Africa and the European Slave Trade
Many developments took place in sub-Saharan Africa from the fifteenth through the eighteenth
centuries. Major regional kingdoms were established in several sectors. Bantu immigration to the south
persisted, spreading agriculture. Conversions to Islam increased in the area below the Sahara, particularly in
the eighteenth century, and European adventurers and traders made their first contacts with the vast African
subcontinent.
Because many African societies lacked writing and instead expressed their values and history through
art and oral traditions, during this period many key political and cultural developments were not recorded
using conventional historical records. Documentation focuses on the European impact, which was not the only
major current of the period; and it focuses on European, not African, perceptions. This poses unusual dangers
for the student of early modern African history in terms of incompleteness and distortion.
The European arrival, however, was a major new ingredient in African history. Because most
Europeans worked through local traders and set up only small outposts of their own, their cultural impact
before 1800 was limited. Even their political impact was highly localized, except in a few regions such as the
Dutch-held Cape region in the south. African rulers used European funds and armaments in their own political
rivalries, and while westerners were often on the stage, they did not yet write the script. Direct penetration into
the interior was rare. However, Europe's vast appetite for slaves, intended for use in the Americas, did have
huge consequences for many regions, reducing population and economic vitality despite the collaboration of
many African rulers and traders in the process.
The following three selections range from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century and suggest aspects of
European-African interaction. They are taken from the east coast, where European activity was less intense
than in parts of the west. Coastal settlements along the Indian Ocean already participated in an extensive
trading network dominated by Arabs. The Islamic religion had won many adherents, and Swahili, a written
language, had developed well before the eighteenth century.
The first document, written around 1520 in Arabic, offers an unusual opportunity to glimpse directly
African reactions to the first Portuguese explorers, colored of course by the Muslim author's hostility to
Christianity. The second document, drawn from the same region on the coast around the port city of Kilwa
Kisiwani, is a characteristic slave-trade treaty drawn up between a French adventurer and the Sultan of Kilwa.
Around the same period a French ship's captain in the slave trade offered a businessman's approach to human
trade, in which the view of slaves as profit-and-loss commodities comes through clearly.
While the documents sketch European activities in the period, they also allow some evaluation of diverse
African reactions and the reasons why some Africans believed they profited from Western ventures.
AFRICAN AND WESTERN INTERACTION
I. REACTIONS TO THE FIRST PORTUGUESE ARRIVALS IN EAST AFRICA (1520)
During al-Fudail's reign there came news from the land of Mozambique that men had come from the
land of the Franks. They had three ships, and the name of their captain was al-Mirati [Dom Vasco da Gama]
After a few days there came word that the ships had passed Kilwa and had gone on to Mafia. The lord of Mafia
rejoined, for they thought they [the Franks] were good and honest men. But those who knew the truth confirmed
that they were corrupt and dishonest persons who had only come to spy out the land in order to seize it. And
they determined to cut the anchors of their ships so that they should drift ashore and be wrecked by the
Muslims. The Franks learnt of this and went on to Malindi. When the people of Malindi saw them, they knew
they were bringers of war and corruption, and were troubled with very great fear. They gave them all they
asked, water, food, firewood, and everything else. And the Franks asked for a pilot to guide them to India, and
after that back to their own land – God curse it!
Then in the [next] year…there came al-Kabitan Bidharis [Dom Pedro Alvarez Cabral] with a fleet of
ships. He asked the people of Kilwa to send water and firewood and desired that the sultan or his son should go
on board to converse with him. The amir and the people of the land decided it best to send him an important
citizen. So they sent Sayyid Luqllian ibn al-Malik al-Adil. They dressed him in royal robes and sent him over.
Then they wanted water, and the Kilwa people drew it in a number of waterskins, and the porters carried
it to the shore. Then they called out to the Portuguese to come ashore and take it. As they were coming, one of
the principal slaves of the Amir Hajj Ibrahim, who was surnamed Hajj Kiteta, ordered the water carriers [of
Kilwa] to carry the water away. So they did so. When the Christians disembarked on shore to fetch water, they
saw neither much nor little water, but none at all. So they went back to their ships in anger. They set off again –
God curse them! – to Malindi, and received everything they wanted in the way of water, firewood and food.
When the Franks went to their own land, they left seven convert Christians at Malindi. They told the people that
two should remain there, and four were to be sent to Gujarat to Sultan Mahmud and one to Kilwa. Then the
Portuguese left, and the four men went to India and were circumcised and became Muslims.
II. A SLAVE-TRADE AGREEMENT (1776)
A copy of M. Morice's Treaty with the King of Kilwa written in Arabic on the reverse side, with two
identical octagonal seals inscribed in white in Arabic. On the front was the translation in these terms: We the
King of Kilwa, Sultan Hasan son of Sultan Ibrahim son of Sultan Yusuf the Shirazi of Kilwa, give our word to
M. Morice, a French national, that we will give him a thousand slaves annually at twenty piastres each and that
he [M. Morice] shall give the King a present of two piastres for each slave. No other but he shall be allowed to
trade for slaves, whether French, Dutch, Portuguese, &c. [etc.], until he shall have received his slaves and has
no wish for more. This contract is made for one hundred years between him and us. To guarantee our word we
give him the fortress in which he may put as many cannon as he likes and his Flag. The French, the Moors and
the King of Kilwa will henceforth be one. Those who attack one of us we shall both attack. Made under our
signs and seals the 14th X. 1776 signed Morice.
And further down is written:
We the undersigned Captain and Officer of the ship Abyssinie, commissioned by M. Morice,
certify to all whom it may concern that the present treaty was made in our presence at Kilwa
on the 14th X. 1776 signed Pichard, Pigné,-Bririard.
III. REPORT OF A FRENCH SLAVE-TRADER (1784-1785)
The country is superb and pleasing once one has extricated oneself from the forests of half submerged
trees called Mangroves. Judging from the ruins of stone-built houses, which can be seen not only on the island
of Kilwa but also on the southern side of the pass, it appears that this was once a very important town and that it
must have had a big trade; at Kilwa one can see the whole of a big mosque built in stone whose arches are very
well constructed. Within the last three years a pagoda which stood at the southern extremity, and which was
very curious looking, fell. Finally, this country produces millet, indigo, superb cotton, silkier even than the
cotton produced on the Ile de Bourbon, sugar cane, gums in abundance, brown cowries of the second sort which
are currency at Jiddah and in Dahomey, besides elephant ivory which is very common, as are elephants, and
lastly Negroes – superb specimens if they are selected with care. This selection we cannot make ourselves,
being at the discretion of the traders, who are now aware of our needs and who know that it is absolutely
essential for us to sail at a given season in order to round the Cape of Good Hope. In addition to competition
amongst ourselves the expeditions have never been properly thought out and always left to chance, and so it
happens that three or four ships find themselves in the same place and crowd each other out. This would not
happen if there were a properly organized body and the expeditions were planned to fit in with the seasons and
the quantity of cargo and the means of using up surplus also planned, since it is not the business of seamen to
concern themselves with correspondence and administration. To my knowledge, the trading that has been done
in this port for the last three years, without counting traders not personally known to me, is as follows:
A total, to my knowledge, of 4,193, and certainly there must have been more in three years.
It is clear that if this number of captives, i.e. 4,193, who were traded for at least in this period of three
years, cost forty piastres each, this represents a sum of 167,720 Piastres, raised for the most part from [French
colonies] or from France direct. It is therefore important not only to safeguard this trade but also to find a way
of spending rather fewer Piastres, which would be quite possible if one considers that the piastres which we
give them for their captives do not remain long in their hands and that they almost immediately give them to the
Moors and Arabs who provide them with their needs which are rice, millet, lambs, tunics, shirts, carpets,
needles, swords, shoes, and silk materials for dresses and linings. The Arabs obtain most of these things from
Surat, and why should we not get them direct from there ourselves? We should make the profit they make, and
we should employ men and ships and we should keep a good number of our piastres which would remain in the
lie de France and in Bourbon; more certainly still, if privately owned ships from Europe or these islands could
not go to the coast of Mozambique and if ships belonging to a private company sent out from Europe could
participate in this trade only by means of piastres taken to Kilwa, it can be estimated how much we have paid
into the hands of the Portuguese at Mozambique, Kerimba and… [omitted: Ibo] where they make us pay fifty or
sixty piastres each , for them. This does not include presents and tiresome vexations. What need is there to give
our money to the Portuguese, when we have the means to operate among ourselves and when we can use our
own industry and keep our money? I have heard for a long time talk of establishing a settlement or trading post
in Madagascar. Truly, seeing the number of idle hands we have and the great number of poor and needy and
foundlings in our almshouses it is surprising that we have not yet considered this plan, at least as far as that part
of the island which we have most visited over a long period is concerned, and also, in certain ports which are
particularly well situated, trading posts could be established without straining the resources of the state.
All selections from G.S.P. Freeman-Greenville, The East African Coast (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), pp. 47-48, 191, 196-197.
Copyright @ 1962 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission. Selection I from An Arabic History of Kilwa Kisiwani
(1520). Selection II from Monsieur Morice, A Slaving Treaty with the Sultan of Kilwa ( 1776) .Selection III from J. Crassons de
Medeuil, The French Slave Trade in Kilwa (1784-1785).