“The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean” The enormous interest which the African Diaspora in the New World has generated has tended to obscure an equally significant forced migration of black Africans from their homelands to alien societies-that vast exodus of enslaved human beings to the lands of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and South Asia which took place after the establishment of an Islamic world empire in the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era. Beginning some eight centuries before the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and not ending until several decades after the latter was halted, the movement of slaves across the Sahara, up the Nile valley and the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf and India probably accounted for the uprooting of as many black Africans from their societies as did the trans-Atlantic trade. Many people do not recognize the slavery that took place in the Indian Ocean, reason being that many historians believe they felt that there was no connection to those people. People only want to study what seems to be close to them, but little did we know that the Indian Ocean transported more slaves and also was in business longer transporting slaves to and from the continent of Asia. Coerced labor existed in the Indian Ocean before the arrival of the Europeans. Hall reports that the Arabs needed labor for plantation, mines and canals, and so captured Zan j and Abyssinians for transport to the Persian Gulf and that African Eunuchs were a major trade item in Aden.
The Essay on The Indian Ocean Trade Network 100 – 1500
The Indian Ocean Trade spread diseases and created more feuds, but mostly, it linked cultures, spread new religions, enhanced trading skills, and increased economic growth in several different regions of the world. Before the Indian Ocean Trade, most regions knew nothing of their neighboring civilizations. This trade network united the world. Because of it, just about all civilizations are ...
(Hall 1996, 15-16) Similarly Harris asserts that the East African slave trade was low in volume until the 19 th Century, supplying such diverse needs as laborers for date plantations in Basra, pearl divers for Bahrein, soldiers for Arabia, Persia and India, dock workers and sailors for Arab dhows, and concubines and servants for most Muslim countries. These forms of slavery should not be confused with the chattel slavery of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and had the possibility of freedom under Muslim Law. Some Africans rose to positions of power and wealth. African descended people were respected soldiers from Iran to Oman and India, later as soldiers and sailors aboard Portuguese ships they traveled to Indonesia and the Far East. In 15 th Century Bengal there were reportedly 8, 000 African slave soldiers and though palace intrigue Baba Shah established the African Dynasty in Bengal until 1493.
The Sidis Of Jan jira (an island 45 miles south of Bombay) were the naval guardians of the Coast from 1616 to 1760- allied with the Murals and others as the situation demanded. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as stated focuses upon the harshness of slavery. In the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade they were viewed as property while in India they had the choice to be raised up laterally within the kingdom. In America it was terribly different because once a slave always a slave.
