Forms of Slave Trade
Senior 6 · History
Forms of Slave Trade
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
In the nineteenth century three bundles of caravan routes tied the interior of East and Central Africa to the Indian Ocean. Study the map and note where each route began, which peoples controlled it, and where it met the sea.
All three routes ended at ports facing Zanzibar, and that is the key to the whole system. The island was the market, the bank and the customs house of the trade. From Zanzibar, ivory went to India, Europe and America, and enslaved people went to the island's own clove plantations, to Arabia and the Persian Gulf, and to the sugar islands of the western Indian Ocean. Rwanda, marked for orientation, lay just beyond the caravans' main roads, a point you will return to at the end of the lesson.
Definition
Long-Distance trade: in East African history, the nineteenth-century caravan trade that linked the interior (from Buganda and the lakes to eastern Congo and Katanga) with the Swahili coast and Zanzibar, dealing above all in ivory and enslaved people.
Porter (Kiswahili mpagazi): a carrier who walked with a caravan carrying a load on the head or shoulder. Many porters were free, paid workers, especially Nyamwezi; others were enslaved.
Hongo: a toll paid by a caravan to a local ruler for the right to pass through his territory or trade there.
Plantation economy: an economy built on large farms growing one cash crop for export with forced or cheap labour, like the clove plantations of Zanzibar and Pemba.
| Factor | How it helped the trade grow |
|---|---|
| Omani rule in Zanzibar | Seyyid Said, Sultan of Oman, made Zanzibar his capital in 1840. He encouraged clove planting and welcomed foreign merchants, turning the island into the commercial centre of the coast. |
| Plantations | The clove plantations of Zanzibar and Pemba, and later grain plantations on the coast, needed a constant supply of enslaved workers. |
| World demand for ivory | East African ivory was prized in India, Europe and North America for bangles, piano keys, billiard balls and combs. |
| Indian finance | Indian merchants and bankers in Zanzibar advanced credit in goods to caravan leaders, to be repaid in ivory and captives when the caravan returned. |
| Trade goods | Cotton cloth (much of it from America, known as merikani), beads, brass and copper wire, and guns were in demand in the interior. |
| African trading peoples | The Nyamwezi, the Kamba and the Yao already traded over long distances and organised their own caravans before coastal merchants moved inland. |
| Demand for enslaved people abroad | Arabia, the Persian Gulf and the French plantation islands of the Indian Ocean bought captives shipped from the coast. |
A caravan could number hundreds or even thousands of people. At its head was a leader, often a coastal Arab or Swahili merchant, or a Nyamwezi or Yao trader, with armed guards, guides and a long line of porters. The journey from the coast to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika could take months.
| Person | Role in the trade |
|---|---|
| Tippu Tip (Hamad bin Muhammad al-Murjabi, born in the 1830s, died 1905) | Zanzibari trader who built a trading and raiding empire in Manyema, west of Lake Tanganyika, dealing in ivory and captives; later appointed a governor by King Leopold's Congo Free State. |
| Mirambo (about 1840 to 1884) | Nyamwezi ruler of Urambo who built a state with an army of young fighters, controlled routes near Tabora and fought the coastal merchants there for control of the trade. |
| Msiri (died 1891) | Nyamwezi trader who founded a kingdom in Katanga, exchanging copper, ivory and captives for guns. |
Warning
Not only "Arab" trade. Calling it simply "the Arab slave trade" hides who did what. Omani Arabs ruled Zanzibar and led many caravans, but Swahili merchants, Indian financiers, Nyamwezi, Yao and Kamba traders, and African rulers such as Mirambo and Msiri all took part, and European and American demand for ivory paid for much of it. Name the groups, as you did for the other trades.
| For East and Central Africa | For the wider world |
|---|---|
| Economic. The interior was drawn into the world market; some chiefs and traders grew rich; new goods such as cloth and guns spread; elephant herds were destroyed over huge areas. | Economic. Zanzibar became one of the richest ports of the Indian Ocean; Indian, Omani, European and American merchants profited. |
| Political. New trader-states rose (Mirambo's Urambo, Msiri's Katanga); guns made warfare deadlier; weaker communities were destroyed or absorbed. | Political. Britain used the campaign against the slave trade to gain influence over the Sultan of Zanzibar, a first step towards colonial rule. |
| Social and demographic. Raided regions such as Manyema and the lands around Lake Nyasa lost many people and lived in fear; families were broken up. | Social. Enslaved East Africans formed communities in Arabia, the Gulf, India and the islands of the Indian Ocean. |
| Cultural. Kiswahili spread inland as the language of trade, and Islam gained followers in trading towns such as Tabora and Ujiji. | Knowledge. European explorers and missionaries travelled on the caravan routes, often with caravan porters, and their reports prepared the way for conquest. |
Important
Source analysis: a grave in London. The Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone died in 1873 at Chitambo's village, in today's Zambia. His African companions carried his body to the coast, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, London, in 1874. The inscription on his grave reads:
"Brought by faithful hands over land and sea here rests David Livingstone, missionary, traveller, philanthropist […]. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, to abolish the desolating slave trade, of Central Africa, where with his last words he wrote, 'All I can add in my solitude, is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world.'"
Read it twice. It joins three aims, to evangelise, to explore and to abolish, in one sentence, just as British policy joined anti-slavery, Christian missions and influence in Africa. It calls Africa's geography "undiscovered secrets", although Africans had lived there and traded along these routes for generations. And the "faithful hands" who carried the body more than a thousand kilometres are not named: they were his African companions, among them Susi and Chuma.
Tip
Compare, don't just describe. The unit's key competence asks you to compare the forms of slave trade. Build a grid with the three trades as columns and five rows: period, routes and destinations, who organised it, scale, and why it ended. A comparison question answered with a grid-based plan (similarities first, then differences) always scores higher than three separate stories.
Important
Discuss: Rwanda and the caravans. Rwanda's kings kept the coastal caravans away from the kingdom for most of the nineteenth century, although coastal goods such as cloth and beads reached it through neighbouring markets such as Karagwe. Using the map, suggest why Rwanda could keep the caravans out while Buganda and the Nyamwezi became deeply involved. What might Rwanda have gained and lost by staying outside the trade?
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the map, the tables, the definitions and the exercises. This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
