University of Johannesburg History 2A 2023

Presumed DANJACOBSON David

Like Arab sources, European documents rarely refer to slaves and the slave trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. However, one German traveler, who accompanied Francisco d'Almeida to Mombasa and Kilwa, observed in Kilwa "more black slaves than white Moors" and in Mombasa all the 500 archers were "negro slaves of the white Moors" (Freeman-Grenville, 1965, p. 107, 109). Tom? Pires, the Portuguese ambassador to China described the Indian Ocean trade in the early sixteenth century. From the ports of Zeila and Berbera, he noted, Arabs obtained gold, ivory, and slaves (Freeman-Greenville, 1962, p. 125). A Franciscan Friar, who visited Mombasa in 1606, mentioned a boat arriving from Zanzibar with some slaves (Freeman-Grenville, 1962, p. 155). An English trading captain noted that the governor of Mombasa, Johan Santa Coba, would send small boats to Kilwa, Pemba, Zanzibar, and Mozambique to obtain gold, ambergris, elephant teeth, and slaves, apparently for himself (Freeman-Grenville, 1962, p. 190). Even when slaves are mentioned as part of cargo, their importance relative to ivory, gold, and iron was minimal.

SF Malan

and Edinburgh decided to form a trading company. To commence with, ivory was expected to be the only source of profit, but it was hoped that ere long steam navigation would make transit so easy that grain and other commodities might be profitably exported.

han trade in ivory, which is mostly in the hands of Zanzibar Arabs or chiefs, the ordinary natives having nothing to do with it, and reaping no benefit from it.

Two years ago, the lessee of the taxes in Shupanga district, a Portuguese, massacred some Landeens--some say to weaken their power, or, as others assert, to seize some ivory said to have been brought to the villages for sale. He invite~l across the chief and his men, and made them drunk. At a signal a Negro went up to the chief and blew his brains out with a revolver, and the rest were massacred. Then there was a rush across the river to secure the reported ivory, of which comparatively little was found. The Portuguese Government repudiated the act, and the perpetrator had to leave the country ; but what must the natives think of white men who commit such atrocities Formerly there wer

Although Africans sought to fit firearms into the traditional fighting methods, they also recognized the need for new tech niques to take advantage of the n

. Firearms in the eighteenth century were absolutely central to the trade of people for goods. Although they did not usually comprise the bulk of goods traded—muskets and gunpowder accounted for about 10 percent of the cargo offloaded on the Loango coast (present-day Angola) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, third behind textiles and liquor— trading would seldom take place unless powder and shot were included

ndispensable.26 The strong preference for guns of those supplying slave traders lends support to a theory widespread among earlier historians, the so-called gun-slave cycle, which ran something as follows: Europeans fostered the slave trade through their control of guns, which they would trade only for slaves, the guns in turn providing the means to acquire more slaves to buy more guns, and so ad infinitum. In this view, Africans conducted war to supply the slave trade, and sold slaves chiefly to obtain the weaponry that allowed them to seize more slav