Fathoming Slavery

Wherever dechristianisation could not have possibly materialised, in those polities which abandoned God to start with, since the Fall to the eschaton, slavery was never substantially execrated, having continued to this day, net of abolitionism, in globalisation. Thence the perduring Arab slave trade over one millennium and the improbability of an end to the Atlantic one absent abolitionism, which would have withal flowed indeed into globalisation. No sooner was Western Europe by contrast dechristianised at heart, in the tares of Protestantism, than the internal slave raids ended together with the tutelage of feudalism.

Written History

Europeans arrived in the Indian Ocean at the end of the fifteenth century, and this chapter explores the evidence for the presence of the Portuguese before analyzing the development of the islands both as trading centers in the customary local networks and their development as supply points on the route between Europe and Asia. The French, Dutch and, above all the English were frequent visitors to the islands, initially Mwali, later Ndzuani; the latter island was to remain very firmly within an English, later British sphere of influence for more than two centuries, and this chapter discusses their role in local events. It also explores the different cultural influences on the islands and the cosmopolitan character of the people, their customs, social structures and material culture, as well as analyzes the histories of and conflicts between the four islands. This chapter closes with the devastating Malagasy slave raids at the end of the eighteenth century.

Out of Africa: The Challenges, Evolution, and Opportunities of African Military History

Since their inception, African studies have endeavored to dispel the harmful racialized stereotypes of the African people. However, these efforts have been uneven and some aspects of African history have remained immersed in colonial dehumanized tropes. The sub-discipline of African military history has been one such aspect due in part to structural issues involved in its generation. However, with these structural issues slowly being overcome by advances in the discipline, the development of African institutions, and the expansion of historical inquiry, there are now a multitude of African military historical inquiries that might be successfully pursued. In turn, these inquiries will help transform the understanding of African military practices from a racialized discussion of slave raids and massacres to a nuanced examination of a complex socio-political practice.

Fitness costs of worker specialization for ant societies

Division of labour is of fundamental importance for the success of societies, yet little is known about how individual specialization affects the fitness of the group as a whole. While specialized workers may be more efficient in the tasks they perform than generalists, they may also lack the flexibility to respond to rapid shifts in task needs. Such rigidity could impose fitness costs when societies face dynamic and unpredictable events, such as an attack by socially parasitic slavemakers. Here, we experimentally assess the colony-level fitness consequences of behavioural specialization in Temnothorax longispinosus ants that are attacked by the slavemaker ant T. americanus . We manipulated the social organization of 102 T. longispinosus colonies, based on the behavioural responses of all 3842 workers. We find that strict specialization is disadvantageous for a colony's annual reproduction and growth during slave raids. These fitness costs may favour generalist strategies in dynamic environments, as we also demonstrate that societies exposed to slavemakers in the field show a lower degree of specialization than those originating from slavemaker-free populations. Our findings provide an explanation for the ubiquity of generalists and highlight their importance for the flexibility and functional robustness of entire societies.

Locals and Migrants in the Coalmining Town of Enugu (Nigeria): Worker Protest and Urban Identity, 1915–1929

This article focuses on the varied workforce in and around the Enugu Government Colliery, located in south-eastern Nigeria and owned by the British colonial state. Opened in 1915 at Udi and in 1917 at Iva Valley and Obwetti, the mines were in a region with a long history of slave raids, population shifts, colonization, and ensuing changes in local forms of political organization. The mines brought together an eclectic mixture of forced and voluntary unskilled labor, prisoners, unskilled contract workers, and voluntary clerical workers and artisans. Moreover, the men were from different ethno-linguistic groups. By taking into account this complex background, the article describes the gradual process by which this group of inexperienced coalminers used industrial-protest strategies that reflected their habituation to the colonial workplace. They organized strikes against the village men, who, as supervisors, exploited them in the coalmines. Their ability to reach beyond their “traditional” rural identities as “peasants” to attack the kinsmen who exploited them indicates the extent to which the complex urban and industrial environment challenged indigenous identities based on locality as well as rural status systems and gender ideologies. One of the major divisions to overcome was the one between supposedly backward “locals”, men who came from villages close to the mine, and more experienced “foreigners” coming from more distant areas in Nigeria: the work experience as “coalmen” led “locals” to see themselves as “modern men” too, and to position themselves in opposition to authoritarian village leaders. The article thus traces the contours of the challenges confronting a new working class as it experimented with unfamiliar forms of affiliation, trust, and association with people with whom it shared new, industrial experiences. It investigates the many ways that “local” men maneuvered against the authoritarian control of chiefs, forced labor, and workplace exploitation by “native” and expatriate staff.

Akdeniz – the Battle for the White Sea, 1550–1571

Jean de Valette was a Knight of St John who had led slave raids in the days when the Hospitallers were based on Rhodes. Several years after the evacuation of Rhodes, whose capitulation he had witnessed, he was appointed governor of Tripoli, granted to the Knights along with Malta; then in 1541 his galley, the San Giovanni, had an altercation with Turkish pirates, and he was captured and put to work as a galley slave at the ripe age (for those times) of forty-seven. He survived the humiliation for a year, until the Knights of Malta and the Turks effected a prisoner exchange. Back in Malta he rose up the hierarchy of the Order; he was known for his occasional bursts of temper, but he was also admired as a brave, imposing figure. He was emerging as a potential leader of the Order just as Turkish power edged ever closer to Malta, and indeed Sicily. In 1546, Turgut, or Dragut, one of the most capable naval commanders in Turkish service, captured Mahdia on the Tunisian coast, though the Spaniards recaptured it in 1550. Turgut clashed with Andrea Doria’s fleet off Jerba, but he escaped just when Doria seemed to have trapped him; he sailed to Malta and Gozo, laying waste the home islands of the Knights, before a victorious assault on Tripoli, lost after over forty years of Christian occupation. The Spaniards attempted to swing the balance back in their favour, and in 1560 they despatched a fleet of about 100 ships (half of them galleys) in the hope of finally capturing Jerba. Andrea Doria was now elderly, and command was entrusted nepotistically to his heir and great-nephew, Gian Andrea Doria, who was unable to impose on his captains the strict discipline that was needed to hold the line in the face of the Turkish naval counter-attack led by Piyale, a talented young admiral of Christian ancestry. It has been claimed that Piyale’s order to hoist sail and run down the Spanish fleet ‘ranks among the great snap decisions in naval history’.