European Slave Routes in the Indian Ocean

This paper attempts to discuss the implications of the European slave trade in the Indian Ocean from 15th century onwards; duplicity of the European policy of slave trade; the conflict of interests among the Europeans themselves; and how the slave trade had flourished, to replace Indian Ocean’s traditional commerce in spices and ivory, involving the Arabs, Indians and Africans. The article also hypothesises that towards the middle of the 19th century, European capitalism created conditions that turned human beings into a commodity for sale. Such conditions helped produce a colonial proletariat in the form of indentured labour (i.e. Indian coolies and the French ‘free’ slaves) to be transplanted from one colonial possession to another by mutual agreement between European powers.