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The slave trade in the Indian Ocean 199

exported. In certain years, as many as 20,000 left Zanzibar, Kilwa Pate and
Pemba. Most of them were sent to Arabia and the Persian Gulf, particularly
Muscat. There, some of them were taken away by the 'Arabs of the North',
whilst othere were re-shipped to Bahrain, Karachi and Bushire, in Persia,
and some went as far as Baghdad and Isfahan. The length of the overland
journeys and sea voyages, the extent of the traffic despite the anti-slavery
struggle, and the serious consequences for Africa are dealt with in studies by
Newitt and Alpers, in their articles published in the Journal of African History,
in Alpers (1967), to which I shall return, and in the thesis by Renault (1971).
Touching in places on the borders of the Indian Ocean, the large-scale slave
trade on the Red Sea and along the Nile should also be mentioned. R. Pank-
hurst estimates that over 25,000 slaves a year were exported on an average
from Ethiopia up to 1865. The traffic had by no means ceased at the beginning
of the twentieth century. The slave trade declined slowly in the second half of
the nineteenth century in Egypt, Arabia and the Sudan, but controversy over
the figures continues, and in more than one region disquieting practices were
still occurring in the twentieth century.
The danger of persistence of the slave trade and slavery in the present
century so concerned the United Nations that it arranged to have the problem
studied. I refer the reader to the Engen Report in 1955 and the Mohamed Awad
Report. The latter recommended that absolute priority be given to the establish-
ment of a committee of experts on slavery.

Forms and avenues of research to be undertaken:

a tentative synopsis

As regards the ' slow abolition of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean ', there

are many avenues beckoning the historian. The period of this study should

extend from the second third of the nineteenth century into the twentieth.

Before the years 1830-60, with chronological variations depending upon the

sectors, it would seem a trifle rash to speak of a ' slow abolition '. The fifteenth

century saw the end of a phase of traditional slave trading that had lasted for

over a thousand years. It did not disappear, however, but was taken over and

stimulated by the colonial slave trade which was at its height in the second half

of the eighteenth century and the first third of the nineteenth. Then came the

period of secondary and clandestine forms of the Western slave trade accom-

panied and then outdone by the Muslim slave trade.

The study of these questions would be greatly facilitated by the publica-

tion of new inventories of archive sources. Valuable guides already exist and

might be used as models. For example, there are those of M. D. Wainwright

and N. Matthews.^4

The Guide to Sources of African History, prepared with the help and under