Travelogues and Other Memories

Magomero and The East African Slave Trade

Footnotes and References

  1. See Timeline of the Abolition of African Slavery https://travelogues.uk/2024/08/20/timeline-of-the-abolition-of-african-slavery/ ↩︎
  2. In 1808 Britain established its West African Squadron or Preventative Squadron, designed to halt slave trading from the West Coast of Africa to the West Indies and America. Between 1808 and 1860, the Royal Navy, West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 ships involved in the slave trade and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard these vessels. At its peak the Squadron comprised a sixth of the all the Royal Navy’s ships and marines in the battle against the slave trade. The Royal Navy of the 19th Century was still an unhealthy place to work and the West Africa Squadron was the unhealthiest posting of all. Between 1830 and 1865 17,000 sailors died from disease, action or accident whilst on the West African station. ↩︎
  3. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in the late 17th and early 19th centuries. Central to the ideas developing under this banner was a celebration of reason which the thinkers of the time saw as the process by which humans could come to understand the universe and improve their own condition. The goals of rational humanity were knowledge, freedom and happiness. ↩︎
  4. The politics of abolition are complicated. The ideas of the Enlightenment called for new ideas regarding people’s rights and the government’s role in protecting those rights but in addition Britain’s economy had become industrial with a “working class” urban workforce who themselves were fighting for fair employment and wages. They were instinctively sympathetic to the plight of slaves and knew that slavery was benefiting the middle and upper classes rather tan themselves. The British already had a huge Empire and the image they wanted to project was of a paternalistic power bringing justice, peace and prosperity to the grateful natives; being a slave trading and slave owning nation did not fit with this image. ↩︎
  5. The Stone Town Slave market is often referred to as the World’s last open slave market but the market in Marrakesh, Morocco was open until 1922 or 1923 when the occupying French stopped the slave trade and closed the market. The Marrakesh market was the end of the trans-Saharan slave trade route that had existed since the 9th century. As the transatlantic, then the African East Coast and the Nile Valley routes were closed the Timbuktu to Marrakesh route and a Sudan to Marrakesh route became the last surviving and most significant slave trade routes from sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean and onwards to the Middle-East. ↩︎
  6. The law declaring slavery illegal had certain caveats including specifically excluding concubines on the very thin argument that emancipating enslaved women who were unable to provide for themselves would lead to them becoming prostitutes. The reality was more to do with the fact that the British, who had been the driving force behind the Sultan’s law, felt that the practice of concubinage was too sensitive a subject to delve into. Concubines were not included within the abolition law until 1909. ↩︎
  7. Obituary: Major-General Christopher Palmer Rigby. (1885). Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, 7(6), 388–390. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1800411 ↩︎
  8. Following the model they had established on the west coast the British established an anti-slaving patrol in the Mozambique channel in 1842. Given the sheer scale of the trade, the fact it generally used small dhows not large slavers and the length of the east coast from Mozambique to present day Kenya, a frigate, four sloops and three or four brigs did little to stem the flow of slaves from the coast to Zanzibar or North to the gulf or from the Portuguese port of Quelimane to Brazil. The patrol was later withdrawn but eventually replaced by patrols from the Cape Squadron based in Cape Town. ↩︎
  9. The Europeans consistently refer to Arabs and Arab slavers. In practice few, if any, Arabs ever visited the interior of Central Africa. The slavers were typically Swahili people who are also often called Swahili-Arabs which is equally incorrect. The Swahili people lived in the coastal towns of East Africa from southern Somalia in the north to northern Mozambique in the South and the north-west of Madagascar. Their origins date back to around 1000 AD and recent DNA analysis shows that they are a genetic mix of African Bantu women and non-African men. The male DNA initially originated in modern-day Iran and later came from India and southern Arabia. Swahili culture and language (kiswahili) is unique and distinct. ↩︎
  10. Livingstone records an intriguing anecdote relating to this meeting; when his party eventually returned to Kongoné he met a woman who had been one of the slaves at Mosauka’s but the dhow transporting her north was intercepted by HMS Lynx and she had been rescued.  ↩︎
  11. Livingstone’s casual reference to Cazembe’s Country is very typical of his journals, it suggest that either he thought his readers would know where the various African chiefs he mentions were based or it is a form of one up-manship to show-off his extensive knowledge of the geography of Africa. ↩︎
  12. Cazembe’s Country is presumably reference to Kazembe whose capital was near Lake Mweru in the lower Luapula valley on the borders of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kazembe is still a traditional kingdom. The 18th and 19th century kingdom commanded the crossroad of important long-distance trade routes that stretched across Africa from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. The Portuguese sent expeditions to Kazembe in 1798 and 1805 in an attempt to open a trade route that linked their holdings in Angola and Mozambique. In the 19th century King Kazemba IV resisted Portugal’s attempts to form trading relationship arguing that he already had plenty of trade with the Swahili coastal ports. ↩︎
  13. Christopher Palmer Rigby 1820 – 1885 was Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul at Zanzibar and Muscat from 1858 to 1861. He helped provision John Speke and James Grant’s trek to Lake Victoria and is referred to by Livingstone. In 1860 he took steps to combat slavery in Zanzibar; he realised that five or six thousand British Indian subjects living on Zanzibar owned slaves so by imprisoning a few wealthy merchant to set an example and fining others he re-established British authority and emancipated 8,000 slaves. (for ref. see 5 below) ↩︎
  14. E.D.Moore (1931) Ivory Scourge of Africa https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.77345/page/n5/mode/2up ↩︎
  15. For more about the relationship between ivory and slavery see https://travelogues.uk/2024/05/31/the-fall-rise-of-malawis-elephants-part-2-the-nightmare-years/ ↩︎
  16. Mackenzie had been transported to the mouth of the Zambezi on HMS Lyra, one of the Cape Squadron carrying out anti-slavery patrols off the East African coast. Whilst on board he purchased a gun and ammunition from the Lyra’s captain ↩︎
  17. The Mang’anja, as they are known in Malawi, are a Bantu people who are the remnants of the Maravi empire which dominated the area from the late 15th century until its collapse in the 19th century. The Mang’anja are also known as the Nyanja and the Chewa. ↩︎
  18. The Yao are a Bantu people who settled near Yawo mountain in the hills of northern Mozambique. They moved to the southern end of Lake Malawi around 1830. Traditionally this migration is explained by famine in Mozambique but others argue that it was an economic migration and that the Yao migrated along established trade routes as they formed trading relationships with the Swahili people. They became influential slave and ivory traders. ↩︎
  19. James Tengatenga (2013) The Legacy of Dr. David Livingstone. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23611941 ↩︎
  20. Tete was 420 km up the Zambezi River from the In dian Ocean and was taken from Swahili People by the Portuguese in 1531. It became a major trading centre in the 17th century. The Portuguese were originally drawn to the upper Zambezi to find gold and silver but over time ivory and slaves became the main commercial activity. ↩︎
  21. Sir John Kirk, 1832 to 1922, a qualified doctor, who accompanied Livingstone on most of his expeditions from 1858 onwards. In 1866 he was appointed as acting surgeon to the political agency in Zanzibar and subsequently Consul General in 1873. He is credited with persuading the Sultan Of Zanzibar to shut the notorious slave market and to eventually criminalise slavery in his domains. ↩︎
  22. Horace Waller 1833 – 1896 was a clergyman and travelled with Bishop Mackenzie as the Lay Superintendent of the UMCA. He stayed with the mission until 1864 when he returned to England. He later edited Livingstone’s last papers and corresponded, at length, with both Livingstone and later Gordon of Khartoum. ↩︎
  23. Horace Waller’s diaries and letters, have not been published and are held in the Bodleian Library Oxford with additional documents at Yale University. I am indebted to Landeg White who has quoted Waller at length in his wonderful book Magomero Portrait of an African Village which gives a very complete account of the UMCA Mission. ↩︎
  24. Beginning in 1822 British diplomats negotiated treaties with the Sheikhs of the Trucial Coast (the precursor to the UAE), Oman, Bahrain and Persia with the intent of suppressing the slave trade. These treaties eventually enabled Britain to stop and detain vessels suspected of transporting slaves. ↩︎
  25. The Murchison Cataracts which are now known as the Kapichira falls lie on the Shire River on the eastern edge of the Majete Wildlife Reserve, 30 kilometres to the southwest of Blantyre. The “discovery”, by Livingstone, of the cataracts in 1859 laid to rest the Doctor’s vision of a navigable waterway from the Indian Ocean into the heart of Africa. In 1861 the UMCA / Livingstone expedition left their boat, The Pioneer, here at Chibisa’s village and proceeded on foot to the highlands where Blantyre stands today. Chibisa’s is now Chikwawa and is still where the road from the south turns northeast to head up to Blantyre and beyond. ↩︎

Other References

  1. Landeg White (1987) Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge University Press
  2. John McCracken (2012) A History of Malawi 1859-1966. Woodbridge, Suffolk: John Currey
  3. Oliver Ransford (1966) Livingstone’s Lake. London: John Murray
  4. Henry Rowley (1866) The Story of the Universities Mission to Central Africa, from its commencement, under Bishop Mackenzie, to its withdrawal from the Zambezi. London: Saunders, Otley, and Co. https://archive.org/details/ofuniversitstory00rowlrich/ofuniversitstory00rowlrich/mode/2up
  5. Royal Navy Museum Portsmouth. Chasing Freedom: The Royal navy and the Suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. https://archives.history.ac.uk/1807commemorated/exhibitions/museums/chasing.html
  6. Britain’s Small Forgotten Wars. Fight Against Slavery, East African 1895. http://www.britainssmallwars.co.uk/fight-against-slavery-zanzibar-east-africa-1895.html
  7. Protector Honours Sailors who helped end African Slave Trade https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/2021/october/20/20211020-protector-slavery
  8. Erin Rushning (2013) David Livingstone and the Other Slave Trade, Part II: The Arab Slave Trade https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/2013/10/21/david-livingstone-and-the-other-slave-trade-part-ii-the-arab-slave-trade/
  9. Obituary: Major-General Christopher Palmer Rigby. (1885). Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, 7(6), 388–390. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1800411
  10. Benedetta Rossi (2024) The Abolition of Slavery in Africa’s Legal Histories https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181832/#:~:text=Some%20independent%20African%20polities%20abolished,slavery’s%20abolition%20should%20be%20studied.
  11. Joanne Silberner (2023) What’s the origin of the long-ago Swahili civilization? Genes offer a revealing answer. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/04/12/1168613272/whats-the-origin-of-the-long-ago-swahili-civilization-genes-offer-a-revealing-an
  12. Ian Cunnison (1961) Kazembe and the Portuguese 1798-1832 https://www.jstor.org/stable/179583?read-now=1#page_scan_tab_contents
  13. David Livingstone (1865) A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone’s Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributies: and the Discovery of Lakes Shirva and Nyassa 1858 – 1864. Accessed at Project Guttenberg’s 2001 edition. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2519/2519-h/2519-h.htm
  14. Harvey Goodwin (1864) Memoir of Bishop Mackenzie (Including many of his letters) https://archive.org/details/memoirofbishopm00good/mode/2up?q=shirehttps://archive.org/details/memoirofbishopm00good/mode/2up
  15. The Victorian Royal Navy – https://www.pdavis.nl/index.htm
  16. 23 Dhows Condemned at cape town in 1852 – https://www.pdavis.nl/Ariel.htm
  17. Matthew Chiswell (2003) The Cape Squadron, Admiral Baldwin Walker and the Suppression of the Slave Trade (1861-4) https://open.uct.ac.za/items/d66ff1fe-8244-4092-84bb-e0100362fcb6
  18. Yusuf A. Al Ghailani (2015) British Early Intervention in the Slave Trade With Oman 1822-1873 https://www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/56b1630b9bc11.pdf
  19. Kings M Phiri (1984) Yao Intrusion into Southern Malawi, Nyanja resistance and Colonial Conquest 1830 -1900. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24328494?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
  20. Colin A Baker (1960) Magomero, and the Battle of Sazi Hill, Zomba 1861 https://www.jstor.org/stable/29545883
  21. Jonathan Newell (1992) “There were Arguments in favour of our taking up arms”: Bishop MacKenzie and the War Against the Yao in 1861. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29778663?read-now=1&seq=14#page_scan_tab_contents
  22. The British missionaries left the buildings in the hands of their erstwhile African congregation. Reverend Burrup visited later in 1862 and found the Mang’anja dying from starvation and the Yao raiding unchecked. Burrup died during this visit and soon the mission was completely abandoned.
  23. J. Watson (1973) Some Notes on the History of the Zomba District https://www.jstor.org/stable/29778289?searchText=history+of+zomba+district&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dhistory%2Bof%2Bzomba%2Bdistrict%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A7a29e033fb83841e334e6e543dc2fa2b&seq=1

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2 responses to “Magomero and The East African Slave Trade”

  1. Liberated East African Slaves Part 2 Magomero and The Nasik Boys – Travelogues and Other Memories

    […] Bishop Mackenzie with eighty-four liberated slaves including two small boys, Chuma and Wekatani (see here). Engraving by Walter Stanley Paget, National Maritime Museum Greenwich […]

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  2. Colonists and Slavery in Malawi Part 1 – Pre-Colonial Africa, The Empty Land – Travelogues and Other Memories

    […] The story of Mackenzie and the ill-fated Magomero mission is told here. […]

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