Is the SlaveVoyages database useful for scholars of slave trading in the wider Indian Ocean World?

Abstract

Assessing the differences between scholarly collaboration on slave trading in the Atlantic World, on the one hand, and similar activities in the wider Indian Ocean, on the other, needs to begin with an assessment of the relative importance of slave trading in the two oceans. Both oceans saw a maritime slave trade that drew heavily on sub–Saharan Africa. But while almost all captives arriving in the Americas came from Africa, in the Indian Ocean World there was a significant, probably majority, traffic in non-Africans, especially if one includes the South China Sea, as indeed most assessments of the Indian Ocean World slave trade do. Focusing on Africa alone initially, scholars who have made their name in the Atlantic World have tended to support the idea that the combined numbers of the Sahara Desert and Indian Ocean slave trade over two millennia were about the same as the volume of the transatlantic slave trade in its 360 years of existence.