#历史开讲 #
The rise of the slave trade in East Africa in the 19th century can be traced back to the general economic decline of the Swahili coast since Portugal faded out of East Africa, and the Amansultan state served as a link between Europe and Asia and the exchange of goods such as ivory and slaves in the African interior, which played a role in catalyzing old trade patterns and reviving indigenous slave trade networks. It should be noted that the economic development of coastal towns in East Africa was subordinate to the demand for slaves and food in the Zanzibar system.
In order to revive the economy, Said Sultan chose to develop an export-oriented economy based on slave labor on plantations, while maintaining economic ties to the interior and hiring and purchasing porters from the interior. It is undeniable that the massive demand for labor stimulated the development of trade routes from the coast to the inland and drove caravans, and slave labor also increased productivity. In addition, Sultan has been active in injecting Indian capital into the plantation economy and building links with major external markets and commercial countries such as the United States.
As the proverb "When the flute sounds in Zanzibar, they dance in Ugigi" vividly illustrates the close connection between the coast and the interior and the expansion of the commercial hinterland of the Sultan State of Zanzibar in the interior. The asymmetric relationship between the inland Middle East and the cities of the Swahili coast determined that for the fate and development of port cities, it was essential to monopolize their resources by controlling the trade routes to the hinterland.
As the largest importer of ivory in Zanzibar, the United States was used as the main product of the exchange of ivory for its slave labor product, cotton. Since Sayyid Sultan introduced clove cultivation to Zanzibar in 1840, Zanzibar's plantations have created new demands for labor, and free labor has been marginalized in this highly specialized production that is adjusted to the crop growth cycle.
Between 1840 and 1860, Zanzibar experienced the "lilac boom", becoming the largest exporter of cloves and a supplier of the world's slave market, and this 20-year boom was based on slave labor and slave trade. Facing the interior of Africa, Saeed Sultan relied on caravan leaders represented by Tip Tib to open up a commercial hinterland across half of the continent and obtain goods from Central Africa for export. Facing the Indian Ocean, he relied on Britain, which dominated the Indian Ocean, to fight pirates and Mazroui rebels in Mombasa for him.
In addition, the desire for ivory in the world market translated into a demand for slave labor in Zanzibar as it grew into the world's largest exporter of ivory. In the twenties and thirties of the 19th century, with the popularity of ivory products in Europe and the United States, the increase in demand for ivory required porters to go deep inland, which created the connection between the ivory trade and the slave trade. At first, the slave trade was a side business of the ivory trade. Accompanied by Tipp Tibb's second trip, his half-brother sought slaves in the south to sell in the north. But Tipp Tib implied that his brother Massoud's profitability and borrowing power could not match his business model dominated by the ivory trade and supplemented by the slave trade.
Thus, in the "black and white ivory" trade, the higher profits of the ivory trade compensated for the lower returns of the slave trade, and the slave trade was secondarily valued in the business as an economic choice calculated by commercial interests rather than based on humane moral judgments, but slaves were indeed an important part of the ivory trade. Because in addition to exchanging ivory with inland tribes with conventional goods, slaves were also important commercial money, and the transportation of ivory also required a large number of slaves, and the flexibility of slaves as "currency" and local materials constituted the reason for the longevity of the slave trade in the interior.
But as ivory sources dried up east and south of Lake Tanganyika, merchants gradually looked west in search of new sources of ivory, and as they moved westward to the Great Lakes, the means of obtaining ivory became more profitable. The mid-19th century was the golden age of the Sultan state of Zanzibar, whose sphere of influence encompassed territories south of Somalia (Mogadishu) to the north of Mozambique (Cape Deldo), while expanding into the Great Lakes region and the upper Congo River in Central Africa. This expansion was accomplished by immigrants who traded in slaves, ivory, and cloves.
After the 60s, Tipu Tib set out from settlements in present-day northwestern Zambia and changed his original peaceful infiltration methods, using more violence to plunder slaves and ivory. On the other hand, the slave trade is becoming increasingly a lucrative activity and a stable way of obtaining labour in the interior, and its importance is gradually increasing.
Because the marginal nature of engaging in the ivory trade is limited by the distance to the coast and access to labour and supplies. The preparation and expansion of slave caravans was a complex process, and one of the prerequisites for long-distance trade was the need for a start-up capital, at which point Indian finance capitalists balanced the risk of supplying Arab caravans with export goods bartering in the interior with slightly higher borrowing rates and pricing mechanisms for import and export goods.
At this time, the Swahili-Arab patrilineal kinship network played a role in lending credit. The second premise was to recruit enough Pagassi, and the marriage of Arabs and Africans would help solve this problem. The Nyanmwitsi are known as the best porters in East Africa, and their loyal, hard-working qualities form a sense of professional honor. Therefore, in Tipu Tib's caravans, the people who carried the goods were not necessarily all slaves, and a considerable proportion were free wage earners of the Nyanmwitsy, but because the Nyanmwitsi participated in long-distance trade, and the arrival of coastal caravans created "markets" and demand, there was a labor gap in local food production, which was one of the reasons for the development of the slave trade, and the slaves who remained in the indigenous settlements belonged to domestic slaves.
Thus, the Nyanmwitsy region, as a center of the ivory trade, became a slave importation area. It is worth mentioning that the porter culture formed by the Nyanmwizi people is a strategy they choose to integrate in the face of the intervention of coastal forces in order to avoid homogeneous competition harming their own interests, and their economy has also transformed from a self-sufficient agricultural production and subsistence economy to a mixed economy combined with wage labor.
But the source of porters was not single, and merchants would recruit freemen or rent slaves from slave owners when they set out to form caravans. However, during long journeys, people flee from time to time, especially when passing through their hometowns. Far from their homeland, the porters had to rely on the caravan as a collective to survive, so they did not need to be bound by chains. Due to famine on the coast of Mrima, the caravan had to be diverted.
The porters resisted choosing to go to Ulu. In the rest before entering Ulu, Tipu Tib advanced the porters' wages in kind, but the porters did not assemble as promised, and Tipu Tib had to collect 800 Wazaram natives by force in five days, tying them together with iron utensils and wooden yocks to ensure the continuation of trade and the maintenance of caravan discipline.