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THE CONSTANT DEMAND OF THE FRENCH: THE MASCARENE SLAVE TRADE AND THE WORLDS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN AND ATLANTIC DURING THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2008

RICHARD B. ALLEN
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Abstract

Analysis of an inventory of 641 slaving voyages involving Mauritius and Réunion between 1768 and 1809 reveals that the Mascarene Islands were at the center of a substantial and dynamic regional slave trading network that also reached into the Americas in ways that raise questions about the relationship between the ‘worlds’ of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. The fact that colonial, as well as metropolitan, merchant capital underwrote Mascarene-based slave trading ventures raises additional questions about the role of locally generated and/or non-Western capital in financing the movement of slave, and ultimately ‘free’, labor throughout the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonial world.

Keywords

slave tradeMascarenesMauritiusRéunionIndian OceanMadagascarMozambiqueSwahili CoastIndia
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 43 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), British Library, London, P/E/5, 398-9, Letter from W. G. Farmer at Calicut, 17 May 1792.

2 OIOC, E/4/1009, 246-9, [Despatch to] Bombay, Political Department, Answer to the Letters in the Political Department dated 4th August 1792, 7th September 1792, 21st December 1792 and 10th March 1793 [Bombay Political Consultation, 19 Feb. 1794].

3 OIOC, E/4/1011, 412, [Despatch] To President in Council at Bombay, 5 August 1796. Answer to the Letter in the Political Department dated 25th Sept 1794.

4 Richard B. Allen, ‘Carrying away the unfortunate: the exportation of slaves from India during the late eighteenth century’, in Jacques Weber (ed.), Le monde créole: peuplement, sociétés et condition humaine, XVIIe–XXe siècles (Paris, 2005), 285–98.

5 OIOC, P/49/46, 1485, Regulations issued 17 May 1774.

6 The island known as the Île de France between 1721 and 1810 was first named Mauritius by the Dutch during their occupation of the island from 1638 to 1710. Following its conquest by the British in 1810, the island was called Mauritius once again. The neighboring Île de Bourbon was renamed Réunion in 1848.

7 G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, The French at Kilwa Island (Oxford, 1965); Akinola, G. A., ‘The French on the Lindi coast, 1785–1789’, Tanzania Notes and Records, 70 (1970), 13–20Google Scholar; Alpers, Edward A., ‘The French slave trade in East Africa (1721–1810)’, Cahiers d'études africaines, 37 (1970), 80–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 J. M. Filliot, La traite des esclaves vers les Mascareignes au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1974), 51.

9 Alpers, ‘The French slave trade’, 80–2.

10 J. V. Payet, Histoire de l'esclavage à l'Île Bourbon (Paris, 1990), 14; Sudel Fuma, L'Esclavagisme à La Réunion (Paris, 1992), 18.

11 William Gervase Clarence-Smith (ed.), The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1989); Shihan de S. Jayasuriya and Richard Pankhurst (eds.), The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean (Trenton NJ, 2003); Gwyn Campbell (ed.), The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia (London, 2004).

12 Young, Robert J., ‘Slaves, coolies and bondsmen. A study of assisted migration in response to emerging English shipping networks in the Indian Ocean, 1685–1776’, Indian Ocean Review, 2 (1989), 23–6Google Scholar.

13 See ‘Madagascar and the slave trade, 1810–1895’, Journal of African History, 22 (1981), 203–27; ‘Madagascar and Mozambique in the slave trade of the Western Indian Ocean, 1800–1861’, Slavery and Abolition, 9 (1988), 166–93; ‘The East African slave trade, 1861–1895: the “Southern” complex’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 22 (1989), 1–26; ‘The structure of trade in Madagascar, 1750–1810’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 26 (1993), 111–48; ‘Madagascar and the slave trade in the South-West Indian Ocean’, in Sandra J. T. Evers and Vinesh Y. Hookoomsing (eds.), Globalisation and the South-West Indian Ocean (Réduit, Mauritius, 2000), 91–108; An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750–1895 (Cambridge, 2005), especially 213–42.

14 See ‘A census of slaves exported from central Madagascar to the Mascarenes between 1769 and 1820’, in Ignace Rakoto (ed.), L'esclavage à Madagascar: aspects historiques et résurgences contemporaines (Antananarivo, 1997), 131–45; History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar, 1770–1822 (Portsmouth NH, 2000); ‘The route of the slave from Highland Madagascar to the Mascarenes: commercial organization, 1770–1820’, in Ignace Rakoto (ed.), La route des esclaves: système servile et traite dans l'est malgache (Paris, 2000), 119–80; ‘The origins of Malagasy arriving at Mauritius and Réunion: expanding the history of Mascarene slavery’, in Vijayalakshmi Teelock and Edward A. Alpers (eds.), History, Memory and Identity (Réduit, Mauritius, 2001), 195–236.

15 E.g. Edward A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (Berkeley, 1975); R. W. Beachey, The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (New York, 1976); Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (London, 1987); José Capela and Eduardo Medeiros, ‘La traite au départ du Mozambique vers les îles françaises de l'Océan Indien, 1720–1904’, in U. Bissoondoyal and S. B. C. Servansing (eds.), Slavery in South West Indian Ocean (Moka, Mauritius, 1989), especially 249–66; Benigna Zimba, Edward Alpers and Allen Isaacman (eds.), Slave Routes and Oral Tradition in Southeastern Africa (Maputo, 2005).

16 Bauss, Rudy, ‘The Portuguese slave trade from Mozambique to Portuguese India and Macau and comments on Timor, 1750–1850: new evidence from the archives’, Camões Center Quarterly, 6–7 (1997), 21–7Google Scholar; Pedro Machado, ‘A forgotten corner of the Indian Ocean: Gujarati merchants, Portuguese India and the Mozambique slave-trade, c. 1730–1830’, in Campbell (ed.), The Structure of Slavery, 17–32, and Machado, ‘Gujarati Indian merchant networks in Mozambique, 1777–c. 1830’ (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 2005), especially 212–51.

17 Teotonio R. de Souza, ‘French slave-trading in Portuguese Goa (1773–1791)’, in de Souza (ed.), Essays in Goan History (New Delhi, 1989), 123–6; Jeannette Pinto, ‘The slave trade in the Indian Ocean: the French experience’, in K. S. Mathew (ed.), French in India and Indian Nationalism (1700 A.D.–1963 A.D.) (Delhi, 1999), II, 606–7.

18 E.g. Robert Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838 (Hanover NH, 1994); Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge, 1995).

19 Hubert Gerbeau, ‘Des minorités mal-connues: esclaves indiens et malais des Mascareignes au XIXe siècle’, in Migrations, minorités et échanges en Océan Indien, XIXe–XXe siècle (IHPOM Études et Documents No. 11) (Aix-en-Provence, 1978), 160–242, and Gerbeau, , ‘Les esclaves asiatiques des Mascareignes: enquêtes et hypothèses’, Annuaire des pays de l'océan indien, 7 (1980), 169–97Google Scholar; Carter, Marina, ‘Indian slaves in Mauritius (1729–1834)’, Indian Historical Review, 15 (1988–9), 233–47Google Scholar; and Carter, ‘A servile minority in a sugar island: Malay and Chinese slaves in Mauritius’, in Weber (ed.), Le monde créole, 257–71.

20 A. Reid, ‘Introduction: slavery and bondage in Southeast Asian history’, in Anthony Reid (ed.), Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia (New York, 1983), especially 27–33; A. van de Kraan, ‘Bali: slavery and slave trade’, in Reid (ed.), Slavery, Bondage and Dependency, especially 329–37; S. Arasaratnam, ‘Slave trade in the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth century’, in K. S. Matthews (ed.), Mariners, Merchants and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History (New Delhi, 1995), 195–208; Vink, Markus, ‘“The World's Oldest Trade”. Dutch slavery and slave trade in the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth century’, Journal of World History, 14 (2003), 131–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, , ‘Carrying away the unfortunate’; Marina Carter, ‘Slavery and unfree labour in the Indian Ocean’, History Compass, 4 (2006), 800–13Google Scholar.

21 Hubert Gerbeau, ‘Quelques aspects de la traite illégale des esclaves à l'Île Bourbon au XIXe siècle’, in Mouvements de populations dans l'Océan Indien (Paris, 1979), 273–308, and Gerbeau, , ‘L'Océan Indien n'est pas l'Atlantique: la traite illégale à Bourbon au XIXe siècle’, Revue Outre-mers, Revue d'histoire, 89 (2002), 79–108Google Scholar; Carter, Marina and Gerbeau, Hubert, ‘Covert slaves and coveted coolies in the early 19th century Mascareignes’, Slavery and Abolition, 9 (1988), 194–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Claude Wanquet, ‘La traite illégale à Maurice à l'époque anglaise (1811–1835)’, in Serge Daget (ed.), De la traite à l'esclavage: actes du colloque internationale sur la traite des noirs, Nantes, 1985 (Nantes, 1988), II, 451–66; Serge Daget, ‘Révolution ajournée: Bourbon et la traite illégale française, 1815–1832’, in Claude Wanquet and Benoît Jullien (eds.), Révolution française et Océan indien: prémices, paroxysmes, héritages et déviances (Paris, 1996), 333–46; Deryck Scarr, Slaving and Slavery in the Indian Ocean (London, 1998); Allen, Richard B., ‘Licentious and unbridled proceedings: the illegal slave trade to Mauritius and the Seychelles during the early nineteenth century’, Journal of African History, 42 (2001), 91–116Google Scholar.

22 Hubert Gerbeau, ‘The slave trade in the Indian Ocean: problems facing the historian and research to be undertaken’, in The African Slave Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century (Paris, 1979), 184–207.

23 Cf. David Eltis, David Richardson, Stephen D. Behrendt and Herbert S. Klein, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge, 2000).

24 Alpers, Edward A., ‘The African diaspora in the Northwestern Indian Ocean: reconsideration of an old problem, new directions for research’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 17 (1997), 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Robert Louis Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Régime Business (Madison, 1979); Michael A. Gomez, Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (Cambridge, 2005).

25 Richard B. Allen, ‘The Mascarene slave-trade and labour migration in the Indian Ocean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in Campbell (ed.), The Structure of Slavery, 33–50.

26 Joseph E. Harris, The African Presence in Asia (Evanston, 1971).

27 Allen, Richard B., ‘A traffic repugnant to humanity: children, the Mascarene slave trade, and British abolitionism’, Slavery and Abolition, 27 (2006), 219–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Allen, ‘Suppressing a nefarious traffic: the Mascarenes, Britain and the abolition of slave trading in the western Indian Ocean, 1770–1835’ (paper presented to the International Conference on the Domestic and International Consequences of the First Governmental Efforts to Abolish the Atlantic Slave Trade, Accra and Elmina, 8–12 Aug. 2007).

28 Jill Louise Geber, ‘The East India Company and Southern Africa: a guide to the Archives of the East India Company and the Board of Control, 1600–1858’ (Ph.D. diss., University College London, 1998), 101.

29 Philippe Haudrère, La compagnie française des Indes au XVIIIe siècle (1719–1795) (Paris, 1989).

30 Auguste Toussaint, La route des îles: contribution à l'histoire maritime des Mascareignes (Paris, 1967), 96, 98–9.

31 Ibid. 101–9, and Toussaint, Histoire des îles Mascareignes (Paris, 1972), 107ff.

32 See Early American Trade with Mauritius (Port Louis, 1954); Histoire de l'Océan indien (Paris, 1961; English trans. as History of the Indian Ocean [Chicago, 1966]); L'Océan indien au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1974); Le mirage des îles: le négoçe français aux Mascareignes aux XVIIIe siècle (Aix-en-Provence, 1977); Les frères Surcouf (Paris, 1979); ‘Avant Surcouf’: corsaires en Océan indien au 18eme siècle (Aix-en-Provence, 1989).

33 Toussaint, La route des îles, 350–7, 449–54.

34 I was able to recover information on more than 440 of Toussaint's 515 voyages. The discrepancy in the size of these two samples is due in part to the destruction by insects and climatic factors of records that were much more complete when Toussaint used them more than forty years ago.

35 Jean Mettas, Répertoire des expeditions négrières françaises au XVIIIe siècle, vol. I: Nantes, ed. Serge Daget (Paris, 1978), and vol. II: Ports autres que Nantes, ed. Serge et Michèle Daget (Paris, 1984).

36 José Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos nos Portos de Moçambique, 1773–1904 (Porto, 2002). My thanks to the anonymous reviewer who brought this work to my attention.

37 P. J. Moree, A Concise History of Dutch Mauritius, 1598–1710 (London, 1998).

38 Jean-Marie Desport, De la servitude à la liberté: Bourbon des origines à 1848 (Réunion, 1989), 8.

39 Chaudenson, Robert, ‘À propos de la genèse du créole mauricien: le peuplement de l'Île de France de 1721 à 1735’, Études créoles, 1 (1979), 43–57Google Scholar.

40 Mettas, Répertoire des expeditions, II, 223–4; Prosper Eve, Les esclaves de Bourbon: la mer et la montagne (Paris, 2003), 45, 60–3.

41 Toussaint, Le mirage des îles, 20ff.; Freeman-Grenville, The French at Kilwa Island, 10–24; Alpers, Ivory and Slaves, 150–1. The Sultan promised to supply Morice with 1,000 slaves each year and to bar other Europeans from trading for slaves in his dominion.

42 Ly-Tio-Fane, Madeleine, ‘Les américains et l'attribution du statut de port franc au Port-Louis de l'Île de France (25 avril 1784)’, Annuaire des pays de l'Océan indien, 14 (1995–6), 373–82Google Scholar.

43 Allen, ‘The Mascarene slave-trade’, 37–8.

44 The Mascarenes were captured by a British expeditionary force in 1810. The 1814 Treaty of Paris ceded Mauritius and its various dependencies, including Rodrigues and the Seychelles, to Britain and returned Réunion to French control.

45 Raymond Decary, Les voyages du chirurgien Avine à l'île de France et dans la mer des Indes au début du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1961), 17; M. J. Milbert, Voyage pittoresque à l'Île de France, au Cap de Bonne-Espérance et à l'Île de Ténériffe (Paris, 1812), I, 257.

46 British National Archives (BNA), Kew, T 71/566, Registry of Personal Slaves, 1817; T 71/571, Registry of Plantation Slaves, 1817. My thanks to Pier Larson for his generous assistance in identifying many of the original ethnonyms in question.

47 Baron d'Unienville, Statistiques de l'île Maurice et ses dépendances suivie d'une notice historique sur cette colonie et d'un essai sur l'île de Madagascar (2nd ed., Maurice, 1885–6), I, 257.

48 Mascarene slaves described as ‘Mozambique’ in contemporary sources came from the Swahili Coast as well as Mozambique. For a recent discussion of Mozambican slave identity, see Edward A. Alpers, ‘Mozambique and “Mozambiques”: slave trade and diaspora on a global scale’, in Zimba et al., Slave Routes, especially 40–6.

49 BNA, T 71/566; T 71/571. My thanks to Edward A. Alpers for his generous assistance in identifying some of the ‘Mozambican’ ethnonyms in this registry.

50 The designation ‘Malay’ could refer not only to persons from Malaya and elsewhere in southeastern Asia, but also to those originating in India or the Maldives. Gerbeau, ‘Des minorités mal-connues’, 160–4.

51 Carter, ‘A servile minority in a sugar island’, 259–60.

52 Toussaint, La route des îles, 241–62.

53 Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, 317.

54 MNA, F 4/1191, 3 complémentaire An X.

55 MNA, F 4/1360, 11 thermidor An XI, and F 4/1368, 22 thermidor An XI, respectively.

56 MNA, GB 26/210, 15 prairial An XII; GB 40/56, 2 complémentaire An XII; GB 26/733, 28 juin 1806.

57 Toussaint reports the arrival of 13 Portuguese vessels from Mozambique, Inhambane and Quelimane between 1802 and 1808 (La route des îles, 263–73).

58 MNA, GB 26/241, 16 messidor An XII.

59 MNA, GB 26/460, 4 germinal An XIII. At least six ‘Arab’ vessels arrived in the islands between 1796 and 1802 (Toussaint, La route des îles, 172).

60 Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, 318.

61 MNA, GB 26/857, 17 juin 1807.

62 Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, 324.

63 MNA, OC 40/19, 5 février 1778.

64 MNA, F 10/345, 17 octobre 1792, and F 27/39, [3 décembre 1793], respectively.

65 MNA, OC 40/135, 11 juin 1779.

66 Eve, Les esclaves de Bourbon, 60–1.

67 Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 65. For specific information on the French trans-Atlantic trade, see Geggus, David, ‘Sex ratio, age and ethnicity in the Atlantic trade: data from French shipping and plantation records’, Journal of African History, 30 (1989), 23–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Geggus, , ‘The French slave trade: an overview’, William and Mary Quarterly, 58, 3rd ser. (2001), 119–38CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

68 Distinguishing ‘children’ and ‘youths’ from one another and ultimately from adults can be problematic. In the Mascarenes, slave children (négrillons and négrittes) were usually defined as being 14 years of age and under; except for slave cargoes, few references exist to ‘youths’ (Fr. caports and caporines, from the Port. caporo) in the Mascarene slave population. The age of the caporos/caports shipped by Portuguese and French slavers remains a subject of debate. In 1804, British officials in the Moluccas defined slave children as being age 10 and under (OIOC, F/4/184/3719, 24, Cecil Smith and P. Bruce to Chief Secretary to Government, 15 Dec. 1804). ‘Youths’ may accordingly have been regarded as being aged 11 to 14–15 or possibly even 16. On the criteria used to distinguish children in the Atlantic trades, see Campbell, Gwyn, ‘Children and slavery in the New World: a review’, Slavery and Abolition, 27 (2006), 261–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 65.

70 These figures may not be out of line with recent information on the French trade. See Geggus, ‘The French slave trade’, 135.

71 MNA, JH 13, 21 7bre 1792 – Dépot de la livraison de la cargaison du Nre le Perier consistant en 411 tetes d'esclaves a Durouzou (?).

72 MNA, GB 26/1054, 17 juin 1808; GB 116/4, Amirauté – Relevé du cargaison d'esclaves du navire portugais La Santa Delfina, 1808.

73 The average number of slaves carried per ton between 1774 and 1793 was 0·45 from Madagascar (19 voyages), 1·35 from Mozambique (20 voyages), and 1·0 from the Swahili Coast (16 voyages). For cargo densities across the Atlantic, see Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1999), 144.

74 The average length of slaving voyages to the Mascarenes (inclusive of days of departure and arrival) between 1774 and 1809 was: 21 days from Madagascar (148 voyages); 59 days from Mozambique (41 voyages); 54 days from the Swahili Coast (36 voyages); 44 days from India (7 voyages).

75 Voyages to the Seychelles from Mozambique averaged 30 days (inclusive of days of departure and arrival) and 28 days from the Swahili Coast (15 and 9 voyages, respectively, between 1774 and 1809). Vessels remained in the Seychelles an average of 36 days (25 voyages) and took another 34 days to sail to the Île de France or the Île de Bourbon (28 voyages).

76 MNA, GB 40/1, 8 vendémiaire An XII.

77 MNA, F 10/168, 1 décembre 1791.

78 MNA, F 10/224, 3 avril 1792.

79 MNA, OC 24B, Journal de navigation du vaisseau L'Espérance, cap. Desmolière, faisant la traite à la côte d'Afrique, 5 novembre 1774–30 mai 1775 (incomplete). Of the 579 slaves loaded at Zanzibar, 98 had died and another 150 were afflicted with the disease at the time of the last entry in the ship's log.

80 MNA, OC 40/130, 2 juin 1779.

81 MNA, GB 40/312, 27 janvier 1808.

82 MNA, OC 48/102, 12 octobre 1786.

83 Herbert S. Klein, The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton, 1978), 195–6.

84 Toussaint, La route des îles, 451, 454.

85 Filliot, La traite des esclaves, 228.

86 Ibid. 107.

87 Allen, ‘Licentious and unbridled proceedings’, 110.

88 See: Behrendt, Stephen D., Eltis, David and Richardson, David, ‘The costs of coercion: African agency in the pre-modern Atlantic world’, Economic History Review, 54 (2001), 454–76CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Richard Sheridan, ‘Resistance and rebellion of African captives in the transatlantic slave trade before becoming seasoned labourers in the British Caribbean, 1690–1807’, in Verene A. Shepherd (ed.), Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom: Perspectives from the Caribbean, Africa and the African Diaspora (New York, 2002), 181–205; David Richardson, ‘Shipboard revolts, African authority, and the transatlantic slave trade’, in Sylviane A. Diouf (ed.), Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Athens OH, 2003), 199–218; Eric Robert Taylor, If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Baton Rouge, 2006).

89 MNA, OC 40/103, 12 décembre 1778.

90 MNA, OC 48/308, 16 avril 1788.

91 An uprising aboard Le Perier in the Mozambique roads on 21 April 1792 resulted in the death of 23 slaves from drowning or being eaten by sharks (MNA, F 10/281, 4 juillet 1792). The insurrection which lasted two-and-a-half hours on board Les Trois Frères on 28 November 1792 while the ship was at sea left 12 slaves killed and 13 drowned (MNA, F 10/386, 17 janvier 1793).

92 ‘Bororo’ was the name the Portuguese gave to the region east of the Shire and north of the Zambezi as far as Angoche (Alpers, Ivory and Slaves, 53).

93 MNA, OC 40/237, 18 novembre 1780.

94 MNA, OB 28/249, 14 juillet 1789.

95 MNA, F 10/573, 4 novembre 1793.

96 Patrick Villiers, ‘The slave and colonial trade in France just before the Revolution’, in Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge, 1991), 210–36.

97 Sannier, Nathalie, ‘Nantes, la traite négrière et l'océan indien au 18e siècle’, Cahier des anneaux de la mémoire, 1 (1999), 60Google Scholar.

98 Paul Butel, ‘Les ports atlantiques français et l'Océan Indien sous la révolution et l'empire, l'exemple de Bordeaux’, in Wanquet and Jullien (eds.), Révolution française et Océan Indien, 86–7.

99 Saugera, Eric, ‘Pour une histoire de la traite française sous le Consultat et l'Empire’, Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 76 (1989), 226CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Saugera, ‘Les armements négriers français vers l'Océan Indien sous le Consultat’, in Wanquet and Jullien (eds.), Révolution française et Océan Indien, 103, respectively.

100 Toussaint, La route des îles, 167, 169, 171, 173.

101 Mettas, La traite négrière, II, 757–8.

102 The adult male slaves loaded on La Normande at Foulpointe in 1769 cost 29–34 piastres ($) each, while the adult females in the ship's cargo cost between $27 and $34 and its boys and girls were purchased for $28–$32½ (MNA, HB 16/9, Compte des noirs particuliers embarqués par connaissement sur la Corvette La Normande – Année 1769). According to a contemporary Dutch source, slaves cost $25 along the Swahili Coast in 1776. Ross, Robert, ‘The Dutch on the Swahili Coast, 1776–1778: two slaving journals, Part I’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 19 (1986), 334–5Google Scholar.

103 On the profitability of the illegal slave trade to the Mascarenes, see Allen, ‘Licentious and unbridled proceedings’, 102–3.

104 MNA, OC 48/58, 16 aoÛt 1786. One-half of the $13,800 total selling-price was due at the time of the sale, with the balance due in two equal payments, one in three months and the other in six months.

105 MNA, NA 22/6/25, 4 juillet 1775. The adult males sold for between 105 and 1,000 livres, while the adult women sold for 350 to 800 livres.

106 MNA, JH 9, Etat Des Noirs que Jai Vendu a Bourbon.

107 MNA: GB 14/55, 4 juillet 1810.

108 Mettas, La traite négrière, II, 615.

109 MNA, OB 50/180, 20 mai 1788; OB 28/75, 1 novembre 1788.

110 MNA, OC 4/126, [Contrat] entre Jean Pascal Dufourg et Valleau, Capitaines de Marine Marchande et Pitot frères compagnie Négoçiants de cette Isle, consignataires du Vau La Ville de Bordeaux, 6 juillet 1789.

111 MNA, OC 4/126, [Société] entre Jn Valeau capne du Navire le Comte de fumel[?] et Jean Dufourg Capne du Navire l'honorine de Bordeaux, 4 juillet 1789. For reasons why slavers preferred to sell their cargoes in and around Cap Français, see Geggus, ‘The French slave trade’, 126ff.

112 Mettas, La traite négrière, I and II.

113 MNA: OB 28/40, 16 aoÛt 1788; Mettas, La traite négrière, II, 95.

114 MNA: OB 28/75, 1 novembre 1788; Mettas, La traite négrière, II, 97–8.

115 Respectively: MNA, KK 3, Recensement des populations blanche et libres, Port Louis (1805); Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer (CAOM), Aix-en-Provence, G1 473, Recensement général de l'Isle de France, 1776.

116 MNA, OA 57/48, 7 septembre 1778; OC 40/186, 12 février 1780.

117 MNA, OB 18/6, 12 octobre 1780. In 1783, Touche du Pujol, acting in his own name and that of his associates, was involved in financing the voyage of Le Bollé to the amount of more than 109,000 livres (MNA, OB 21/243, 14 octobre 1783).

118 MNA, OB 18/18, 28 septembre 1782.

119 MNA, OB 21/290, 4 janvier 1784.

120 MNA, F 23/73, 15 janvier 1793.

121 MNA, OB 21/108, 21 novembre 1782.

122 Mettas, La traite négrière, II, 229.

123 Auguste Toussaint, ‘Le trafic commerciale entre les Mascareignes et Madagascar, de 1773 à 1810’, Annales de l'Université de Madagascar, Série lettres et sciences humaines, 6 (1967), 35–89; Ly-Tio-Fane, Madeleine, ‘Problèmes d'approvisionnement de l'Île de France au temps de l'Intendant Poivre’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences of Mauritius, 3 (1968), 101–15Google Scholar; Campbell, ‘The structure of trade’, 113.

124 MNA, F 4; GB 26.

125 MNA, OB 21/73, 16 septembre 1782.

126 MNA, F 4/1156, 23 messidor An X.

127 MNA, GB 26/715, 28 avril 1806.

128 MNA, GB 26/973, 29 décembre 1807.

129 MNA, OA 44/1, No. 126 Domaine Recette, entry dated 3 juillet 1772.

130 OIOC, P/241/31, 562, Matthew Yeats to Major-General Medows, 3 Feb. 1792.

131 OIOC, P/241/36, 16, 19, Matthew Yeats to Sir Charles Oakeley, 22 Dec. 1792.

132 MNA, JH 10, Instructions, et conditions de Mr Bartro Capitaine du Nre le Chr Dentrecasteaux en avril 1789.

133 MNA, OA 44/1, No. 126 Domaine Recette, entry dated 29 décembre 1772.

134 MNA, OA 44/2, No. 127 Domaine du Roy Recette, entry dated 21 mai 1773.

135 MNA, OA 44/2, No. 127 Domaine du Roy Recette, entry dated 15 juillet 1773.

136 Toussaint, La route des îles, 193–238.

137 Allen, ‘The Mascarene slave-trade’, 41.

138 See ibid.; Carter, ‘A servile minority’.

139 CAOM, G1 505, no. 2, Tableau Général de l'Etat de Population et de Culture ou étoit L'Isle de france, L'année 1766; BNA, CO 167/5, Relevé du Cadastre Général de l'Isle de France pour l'Année Mil huit Cent Neuf d'après les Recensemens Fournis par les Habitants.

140 Payet, Histoire de l'esclavage, 17.

141 Allen, ‘The Mascarene slave-trade’, 38–41.

142 Toussaint, La route des îles, 183–4.

143 Burton Benedict, People of the Seychelles (3rd ed., London, 1970); Toussaint, Histoire des îles Mascareignes, 80–1; Deryck Scarr, Seychelles Since 1770: History of a Slave and Post-Slave Society (London, 2000).

144 Vernet, Thomas, ‘Le commerce des esclaves sur la côte Swahili, 1500–1750’, Azania, 38 (2003), 69–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

145 Allen, ‘Licentious and unbridled proceedings’, 100.

146 Gerbeau, ‘Quelques aspects de la traite illégale’, 296, and Gerbeau, ‘L'Océan Indien n'est pas l'Atlantique’, 96; Allen, ‘The Mascarene slave-trade’, 41.

147 Campbell, ‘Madagascar and Mozambique in the slave trade’, and Campbell, ‘The East African slave trade, 1861–1895’.

148 Geggus, ‘The French Slave Trade’, 121.

149 See J. Auber, Histoire de l'Océan Indien (Tananarive, 1955); Toussaint, History of the Indian Ocean; K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1985); Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean: A History of People and the Sea (Delhi, 1993); Richard Hall, Empires of the Monsoon: A History of the Indian Ocean and Its Invaders (London, 1996); R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (Armonk, 2002); Milo Kearney, The Indian Ocean in World History (New York, 2004); Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge MA, 2006).

150 Niels Steensgaard, ‘The Indian Ocean network and the emerging world-economy, c. 1500–1750’, in Satish Chandra (ed.), The Indian Ocean: Explorations in History, Commerce and Politics (Delhi, 1987), 127; Ewald, Janet J., ‘Crossers of the sea: slaves, freedmen, and other migrants in the Northwestern Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1914’, American Historical Review, 105 (2000), 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

151 Pier Larson, ‘African diasporas and the Atlantic’, in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman (eds.), The Atlantic in Global History, 1500–2000 (Upper Saddle River NJ, 2007), 129–47. For another recent overview of the Indian Ocean trades, see Gwyn Campbell, ‘Slavery and the trans-Indian Ocean world slave trade: a historical outline’, in Himanshu Prabha Ray and Edward A. Alpers (eds.), Cross Currents and Community Networks: The History of the Indian Ocean (Oxford, 2007), 286–305.

152 Larson, History and Memory; Campbell, An Economic History.

153 Pier Larson, personal communication.

154 Willis, John E. Jr., ‘Maritime Asia, 1500–1800: the interactive emergence of European domination’, American Historical Review, 98 (1993), 83–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

155 Allen, ‘The Mascarene slave-trade’, 42.

156 Allen, ‘Carrying away the unfortunate’, 295–6. Indians comprised 65.5 per cent of all such workers. David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge, 1995), 156–7. Nineteenth-century abolitionists first advanced the notion that the indentured labor system was little more than ‘a new system of slavery’. Modern proponents of this argument follow Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920 (2nd ed., London, 1993 [1974]).

157 I. M. Cumpston, Indians Overseas in British Territories, 1834–1854 (London, 1953), 85.

158 Hjejle, Benedicte, ‘Slavery and agricultural bondage in South India in the nineteenth century’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 15 (1967), 106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

159 Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Moka, Mauritius, PE 1. The men in question belonged to the Palin caste.

160 Huguette Ly-Tio-Fane, ‘Aperçu d'une immigration forcée: l'importation d'africains libérés aux Mascareignes et aux Seychelles, 1840–1880’, in Minorités et gens de mer en océan indien, XIXe–XXe siècles (IHPOM Études et documents, 12) (Aix-en-Provence, 1979), 73–84; Hubert Gerbeau, ‘Engagées and coolies in Réunion Island: slavery's masks and freedom's constraints’, in P. C. Emmer (ed.), Colonialism and Migration: Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery (Dordrecht, 1986), especially 220–3, 236; Campbell, ‘The East African slave trade, 1861–1895’, 23–4; Capela and Medeiros, ‘La traite au départ du Mozambique’, 266–71; Sudel Fuma, ‘La traite des esclaves dans le bassin du sud-ouest de l'Océan Indien et la France après 1848’, in Rakoto, La route des esclaves, 247–61.

161 E.g. Philip D. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1998); John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1998); Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge MA, 2005). For a recent review of the issues surrounding the definition of the Atlantic world, see Games, Alison, ‘Atlantic history: definitions, challenges, and opportunities’, American Historical Review, 111 (2006), 741–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article was part of an AHR Forum on ‘Oceans of History,’ a forum that completely ignored the Indian Ocean.

162 Mettas, La traite négrière, I, 613–14.

163 Filliot, La traite des esclaves, 183–7.

164 Megan Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius (Durham NC, 2005), 113.

165 Ethel Bruce Sainsbury, A Calendar of the Court Minutes, Etc. of the East India Company, 1671–1673 (Oxford, 1932), 4, 6.

166 OIOC, L/MAR/B/17H, Ship's log of the Royal George – journey from England to Cabinda, St. Helena and Bencoolen, 1764–5.

167 A. J. R. Russell-Wood, ‘A Brazilian commercial presence beyond the Cape of Good Hope, 16th–19th centuries’, in Pius Malekandathil and Jamal Mohammed (eds.), The Portuguese, Indian Ocean and European Bridgeheads 1500–1800 (Goa, 2001), 191–211. My thanks to the author for providing me with a copy of this article. On the slave trade from Mozambique to Brazil, see: Manolo Florentino, ‘Slave trade between Mozambique and the port of Rio de Janeiro, c. 1790–c. 1850, demographic, social and economic aspects’, in Benigna et al. (eds.), Slave Routes, 63–90.

168 Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, 324. The voyage in question originated in Rio de Janeiro. On the Mozambican slave diaspora, see Alpers, ‘Mozambique and “Mozambiques”’, especially 47–61.

169 Such may have the case with Le Moissonneur, outfitted at Saint-Malo, during 1776–8, and La Geneviève, out of Nantes, during 1782–4 (Mettas, La traite négrière, II, 762, and II, 623, respectively). Cotton textiles, originally from Asia and later from Europe, played a central role in the Angolan slave trade. Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison, 1988), 74.

170 MNA, JH 11, Inventaire ou Etat General des affaires de Srs Charoux et Lougnet Tant En Marchand, argent Complant, Bons, & Billets de Changes, Dettes actives qui Leurs sont Duës Meubles et Ymeubles, Esclaves que Dettes Passives, que les dits Sieurs Doivt à Divers, Tant en Europe, Lamérique, que dans La Colonie fait ce Jour 22 Juillet 1790.

171 Bauss, Rudy, ‘Indian and Chinese control of the Portuguese eastern empire (1770–1850)’, Purabhilekh-Puratatva 10 (1992), 1–19Google Scholar. My thanks to James C. Armstrong for providing me with a copy of this article.

172 E.g. Denys Lombard and Jean Aubin (eds.), Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea (New Delhi, 2000); Uma Das Gupta (comp.), The World of the Indian Ocean Merchant, 1500–1800: Collected Essays of Ashin Das Gupta (New Delhi, 2001).

173 Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 70–1. See also Alpers, ‘Mozambique and “Mozambiques”’, 51, 55.

174 Machado, ‘Gujarati Indian merchant networks’, 212, 223, 225.