ABSTRACT
In the conventional view, Indian Ocean World (IOW) slavery shared the same essential features as the Atlantic slave system. Studies, inspired by the Atlantic model, have concentrated overwhelmingly on the export of East Africans by Arabs to Zanzibar and the Persian Gulf, and by Europeans to European enclaves in the IOW, notably the Mascarene Islands and the Cape. At these destinations, imported chattel labour underpinned “slave modes of production”. What is missing from the bulk of these studies is an authentic IOW dimension. This is
generally true even of the few studies of other forms of slavery indigenous to the IOW.1
This contribution is offered as a corrective to conventional views of IOW slavery. It first defines the term “Indian Ocean World” and discusses its historic significance as the location of the first “global economy”. It then analyses the meaning and significance in IOW history of the slave trade and slavery. In order to distinguish forms of servitude in the IOW from those in the Atlantic
World, it is vital to establish the meaning and historical significance of the IOW – a concept fundamentally different from that of the “Atlantic” or “Pacific” World. It was introduced from the 1980s by Asia-centric historians in order to counter Eurocentric historiography that emphasised Europe as the centre of the first global economy and, from the “Age of Discoveries”, European domination of the major commodities and sea lanes of the Indian Ocean arena (Wallerstein, 1974). Instead, Asia-centric historians posited Asia as the centre of the first global economy, one that developed by at least AD 1000 – possibly much earlier – and which remained dominant until at least the mid-eighteenth century. Some historians would argue it remained dominant until the early nineteenth century.2
