In this chapter tomb paintings join the selection of texts (preserved on stone, papyrus, and leather) to show the role of dependence as a structural feature of pharaonic society. Foreigners were acquired through raiding and warfare, and settled in both existing and new communities. An actual trade in persons is also documented and varying aspects of the experience of such individuals is examined, as they were exploited by those who purchased them or passed them on as gifts. Changes over time in the vocabulary of dependence are discussed, as are the different types of work and production in which such dependents were involved. Non-free dependents were employed on the land, in animal herding, and in artisanal workshops, especially textiles, as well as in the home. The key economic role of Egyptian temples is a constant feature of the period.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Islamic frontier and the European colonial frontier met in the Central African interior, augmenting each other as well as clashing. The crucial variable was exploitation, not conquest; mobility and freedom from being accosted while collecting valuable goods (if necessary, forcefully) were key to personal advancement and to the political-economic mode of life. ‘Zariba’ is the Arabic term for the enclosures built to contain the goods (slaves, ivory, food, etc.) that the raiders were able to amass. Some zaribas were temporary, while others became more established, morphing into cities. The chapter focuses on some of the key people involved in these raiding projects to show the personal orientation and skills they developed and the kinds of encounters and confrontations they navigated as they attempted to claim privileged status, or to undermine another’s status. By the early twentieth century, French colonial officials had become leaders in forceful acquisition, either co-opting or eliminating most of their challengers. While the French colonial government saw itself as replacing the acquisition-oriented polities with one geared towards production and the management of people, the French operated in a context of penury, and, as a result, their imposition of a state-bureaucratic form ironically entrenched forceful acquisition as a tactic of rule and profit. Raiding and acquisition retained their prominence less because they expressed values than because they were an improvised response to conflicts of values between people with competing claims and interests.

Spain never managed to take control of the Sulu Archipelago, where the Sulu Sultanate thrived, particularly after c.1770, on a combination of trade and slave raiding. Maritime raiding was a central means of warfare for both the Sulu Sultanate and Spain during the protracted Moro Wars from 1565 to 1876, but from the second half of the eighteenth century, Spain began increasingly to label their adversaries 'pirates'. From the 1840s the Spanish Navy began to gain the upper hand in the struggle at sea, leading to a sharp decline in large-scale piracy and coastal raiding from the middle of the century. The lack of international recognition of Spain’s territorial claims over the Sulu Sultanate, however, hindered naval cooperation with the British and the Dutch for the purpose of suppressing piracy, which allowed petty piratical activity emanating from the Sulu Sea to continue. The United States took over Spain’s colony in the Philippines in 1899 and managed initially to maintain reasonable maritime security, although attacks against indigenous fishermen and Chinese traders and pearl fishers continued. Between 1907 and 1909 the last serious outbreak of piracy in the area occurred with the depredations of Jikiri and his band, which the Americans only defeated with considerable difficulty.