The slave trade in the Indian Ocean 185domain whose global nature cannot escape him. That it should be exceedingly
hard for him to grasp its components does not surprise him. The first difficulty
he meets with is that of the ill-defined limits of the oceanic area. As an initial
hypothesis, he may consider that any phenomenon involving the transport
of slaves from Africa or arriving there via the Indian Ocean falls within his
purview. More difficult to solve are the problems relating to the immensity
of the geographic sectors, the human diversity in the coastal countries and
islands, and the length of the periods concerned. Each of these aspects has
been dealt with in the works of many specialists who usually have no connection
with one another. The historian of Zanzibar or of Mauritius in the nineteenth
century had little occasion to do any work on India or China in the fifteenth
century, and vice versa. This is a drawback, but not a serious worry ; that, as
we shall see, stems from the very nature of the subject-matter involved.
The specialist in the slave trade is a historian of men and not of mer-
chandise, and he cannot accept the silence of those transported. Traders,
sailors, administrators and planters cannot give him enough information.
Would one write the history of Auschwitz drawing only on Nazi sources?
This comparison makes us aware of a twofold danger : those who, using only
one type of document, see but a part of the picture and are therefore biased,
and those who, reacting against deception, put their own interpretation on
the thoughts of silent actors and are therefore overbold. The study of the
transported slaves is not as simple as that of deported persons during the last
war. The zeal of the abolitionists sometimes lights the way, but often obscures
it too. Does the historian himself remain uninfluenced by the irrationalism of
a history where opposing schools of thought seem to be divided on the basis of
colour, where some side with the victims and others with the executioners?
Whether this difficulty is felt or not, it is reflected in the tone and arrangement
of published works. Those who are more technically minded will be criticized
for their dispassionate indifference, others, more givan to polemics, will be
taken to task for their unscientific bombast. Those who are concerned about
the dearth of records become over-meticulous, counting, standing up and
knocking down their Negroes like skittles; others, obsessed by the existence
of this forest of fossilized men, of whom only patchy traces remain, launch
into bold hypotheses and parade their millions of captives in flamboyant,
funereal processions. At best, must the historian not borrow from both schools
of thought, introducing a human dimension into the infinitely detailed analyses
and building up his general assumptions with scientific accuracy? But even so,
will he be able to force the slaves out of their silence? The ways of approach
are narrow, and often very indirect, as we shall see in the last part, but the
postulate that I have advanced on the content of a history of the slave trade
now inclines me in this direction.
If the requested study on the slave trade is taken to mean a history of