Mereja Forum

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The Persistence of Slavery in the Southern Red Sea Region in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
by Steven Serels First Online: 15 January 2020
(Why does Arab slavery still persist in the Arab and Islamic region of the Arabian peninsula and the Red Sea region? Why do some people hate their own languages, history and identity, you may ask, in Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, and Ethiopia? )

Abstract
Slavery persists in the Southern Red Sea Region (SRSR). Encompassing parts of modern-day Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia (Somaliland), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan, the SRSR was historically home to a regional slave system structured by large-scale raiding, slave caravans, open markets, and, often though not exclusively, domestic service. Over the past century and a half, this system has transformed. It is now defined primarily by the enslavement in Saudi Arabia of vulnerable impoverished migrant workers from elsewhere in the region. This chapter demonstrates that the modern SRSR slave system grew directly out of the traditional system because states in the region consistently failed to follow through on their public commitments to abolition. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British, French, Italian, Ottoman, and Egyptian imperial officials refused to build up a rigorous policing mechanism capable of combatting the slave trade and bringing about an end to slavery. Post-independence states, backed by their American and Soviet allies, similarly ignored the practice of slavery in their respective territory and continued to use the rhetoric of abolition for short-term diplomatic goals. As a result, those who were invested in slavery and the slave trade could easily outmanoeuvre poorly developed anti-slavery institutions. With few legal impediments, they were able to adapt their practices to meet the changing regional economic situation.

Link to the article: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.10 ... 95957-0_12

Notes
1.
British Military Authority (Eritrea), Slave Trade Red Sea, 4 November 1947, FO371/68774, National Archive, London (hereafter NA).

2.
For a concise history of the Saudi-British diplomatic exchanges regarding slavery, see Suzanne Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade in Saudi Arabia and the Arab States on the Persian Gulf, 1921–63,’ in Abolition and its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, ed. Gwyn Campbell (New York: Routledge, 2005), 120–36.

3.
Clarke to Foreign Secretary, 2 September 1947, FO371/62109, NA.

4.
British Military Administration (Eritrea), Slave Traffic Interim Report, December 1947, FO371/68774, NA.

5.
Jeddah Chancery to Foreign Office, 9 March 1949, FO371/75034, NA.

6.
Direzione Generale degli Affari Politici. Ministro dell’Africa Italiana, L’Italia E Le sue colonie prefasciste (Rome: Ministro dell’Africa Italiana, 1947) 34; Convention relative à la répression de la traite des esclaves dans le Sultanat de Tadjourah, 28 October 1889, FM, SG CFS//6, Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer, Aix-En-Provence (hereafter ANOM).

7.
This general logic informed not just the treaty regime in the SRSR, it also underpinned the international institutional architecture established in the nineteenth century by European officials to bring about the end of slavery in the world. For a more detailed analysis of the origin of this general logic and of these international institutions, see Suzanne Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2003), 1–46.

8.
For details of the British diplomatic pressure and their limited effects, see Ehud Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840–1890 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Gabriel Baer, ‘Slavery in Nineteenth Century Egypt,’ Journal of African History 7, no. 3 (1967): 417–41.

9.
William Ochsenwald, ‘Muslim-European Conflict in the Hijaz: the Slave Trade Controversy, 1840–1895,’ Middle Eastern Studies 16 (1980): 120.

10.
Lord Noel-Buxton, ‘Slavery in Abyssinia,’ International Affairs 11, no. 4 (July 1932): 517; Richard Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800–1935 (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University Press, 1968), 111.

11.
Philip Zaphiro, Memorandum on the Slave Traffic between Abyssinia and the Coast of Arabia, November 1929, IOR/R/20/1/1560, British Library, London (hereafter BL).

12.
J. B. Eustace, Senior Naval Officer (Aden Division) to the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, 1 September 1905, IOR/R/20/A/1300, BL.

13.
James McCann, ‘“Children of the House”: Slavery and Its Suppression in Lasta, Northern Ethiopia, 1916–1935,’ in The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 347–50.

14.
M. Rochet d’Héricourt, Second Voyage sur les Deux Rives de la Mer Rouge Dans le Pays des Adels et le Royaume de Choa (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1846), 19.

15.
Renato Paoli, Le condizioni commerciali dell’Eritrea (Novara: Istituto Geografico de agostini, 1913), 27.

16.
Government of Côte Française des Somalis, ‘Rapport sur la Traite des Esclaves à la Côte Française des Somalis,’ 16 February 1923, FM, 1AFFPOL/402, ANOM.

17.
Captain E. B. C. Dicken to Senior Officer, Red Sea Sloops, 3 April 1931, IOR/R/PS/12/4088, BL.

18.
Secretary to the Admiralty to Lister, 8 June 1881, FO84/1597, NA. British naval officers repeatedly requested permission to acquire and operate a fleet of dhows, but this request went unfulfilled. Jones to Hay, 20 October 1885, FO407/67/165, NA.

19.
Alice Moore-Harell, Gordon and the Sudan: Prologue to the Mahdiyya, 1877–1880 (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 126–43, 169–77.

20.
R. Wingate, ‘Memorandum by the Governor-General, 1904,’ in Reports on the Finances, Administration and Conditions of the Sudan, 1904, vol. 2 (1904): 35, Sudan Archive Durham University (hereafter SAD).

21.
E. B. C. Dickson, Captain, Senior Officer, Red Sea Sloops, Note, 2 March 1931, L/PS/12/4094, BL.

22.
Senior Naval Officer, HMS Fleetwood, to Admiralty, 22 April 1938, FO905/61, NA; Senior Naval Officer, HMS Fleetwood, to Admiralty, 10 July 1938, FO905/61, NA.

23.
Jackson, Commanding Officer HMS Dajlia, to the Commander-in-chief, Mediterranean, 9 June 1930, IOR/R/20/1/1560, BL; B. R. Reilly, Resident Aden to SSC, 18 March 1931, IOR/R/20/1/1560, BL.

24.
Alexander Naty, ‘Environment, Society and the State in Western Eritrea,’ Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 72, no. 4 (2002): 574.

25.
Residente del Sahel to Governor of Eritrea, 26 June 1905, PACCO454, Archivio Eritrea of the Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome (hereafter AEMAE).

26.
Elenco degli Schiavi Liberati dalla Autoriza della Colonia dal 1905 al 1913, PACCO193, AEMAE.

27.
L’Agente Italiano in Tigre to Governor of Eritrea, 31 August 1913, PACCO580, AEMAE.

28.
Jordan Gebre-Medhin, Peasants and Nationalism in Eritrea: A Critique of Ethiopian Studies (New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 1989), 50.

29.
J. B. Eustace, Senior Naval Officer, Aden Division, to the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, 1 September 1905, IOR/R/20/A/1300, BL.

30.
Henry Berger to Governor of Côte Française des Somalis, 24 February 1930, Fonds Territorieux, 1E6, ANOM; Le Chef du Poste administratif d’Obock to the Governor of Côte Française des Somalis, 18 February 1939, Fonds Territorieux, 3G3, ANOM.

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