ABSTRACT
The renewed interest in the ‘Eastern’ slave trade out of Africa is very much to be welcomed since it should enable us to break out of the straitjacket of the nineteenth century British abolitionists which has hitherto hampered our understanding of the phenomenon. The precise quantification is also to be welcomed, although the temptation to stretch the limited data we have beyond their statistical capabilities, especially the temptation to project backwards centuries upon centuries from the few firm figures of the nineteenth century, must be resisted. The Eastern slave trade, as much as its Western counterpart, was a historical phenomenon tied up with the prevailing modes of production in different places and at different times, and its contours cannot merely be deduced statistically. One can go further and say that the rise and fall of the 18th–19th century East African slave trade was in many ways a new phenomenon tied up with capitalism, and it had its own characteristics which cannot be dragged beyond their historical depths.
