Black Ivory

by R. M. Ballantyne

The dhows which were thus chased or captured were all regular and undisguised slavers. Their owners were openly engaged in what they knew was held to be piracy alike by the Portuguese, the Sultan of Zanzibar, and the English. They were exporting slaves from Africa to Arabia and Persia, which is an illegal species of traffic. In dealing with these, no difficulty was experienced except the difficulty of catching them. When caught, the dhows were invariably destroyed and the slaves set free—that is to say, carried to those ports where they might be set free with safety.

But there were two other sorts of traffickers in the bodies and souls of human beings, who were much more difficult to deal with.

There were, first the legal slave-traders, namely, the men who convey slaves by sea from one part of the Sultan of Zanzibar’s dominions to another. This kind of slavery was prosecuted under the shelter of what we have already referred to as a domestic institution! It involved, as we have said before, brutality, injustice, cruelty, theft, murder, and extermination, but, being a domestic institution of Zanzibar, it was held to be legal, and the British Government have recognised and tolerated it by treaty for a considerable portion of this century!

It is, however, but justice to ourselves to say, that our Government entered into the treaty with the view of checking, limiting, and mitigating the evils of the slave-trade. We have erred in recognising any form of slavery, no matter how humane our object was—one proof of which is that we have, by our interference, unintentionally increased the evils of slavery instead of abating them.

It is worth while remarking here, that slavery is also a domestic institution in Arabia and Persia. If it be right that we should not interfere with the Zanzibar institution, why should we interfere with that of Arabia or Persia? Our treaty appears to have been founded on the principle that we ought to respect domestic institutions. We maintain a squadron on the east coast of Africa to stop the flow of Africans to the latter countries, while we permit the flow by treaty, as well as by practice, to the former. Is this consistent? The only difference between the two cases is one of distance, not of principle.

But to return to our point—the legal traders. In consequence of the Sultan’s dominions lying partly on an island and partly on the mainland, his domestic institution necessitates boats, and in order to distinguish between his boats and the pirates, there is a particular season fixed in which he may carry his slaves by sea from one part of his dominions to another; and each boat is furnished with papers which prove it to be a “legal trader.” This is the point on which the grand fallacy of our interference hinges. The “domestic institution” would be amply supplied by about 4000 slaves a year. The so-called legal traders are simply legalised deceivers, who transport not fewer than 30,000 slaves a year! It must be borne in mind that these 30,000 represent only a portion—the Zanzibar portion—of the great African slave-trade. From the Portuguese settlements to the south, and from the north by way of Egypt, the export of negroes as slaves is larger. It is estimated that the total number of human beings enslaved on the east and north-east coast of Africa is about 70,000 a year. As all authorities agree in the statement that, at the lowest estimate, only one out of every five captured survives to go into slavery, this number represents a loss to Africa of 350,000 human beings a year. They leave Zanzibar with full cargoes continually, with far more than is required for what we may term home-consumption. Nevertheless, correct papers are furnished to them by the Sultan, which protects them from British cruisers within the prescribed limits, namely, between Cape Dalgado and Lamoo, a line of coast about 1500 miles in extent. But it is easy for them to evade the cruisers in these wide seas and extensive coasts, and the value of Black Ivory is so great that the loss of a few is but a small matter. On reaching the northern limits the legal traders become pirates. They run to the northward, and take their chance of being captured by cruisers.

The reason of all this is very obvious. The Sultan receives nearly half a sovereign a head for each slave imported into Zanzibar, and our Governments, in time past, have allowed themselves to entertain the belief, that, by treaty, the Sultan could be induced to destroy this the chief source of his revenue!

Surely it is not too much to say, that Great Britain ought to enter into no treaty whatever in regard to slavery, excepting such as shall provide for the absolute, total, and immediate extirpation thereof by whatsoever name called.

Besides these two classes of slavers,—the open, professional pirates, and the sneaking, deceiving “domestic” slavers,—there are the slave-smugglers. They are men who profess to be, and actually are, legal traders in ivory, gum, copal, and other produce of Africa. These fellows manage to smuggle two or three slaves each voyage to the Black Ivory markets, under pretence that they form part of the crew of their dhows. It is exceedingly difficult, almost impossible, for the officers of our cruisers to convict these smugglers—to distinguish between slaves and crews, consequently immense numbers of slaves are carried off to the northern ports in this manner. Sometimes these dhows carry Arab or other passengers, and when there are so many slaves on board that it would be obviously absurd to pretend that they formed part of the crew, the owner dresses the poor wretches up in the habiliments that come most readily to hand, and passes them off as the wives or servants of these passengers. Any one might see at a glance that the stupid, silent, timid-looking creatures, who have had almost every human element beaten out of them, are nothing of the sort, but there is no means of proving them other than they are represented to be. If an interpreter were to ask them they would be ready to swear anything that their owner had commanded; hence the cruisers are deceived in every way—in many ways besides those now mentioned—and our philanthropic intentions are utterly thwarted; for the rescuing and setting free of 1000 or 2000 negroes a year out of the 30,000 annually exported, is not an adequate result for our great expense in keeping a squadron on the coast, especially when we consider that hundreds, probably thousands, of slaves perish amid horrible sufferings caused by the efforts of the man-stealers to avoid our cruisers. These would probably not lose their lives, and the entire body of slaves would suffer less, if we did not interfere at all.

From this we do not argue that non-interference would be best, but that as our present system of repression does not effectively accomplish what is aimed at, it ought to be changed. What the change should be, many wise and able men have stated. Their opinion we cannot quote here, but one thing taught to us by past experience is clear, we cannot cure the slave-trade by merely limiting it. Our motto in regard to slavery ought to be—Total and immediate extinction everywhere.