194 Hubert Gerbeau
It is perhaps in the microcosm of the Mascarene Islands that the multi-
plier effect on the slave trade of the intrusion of Europeans in the Indian Ocean
can best be analysed. The colonization of Bourbon and Ile de France (Mauritius)
gave rise to a need, as in the West Indies, for manpower from afar, and for
some fifty years slaves were brought from India, Senegal and the Gulf of Guinea.
At the same time cargoes of slaves were brought from Madagascar. These were
increased in the eighteenth century and reinforced by those from East Africa.
At first, the only suppliers were the Portuguese trading stations South of Cape
Delgado. In the second half of the century, slaves were also purchased from the
Muslims on the Zanguebar coast, i.e. from Cape Delgado to the Gulf of Aden.
From 1670 to 1810, the Mascarene Islands thus appear to have imported
approximately 160,000 slaves, 115,000 of them between 1769 and 1810. Of
these 160,000, 45 per cent were Malagasies, 40 per cent Africans from the east
coast, 13 per cent Indians and 2 per cent Africans from the west (Filliot, 1974).
In Bourbon, which accounted for approximately half the total traffic, the slave
population in 1808 is estimated to have been 53,726 persons, 23,013 of whom
were Creoles, 17,476 ' Mozambiques', 11,547 Malagasies and 1,690 Indians or
Malays (Wanquet, in press).
The volume of the traffic stimulated the activity of local slave dealers,
but it is difficult to say how many slaves were intended for Europeans and how
many went to supply the old traditional markets. Some of the latter operated
in an autonomous fashion, as for example the Egyptian markets along the Red
Sea which gave rise to a traffic in eunuchs and Abyssinian and Galla girls.
Other enterprises had a twofold object, as illustrated by Malagasies and
Muslims. From 1785 to 1823 the Malagasies organized their own raids on the
Comoro Islands and along the east coast of Africa, between Mafia and the
Kerimba archipelago. Froberville describes expeditions of 400 to 500 pirogues
carrying over 15,000 men. The extent of the phenomenon can be judged by
contemporary accounts and also by the living witness of oral traditions that
can still be heard on Great Comoro, Mayotte and along the Mozambique
coast, and by the size of the fortresses which were built there to withstand
attacks by Malagasy slave traders (Vérin, 1972).
Less spectacular, but part of the long history, was the Muslim slave trade.
On the east coast of Africa, Portuguese domination, though discontinuous and
unstable, included the capture of a transoceanic commercial system that
stretched from Mozambique to Canton. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries this resulted in 'an uninterrputed economic and cultural decline'
for the Muslim towns (Oliver, 1970). Nevertheless, in the lulls between pillaging
expeditions and revolts, Muslim ships pursued their traffic. The slave trade was
re-established on a large scale between 1622 and 1650 from the Zendj coast
to Bombay by Muslims from Muscat. Muslim ships are reported to have been
active at the end of the seventeenth century at Mogadishu, Kilwa and Zanzibar.