A commentary on the slave trade 293roads, canals, mosques and public buildings, etc. He also imported Africans to
serve in his army, a point of interest in terms of African settlers in India.
But the key point I wish to make here is that in addition to promoting
trade with Persians and Arabs, he negotiated also with the Portuguese and
British and this aspect of Ambar's contribution has not received much attention
to my knowledge.
A different aspect of this relates to relations between Ambar and another
area ruled by Africans, Janjira Island which emerged under Africans (Siddis)
in the late fifteenth century and became a critical naval force on the north-
west coast of India. Ambar sought an alliance with them in 1616 and failed;
the Moguls negotiated an alliance about which an Indian military historian
has written :
It is only when the Siddis of Janjira offered their services to the Moguls against the
Maratha power on the sea that Arangazib (the Mogul emperor) gave half-hearted
recognition to a fleet being organized on a reasonable scale. During 200 years of
Mogul greatness, the Indian Sea was under alien control.^5
The Moguls thus began to subsidize the navy of the Janjira Siddis in exchange
for an alliance.
Another Indian scholar, Jadanath Sarkar, has written that Shivaji, the
Maratha hero :
achieved this [building a Maratha nation] in the teeth of the opposition of four
mighty Powers like the Mogul empire, Bijapur [another Indian kingdom], Portuguese
India, and the Abyssinians of Janjira.^6
The Janjira Siddis were subsequently wooed by several European powers
—Portugal, Holland, Great Britain. Alliances were made during the seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for the protection of European trade in
north-western India before Janjira succumbed to British colonial rule in 1834.
There is clearly a need to investigate these economic, political and diplomatic
dimensions of Africans in India.
The better known revolts of Africans in Bengal Province during the
fifteenth century, as well as Ambar's usurpation of power deserve intensive
research.
In addition to economic effects, certain social and political consequences
should be explored more intensively. How and why did African slaves rise to
economic and political power in various parts of Asia? They acquired power,
frequently if not always with Arab support, among the northern Aryans and
among the darker southerners, of present-day India in particular. Yet, full
assimilation has not occurred, nor has it been an expressed policy goal of
present leaders. Why? And how significant is the fact? What have been the