214 Summary report of the meeting of experts
on the African slave trade
and in the region of the Persian Gulf, however, it was important that intense
and speedy action should be taken before the disappearance of elderly witnesses
able to provide both information on the slave trade and important linguistic
material.
To increase our information on the transplantation of African cultures,
a careful survey should be undertaken, rapidly and in depth, of all the traces
of African languages in the three Americas. This study might initially be under-
taken through co-operation between African linguistic specialists and American
scholars, pending the creation of institutes of African linguistics, particularly
in the Caribbean area.
In Africa, a systematic mapping should be undertaken of destroyed or
deserted villages wherever they can validly be linked to the slave trade.
In the Caribbean, Brazil and North America, immediate action should
be taken systematically to assemble objects related to the slave trade, or objects
which have African prototypes.
In a more general vein, the present vagueness of definitions relating
to the ethnic origin of the transported slaves led the meeting to recommend
that scholars should not be satisfied with vague epithets referring to the embar-
kation area in Africa (e.g. 'Congo', 'Angolan') or to a general linguistic group
(e.g. 'Bantu').
Interesting examples were given of the results obtainable when greater
detail is sought. In the Cape Verde Islands between 1834 and 1856, a register
gives 5,890 names of slaves of whom 141, who had not been baptized, were
entered under their African names with an indication of their origin (Mandingo,
Joloff, Mandyak, Flup, etc.). On the other hand, the example of the Malays in
the Indian Ocean should be carefully distinguished from that of the 'Male'
of Brazil. In connection with these latter the meeting received divergent infor-
mation. However, the word 'Male' is synonymous with Muslim, as is 'Fulani'
in Guyana.
More generally still, reference was made on several occasions to the
advantage of having a descriptive graph of the quantitative evolution of the
slave trade. The information provided by recent studies on this point could be
gradually corrected and made more accurate as research methods become more
sensitive. Such an overall picture of the phenomenon, in conjunction with
regional and country graphs, would make it easier to perceive the variations
and contradictions of the slave trade. It would also contribute to emphasizing
the importance of never overlooking chronological factors in any quantitative
assessment of the phenomenon.Effects of the slave tradeThe results so far achieved by research vary considerably. Information becomes