196 Hubert Gerbeauslave trade in 1817, was equally tolerant of the slave-traders in Bourbon.
Repressive laws became more severe in 1820s but there was a world of dif-
ference between theory and practice. Hypocrisy often vied with inefficiency.
For every zealous governor, such as Hall in Mauritius or Milius in Bourbon,
there were ten accommodating judges, officials who dealt in the slave trade
themselves, corrupt police, and inhabitants fanatically supporting slavery.
In Bourbon, the gendarmes, who spent more in the taverns than they earned,
turned a blind eye when captives were disembarked, and the judges who had
interests on the island, demanded a superabundance of proof before they
condemned a guilty party, even when all the evidence was against him. In
Mauritius, the chief registrar responsible for the slave register, which was the
principal means of checking on the illicit trade, was himself an opulent importer
of slaves brought in secretly from East Africa. Investigations carried out in
Mauritius by a Royal Commission from 1826 to 1828 show that the slave trade
was practised there at least up to 1824. This needs to be studied further.
Research could be based on the London archives and the voluminous files of
the Mauritius Record Office (for example, series IA, IC and series IB which
contains the ' Minutes of Evidence and Other Records of the Eastern Enquiry
Commission, 1826-1828'.
The Seychelles archipelago played a specific part in this traffic. By virtue
of its geographical position, it served as a relay point, and by registering the
slaves it facilitated their re-exportation towards Mauritius. Local archives
shed light on the slave trade in the archipelago, particularly for the 1823-28
period (Seychelles Government Archives, at Port Victoria, Mahé).
In Réunion, a thorough study of the local archives has led me to conjec-
ture that at least 45,000 slaves arrived secretly, most of them between 1817
and a final date around 1831, although some arrivals apparently continued
into the 1840s (Gerbeau, 1972).
After the abolition of slavery, enforced in 1835 in Mauritius and in 1848
in Réunion, latent or derivative forms of slavery persisted. I referred above
to the methodological problem thus facing the historian of the slave trade.
While the traffic in Indian 'free employees' had its roots mainly in poverty,
that of the African coast, Madagascar and the Comoros was linked with the
continuance of slavery in those areas. A great deal remains to be discovered
about the manoeuvres governing the 'employment' of these slaves. Reports by
English consuls might well be supplemented by French archives, e.g. those
concerning Nossi-Bé, Sainte-Marie de Madagascar and Mayotte (Dépôt des
Archives d'Outre-Mer at Aix-en-Provence).
Mayotte was the only island in the Comoros which was annexed by
France in 1843 and was consequently subject to restrictions on the slave trade.
Throughout the rest of the archipelago the trade from East Africa continued.
On Great Comoro, the Sultan of Itzandra built a walled enclosure in the moun-