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Admittedly, the final estimates for the Saharan slave trade are very poor. This is also true for the Red Sea slave trade. However, it will be shown that all of the statistical results are completely robust with or without the estimates of slaves shipped during these two slave trades. That is, the statistical findings remain even if the Red Sea and Saharan slave trades are completely ignored because of the poor quality of their data. Combining the ethnicity data with the shipping data, estimates of the number of slaves taken from each country in Africa are constructed. 26 The construction procedure follows the following logic. Using the shipping data, the number of slaves shipped from each coastal country in Africa is first calculated. As mentioned, the problem with these numbers is that slaves shipped from the ports of a coastal country may not have come from that country, but from inland countries that lie landlocked behind the coastal country. To estimate the number of slaves shipped from the coast that would have come from these inland countries, the sample of slaves from the ethnicity data is used. Each ethnicity is first mapped to modern country boundaries. This step relies on a great amount of past research by African historians. The authors of the secondary sources, from which the data were taken, generally also provide a detailed analysis of the meaning and locations of the ethnicities appearing in the historical records. In many of the publications, the authors created maps showing the locations of the ethnic groups recorded in the documents. For example, detailed maps are provided in Higman’s samples from the British Caribbean, Koelle’s linguistic inventory of free slaves in Sierra Leone, Mary Karasch’s samples from Rio de Janeiro, Aguirre Beltran’s sample from plantation and sales records from Mexico, Adam Jones’ sample of liberated child slaves from Sierra Leone, and David Pavy’s sample of slaves from Colombia. 27 Other sources also provide excellent summaries of the most common ethnic designations used during the slave trades. These include Philip Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, ethnographer George Peter Murdock’s Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cultural History, and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s

Admittedly, the final estimates for the Saharan slave trade are very poor. This is also true for the Red Sea slave trade. However, it will be shown that all of the statistical results are completely robust with or without the estimates of slaves shipped during these two slave trades. That is, the statistical findings remain even if the Red Sea and Saharan slave trades are completely ignored because of the poor quality of their data. Combining the ethnicity data with the shipping data, estimates of the number of slaves taken from each country in Africa are constructed.The construction procedure follows the following logic. Using the shipping data, the number of slaves shipped from each coastal country in Africa is first calculated. As mentioned, the problem with these numbers is that slaves shipped from the ports of a coastal country may not have come from that country, but from inland countries that lie landlocked behind the coastal country. To estimate the number of slaves shipped from the coast that would have come from these inland countries, the sample of slaves from the ethnicity data is used. Each ethnicity is first mapped to modern country boundaries. This step relies on a great amount of past research by African historians. The authors of the secondary sources, from which the data were taken, generally also provide a detailed analysis of the meaning and locations of the ethnicities appearing in the historical records. In many of the publications, the authors created maps showing the locations of the ethnic groups recorded in the documents. For example, detailed maps are provided in Higman’s samples from the British Caribbean, Koelle’s linguistic inventory of free slaves in Sierra Leone, Mary Karasch’s samples from Rio de Janeiro, Aguirre Beltran’s sample from plantation and sales records from Mexico, Adam Jones’ sample of liberated child slaves from Sierra Leone, and David Pavy’s sample of slaves from Colombia.Other sources also provide excellent summaries of the most common ethnic designations used during the slave trades. These include Philip Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, ethnographer George Peter Murdock’s Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cultural History, and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. Many of the ethnic groups in the ethnicity sample do not map cleanly into one country. The quantitatively most important ethnic groups that fall into this category include: the Ana, Ewe, Fon, Kabre, and Popo, who occupied land in modern Benin and Togo; the Kongo, who resided in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola; the Makonde, localized within Mozambique and Tanzania; the Malinke, who occupied lived within Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Guinea Bissau; the Nalu, from Guinea Bissau and Guinea; the Teke, living in land within Gabon, Congo, and Democratic Republic of Congo; and the Yao from Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. In cases such as these, the total number of slaves from each ethnic group was divided between the countries using information from George Peter Murdock’s Africa: Its Peoples and Their Cultural History. Ethnic groups were first mapped to his classification of over 800 ethnic groups for Africa. Using a digitized version of a map provided in his book and GIS software, the proportion of land area in each country occupied by the ethnic group was calculated. These proportions were then used as weights to disaggregate the total number of slaves of an ethnicity between the countries. Using the ethnicity sample, an estimate of the number of slaves shipped from each coastal country that would have come from each inland country is calculated. Using these figures, the number of slaves that came from all countries in Africa, both coastal and inland, is then calculated. Because over time, slaves were increasingly being taken from further inland, the estimation procedure is performed separately for each of the following four time periods: 14001599, 1600-1699, 1700-1799, 1800-1900. In other words, for each time period, the shipping data and ethnicity data from that time period only is used in the calculations. In the end, the procedure yields estimates of the number of slaves taken from each country in each of the four slave trades for each of the four time periods listed above.

ond, it analyzes the consequences of the subsequent cattle losses in South Africa, and notably Natal, by examining the huge demand that arose for imported cattle and the role of Madagascar as a major supplie

Africa in 1896-1897, cattle diseases and other natural blights were ravaging stock and causing immense concern to farmers and political

y diminishing rainfall. De Kiewet claims that between 1882 and 1925 South Africa suffered from a severe drought approximately every

possible to maintain and the disease spread rapidly through Pondoland in the early 1880s to Kaffraria and the Cape Colo

Cape before the end of 1896 and in late November 1897 Cape Town w

by 77 percent in 1897, compared to a decrease for white-owned stock of 48 percent. Subsequently white owned stock, increased although in 1898 the number of African-owned cattle decreased by a further 34 percent: Thus whereas Africans in Natal possessed 494,402 cattle in 1896, just over double the total white owned stock, by 1898 their cattle stock had plummeted to 75,842, or just under half the number of cattle owned by whites.18 A second epidemic of rinderpest hit South Africa in 1901, its impact accentuated by the demand for cattle established by the South African War of 18991902. Moreover, it was closely followed by an outbreak of East Coast Fever, a disease that caused as much destruction to cattle, albeit over a more extended period of time, as rinderpest. East Coast Fever first attracted the atten

For example, Ballard claims that as a result of rinderpest and a locust plague, the maize and sorghum crop declined by between 24 and 98 percent in fifteen out of the twenty-four Natal administrative districts in 1895-1896.39 This combined with the rapid expansion or urban mining centers meant that by 1899 South Africa was generally no longer self-sufficient in food. Competition from foreign suppliers grew as freight rates declines due to improved transport facilities, in the form of ocean steam ships and the rapid extension inland of railways. The result was an increase in imported wheat, maize, vegetable and dairy products. Madagascar emerged as an important supplier of both maize, a staple food crop in Natal, and beans in the periods 1877-188

, foreign traders, and even Sakalava chiefs to secure a supply of East African and Malagasy slaves for the Merina market. Provincial officials in Bara and Sakalava country were also implicated in kidnapping for the slave export trade. When Ramboamadio, one such Merina officer stationed at Mahabo near Morondava, was summoned to the imperial capital in 1874 to answer charges of collusion with Tovenkery, the local Sakalava king, in slave-raiding in

e 1,000 A 2,000 et se subdisient en groupes de 50 A 100 A l'approche des regions h

has estimated a 12 to 21 percent mortality among Malagasy and East African slaves during shipment to the Mascarenes at the start of the nineteenth century, and it is likely that this figure increased slightly in later decades. Although the treatment of East African slaves aboard Arab dhows supplying the Muslim

However, whereas French colors were prominent on slavers catering for the French plantation islands, other flags were also used for the shipping of slaves to Madagascar. Although subject to much harassment prior to the 1882-1885 war, slavers carrying Arab colors flourished there

This article reviews the evidence and arguments presented by Hedges and suggests that while his work haws provided an important contribution to the debate, elements of his argument need substantial revision

edges also stressed the external demand for ivory as the reason for the ivory boom, rather than, as I claim, the internal demand for brass as the reason for the ivory boom. 7

ater asserted that the origins of centralised political authority lay in the ivory trade, largely because

he chiefdoms of the northern Nguni were progressively incorporated into exchanging commodities with Europeans from 1750. 10

ccording to him, the structures initially developed to maintain a large supply of ivory to the coast were significant to state formation. Hedges proposed that the boom in the ivory trade created a greater need for labour, which in turn led to chiefs drawing on regiment age sets, or amabutho, to facilitate hunting elephant in order to deliver a constant supply of ivory to the marke

ccording to him, the structures initially developed to maintain a large supply of ivory to the coast were significant to state formation. Hedges proposed that the boom in the ivory trade created a greater need for labour, which in turn led to chiefs drawing on regiment age sets, or amabutho, to facilitate hunting elephant in order to deliver a constant supply of ivory to the market.

edges claimed that the ivory trade had rapidly declined by the end of the 18th century, and was replaced by a substantial cattle trade based on whalers’ need for fresh meat.

ese two clauses were part of an attempt to keep access to the trade routes from the north and north-west open, which suggests that Bolts expected ivory from these directions. 30

The traders from the north traded along the Nkomati river, bringing ivory in exchange for black cloth, and the abundance of brass offered along the Maputo river attracted the supply from the south, from the area beyond the Mkuze river, today known as northern KwaZulu-Natal.

The traders from the north traded along the Nkomati river, bringing ivory in exchange for black cloth, and the abundance of brass offered along the Maputo river attracted the supply from the south, from the area beyond the Mkuze river, today known as northern KwaZulu-Natal.

The importance of Chandler’s country trade was his access to capital with which to maintain a supply of a large quantity of trade goods, in particular the brass items that were in high demand in the southern hinterland of Delagoa Bay (see Table 1). Besides the limited political interference displayed by Europeans at this time, the greater level of ivory supply to the coast can be attributed to the ample supply of brass.

lephant hunting was labour intensive: men needed to locate, track, pursue and bring down animals, cut out tusks and carry their spoils long distances to collection points along the upper reaches of the Maputo rive

Methods commonly used in Africa to kill elephant included using spears, or bows and poisoned arrows; digging pitfalls and deadfalls, perching in trees over elephant paths in order to plunge spears into animals passing underneath, and severing the hamstring tendon with a light axe. 41 This demand for labour explains why ageregiment systems developed at much the same time in the Ndwandwe, Ngwane and Mthethwa societies, as units of labour for the state.

The English ivory trade was a source of copper and brass, and traders could supply copious amounts of these cuprous goods.

This amount represents 26 per cent of the income calculated in 1802–1803. Thus not only did the ivory trade continue throughout the whaling period of 1785–1799, it also did so throughout first 15 years of the 19th century, supplying brass and other goods at a reduced yet significant rate to chiefdoms of the Nguni

sometime partially, mostly inherited from his parents, and he was required to render services to a feudal lord

. The divisions between the different social classes were often not very strict because of intermarriage and social mobility.

What about the gun-slave cycle? Historians have documented dramatic increases in the

Before then, the older gunpowder technology,

f guns and gunpowder to Africans began with Protestant slave traders not bound by Catholic

guns and gunpowder to Africans began with Protestant slave traders not bound by Catholic prohibitions. 15 The Dutch were the first to sell large numbers, followed by the English as their participation in the slave trade expanded.