No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Eastward across the Western Sea: The Indian Oceanic Trafficking of Africans into China
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
Abstract
Despite its greater extensiveness in comparison to the ferrying of their West African counterparts across the Atlantic Ocean into bondage in the New World, the history of the extraction of East Africans to serve as slaves in the various lands that ring the Indian Ocean is barely known to most of us. Particularly as Westerners, our knowledge of even the sketchiest outlines of the latter phenomenon pales before what we know intimately about the intricacies of the former. Furthermore, unknown altogether to too many is the fact that—from at least as early as the eighth century of the Common Era—these East African slaves were exported as distantly as China. Based principally on the pertinent Chinese sources, this study raises and investigates three fundamental questions concerning this conveyance of East Africans into China. First, who were the original enslavers of these East Africans and thus the prime purveyors of their entrance over the centuries into bondage in China? Second, how—that is, by land or by sea—and under what auspices were these East Africans typically transported from their homelands mainly along the eastern African coastline to a locale as far away as China? Third and finally, what was the probable fate of these East Africans once they had arrived in China? The essay concludes with a consideration of the consequentiality of this largely overlooked and therefore unheralded saga amidst the history of Chinese institutionalised servitude overall.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Itinerario , Volume 47 , Special Issue 3: Regimes of Bondage: The Encounter between Early Modern European and Asian Slaveries , December 2023 , pp. 297 - 310
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University
References
1 Campbell, Gwyn, “Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World,” in India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms, ed. Hawley, John C. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 23Google Scholar.
2 Campbell, “Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World,” 21.
3 Harris, Joseph E., The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1971), 5–6Google Scholar. See also Parker, Charles H., Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800 (2010; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 115Google Scholar.
4 Wyatt, Don J., The Blacks of Premodern China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 2–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Goodrich, L. Carrington, “Negroes in China,” Bulletin of the Catholic University of Peking 8 (December 1931), 137–8Google Scholar.
6 Wyatt, Blacks of Premodern China, 9, 15–16.
7 Ibid., 68–9. See also Wyatt, Don J., “A Certain Whiteness of Being: Chinese Perceptions of Self by the Beginning of European Contact,” in Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions, ed. Kowner, Rotem and Demel, Walter (2013; repr., Leiden: Brill, 2014), 314–15Google Scholar.
8 Filesi, Teobaldo, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, trans. Morison, David L. (London: Frank Cass, Central Asian Research Centre, 1972), 22Google Scholar.
9 See Peng Hui 彭蕙, Ming Qing shiqi Aomen heiren wenti yanjiu 明清时期澳门黑人问题研究 [A study of the question of the black presence in Macau during the Ming and Qing dynasties] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2017); and Dikötter, Frank, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992; repr., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
10 van Leur, J. C., Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History, 2nd ed. (1955; repr., The Hague: W. van Hoeve, 1967), 99Google Scholar. See also Campbell, “Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World,” 21.
11 Snow, Philip, The Star Raft: China's Encounter with Africa (1988; repr., Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 17Google Scholar.
12 Filesi, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, 4, 18.
13 Zhang Tiesheng 張鉄生, ZhongFei jiaotongshi chutan 中非交通史初探 [Preliminary investigation of the history of Chinese-African relations], 2nd ed. (Beijing: Shenghuo dushu xinzhi sanlian shudian, 1973), 2, 7, 9.
14 Hirth, Friedrich, “Early Chinese Notices of East African Territories,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 30:1 (December 1909), 46–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Duyvendak, J. J. L., China's Discovery of Africa: Lectures Given at the University of London on January 22 and 23, 1947 (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949), 8–9Google Scholar.
15 Wyatt, Blacks of Premodern China, 84–9.
16 Ibid., 84–7; Wilkinson, Endymion, Chinese History: A New Manual, 4th ed. (1973; repr., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015), 741Google Scholar.
17 Duan Chengshi 段成式, Youyang zazu 酉陽雑俎 [Miscellany of tidbits from Youyang mountain cave] (Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1975), 4.3b. See also Wyatt, Blacks of Premodern China, 84–5; R. W. Beachey, The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (London: Rex Collings, 1976), 4; Beachey, R. W., A Collection of Documents on the Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (London: Rex Collings, 1976), 1–2Google Scholar; Duyvendak, China's Discovery of Africa, 13–14.
18 Tuotuo 脫脫 et al., Songshi 宋史 [Song history] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977), 490.14118. Although it is implied here that they were individually contoured, the passage does not explicitly apprise us of exactly how the silks gifted to the servants might have differed, whether their “differences” consisted of variances in quality; in pattern, texture, or colour; or in amount or in some combination thereof.
19 Filesi, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, 24–5.
20 Wyatt, Blacks of Premodern China, 69–70. See also Filesi, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, 2, 18, 20, 21.
21 Tuotuo, Songshi, 490.14122.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid. In Song times, a tael, being a liang in Chinese, was equivalent to 1.3 Western ounces.
24 Snow, Star Raft, 20, 196. Snow refers to Cengjiani as Zengjiani; strictly proper pinyin transliteration dictates the former spelling.
25 Filesi, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, 31. See also Dathorne, O. R., Asian Voyages: Two Thousand Years of Constructing the Other (Westport, Conn.: Bergen & Garvey, 1996), 74, 83, 164Google Scholar.
26 Snow, Star Raft, 9, 10. See also Dikötter, Discourse of Race in Modern China, 9.
27 Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修, Song Qi 宋祁, et al., Xin Tangshu 新唐書 [New history of the Tang] (Taibei: Dingwen shuju, 1976), 222C.6302.
28 Lo Jung-pang, China as a Sea Power 1127–1368: A Preliminary Survey of the Maritime Expansion and Naval Exploits of the Chinese People During the Southern Song and Yuan Periods, ed. Bruce A. Elleman (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press and National University of Singapore Press, 2012), 105.
29 Snow, Star Raft, 11–14. See also Wilkinson, Chinese History, 760–1.
30 Lo Jung-pang, China as a Sea Power, 105–6.
31 Wilkinson, Chinese History, 777–8. See also Delgado, James P., Khubilai Khan's Lost Fleet: In Search of a Legendary Armada (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
32 Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 125–8. A richly informing source for what we know about Mongol seagoing intercontinental trade during the Yuan period is the reportage of the Moroccan diarist-observer Ibn Battuta (1304–1369). Of the available translations of his testimony, see Dunn, Ross, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century (1986; repr., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Among those most recently published, a monograph that discusses the obsession of the Mongols with the oceans as a collective source of trade and therefore wealth is Allsen, Thomas T., The Steppe and the Sea: Pearls in the Mongol Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)Google Scholar.
33 Jean-Paul Roux, Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, trans. Toula Ballas (2002; repr., New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), 66, 92.
34 Ibid., 92. See also Don J. Wyatt, “The Image of the Black in Chinese Art,” in The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art, ed. David Bindman, Suzanne Blier, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., with Karen C. C. Dalton (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press/Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, 2017), 306–11.
35 Lo Jung-pang, China as a Sea Power, 108.
36 Wilkinson, Chinese History, 205, 397.
37 Snow, Star Raft, 9, 10.
38 Filesi, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, 25, 41, 42, 45, 46, 71, 78–9.
39 Dathorne, Asian Voyages, 81, 98–100, 117. See also Julie Wilensky, “The Magical Kunlun and ‘Devil Slaves’: Chinese Perceptions of Dark-Skinned People and Africa before 1500,” Sino-Platonic Papers 122 (July 2002), 33.
40 Wilkinson, Chinese History, 794–6.
41 Dreyer, Edward L., Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–1433 (2006; repr., New York: Longman, 2007), 99–134Google Scholar; Wyatt, Blacks of Premodern China, 103. See also Dreyer, Zheng He, 82–91.
42 Dreyer, Zheng He, 32, 83, 89, 90.
43 Ibid.,166–71.
44 Filesi, China and Africa in the Middle Ages, 67.
45 Parker, Global Interactions, 88–9, 139. See also Beachey, Collection of Documents, x.
46 Parker, Global Interactions, 20–6. See also Abdul Sheriff, “Globalisation with a Difference: An Overview,” in The Indian Ocean: Oceanic Connections and the Creation of New Societies, ed. Abdul Sheriff and Engseng Ho (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2014), 37–41.
47 Brook, Timothy, Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (2008; repr., New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009), 87–94Google Scholar.
48 Cotterell, Arthur, Western Power in Asia: Its Slow Rise and Swift Fall, 1415–1999 (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 42Google Scholar.
49 Ibid., 42.
50 Fujitani, James, “The Ming Rejection of the Portuguese Embassy of 1517: A Reassessment,” Journal of World History 27:1 (March 2016), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Cotterell, Western Power in Asia, 42. See also Fujitani, “The Ming Rejection of the Portuguese Embassy,” 87.
52 Boxer, C. R., Fidalgos in the Far East, 1550–1770: Fact and Fancy in the History of Macao (1948; repr., The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 143Google Scholar.
53 C. R. Boxer, Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 1415–1825: A Succinct Survey (1961; repr., Berkeley/ Johannesburg: University of California Press/Witwatersrand University Press, 1969), 42.
54 Ibid., 43–4.
55 Brook, Vermeer's Hat, 95–8.
56 Wang Shixing 王士性, Guangzhi yi 廣志繹 [Record of extensive travels continued] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006), 4.293. This work, which bears a preface dated 1597, is an expansion of Wang's earlier Guang youzhi [Record of Guangdong and Guangxi travels]. See also Brook, Vermeer's Hat, 96–7.
57 Qu Dajun 屈大均, Guangdong xinyu 廣東新語 [News from Guangdong] ([Jiulong]: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 7.234. Yue is an old simplified shorthand name for Guangdong province. On Red Hairs as a recently coined name for the Dutch, see Brook, Vermeer's Hat, 90–1, 97, 99, 100, 105, 108, 111, 196–7, 198, 245, 264.
58 Qu, Guangdong xinyu, 7.234.
59 Ibid., 7.234–5.
60 See Mizusawa Toshitada 水澤利忠, Shiji huizhu kaozheng fu jiaobu 史記會注考證附校補, 2 vols. [Collected commentarial evidence with appended corrections to the historical record (of Sima Qian)] (Shanghai: Guji chuban she: Xinhua shudian Shanghai faxing suo faxing, 1986), 2: 1977.
61 Manning, Patrick, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 28Google Scholar.
62 Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History (1950; repr., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 112.
63 Silva, Pablo Miguel Sierra, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico: Puebla de Los Ángeles, 1531–1706 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
64 Irwin, Graham W., Africans Abroad: A Documentary History of the Black Diaspora in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean During the Age of Slavery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 168–71Google Scholar. See also Campbell, “Slave Trades and the Indian Ocean World,” 21.
65 Wang Shixing, Guang zhiyi [Record of Guangdong and Guangxi continued] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006), 293. This work, which bears a preface dated 1597, is an expansion of Wang's earlier Guang youzhi [Record of Guangdong and Guangxi travels]. See also Brook, Vermeer's Hat, 96–7.
66 Earle, T. F. and Lowe, K. J. P., Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.