Slavery and Post-Slavery in the Indian Ocean World

Abstract

Unlike the Atlantic, slavery and slave trade in the Indian Ocean persisted over centuries, from antiquity to the present: slavery involved many actors, not necessarily attributed to tensions between the “West and the rest.” Multiple forms of bondage, debt dependence, and slavery persisted and coexisted over centuries, since ancient times, then with the expansion of Islam in the 8th century, and reached a peak with the intrusion of European powers between the 16th and the 19th centuries. However, even after the official abolition of slavery in the western colonies, forms of bondage and illegal slavery have persisted and were openly practiced in the Gulf region through much of the 20th century.