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Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World pp 227–244Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Famine and Slavery in Africa’s Red Sea World, 1887–1914

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

Abstract

At end of the nineteenth century, the slave trade in the Southern Red Sea Region experienced a sudden reinvigoration. This was the direct result of a deadly famine that ravaged the African littoral following the introduction of rinderpest in 1887. Up to two-thirds of the population in some affected areas died during the famine. After the acute crisis abated, those who had survived depended on the regional slave trade to power reconstruction. The British, French, and Italian colonial officials who had come to rule much of the region around the time of the famine not only ignored their obligations to combat the slave trade but also, in many cases, actively encouraged its revival.

Researching and writing this paper was made possible by grants from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Volkswagen Stiftung, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    William Patzert, “Wind-Induced Reversal in Red Sea Circulation,” Deep Sea Research and Oceanographic Abstracts 21, no. 2 (1974): 109–21; John Meloy, Imperial Power and Maritime Trade: Mecca and Cairo in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2010), 53–55.

  2. 2.

    See Amrita Rangasami, “‘Failure of Entitlements’ Theory of Famine: A Response,” part 1, Economic and Political Weekly 20, no. 41 (12 October 1985): 1747–52. For a study of communal self-preservation strategies during a famine in the region, see Alex de Waal, Famine that Kills: Darfur Sudan, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

  3. 3.

    Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Staff Diary and Intelligence Report, Suakin, no. 98 (24 December 1888–6 January 1889), Sudan Archive, Durham University (hereafter SAD). For example, on 25 December 1889, 560 Hadandawa pastoralists arrived at Sawakin together with their shaykhs.

  4. 4.

    For descriptions of the famine, see Richard Pankhurst, The Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888–1892: A New Assessment (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University, 1964); Steven Serels, “Famines of War: The Red Sea Grain Market and Famine in Eastern Sudan 1889–1891,” Northeast African Studies 12, no. 1 (2012): 73–94; Rudolph von Slatin, Fire and Sword in the Sudan: A Personal Narrative of Fighting and Serving the Dervishes, 1879–1895, trans. F. R. Wingate (London: Edward Arnold, 1896), 452–57; F. R. Wingate, Ten Years’ Captivity in the Mahdi’s Camp 1882–1892 (London: Sampson, Low, Marston and Co, 1892) 284–91; Ferdinando Martini, Nell’Africa italiana, 8th ed. (Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1925), 29–31.

  5. 5.

    Administration Report of the Somali Coast for the Year 1891–92, IOR/V/10/1995, British Library, London (hereafter BL).

  6. 6.

    British Parliamentary Papers: Command Papers. Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration and Condition of Egypt and the Soudan in 1903 (Cd 1951, 1904), 79.

  7. 7.

    See William Garstin, “Report on the Soudan,” in British Parliamentary Papers: Command Papers. Dispatch from Her Majesty’s Agent and Consul General at Cairo (C 9332, 1899), 5; “Report by Mr. Garstin on the Province of Dongola,” n.d. [April 1897], FO407/143/12, National Archives, Kew (hereafter NAUK).

  8. 8.

    L’Economia Eritrea; nel Cinquatennio dell’occupazione di Assab (1882–1932) (Florence: Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano, 1932), 7–8.

  9. 9.

    Pankhurst , The Great Ethiopian Famine, 39.

  10. 10.

    Richard Pankhurst and Douglas Johnson, “The Great Drought and Famine of 1888–92 in Northeast Africa,” in The Ecology of Survival: Case Studies from Northeast African History, ed. Douglas Johnson and David Anderson (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988), 51.

  11. 11.

    See Gwyn Campbell, ed., The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London: Frank Cass, 2004); Paul Lovejoy and Toyin Falola, eds., Pawnship, Slavery and Colonialism in Africa (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003).

  12. 12.

    See Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996); Suzanne Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2003); Richard Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800–1935 (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University Press, 1968), 73–134. Accounts of famines are absent from nearly all studies of slavery in Africa’s Red Sea world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  13. 13.

    See Pankhurst and Johnson, “The Great Drought and Famine of 1888–92 in Northeast Africa,” in The Ecology of Survival: Case Studies from North East African History, ed. Douglas H. Johnson and David M. Anderson (London: Lester Crook Academic and Westview Press, 1988), 47–73. Pankhurst and Johnson were the first to suggest that the famine in the Ethiopian plateau was distinct from the famine in the central Sudan.

  14. 14.

    For a history of the Mahdist Rebellion, see P. M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898: A Study of its Origins, Development and Overthrow, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).

  15. 15.

    For a history of Djibouti , see Philippe Oberlé, Histoire de Djibouti: des origines à la République (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1985).

  16. 16.

    For a history of Muhammad Abd Allah al-Hasan’s movement in Somalia , see Abdi Sheik-Abdi, Divine Madness: Mohammed Abdulle Hassan (1856–1920) (London: Zed Books Ltd, 1993). For a history of modern Ethiopia, see Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1974 (Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press, 1991).

  17. 17.

    Egerton to Granville, 26 August 1884, FO407/62/337, NAUK.

  18. 18.

    Baring to Granville, 9 June 1885, FO407/65/343, NAUK.

  19. 19.

    For a history of military slavery in the Sudan, see Douglas H. Johnson, “Sudanese Military Slavery from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century,” in Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour, ed. Leonie Archer (London: Routledge, 1988), 142–55.

  20. 20.

    See Pankhurst and Johnson, “The Great Drought and Famine,” 47–73.

  21. 21.

    Pankhurst and Johnson, “The Great Drought and Famine,” 63.

  22. 22.

    Administration Report of the Somali Coast for the Year 1891–92, IOR/V/10/1995, BL.

  23. 23.

    John Rowe and Kjell Hødnebø, “Rinderpest in the Sudan 1888–1890: The Mystery of the Missing Panzootic,” Sudanic Africa 5 (1994): 149–79; B. A. Lewis, The Murle: Red Chiefs and Black Commoners (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

  24. 24.

    See Pankhurst and Johnson, “The Great Drought and Famine of 1888–92 in Northeast Africa,” 47–73.

  25. 25.

    Pankhurst , The Great Ethiopian Famine, 29.

  26. 26.

    See Serels, “Famines of War,” 77–81; Jonathan Miran, Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), 91; Abdi Ismail Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1884–1986 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 27.

  27. 27.

    Serels, “Famines of War,” 84–86.

  28. 28.

    Administration Report of the Somali Coast for the Year 1891–92, IOR/V/10/1995, BL.

  29. 29.

    Extract from a Report by the Italian Consul General at Aden, 16 April 1891, IOR/R/20/A/1174, BL.

  30. 30.

    Tornielli to Salisbury, 12 February 1890 IOR/R/20/A/1173, BL.

  31. 31.

    Stace to Hardinge, 2 September 1891, IOR/R/20/A/1174, BL.

  32. 32.

    Rodd to Salisbury, 14 June 1897, FO403/255, NAUK.

  33. 33.

    Eustace to the Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies, 1 September 1905, IOR/R/20/A/1300, BL.

  34. 34.

    Von Slatin, Fire and Sword in the Sudan, 456.

  35. 35.

    Pankhurst and Johnson, “The Great Drought and Famine of 1888–92 in Northeast Africa,” 63.

  36. 36.

    Clarke to Salisbury, 26 August 1889, FO407/89/108, NAUK.

  37. 37.

    See Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Staff Diary and Intelligence Report, Frontier Field Force, no. 254 (29 March–11 April 1891), SAD. The Egyptian Military Intelligence Report covering 29 March–11 April 1891 records the last arriving refugees.

  38. 38.

    See Jay Spaulding, “Land Tenure and Social Class in the Northern Turkish Sudan,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 15, no. 1 (1982): 1–20.

  39. 39.

    Petition Submitted by Some Refugees of Dongola Province, at Assuan, n.d. [August 1885], FO407/66/113, NAUK; Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Staff Diary and Intelligence Report, Frontier Field Force, no. 229 (SAD, 11–17 May 1890); Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Staff Diary and Intelligence Report, Frontier Field Force, no. 233 (8–14 June 1890), SAD; Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Staff Diary and Intelligence Report, Frontier Field Force, no. 244 (28 September–11 October 1890), SAD.

  40. 40.

    House of Commons. United Kingdom Government. British Parliamentary Papers: Command Papers. Reports on the Province of Dongola (C 8427, 1897), 2.

  41. 41.

    W. Nichols, “The Sakia in Dongola Province,” Sudan Notes and Records 1, no. 1 (January 1918): 23–24; Spaulding, “Land Tenure and Social Class in the Northern Turkish Sudan,” 1–20.

  42. 42.

    Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Staff Diary and Intelligence Report, Eastern Sudan, no. 4 (15–28 April 1891), SAD. On 26 April 1891, an Egyptian government dhow caught two dhows unloading contraband cargo on the Sudanese coast. Arrested crew members subsequently confessed that there was an extensive trade in slaves between the Sudan and Arabia.

  43. 43.

    Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Intelligence Report, Egypt, no. 8 (December 1892), 3, SAD; British Parliamentary Papers: Command Papers. Report for the Year 1896 on the Trade of Suakin, Commercial no. 1859 (C 8277, 1897), 2.

  44. 44.

    “Report and Map of Tokar Sub-District by Kaimkam Hickman Bey, Commanding Tokar,” in Intelligence Department, Egyptian Army, Intelligence Report, Egypt, no. 21 (December 1893), 5, SAD; Barnham to Cromer, 14 February 1894, FO407/126/77, NAUK.

  45. 45.

    Pankhurst, The Great Ethiopian Famine, 39.

  46. 46.

    Gino Bartolimmei Gioli, “La produzione frumentaria in Eritrea di fronte alle relazioni doganali fra metropoli e colonia,” in Atti della R. Academia dei Geografili, series V, vol. 1, no. 1 (1904): 86–88.

  47. 47.

    Babikr Badri, The Memoirs of Babikr Bedri, trans. by George Scott (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 203.

  48. 48.

    Miers, Slavery in the Twentieth Century, 14–19.

  49. 49.

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

  50. 50.

    R. Wingate, “Memorandum by the Governor-General, 1904,” in Reports on the Finances, Administration and Conditions of the Sudan, 1904, vol. 2 (1904), 35, SAD.

  51. 51.

    H. E. S. Cordeaux, Somaliland Protectorate Revenue Cutters. Standing Orders, 9 March 1903, IOR/L/PS/10/32, BL.

  52. 52.

    E. B. C. Dickson, Captain, Senior Officer Red Sea Sloops, note, 2 March 1931, IOR/L/PS/12/4094, BL. In 1931, Rear Admiral Deville, the naval officer in command of the Red Sea fleet, stated that his ships had stopped searching dhows for slaves. As Captain Dickson subsequently recounted, Deville “appeared to consider it quite a joke we should do so. Whilst admitting that the capture of slaves might be barbarous, he considered their lot in Arabia so comfortable that they were deserving of no special pity.”

  53. 53.

    Admiralty to Foreign Office, 14 December 1903, IOR/R/20/A/1300, BL.

  54. 54.

    British Somaliland Protectorate, Intelligence Report No. 8, August 1908, CO535/12, NAUK.

  55. 55.

    Commissioner of the Somaliland Protectorate to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 21 February 1910, CO535/18, NAUK.

  56. 56.

    Archer to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 19 August 1913, CO535/31, NAUK. British officials estimated that one-third of the population of Somaliland died during a particularly bloody period of fighting in 1911 and 1912.

  57. 57.

    Note—the Price of Grain in Omdurman and Eastern Sudan, SAD269/2/47–48.

  58. 58.

    Talbot to Wingate, 10 February 1899, SAD269/2/35–36.

  59. 59.

    Slatin to Wingate, 2 December 1912, SAD183/3/16–17. Rudolph von Slatin, the Senior Inspector, once even threatened to cut off a finger from the hand of a junior official for having called a “slave” a “slave” and not a “servant” or simply “Sudanese ” in an official document.

  60. 60.

    C. H. Townsend, “Annual Report, Berber Province, 1910,” in Reports on the Finances, Administration and Conditions of the Sudan. 1910 (1910), 193, SAD; H. W. Jackson, “Annual Report, Dongola Province, 1908,” in Reports on the Finances, Administration and Conditions of the Sudan, 1908 (1908), 503, SAD; E. A. Stanton, “Annual Report, Khartoum Province, 1908,” in Reports on the Finances, Administration and Conditions of the Sudan, 1908 (1908), 554, SAD.

  61. 61.

    British Parliamentary Papers: Command Papers. Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Conditions of Egypt and the Soudan, 1899 (Cd 95, 1900), 6; Memorandum by Mr. Dawkins on the Conditions of the Dongola Province, n.d. [March 1897] FO407/142/80, NAUK; E. B. Wilkinson, “Annual Report, Department of Agriculture and Forests, 1912,” in Reports on the Finances, Administration and Conditions of the Sudan, 1912, vol. 2 (1912), 155, SAD.

  62. 62.

    Quoted in Reports by His Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General on the Finances, Administration, and Conditions of Egypt and the Soudan, 62.

  63. 63.

    Cromer to Wingate, 1 January 1906, SAD278/1/2; Wingate to Kitchener, 16 January 1911, SAD300/1/63; Wingate to Kitchener, 24 January 1911, SAD300/1/77; Wingate to Hamilton, 9 December 1908, SAD284/5/8–9.

  64. 64.

    Rodd to Salisbury, 3 June 1897, FO403/255, NAUK; Cromer to Salisbury, 20 January 1898, FO 403/274, NAUK.

  65. 65.

    Aboussamad H. Ahmad, “Trading in Slaves in Bela-Shangul and Gumuz, Ethiopia: Border Enclaves in History, 1897–1938,” Journal of African History 40, no. 3 (November 1999): 433.

  66. 66.

    Lord Noel-Buxton, “Slavery in Abyssinia,” International Affairs 11, no. 4 (July 1932): 517; Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia, 111.

  67. 67.

    Rennell Rodd to Salisbury, 14 May 1897, FO 403/255, NAUK. This process was noticed as early as 1897.

  68. 68.

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

  69. 69.

    See James McCann, From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia: A Rural History 1900–1935 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 80–81. Cultivation in the grain producing regions in northern Ethiopia continued to be limited by insufficient animal labor resulting from repeated outbreaks of rinderpest.

  70. 70.

    Philippe Oberlé and Pierre Hugot, Histoire de Djibouti: des origines à la République (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1985), 103–05.

  71. 71.

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

  72. 72.

    Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano. L’Economia Eritrea: nel cinquatennio dell’occupazione di Assab (1882–1932) (Florence: Istituto Agricolo Coloniale Italiano, 1932), 7–8. This plan was formulated by Leopoldo Franchetti in 1889 at the behest of Prime Minister Francesco Crispi. On 1 July 1890, the Italian government formally adopted this policy.

  73. 73.

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

  74. 74.

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

  75. 75.

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

  76. 76.

    Elenco degli schiavi liberati dalla autoriza della colonia dal 1905 al 1913, PACCO193, AEMAE.

  77. 77.

    R. Commissario Civile, Nota, 18 September 1904, PACCO1063, AEMAE.

  78. 78.

    Norme per la liberazione degli schiavi provenanti da oltre confine, n.d. [1904] PACCO64, AEMAE.

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  1. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Steven Serels

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  1. Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Gwyn Campbell

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Serels, S. (2018). Famine and Slavery in Africa’s Red Sea World, 1887–1914. In: Campbell, G. (eds) Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70028-1_11

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