The East African Slave Trade

Podcast Transcript

Most people are familiar with the transatlantic slave trade, which enslaved over ten million people over a period of centuries.

Fewer people are aware of the other African slave trade, which was centered in Eastern Africa along the Indian Ocean. It was centuries older and lasted decades longer than the Atlantic slave trade.

While the systems differed, the human costs were equally staggering.

Learn more about the East African Slave Trade on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The Indian Ocean slave trade, more commonly known as the East African slave trade, holds the dark distinction of being one of the longest-running systems of human trafficking in global history.

Originating from ancient, localized networks, it saw significant growth after the 7th century with the expansion of Islamic commerce. The trade reached its greatest intensity during the 18th and 19th centuries, finally ending early in the 20th century due to a combination of European imperial action and international anti-slavery efforts.

Slavery existed in Africa, as it did all over the world, long before external trade networks formalized it. Indigenous forms of bondage across the continent were varied and were often distinct from the chattel slavery that would later emerge through contact with Arab and European traders.

In most African societies, slavery was embedded in broader systems of social hierarchy and obligation. Slaves were typically acquired through warfare, or as punishment for crimes like debt or serious offenses against the community, or through ritual tribute systems.

Crucially, in many African cultures, slaves were not simply property. They could own goods, marry, have children, who were often born free, and in some cases, rise to positions of considerable authority.

In the Sahel kingdoms like Mali and Songhai, royal slaves sometimes commanded armies or administered provinces, wielding more power than many free subjects.

Slavery in these societies also functioned as a form of social absorption. Captives taken in war were often integrated into households and kin networks over generations.

The distinction between “slave” and “subordinate family member” was often fluid. In stateless societies, slavery served to bind outsiders, people without kin networks, into the social fabric, albeit at the bottom of it.

That said, it would be wrong to romanticize pre-trade African slavery. Harsh plantation-style slavery did exist in some regions, particularly in parts of West Africa and the Swahili Coast.

The suffering of enslaved people was real and widespread. But the scale and brutality intensified dramatically once demand for enslaved labor from outside of Africa entered the picture.

The East African slave trade is one of the oldest and longest-running forced migration systems in human history, predating the transatlantic trade by nearly a millennium.

The trade’s roots lie in the expansion of Islam across the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf in the 7th century. Arab and Persian merchants had long navigated the Indian Ocean using monsoon winds, trading with the East African coast. They called the region Zanj, meaning “black” in Arabic.

As Islamic civilization expanded and its economies grew, demand for enslaved labor increased sharply. The first documented large-scale movement of enslaved Africans into the Arab world dates to around the 7th and 8th centuries.

It should be noted that that Europeas did take part in the East African slave trade; however, the vast majority of the slave trade in this region was conducted with the Islamic world.

The primary method of enslavement was armed raiding. Arab merchants and their African allies organized large, well-armed caravans that penetrated deep into the African interior.

Villages were attacked at night or dawn, men who resisted were killed, and women, children, and surviving men were bound and marched to the coast. The violence of the raids was immense: for every person enslaved, estimates suggest several more died resisting or fleeing.

Captured people were force-marched hundreds of miles to the coast, often in neck yokes, with inadequate food and water. Mortality on these overland marches was catastrophic.

Historical accounts suggest that for every enslaved person who reached the coast alive, one or more died on the journey. The explorer David Livingstone, who witnessed these caravans in the 1860s, described the routes as littered with bones and bodies.

By the 10th to 12th centuries, a string of city-states had emerged along the East African coast: Kilwa, Mombasa, Malindi, Zanzibar, Sofala, and others. These Swahili cities, blending Bantu African and Arab Islamic cultures, became the commercial hubs of the Indian Ocean world.

They exported ivory, gold, iron, and enslaved people to Arabia, Persia, India, and even China.

The primary market of the East African slave trade was Zanzibar, which, under the Omani Sultanate, became the largest slave market in the Indian Ocean region. At its peak in the 19th century, between 40,000 and 50,000 enslaved people passed through Zanzibar annually.

The market at Stone Town was a scene of profound human degradation with enslaved people being publicly inspected, separated from family members, and sold to the highest bidder.

The business proved lucrative, and merchants traveled across the Indian Ocean, carrying goods such as ivory, shells, and enslaved people.

As empires in the Middle East, such as the Islamic Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire, grew and developed, the slave trade became a primary source of wealth for them.

Just as slavery existed in Africa, so too did slavery exist in the Middle East prior to the East African slave trade.

The practice of slavery in the Middle East had previously consisted of enslaving Eastern and Central Europeans, mostly Slavs.

However, as military power grew in Europe, it effectively halted further Islamic expansion. This restriction cut off previous sources of slaves for Arabs, prompting them to turn their focus toward Africa as an alternative source.

One interesting effect of the increase in Islamic trade routes was the spread of Islam wherever traders went.

Many merchants in Africa chose to convert to Islam, as doing so helped them build more contacts, expand their trading influence, and gain favor with business partners.

In Islam, it is not allowed to enslave other Muslims. This meant that any East and North Africans who followed Islam were safe from being captured and put into slavery.

The trade in slaves increased dramatically after the 9th century, when Arabs took control of the Swahili Coast and its sea trade routes. The primary group who were enslaved were the Zanj, a group of Bantu people living on the East African Coast.

The Zanj were taken for centuries from their homes and shipped to countries across the Indian Ocean. There were reports of Zanj slaves from as far away as China.

The Africans slaves worked as harem guards, teachers, and field workers. Because of these positions, men were often castrated, keeping them “safe” to be around women and serve as trustworthy servants.

The lives of Zanj slaves were terrible. Many were brought into the Arab world to work on plantations, where they did strenuous agricultural labor. As the slaves took on more and more plantation work, other Arabs found it demeaning and refused to take plantation positions, leading to the demand for enslaved people to increase.

There were major differences between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean slave trades.

Europeans typically preferred enslaved men to perform physical labor on plantations. Arab merchants focused primarily on slaves for sexual purposes, meaning they mainly sold girls and women as concubines and harems, or as sex slaves. This meant that women were sold for twice the price of men, at a 3-to-1 ratio.

Male slaves were still put into roles with difficult physical labor, working in fields or as guards. The process of castration was considered to be a brutal procedure, resulting in many deaths.

Multiple uprisings by enslaved Zanj people occurred between 869 and 883, specifically in Barsa, modern-day Iraq. This rebellion grew to have half a million slaves and claimed the lives of thousands of people in Iraq. However, despite the uprisings, the slave trade continued.

The Trans Saharan Slave system was a massive part of the Arab slave trade. This saw Arabs transport enslaved people from across the Sahara Desert to North Africa through Trans-Saharan Caravans.

Most of the enslaved people who went through the Trans-Saharan Caravan were brought from Sub-Saharan Africa to countries in North Africa or the Middle East.

The origins of this part of the slave trade can be traced back to the 3rd Century BC, where Egyptian Kings crossed the Nile to capture prisoners of war, turn them into slaves, and send them North.

The Trans-Saharan route continued into the Middle Ages when Arabs, acquired slaves through violent raids and sendt them across the Sahara desert on brutal forced marches to be sold on slave markets.

The routes across the desert depended on the intended destination. Some were taken by boat down the Nile River; others were taken to different ports; and others were forced to walk for long periods. To cross the desert, merchants received assistance from local ethnic groups better equipped to survive the brutal, scorching conditions.

Local groups of nomadic people served as guards, camel drivers, and guides along the routes. Despite guides, the journey across the Sahara proved deadly, as caravans of thousands sometimes disappeared without a trace.

The Trans-Saharan route continued long into the 19th and 20th centuries, with raids continuing to occur, and over a million enslaved people were made to complete the brutal journey across the desert.

During this time, an estimated 66% of all value shipped across the Sahara was made up of slaves.

Many of the initial protections from enslavement, like having converted to Islam, no longer mattered in the 19th century, as African Muslims who should’ve been exempt from slave status were captured and sold.

The slave trade in the Arab world was alive and thriving long after the transatlantic slave trade ended, effectively contining into the into the 20th century.

The end of the slave trade only ended after large amounts of international pressure were applied. This pressure began in 1873, when Great Britain pressured Zanzibar’s Sultan, Seyyid Barghash, to sign a treaty making the slave trade in his region illegal.

The British played a massive role in ending the slave trade by making deals with local African rulers, offering protection against slave kingdoms, and capturing slave ships to save the enslaved people on board.

This resulted in a shift in focus elsewhere, moving to islands like Madagascar. So, while the slave trade was suppressed, it was not ended.

As for the Trans-Saharan routes, efforts to abolish the slave trade were primarily led by Britain and France. This was done by France and Britain outlawing slavery in their African Territories, making the selling, exporting, and importing of slaves in their territories illegal.

Despite outlawing the practice, the slave trade still occurred, with tens of thousands of people still being enslaved and sold. Because there was still a market for slaves, there were still people willing to meet the demand.

By the mid-20th century, International pressure to end slavery began to really take force. The League of Nations and the United Nations formed different groups and committees to put pressure on countries where slavery was still practiced.

The East African slave trade is far less well-known than the transatlantic slave trade. Yet it began centuries earlier and continued well into the 20th century. The total number of people enslaved in the East African slave trade was comparable to the number enslaved in West Africa, but over a longer period of time.

Nevertheless, both systems represented vast networks of exploitation that caused enormous suffering and permanently reshaped global history.