didot l’ainé, 1800), 4: 125–56.
21.
Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 202–3.
22.
James Silk Buckingham, ‘Voyage on the Nile from Cairo to the Cataracts’, The Oriental Herald 22 (1829): 247.
23.
Buckingham, ‘Voyage on the Nile’, 248.
24.
Prunier, ‘Military Slavery in the Sudan’, 130.
25.
Baroness Minutoli, Recollections of Egypt (Philadelphia: Carey, 1827), 111.
26.
Khalid Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, his army, and the making of modern Egypt. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 8.
27.
John O. Udal, The Nile in Darkness: Conquest and Exploration, 1504–1862 (Norwich, England: M. Russell, 1998), 242.
28.
Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 88.
29.
Edouard Combes, Voyage en Égypte, en Nubie, les Déserts de Beyouda, des Bicharyn et sur les Cotes de la Mer Rouge (Paris: Desessart Librairie-Éditeur, 1846), 1: 153–4.
30.
Combes, Voyage, 1: 165, 167.
31.
Combes, Voyage, 1: 173–4.
32.
Combes, Voyage, 1: 182–3.
33.
Combes, Voyage, 2: 185.
34.
Combes, Voyage, 2: 229.
35.
Combes, Voyage, 2: 229–30.
36.
For the later trade from Egypt to Turkey, see Ehud R. Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and its Suppression, 1840–1890 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982). For the example of Fadlcarim, a slave who moved along this trajectory from Kordofan to Istanbul, see Le R[évérend] P[ère] Calixte de la Providence, Les Fleurs du désert, ou Vies admirables de trois jeunes ethiopiennes, Zahara, Amna et Fadalcarim avec des considerations sur l’oeuvre de la regeneration de l’Afrique centrale (Paris: Bray, 1870).
37.
La Rue, ‘Ninth Master’, 108–9.
38.
Journal of the Rev. Wm Jowett, 10 December 1818 to 12 January 1819, E3/1818, f. 41–78, p. 2, 4, Church Missionary Society Archives. See also Jowett, Christian researches in the Mediterranean from 1815 to 1820: In furtherance of the objects of the Church Missionary Society (London: W. & Connor, J., 1822), 122–4.
39.
A.B. Clot, Aperçu sur le ver Dragonneau observé en Égypte (Marseille: Feissat ainé et Demonchy, 1830).
40.
A.B. Clot-Bey, Aperçu General sur l’Egypte (Paris: Fortin, Mason et Cie., 1840), I: 338.
41.
Clot, Aperçu Général sur l’Égypte, I: 339. This is quite similar to the views of Muhammad ‘Ali in 1840, as quoted by Richard Robert Madden, Egypt and Mohammed Ali. Illustrative of the Condition of his Slaves and Subjects, 2nd ed. (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1841), 114.
42.
Clot , Aperçu Général sur l’Égypte, I:339. Of course, in this he follows other French orientalists, notably Jomard; see E. F. Jomard, Description de l’Egypte (Paris: Impr. C.L.F. Panckoucke, 1821–1829), 18: 365–6. For a modern critique of the surprisingly enduring notion that African slavery was adoptive and American slavery economic, see Frederick Cooper, ‘The Problem of Slavery in African Studies’, Journal of African History 20, no. 1 (1979): 103–25.
43.
For an introduction to this movement, see Pamela M. Pilbeam, Saint-Simonians in Nineteenth-Century France: From Free Love to Algeria (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
44.
George M. La Rue, ‘Zenneb from Dar Fur: An Enslaved Woman and her Self-Presentation in Egypt and the Sudan, 1833–1838’, in African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade: Volume 1, the Sources, ed. Alice Bellagamba, Sandra Greene and Martin Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 220–38.
45.
Léon de Laborde, ‘Chasse aux Nègres’, Revue Française 9 (October 1838): 319–33.
46.
Ismayl Urbain, Voyage d’Orient suivi de Poemes de Menilmontant et d’Egypte, ed. Philippe Régnier (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993); Anne Levallois, Les écrits autobiographiques d’Ismaÿl Urbain: Homme de couleur, saint-simonien et musulman (1812–1884) (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris, 2005); Philippe Régnier, ‘Thomas-Ismayl Urbain, Métis, Saint-Simonien et Musulman: Crise de personnalité et crise de Civilisation (Egypte, 1835)’, in La Fuite en Egypte: Supplement aux voyages européens en Orient, ed. Jean Calude Vatin (Cairo: CEDEJ, 1989), 299–316; Michel Levallois, Ismaÿl Urbain: une autre conquête de l’Algérie, (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2001); Sarga Moussa, ‘Les saint-simoniens en Égypte: le cas d’Ismayl Urbain’, in La France et l’Égypte à l’époque des vice-rois 1805–1882, ed. Daniel Panzac et Andé Raymond (Paris: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 2002), 225–33; Suzanne Voilquin, Souvenirs d’une fille du peuple, ou la Saint-Simonienne en Égypte – 1834 à 1836 (Paris: Sauzet, 1866); John David Ragan, ‘French Women Travelers in Egypt: A Discourse Marginal to Orientalism?’ in Travellers in Egypt, ed. Paul Starkey and Janet Starkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 222–4; Renée Champion, ‘Suzanne Voilquin en Égypte ou la pratique de la solidarité feminine’, in L’Orientalisme des Saint-Simoniens, ed. Michel Levallois et Sarga Moussa (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2006), 157–72.
47.
CMS Missionary Register XV (May 1827): 251; Letter by Samuel Gobat, 4 December 1826, in Journal of a three year’s residence in Abyssinia (New York: M.W. Dodd, 1850), 111–12.
48.
George 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, Volume 2: The Modern Period, ed. Anna Winterbottom and Facil Tesfaye (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For a more general treatment, see La Rue, ‘African Slave Women in Egypt, from ca. 1820 to the Plague Epidemic of 1834–1835’, in Women and Slavery: Volume One – Africa and the Western Indian Ocean Islands, ed. Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2007), 168–89.
49.
F. Mengin, Histoire Sommaire de l’Égypte (Paris: Didot, 1839), 472.
50.
La Rue, ‘Treating Black Deaths’, 27–59.
51.
The quote is from John Bowring, Report on Egypt and Candia (London: Parliamentary Papers, Reports from Commissioners XI, 1840), 96. For Campbell’s letter to Viscount Palmerston (1 December 1837) recounting the same incident, see Bowring, Report on Egypt and Candia, 97.
52.
Bowring, Report on Egypt and Candia, 98.
53.
Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780–1850 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1964), 109.
54.
Bowring, Report on Egypt and Candia, 100. See also Abbas Ibrahim Muhammad ‘Ali, The British, the Slave Trade and Slavery in the Sudan, 1820–1881 (Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1972), 11, where the text is truncated.
55.
Thomas F. Buxton, The African Slave Trade, (London: John Murray,1839), vi, viii.
56.
Second Annual Report of the British and Foreign Slavery Society (London: n.p., 1841), 36. See also Richard Robert Madden, Egypt and Mohammed Ali. Illustrative of the Condition of his slaves and Subjects 2nd ed. (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1841), 112–13.
57.
Second Annual Report, 36; Madden, Egypt and Mohammed Ali, 113.
58.
Second Annual Report, 36–37; Madden, Egypt and Mohammed Ali, 113–14.
59.
Second Annual Report, 37; Madden, Egypt and Mohammed Ali, 114.
60.
Second Annual Report, 37; Madden, Egypt and Mohammed Ali, 114.
61.
For this discussion, I rely on Baer, ‘Slavery and Its Abolition’, 176–89. Additional material can be found in Reda Mowafi, Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition Attempts in Egypt and the Sudan 1820–1882 (Lund, Sweden: Esselte Studium, 1981).
62.
On the impact of the Egyptian cotton boom, see Baer, ‘Slavery and Abolition’, 165–6, 171. For a further discussion of this, see La Rue, ‘Export Trade’, 651–54.
63.
Baer, ‘Slavery and Abolition’, 178–9.
64.
Mowafi, Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition, 68.
65.
Mowafi, Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition, 60–97.
66.
Baer, ‘Slavery and Abolition’, 179–80. For the text, see Mowafi, Slavery, Slave Trade and Abolition, 125–32.
67.
George M. La Rue, ‘The Capture of a Slave Caravan: The Incident at Asyut (Egypt) in 1880’, African Economic History 30 (2002): 83–108.
68.
For a convenient collection of the relevant Qur’anic passages, hadith, and Maliki legal commentaries, see John O’Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powell, The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Muslim World (Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002), 1–9, 21–32. For more discussion and examples, see Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, 22–48 and 66–84.
69.
Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade Of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 141–62.
70.
P.M. Holt and Martin W. Daly, The History of the Sudan: From the Coming of Islam to the Present Day, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), 126–7. Suzanne Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2003), 153–6.

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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
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
Alessandro Stanziani

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La Rue, G.M. (2019). Changing Masters in the Longue Durée: Slavery and Abolition in Egypt and the Sudan, 1798–1882. 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_9

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95957-0_9
Published: 15 January 2020
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