In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

29 1w Trafficking and Reenslavement The Social Vulnerability of Women and Children in Nineteenth-Century East Africa elisabeth mcmahon In the waning years of slavery on Pemba Island in the Zanzibar archipelago, a variety of people, mostly women and children, petitioned the British viceconsul for help because they had recently been kidnapped and trafficked as slaves. Scholars often focus on how the slave trade was suppressed during the abolition era; however, it is clear that slavery survived and was reinvented in new forms by traffickers eager to continue the lucrative process. Trafficking and abolition were not polar opposites in East Africa but rather points on a continuum. As the British cracked down on slave trading, trafficking began on a smaller scale, with individuals kidnapping vulnerable people, especially women and children, and enslaving them. While the British abolished the slave trade along the East African coast in 1873, it took several decades of consistent vigilance before the trafficking of large numbers of individuals began to diminish. Moreover, as Hideaki Suzuki has observed, the increase in kidnapping in the coastal and island regions indicates that as abolition of the slave trade progressed, the areas for “slave hunting” shifted from the large-scale interior caravans into opportunistic captures near coastal shores.1 Kidnapping had certainly occurred throughout the nineteenth century in East Africa, but the locations and manner of trafficking shifted by the end of the century. In 1895 a newly appointed vice-consul on Pemba Island attempted to extend British political and economic control to the island. Initially there was little intention that the he would have any interaction with enslaved people; he was there to protect the interests of British citizens and subjects (the island’s Indian population). As both Richard Roberts and Jean Allain note (chapters 3 and 7, this volume), European states pushed abolition and antitrafficking policies, and yet they were loathe to enforce them in African colonies. Scholarship on 30 w Elisabeth McMahon abolition in Africa consistently shows that European colonizers were unwilling to confront the realities of the continuation of enslavement and trafficking in their regions.2 The cases of women kidnapped into slavery in late-nineteenthcentury Pemba are reflected in the developments and problems of trafficking found one hundred years later; in many respects little has changed. While bureaucracies and international agencies have expanded in the intervening years and pushed for expanding legal frameworks, the chapters in this volume show that, absent the will of officials on the ground, legislation alone will not stop trafficking. Moreover, much like the expansion of kidnapping from coastal territories in the nineteenth century, twenty-first-century traffickers continue to adapt their systems and find ways to work around the laws against trafficking. Jody Sarich and Kevin Bales’s illuminating exposition on visas, in the afterword of this volume demonstrates that legal systems are continually manipulated to expand the numbers of enslaved people. The cases discussed in this chapter illustrate not only the problems of bureaucracies in dealing with trafficking but also how one official on the ground, willing to make a difference, may enact powerful change. Most individuals, who complained to the British vice-consul on Pemba that they had been kidnapped, claimed either that they were slaves of someone else already, that they were freed slaves and as such could not be reenslaved, or that they were born free. For the people already slaves, reenslavement meant the unpredictability of new masters, under whom working may or may not have been easier. In general, slaves on Pemba were more likely to work longer hours at agricultural work, thus those captured from Zanzibar or the mainland were likely to resist efforts to sell them to a new master on Pemba. Freed slaves, usually women with no adult male relatives, were especially vulnerable to being reenslaved. For both these groups, reputation significantly impacted the results of their efforts to attain their freedom from the British vice-consul. Women who claimed to have been captured into slavery but never enslaved were less likely to get the vice-consul to believe them than women who either claimed to be slaves of someone else with a good reputation or who had been freed and could prove their community connections. These cases illustrate the vulnerability of women to enslavement. While colonial officials asserted a desire to emancipate slaves, in reality they wanted to emancipate male slaves only, not women. The law that concubines were considered part of the harem, and as such not able to seek...

Share