ABSTRACT
In the conventional view, Indian Ocean World (IOW) slavery shared the same essential features as the Atlantic slave system. Studies, inspired by the Atlantic model, have concentrated overwhelmingly on the export of East Africans by Arabs to Zanzibar and the Persian Gulf, and by Europeans to European enclaves in the IOW, notably the Mascarene Islands and the Cape. At these destinations, imported chattel labour underpinned “slave modes of production”.
