Slave Trade and Urban Slavery on the Swahili Coast from Medieval Times to Abolition
Authors: Vernet-Habasque Thomas 
Published: April 2024

Swahili culture is an African, Islamic, coastal, and urban-oriented culture that developed on the eastern coast of Africa. The Swahili coast extends from southern Somalia to Mozambique and to the offshore islands. Urban settlements of various sizes, including prosperous stone towns, were numerous on the coast. The Swahili were engaged in maritime trade and acted as middlemen between the Indian Ocean networks and the mainland networks held by neighboring non-Islamic communities. As evidenced by the earliest historical sources, slave trading and slavery were common practices along the coast, as in other African or Islamic societies. Slavery was regulated by Koranic principles and legitimized by Islamic discourses. Domination and hierarchization were also based on paternalism and the opposition between “civilization” and “barbarity,” the coast and the mainland. Yet, dependence was complex: chattel slavery was just one form of dependence, and like clients, slaves were valued as much as followers as they were producers. As such, slavery was also characterized by patron–client relationships.

The boom of the plantation economy during the 19th century has overshadowed the study of slavery and the slave trade on the coast through the longue durée, and this latter perspective also helps with stepping back from an external (i.e., Arabo-centric) angle, focusing on the Busaidi state of Zanzibar and the experience of slavery in the Middle East. During the Middle Ages, the slave trade from the coast was steady but not massive, mostly furnishing demand in the Gulf and southern Arabia. Networks are better known during the early modern era thanks to a much larger body of evidence. The Swahili never produced slaves but obtained them through contact with their trading partners. Mainland slave trade networks were not widespread, and major exporting areas were always specific: mostly Madagascar until the mid-18th century, northern Mozambique and the Lake Nyasa regionand, later in the 19th century, the hinterland of the Tanganyika coast and the region of Lake Tanganyika. The spread of global capitalism, the boom of the plantation economy, and the economic prosperity from the 1840s led to a dramatic rise of slavery on the coast, where approximately 40 to 65 percent of the population was servile around the 1880s. Slaves were ubiquitous in the urban context and did all sorts of work, from domestic female slaves to skilled workers and hired slaves with a large autonomy. The urban environment offered more opportunities for slaves to gain autonomy, respectability, and the possibility of manumission. This was based not only on access to the commercial economy but also on better access to urban and Islamic life and manners, which were structural features of coastal culture. Within the frame of clientship relations and respectability, enslaved people could thus hope for a better life and emancipation. However, this flexibility was a way to preserve the slaving system, and the experience of slaves was always scarred by violence, oppression, and vexation.