212 Summary report of the meeting of experts
on the African slave trade
at least ten centuries towards the Islamic countries, for which very little
precise information has been collected up to now.
An evaluation should be made of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean, which
lasted from ancient times to the twentieth century, much longer than
that in the Atlantic. Here again present estimates vary greatly: they
range from 1 to 5 million for the period from 1451 to 1870.
A very thorough study should be made of the post-abolition clandestine slave
trade in all its forms, particularly in the south Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Although much good work has already been done, the meeting considered
that in too many instances the establishment of the figures used was based on
a partial, or even partisan, critique of the sources and that the investigation
should therefore be broadened. However there should be preparation for the
further research to be carried out by basing it on the adoption of stricter working
methods.
While recognizing that regional or global quantification was necessary
in order to satisfy the legitimate concern for a proper assessment of the damage
caused to Africa, and also to make the requisite economic analysis, the meeting
hoped that the research entailed, which would certainly be of long duration,
would not block all the discussion and research that needs to be pursued in so
many other fields.
The meeting noted that hardly anyone disputed the fact that several
tens of millions of black Africans were uprooted from Africa and transported
to more or less distant receiving countries and that this drain, quantitatively
huge and qualitatively catastrophic, could not be compared, so far as its effects
were concerned, to the voluntary or at least free migration of Europeans to
North America in the nineteenth century.
Possibilities of improving our present state of knowledgeTwo main theoretical approaches emerged during the discussion, with some
experts on one side and some on the other. However, these approaches are not
methodologically irreconcilable, even though they are linked to different phil-
osophies or historical methods.
The inductive method is to present the slave trade, a logical and not
at all accidental phenomenon, in the context of world-wide social and economic
evolution.
The slave trade arose from the needs of the capitalist economy to develop
outside Africa, and variations in the scale of the drain from the African con-
tinent and in the distribution of slaves among the receiving countries reflected
the variations in those needs. Very different situations were mentioned as
between the Atlantic islands (Fernando Po, Sao Tomé, Cape Verde, Canaries-
Azores-Madeira), the Caribbean area, North and South America, the countries