The Context
The contributors to this volume examine the relationship between bondage and the environment in the Indian Ocean world (IOW). Although the term âIndian Ocean worldâ is becoming more widely used by scholars, it is sometimes used erroneously, so it is important to first define its usage here. The IOW refers to a vast macro-region, running from Africa (roughly east of a Cape to Cairo line) to the Far East . The rationale for considering this vast area as a âworldâ is the historical influence upon it of the monsoon system and related environmental factors. The monsoon system governs all IOW maritime spheres in the northern hemisphere and to about 12° south of the equator and much of their continental hinterlands. In the boreal summer, as the Asian continent warms, hot air rises and through a process of convection sucks in moist air from the seas to the south, creating the south-west monsoon . In winter , the reverse process occurs, creating the south-east monsoon . Historical patterns of production and exchange have been heavily influenced, and to some degree still are, by the monsoons and associated systems of winds and currents that govern much of the region. Agricultural production , in which the vast bulk of the population was engaged , was largely shaped by the monsoon rains . The south-west monsoons bring rains that create the wet-crop (chiefly rice ) cultivation zone of the littoral regions of the IOW , beyond which lie first the dry-crop (wheat , barley) cultivation zone, and beyond that generally arid pastoral regions. At the same time, the biannual changeover in monsoon winds and currents created the possibility for regular direct trans-oceanic exchange . Moreover, to the south of the monsoon system, south-east trade winds feed into the monsoon system. This permitted the development by the BCE/CE changeover of an IOW âglobalâ economy âa sophisticated, regular system of long-distance exchange of commodities, peoples, ideas, and technologies across and beyond the IOW , albeit with considerable fluctuations, that has continued to the present day.1
It is also necessary to explain why the term âbondageâ is used in the title of this volume. Systems of unfree labour existed throughout the IOW but varied greatly according to time and place. The term âbondageâ is used here in preference to â slavery â because of the close association of the latter term to systems of servile labour in the ancient Mediterranean and early modern Atlantic worlds where âslavery â had a clear meaning. It there referred to an institution in which slaves formed a high proportion (20 per cent or more) of the total population , slave labour constituted the base of the economy , and slavery pervaded societal culture . Moreover, in such slave societies the term âslaveâ was also clear. It referred essentially to a chattel , owned by a master, which could be bought and sold like other commodities.
Such slave societies, defined by Moses Finley , were, according to Keith Hopkins , limited to only five locations in history: classical Athens , Roman Italy , and, in the age of the transatlantic slave trade, Brazil , the Caribbean , and the American South.2 According to such definitions, there existed few slave societies in the IOW outside plantation economies such as nineteenth-century Zanzibar and in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries on the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and RĂ©union. Moreover, the identification of a slave as âchattel â in the terms defined by Finley and Hopkins , and followed by most historians of slavery in the Atlantic world, is a complex issue in non-European contexts. Chattel slaves could be found in European enclaves , notably the Mascarene Islands . However, chattel slavery represented one extreme of a wide spectrum of systems of unfree labour in the IOW , including slaves who occasionally, as in some agrestic societies in India , could be sold only with the land they lived on, and sometimes, as in the case of concubines in Muslim societies who had borne their master a child , could not be sold. In contrast to the Atlantic system, black Africans formed a minority of slaves in the IOW , constituting a majority only in Africa and, at certain periods, in other lands littoral to the western Indian Ocean. Slaves in the IOW comprised people of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In addition, the majority of those enslaved and trafficked were women and children, not men as in the transatlantic trade. Most of those subject to IOW bondage systems were accorded rights; some rose to positions of influence and wealth superior to that of nominally free peasants , a few became sovereigns and founded dynasties.3
A significant traffic in human beings had developed by at least 2000 BCE in the IOW. This trade experienced three major periods of demand-led expansion corresponding to sustained bursts of IOW -wide economic growth: from about 300 BCE to 300 CE, between the ninth and thirteenth centuries CE, and again from around...