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1
INDIA’S RELATIONS WITH EAST AFRICA:
A HISTORICAL STUDY
DR. MANISH KARMWAR*
Indo-African trade relations are one of the very important segments among others to understand African
settlements in different parts of Indian sub-continent. The evidence of African trade in India dates back many
centuries. From ancient times, providence had been 'kind to India' which enjoyed a superabundance of three
valuable export commodities which were prized in Africa: pepper, silk and cotton. The force migration of Negroes
from the African sub-continent into India went up only in the sixth century A.D. when the Arabs expanded their
trade with India. Ample sources are available to substantiate this contention. The Persians and the Persian Gulf
may also have begun to play an important role as an intermediary between East Africa and India. From the late
seventh century through the fifteenth century the history of the East African coast is somewhat illuminated by
Europeans and by numerous archeological and other records. During the course of the sixteenth century the
Portuguese dominated the Indian Ocean and its littoral. Portugal was determined to eliminate Muslim merchants,
especially Arabs, in the Indian Ocean system. This paper tries to explore India Africa relation especially with east
Africa from earliest times to nineteenth century A.D. It analyses the fact through archaeological and literally
sources. Here trade relations between India and Africa are shown in different stages, which focus on volume of
trade, trade composition and trade routes. The paper recognises the fact that trade and the hold over natural
resources had been the principal reason behind the age old links between Africa and India.
Archaeological sites trace the earliest relation between India and East African countries
and provide evidences to support their trade related bond. Archaeological excavations at
the site of Rojdi in Gujarat have revealed the presence of domesticated grains that had
their origin in Africa. These include finger millet dating around 2500-2300
BC(Weber,1998). There are ancient sites in South Asia which have yielded evidence for
the prehistoric
1
production of Jowar
2
of African origin. Jowar was grown at Pirack
3
in
the earliest period dating back to circa 2000 B.C. There are sufficient grounds to prove
the African origin of the millet also, though non-biological evidence is lacking for contact
between India and Africa during or prior to the Second millennium. The only possibility
that emerges is the direct connection across the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Since
1
Prehistory is a term often used to describe the period before written history.
2
Sorghum bicolour.
3
Gujarat.
2
the overland route to India could not be of any practical use, there is a reason to suppose
that proto-historic
4
maritime activity connecting the Indian sub-continent to Mesopotamia
was fairly wider in scope than the available historical records reveal (Chauhan, 1995). In
2000 B.C., Indian cotton was widely in use in Mesopotamia where Indian traders had
their settlement. Sesamum, wheat, rice were exported to East Africa from India. In
Gujarat, at Lothal
5
harbour structures have been found of that era confirming the
existence of port and dockyard facilities on the Indian side of the trade route where ships
could load and unload their goods. Therefore, it can be conclusively averred that the
earliest trade in the Indian Ocean existed between the Gulf and Western India, especially
Gujarat, Cutch and Sind in and around 2000 B.C. (Chauhan, 1995).
According to Cyril A. Hromnik,
6
India had seaworthy ships and it must have left a
deep mark on all the coasts of the ocean that bears its name i.e. the Indian Ocean. The
works of early writers make it amply clear that Indian ships sailed regularly to the coast
of East Africa at the time. The range of items such as Indian 'Bhang', Coconut scrapers,
beads, cotton, metalwork, architecture, different currencies in the east and even South
Africa covered the period between 3000 to 200 B.C. Indian gold mining on and around
the south Zambezi plateau might have started as early as the end of the Second
millennium B.C. in the opinion of Hromnik, the arrow heads, the first tools made in
Africa, had Indian origin and the linguistic evidence, as the best recorder of history,
further make us believe that the area which is called in modern times as 'Sub-Saharan
Africa' was in fact Indo-Africa(Hromnik,1981). S.A.I. Tirmizi's(1968) Scholarly work on
Indian sources for African history clearly reveals that ebony, ivory and cotton goods
including silk meant for wrapping the well-known Egyptian mummies were supplied to
Egypt in the Second millennium B.C. by the Abyssinian and Somali traders who used to
transport them from India. He avers that the trade between India and East African coast
has been going on at least since Roman time.
4
Protohistory refers to a period between prehistory and history, during which a culture or
civilization has not yet developed writing.
5
Lothal ,Mound of the Dead, was one of the most prominent cities of the ancient Indus valley
civilization. Located in the modern state of Gujarat.
6
He wrote Indo-Africa: Towards a New Understanding of the History of Sub-saharan Africa(Cape
Town: Juta and Company Limited,1981), “Dravidian Gold Mining and Trade in Ancient
Kmatiland”, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 26, no. 3-4(1991): pp.283-290.
3
Given this scenario, an element of surprise is that the earliest archaeological
evidence for maritime activity in India bought to light by S.R. Rao (1973) while
excavating Lothal includes the terracotta models of an African guerilla and mummy. This
human intercourse was greatly facilitated by the trade winds which blow from November
to March from the north-east and carried dhows from Asia to the East African coast.
From May through September the winds reverse themselves, blowing from the
southwest, and so carried the dhows and the crew back to the Arabian Peninsula, India,
and the Far East. For the five months that the winds blow east to west, Indians, Arabs,
and other Asians could reach several points of East Africa, from the Horn to the present-
day Mozambique and beyond, selling their goods, establishing contacts.
India was largely self-sufficient, apart from gold and some other precious goods,
especially in the staple ‘forest’ products that East Africa could have supplied. Indeed,
India appears to have been an active exporter of ivory at this time which probably
delayed the exploitation of African ivory resources. Exploitation appears to have been
stimulated by the intense rivalry among Greek successor states after the death of
Alexander. The firm control exercised by the Seleucids
7
over the land-routes to India
induced the Ptolemies of Egypt to seek ivory from elsewhere. The immediate need was to
secure war elephants, but the Ptolemies also wished to break the Seleuced monopoly over
the supply of Indian ivory to the Mediterranean. They therefore turned to the African
coast of the Red Sea, establishing a series of elephant-hunting posts as far as the mouth of
the Red Sea. The effect of the Ptolemies’ policy brought tremendous expansion in the
ivory trade (Sheriff, 1981).
The loss of Syria under Ptolemy V, and the growing demand in Italy for Arabian
and Indian commodities at a time when the immediate hinterland of the Red Sea coast
was apparently being depleted of ivory, forced Egypt to turn to the southern sea-route in
order to maintain some commercial contact with India. By the end of the second Century
7
The Seleucid Empire,312 - 60 BC,was a Hellenistic successor state of Alexander the Great's
short-lived Macedonian empire. At its height, the Seleucid Empire included central Anatolia, the
Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia, Turkmenistan and Pamir.
4
B.C, Socotra
8
was inhabited by foreign traders including Cretans,
9
and Eudoxus
10
took
advantage of a shipwrecked Indian pilot to make the first direct voyage to India. Indian
trade continued to grow sufficiently in importance for officers to be appointed ‘in charge
of the Red and Indian Seas’ between110-51B.C. But Eudoxus’ initiative does not seem to
have been followed up regularly. Strabo implies that this was due to the weakness and
anarchy of the later Ptolemies when ‘not so many as twenty vessels would dare to
traverse the Arabian Gulf [Red Sea] far enough to get a peep outside the straits. Egyptian
trade with India at that time was therefore largely indirect, through the south-west
Arabian entrepots. The Periplus notes about Aden
11
that “in the early days of the city,
when the voyage was not yet made from India to Egypt, and when they did not dare to
sail from Egypt to the ports across this Ocean, but all came together at this place, it
received cargoes from both countries” (Schoff, 1912). South-west Arabia thus occupied a
crucial middleman’s position and appropriated its share of commercial profit which
became proverbial. The Sabaeans
12
were superseded in115 B.C by the Himyarites, who
gradually came to concentrate the entrepot traffic at the port of Muza which was
governed by the vassal state of Maafir (Schoff, 1912).
The south-west Arabians peninsula also appear to have controlled the other
branch of trade which led down the East African coast. It has already been suggested that
one of the driving forces for Ptolemic commercial expansion down the Red Sea was the
increasing demand for oriental luxuries, including ivory. It is therefore possible that the
Arabs extended their commercial activities to the East African coast at this time to supply
that demand for ivory. It is significant that when, at the end of the second century B.C.,
the northeast monsoon apparently blew Eudoxus on to the African coast somewhere
south of Cape Guardafui,
13
Ptolmey was able to obtain a pilot, probably an Arab, who
8
Socotra is a small archipelago of four islands and islets in the Indian Ocean off the coast of the
Horn of Africa.
9
Crete, is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.
10
Eudoxus of Cnidus was a Greek astronomer, mathematician, scholar and student of Plato..
11
Aden's ancient, natural harbour lies in the crater of an extinct volcano which now forms a
peninsula, joined to the mainland by a low isthmus.
12
The Sabaeans were an ancient people speaking an Old South Arabian language who lived in
what is today Yemen, in south west Arabian Peninsula
13
Cape Guardafui,Ras Asir, in Somalia, is the headland that forms the geographical apex of what
is commonly known as the Horn of Africa.
5
took him back to the Red Sea. These trading connections undoubtedly preceded the
establishment of any formal Arab suzerainty on the East African coast which the Periplus
in the second half of the 1st century A.D. described as ‘ancient’(Sheriff,1981). Therefore,
we can date Arab commercial expansion to the East African coast to perhaps as early as
the 2nd century B.C., Miller, however, argues that East Africa formed a vital link in the
cinnamon
14
trade between East Asia (the spice’s natural habitat) and the northern coast of
Somalia, where not only the Greco-Romans but also the ancient Egyptians obtained it
from the second millennium B.C. On the strength of Pliny’s reference to the transport of
cinnamon ‘over wide seas on rafts’, Miller postulates trans-oceanic voyages by
Indonesians to Madagascar and the East African coast, followed by coastal and overland
routes ending at the Somali ports. While Indonesian migration to Madagascar may have
taken this form, it is now held to have taken place during the first millennium A.D.
Moreover, there is nothing to link that migration with the trade-route described by Pliny,
which quite clearly appears to follow the northern coast of the Indian Ocean, terminating
at the South Arabian port of Ocilia. There is thus no support for Miller’s circuitous
cinnamon route, or for his enormous extension of the time when East Africa was linked
commercially with the lands across the Indian Ocean.
Indian commerce with the Horn of Africa was, as the Periplus suggests, of great
antiquity; it owed much of its importance to the fact that the African coast lay on the
trade route from India to Egypt and the Roman Empire. By the first century B.C. this
trade had become so lucrative that it was carried out by large numbers of merchants and
navigators from both east and west. Strabo remarked that as many as one hundred and
twenty vessels sailed in his time from the Egyptian Red Sea ports of Myos Hormus,
15
whereas formerly, under the Ptolemies, only a few ventured to undertake the voyage and
to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise. Pliny, too, underlined the importance of India's
trade with the west. Writing about a century later he declares that in no year did India
absorb less than fifty million sersteces (about £425,000) of the Roman Empire's wealth,
and that it sent back merchandise which sold at 'a hundred times its prime cost'. Over a
14
Cinnamon is a small evergreen tree 10–15 metres (32.8–49.2 feet) tall, belonging to the family
Lauraceae, and is native to India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. The bark is widely used as a
spice due to its distinct odour.
15
Myos Hormos was a Red Sea port constructed by the Ptolemies around the 3rd century BC.
6
millennium and a half later James Bruce
16
pointed to the significance of the trade winds
which from early times had so greatly facilitated trading connections between India and
the Red Sea.
From ancient times, providence had been 'kind to India' which enjoyed a
superabundance of three valuable export commodities which were prized in Africa:
pepper, silk and cotton. Of all the spices pepper, he thought, was rightly considered the
'greatest friend to the health of man'; 'nowhere known but in India’, it grew
'spontaneously, and was gathered without toil'(Bruce,1790). Speak, who during his
journey to discover the source of the White Nile several decades later met many Indian
merchants deep in the interior of Africa, was much impressed by the age old character of
their trade. He drew attention to the fact that Indians had been acquainted with the region
in ancient times and had names of their own for most of its important landmarks. Indian
trade with the Horn of Africa was important throughout recorded history; its character
remained largely unchanged for century as it was noticed by foreign observers both in the
middle Ages and in later times.
Ethiopian economic history dawns in the bright, yet shadowy glory of the
Aksumite Empire,
17
the achievements of which can be seen to this day in the ruins of its
cities and towns, reservoirs and dams, temples and stelae relics of a great civilization of
considerable importance in world history. The first historical document touching on the
economy of this empire is the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. This detailed account of
the principal Red Sea ports and their foreign trade states that the emperor's maritime
dominions stretched at that time along the coast of what is now Eritrea as far the 'Berber
Country’ i.e. the coast of Somaliland, though some of the ports in the latter region, were
not subject to a king, but each ruled by a separate chief. An indication of the close
relations with the Greeks, who were at that time the paramount maritime power, is
afforded by a reference to the fact that Zoscales, the Aksumite ruler of the day, was
'acquainted with Greek literature'. This king, the side of the Bay of Zula not far from
16
James Bruce was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who spent more than a dozen years in
North Africa and Ethiopia, where he traced the origins of the Blue Nile.
17
The Aksumite Empire was an important trading nation in northeastern Africa, growing from
the proto-Aksumite period ca. 4th century BC to achieve prominence by the 1st century AD.
7
Massawa was already a major trading centre and the main port of the empire. It is
described in this work as “a fair - sized village”, though Pliny calls it ‘a very large
centre’. There are indications that its commerce was suffering from the activities of
nearby warlike peoples who did not appreciate the benefits of peaceful trade. Adulis, the
Periplus states, was ‘a port established by law, lying at the inner end of a bay that runs in
toward the south’. The Periplus gives us a valuable account of the Horn of Africa's
foreign trade at this period (Pankhurst, 1961).
The Periplus has little to say about the exports of Adulis and sums them up briefly
as 'ivory, tortoise shell and rhinoceros horn. Pliny, on the other hand, relates that the port
traded in a large quantity of ivory, rhinoceros-horns, hippopotamus-hides, apes and
slaves. All these ports along the coast of the Horn of Africa were of international fame
and were visited by vessels which either sailed there expressly or else exchanged their
cargoes there while journeying along the neighbouring coast. Trading ships came both
from Egypt whence they set forth every year in July, and from the ports between Ariaca
and Barygaza on the north-west coast of the Indian sub-continent. These vessels brought
the products of their own lands, such as wheat, rice, clarified butter, seasame oil, cotton
cloth, girdles, and sugar, which the Periplus terms 'honey from the reed called sacchari'.
The exports of these lands to the south of present-day Ethiopia included a little palm-oil
and a great quantity of ivory, though inferior to that of Adulis, rhinoceros horn and
tortoise-shell, which, the Periplus says, was second only to that of India (Pankhurst,
1961).
During the third to fifth centuries A.D., the trade between East Africa and South
Asia seems to have ceased as no ceramics from there have yet been discovered at Ras
Hafun, an evidence of Safavid
18
Persian hold over western Indian trade. But the
connection with the Gulf did continue. The force migration of Negroes from the African
sub-continent into India went up only in the sixth century A.D. when the Arabs expanded
their trade with India. Ample sources are available to substantiate this contention. As
early as 636 A.D., an expedition had been dispatched from the Persian Gulf to pillage the
18
The Safavids were an Iranian Shia dynasty of mixed Azeri and Kurdish origins, which ruled
Persia from 1501/1502 to 1722 A.D.. Safavids established the greatest Iranian empire.
8
flourishing port of Thana on the western coast of India, in the vicinity of Bombay. Thirty
years later, the Arabs again touched this port. After the coming of Islam on the world
scene and consequent upon the conquest of Persia by the Arabs in the seventh century,
the Arab merchants tried to control the oceanic commerce of the Konkan ports (Chauhan,
1995).
According to Ibn Batuta, a Moroccan traveler who happened to travel through
Karnataka, they followed the tenets of Shafi. It was obvious; they were emigrants from
Arabia, who had fled from their motherland to escape the fury and persecution of
Hajjaj,
19
at the end of the 7th century A.D. While in India, they opted for commerce and
slowly they captured the entire coastal trade. The Arabs had not only monopolized the
early carrying trade between Arabia and Malabar,
20
but had also made several settlements
on the Malabar and Konkan coasts. The fact that there were well established Muslim
settlements; 'Hanjamans'
21
in Goa at the beginning of the 7th century has also been
recognized. It is also believed that the Abyssinians had also established colonies along
the whole western coast of India from Cape Comorin upwards at a very early period of
the Christian era, of which Rajpuri
22
is one of the last remaining.
The Ethiopians, however, do not appear to have been able to step fully into the
shoes of the Arabs as carriers of trade in western Indian Ocean. Farther east, Persia was
emerging as a significant maritime power. The Sassanids
23
began in the third century of
our era to encourage native Persian navigation, monopolized the trade as far as India
during the sixth, and extended their commerce to China at the latest by the seventh
century. They also expanded westwards to acquire control over the other artery of trade
through the Red Sea, conquering both south-west Arabia and Egypt by the early seventh
century. Though the Persian empire collapsed under the Muslim onslaught in c 635 A.D,
there is considerable evidence to show that Persian navigators continued to dominate the
19
The Governor of Iraq.
20
The Malabar Coast, in historical contexts, refers to India's southwest coast, lying on the narrow
coastal plain of Karnataka and Kerala states between the Western Ghats range and the Arabian
Sea.
21
Inscription, (Association of Muslim merchants).
22
Rajpuri is situated at a distance of 4km from Murud Janjira Taluka, Raigad district, India.
23
The Sassanid Empire or Sassanian Dynasty or Sassanian Dynasty is the name used for the
third Iranian dynasty and the second Persian empire.
9
Indian Ocean trade for a considerable period thereafter, bequeathing a significant nautical
and commercial vocabulary to the whole Indian Ocean world(Sheriff,1981).
Such a command of the western Indian Ocean by the Persians in the sixth and
seventh centuries, especially in view of the decline of the Arabs and the inability of the
Ethiopians to replace them, strongly suggests that they had a dominant commercial
influence over the East African coast. The Persians and the Persian Gulf may also have
begun to play an important role as an intermediary between East Africa and India. The
collapse of the Roman Empire had deprived East Africa of its major ivory market at a
time when India was still largely self-sufficient. But already by the beginning of the sixth
century Indian demand for ivory for the manufacture of bridal ornaments seems to have
begun to outstrip local supply. That demand was securely based on the regular ritual
destruction of these ornaments upon the termination of the Hindu marriage by the death
of either of the partners. By the end of the seventh century, therefore, firm commercial
links had been re-established between the East African coast and the northern rim of the
Indian Ocean. The Indian market was to serve East Africa until the nineteenth century. In
return the East Africans probably received a wide range of manufactured goods,
including cloth and beads. This exchange underpinned the city-states which were founded
along the coast. But during this second phase of its history the East African coast
experienced a change predominantly in the direction of its trade rather than in its
character. It diversified the market for its ivory, but did not divert its economy from
reliance on the exchange of a few raw materials for manufactured luxuries. The export of
slaves, though not horrific or in an unbroken stream, still meant a drain on East Africa’s
human resources that may have been of critical significance at certain times and places in
the history of East Africa even before the nineteenth century. The trade, however, was
under the control of a class of coastal people themselves a product of international trade
and dependent for their prosperity on its continuance. They could hardly have been
expected to initiate a move to withdraw from this relationship of dependence and
underdevelopment (Sheriff, 1981).
From the late seventh century through the fifteenth century the history of the East
African coast is somewhat illuminated by Europeans and by numerous archeological and
10
other records. Gervase Mathew has suggested that eighth and twelfth century, under
Cholas of South India must have developed flourishing trade with East Africa. With the
advent of thirteenth century when Muslim influence was experienced by not only East
Africa but by west Asia, this branch of trade came up with new vigour. Bulk of the Indian
Ocean trading system passed into Muslim hands and all its participants acquired a new
solidarity. Survivor of emporia (Adulis, Ocelis) adopted Islam and before A.D. 1000 new
settlements were founded that were either Muslim from the beginning or subsequently
became so. The chustestie speaking Somali, known to Arabs as Black Berbers, inhabiting
the Benadir coast
24
remained in close contact with Arabia and Persian Gulf and probably
adopted Islam from their earliest time. The Muslim invasion and expansion in India was
already brisk in thirteenth century which attracted Muslim traders from Yamen and
Persian Gulf linking India directly with East Africa. Besides there were direct trade
contacts between India and East Africa in this period. Indian merchants took up residence
and exercised a profound influence. Conversely merchants from the East African coast
are known to have frequented western coast of India and East at the beginning of the
Sixteenth century(Ali,1960). The Siddis of Gujarat trace the roots of their saint and
community progenitor, Gori Pir, who is usually described as an Abyssinian who came to
Gujarat to trade in the 14th century and whose arrival is associated with the extension of
trade in locally mined agate to Africa. This dating accords well with evidence that by the
end of the 12th century there were resident traders and slaves being traded from both
Abyssinian and Zanzibar at Tiz, an important ports of the Makran in what is today Iran,
and that in 1451 Sultan Mahmud Khilji (1436-1469), founder of the Khilji dynasty of
Malwa, is reported to have visited Gori Pir’s dargah(Catlin,2004).
It is obvious from the archaeological evidence that from middle of thirteenth
century until the coming of the Portuguese at the end of fifteenth century the East African
coast enjoyed a period of quite remarkable prosperity based on overseas
trade(Oliver,1972). Edrisis,
25
Al-masudi, Ibn-i-Batuta and Marco Polo, though silent on
trade exchange, speak in length of Arab and East African contacts on the other. It is
24
Benadir is a coastal region of Somalia.
25
El Idrisi was an Arab geographer, cartographer and traveller who lived in Sicily, at the court of
King Roger II
11
evident that during the early medieval period, India’s trade with East Africa survived on
the Arab and Chinese demand. Edrisis has shown greater demand for East African iron
ore in India. Ivory had always been imported in the same way(Davidson,1959). Al-
Baruni mentions, the prosperity of the ports of Somnath
26
on the north coast of India was
based on the African trade(Posnansky,1966). Gold was another staple import of India.
Large quantity of gold must have gone to India from the ports of East Africa. Sofala
27
is
referred to by Al-Masudi as a land of gold and in tenth century the gold mint of Oman
began striking coins of gold from Sofala. Therefore, it is probable that the merchants of
Oman might have exported gold of Sofala to India. Ibn-i-Batuta also refers to the slave
trade and their role in Delhi Sultanats. “Rukh -Ud-din Barbak, king of the old muslim
kingdom of Bengal (1459-74) had 8000 African slaves, Delhi Sultanate, provincial
kingdom of Bahamanid, Jaunpur and Janjira also witness a significant role of African
slaves in their dominions(Toussaint,1966). Mughal emperor, Aurangazeb, employed an
African admiral in Bombay, Nizam of Hyderabad had an African guard during the same
period(Mahalingam,1955). But slave trading nonetheless remained subsidiary. The trade
still remained based on barter system, where Indian merchants came to play a vital role as
stockiest and middleman in the following century. This period established a definite
pattern to this branch of trade, called medieval trade pattern, in which East African
natural products attract India’s finished goods, cloth, tools, implements and food articles.
Tome Pires,
28
describing the period from 1512 to 1515, relates that Cairo
merchants brought to Aden gold, silver, quicksilver, vermilion, copper, rosewater,
camlets, coloured woolen cloth, glass beads, weapons and 'things of that kind' from Italy,
Greece, Damascus and elsewhere. Pires adds that the Deccan region of southern India
produced white and coloured cloth and black beads, which were in considerable demand
in Abyssinia(Pires,2005). This trade, he explains, was carried out by ships from Aden and
26
Somnath means "The Protector of Moon God". The Somnath located in the Prabhas Kshetra
near Veraval in Saurashtra, on the western coast of Gujarat.
27
Sofala, at present known as Nova Sofala, used to be the chief seaport of the Monomotapa
Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura.
28
Tome Pires was an apothecary from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 A.D. in Malacca
immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in
South East Asia.
12
ships from cambay. The Abyssinians, he relates, were visited by merchants from Aden,
Sherer in Hadramut
29
and the Red Sea ports of Fartak, Dahlak and Suakin. The things
which were most in demand in Abyssinia were rosewater, dried roses, all kind of beads,
crystal, and coarse cloth from Cambay, silks, white cloths, dates and opium.
Duarte Barbosa,
30
whose report on the area was completed in 1518, corroborated
these accounts of the Aden trade, stating that this port carried on extensive commerce
with Zeila
31
and Berbera,
32
as well as with Massawa
33
and the country of Prester John.
34
From these and other East African ports, he said, came 'many ships with foodstuffs in
abundance' which were exchanged for a 'great store of spices and drugs, cotton cloths and
other wares of the great Kingdom of Cambaya' (Cambay)(Dames,1918). He adds that
ships entering the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden came from many parts of India,
including the Kingdom of Cambay, Chaul, Dabul, Batical, Malabar, and the Bengal
coast, as well as from countries even farther afield, such as Ceylon, Malacca, Sumatra,
Burma and China. He confirms that the whole coast of East Africa was well supplied
with gold brought down from the land of Prester John. Ludovico di Varthema
35
relates
that merchants from Ethiopia traveled as far as Calicut(Dames,1918). Tome Pires
recalled that Gujarati sailors engaged in the Cambay trade had formerly been
accompanied in their ships by traders from many parts of the Middle East and the East
African coast. In Pires' list abyssnians take their place alongside many other nationalities,
such as people from Cairo, Ormuz, Kilwa, Malindi, Mogadishu and Mombasa, Persians,
Rumes, Turkomans, Armenians, Guilans, Khorasanians and men of shiraz. At Malacca,
29
Region of the Arabian Peninsula which stretches across political boundaries, forming a major
part of southeast Yemen, and extending eastwards to Oman.
30
Duarte Barbosa (died 1521) was a Portuguese writer and trader living in the 15th and the 16th
century.
31
Zeila is a port city on the Gulf of Aden coast and is located in the Awdal region of Somalia
near the Djibouti border.
32
Berbera is a city in northwestern Somalia.
33
Massawa, formerly known as Mitsiwa is a port on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea. Important for
many centuries.
34
The legends of Prester John, popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, told
of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and
pagans in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval
popular fantasy.
35
Ludovico di Varthema, also known as Barthema and Vertomannus (c. 1470-1517) was an
Italian traveller and writer. He was the first European non-Muslim known to have entered Mecca
as a pilgrim.
13
too, foreign traders had included Abyssinians, together with Moors from Cairo, mecca,
Aden and Ormuz, men of Malindi, Rumes, Turks, Turkomans, and Christian
Armenians(Pires,2005).
The foreign trade of the Horn of Africa suffered greatly in the early sixteenth
century from the Portuguese conflict with the Arabs. Albuquerque refers, for example, to
the sinking by his compatriots of twenty Zeila ships of 'great size',(Brich,1875) while
Barbosa describes the destruction a few years later of the Arab trading establishment at
Zeila, Berbera, and Brava. He adds that in his day vessels from the East travelled in
constant danger of interception from the Portuguese men-of-war who lay in wait for them
at Cape Guardafui. He says that they often captured great booty as they seized any
Moorish vessels they could, claiming that these sailed in defiance of the King of
Portugal's prohibition. Such interference by the Portuguese had serious repercussions
throughout the east. Corsali reports, for example, that the thriving commerce of Malacca,
Calicut, Ormuz and Aden came to an end, and Indian merchants were obliged to
withdraw into the hinterland of the sub-continent; farther afield Venice and Cairo also
suffered from the suspension of this trade route(Pankhurst,1961).
Moreover the Portuguese, who were mainly interested in the Indies,
36
never really
replaced the Arabs as a trading power in East African waters. By developing the trade
route round the Cape of Good Hope they caused commerce in the Red Sea and Gulf of
Aden to decline. Ports like Massawa, Zeila and Berbera, which had flourished when
international trade passed by their shores, fell on leaner days as the seas in question
became more and more a backwater from the point of view of world commerce.
The emergence of Turkish influence over the Red Sea area in the following
decades dealt a further blow to Ethiopian foreign trade, especially after the capture of
Massawa, their principal port, in 1557. Although the Turks, and later their local
representatives, the Naibs, were not averse to allowing Ethiopian trade to pass through
the port, they exacted heavy and arbitrary customs fees. Massawa was therefore declining
36
The Indies or East Indies or East India is a term often used to refer to the islands of South East
Asia, especially the Malay Archipelago. In a wider sense, the Indies is also used to describe land
of South and Southeast Asia.
14
in importance when Bruce
37
visited it in the second half of the eighteenth century. 'The
oppression of the Turks', he wrote, put the finishing hand to the ruin of the India trade in
the Red Sea, begun some years before by the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and
the settlements made by the Portuguese on the continent of India.
Before the arrival of the Portuguese in Indian Ocean waters, trade between India and
East Africa was based primarily on the exchange of gold from southern Zambesia and
ivory from the coastal hinterland of East Africa for cotton cloths from India and glass
beads from both India and Venice. The importance of exotic trade goods for East Africa
was vividly recounted in early sixteenth-century. Portuguese reports, suggested that
“cloth and beads are to the Kaffirs
38
what pepper is to Flanders
39
and corn to us, because
they cannot live without this merchandise or lay up their treasures of it”. The fifteenth
century may have witnessed important changes in both the personnel and organization of
trade with the rise to prominence of the Muslim sultanate of Gujarat from 1392 and the
domination of Indian Ocean trade by Gujarati merchants, for, as Jean Aubin remarks,
Gujarat was the "keystone of the commercial structures of the Indian
Ocean”(Alpers,1976).
The heart of the sultanate of Gujarat was Cambay. Around 1500 A.D. the city of
Cambay was the most important international trading port of Gujarat, but as the result of
the progressive silting up of the bay on which it is located and the dangerous tides there,
it was soon to be surpassed by both Diu and Surat. Indeed, Portuguese relations with
Gujarat at the beginning of the sixteen century were dominated by the rivalry between
Diu and surat, and, in a militaristic solution typical of their creation of an Asian seaborn
empire, the Portuguese forcibly seized Diu after many attempts in 1555. By about 1520
A.D., in fact, Diu had become the greatest trading port of Gujarat, driving a great traffic
with the other Indian ports. Ships also sailed to Mecca, Aden, Zeila, Berbera, Mogadisu,
Malindi, Brava, Mombasa, and Ormuz(Dames,1918).
37
James Bruce 1730-94, Scottish explorer in Africa.
38
Kaffir, kaffer or kafir, which once was a blanket term for black southern Africans , is now
utilized exclusively as an ethnic or racial slur.
39
Flanders is a geographical region located in parts of present day Belgium, France, and the
Netherlands. Over the course of history, the geographical territory that was called "Flanders" has
varied.
15
The merchants of Gujarat included representatives of all the major trading
communities of western Asia. Among the Muslims were Arabs, Turks (especially at
Diu), Persians, and Egyptians. Gujarati Muslims also participated in this trade, but to a
much less significant extent than their foreign coreligionists’ resident in the sultanate.
The most important Gujarati traders, however, were Hindus and Jains, and among these
the predominant groups were Vanias.
During the course of the sixteenth century the Portuguese dominated the Indian
Ocean and its littoral. Portugal was determined to eliminate Muslim merchants,
especially Arabs, in the Indian Ocean system. Accordingly, the Hindu and Jain merchants
of Gujarat were ideally situated to increase further their domination of the traditional
trade of Asia(Pearson,1976). By the end of the century the Portuguese must have
recognized how very dependent on the support of Gujarati merchants they had become,
for in 1595, they were forbidden to trade beyond the ports of western India, and Hindus
were prohibited from acting as agents for Portuguese officials and from holding royal
contracts. The Portuguese crown was predictably more concerned with protecting its own
revenue and the income of its high-born officials that it was to encourage the emergence
of an effective low-born Portuguese merchant class in Asia(Boxer,1970).
During the seventeenth century A.D. the increasing vulnerability of the
Portuguese in Asia and the steady attrition of their maritime empire in the face of
English, Dutch, and Umani Arab competition made them all the more responsive to
protest and pressure from Gujarati merchants upon whose commercial activities they
came increasingly to rely. At the same time as Portugal was consolidating its hold over
Diu, the independent sultanate of Gujarat was being incorporated into the Mughal Empire
as the consequence of Akbar's conquest in 1572(Alpers,1976).
In East Africa, specific commercial links to Gujarat were equally dependent upon
the holders of local political power. Even after the Portuguese took the coast by storm in
1505 A.D., they did not achieve effective imperial control of East African trade until the
penetration of Zambesia, which became significant only from the 1570s, the occupation
of Mombasa in 1952, and the construction of Fort Jesus in the following year. Until the
16
end of the sixteenth century A.D. they were unable to direct all the Gujarat trade to their
strongholds at Malindi and Mozambique, which were linked by imperial bonds
principally to Diu. Thus what the Portuguese called “illegal” and “contraband” commerce
between Gujarat and the East African ports which lay outside their control or sphere of
influence in the sixteenth century- Mombasa and Angoche to the south of Mozambique
Island for example-very likely was in the hands of Gujarati merchants from Surat.
Throughout the sixteenth century A.D. the trade of Portuguese East Africa was a
declared monopoly of the Portuguese captains of the coast. Despite this, the principal
trading goods for the East African trade continued to be Gujarati cloths. Since all
authorities agree that the early sixteenth century witnessed a reduction in the flow of gold
abroad from east Africa, the resulting monopoly which Gujarati clothes exercised over
‘The East African Market’ does not necessarily reflect an increase in trade between
Gujarat and East Africa. In the later part of the century, only a very small number of
Gujarati merchants seem to have been personally trading in East Africa, and these few
were undoubtedly from Diu. In 1600 A.D. there do not appear to have been any Indian
resident at Mozambique, but after the Portuguese secured Mombasa and made it their
capital for the Swahili coast an important small community of vanias grew up on the
narrow Mombasa street which faced the gate of the fort and is now known as Ndia Kuu.
By 1606 A.D. Indians from Diu were also trading at Pate, on the coast north of Mombasa.
Faced with the declining fortunes of Mozambique, which for most of the seventeenth
century had been subjected to a series of futile administrative measure designed to
stimulate trade while keeping it in the hands of the Portuguese, and perhaps too in
response to the havoc wreaked on Diu by the 'Umani Arabs in 1669, the Viceroy of India
in 1686 granted a full monopoly of trade between Diu and Mozambique to a group of
merchants at Diu who are described as "the company of Mazanes”.
The products of Gujarat clearly continued to dominate the trade of East Africa
during the seventeenth century, and most of the products of East Africa were consumed
by Gujarat. In 1630, Jean Mocquet
40
noted that bertangil, a cotton cloth dyed blue or dark
purple, was the proper trading cloth for the East African market. This seems to have been
40
Jean Mocquet , born in the surroundings of Vienna, in 1575, was a French traveller.
17
a specific kind of plain white calico, which was taken, bleached to Agra and Ahmedabad,
near the source of indigo, to be dyed blue, black, or red. For the decades after 1630 A.D.
Tavernier
41
notes that "these kinds of cotton cloth, which cost from 2 to 12 rupees the
piece, are exported to the coast of Malindi, and they constitute the principal trade done by
the Governor of Mozambique, about which he was unusually well informed. Most of
these cloths were probably obtained by the correspondents of vania merchants in Diu and
Goa who operated in the main towns of Mughal Gujarat. But there also was a certain
amount to direct trade in Portuguese vessels with Cambay, and perhaps other Mughal
ports, for the Mozambique market. In 1600, it was probably no more than about four
percent of the total exports trade of western India. East Africa's share of this trade was
probably not much different at the end of the seventeenth century. But, if the trade of East
Africa was peripheral to that of Gujarat as a whole, it was absolutely central to that of
Diu.
At mid-century, however, the colonial economy of Mozambique was completely
dominated by the ivory trade to Gujarat, and this was exclusively in the hands of the
company of Mazanes and a handful of vanias and Muslims from the much less important
Portuguese port of Daman in Gujarat, as well as Goa. During the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the trade of Gujarat with Portuguese East Africa, including both
Mozambique and the Swahili coast, was almost entirely mediated through the agency of
the Indian merchants of Diu.
Indian Gujarati merchants of Mozambique Island traditionally owned small
numbers of slaves whom they employed on their boats. On an irregular basis, they also
shipped small numbers of slaves to Diu and Daman from the 1730s, but remained largely
aloof from the slave export trade until the late eighteenth century. While ivory remained
their primary commercial focus, they moved from ‘Indirect’ involvement in the slave-
41
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was a French traveller and pioneer of trade with India, born in Paris,
where his father Gabriel and uncle Melchior, Protestants from Antwerp, pursued the profession of
geographers and engravers.
18
trade (as providers of the cloth for which most slaves were exchanged) to ‘direct’
participation, exporting slaves to western India and supplying credit to visiting
Portuguese and Brazilian slavers.
42
During the 1750s and 1760s, slaves continued to be used extensively on
Mozambique Island, chiefly as dock labourers serving vessels from Diu and Daman, and
as porters, carrying goods cleared at customs to nearby warehouses and subsequently to
markets in the interior. Slaves could be cheap enough for even ‘poor’ Indians to purchase,
but the average number owned by Indian residents of Mozambique Island was two or
three, although a few possessed ten or more slaves(Campbell,2004).
In the 1740s, continued concern about non-Christian 'influences' is reflected in the
demand that the Governors of Diu and Daman record precisely the slaves which are
usually taken from Mozambique on the vessels of those ports and be careful not to allow
them to go to areas which are not catholic. African slaves brought to Daman were either
absorbed locally or sent on to Goa, but those sent to Diu were overwhelmingly re-
exported to north-west India, notably Kathiawar,
43
where demand remained small until
the nineteenth century when markets also developed for them in Kutch and possibly even
Sind. In Kathiawar, African slaves were employed in domestic and 'ceremonial' service
and in the armies of local rulers, and in kutch, which was sparsely populated due to large
part to high rates of male out-migration, as maritime labour.
44
Some slaves imported into
Diu were also trans-shipped to the French possession of Pondicherry. Some slaves may
have been sold for work on coffee plantations, while most salves in the Persian Gulf
were, employed as soldiers, household servants, sailors and dock hands, and pearl divers.
From the 1770s, demand from the French Mascarene led to an expansion in the
Mozambique slave export trade and of Indian involvement. While recent work has
explored aspects of the slave-trade to Muslim countries in the western Indian Ocean,
42
Customs record indicates that ivory dominated the Indian export trade from Mozambique until
c. 1810. Silver and gold also figured prominently.
43
Kathiawar or Kathiawad is a peninsula in western India. It is part of Gujarat state.
44
See Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol.VIII: Kathiawar (Bombay: Government Central
Press, 1884); H. Wilberforce-Bell, A History of Kathiawad from the Earliest Times (London:
Heinemann, 1916); Harald Tambs-Lyche, Power, Profit and Poetry: Traditional Society in
Kathiawar, Western India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997).
19
studies of African Siddi or Habshi communities in India have generally paid only cursory
attention to their origins in the slave-trade.
Increased slave imports to Diu and Daman should be seen in the context of the
opening of Mozambique ports in the 1780s in order to increase the level of trade with
Portuguese India and generate more revenue, and more importantly, increased French and
Brazilian slaving. By the 1760s, Gujarati merchants had established direct contact with
Mozambique's southern coast, especially with Quelimane,
45
approximately at one week's
sailing distance. Slaves figured amongst Quelimane's exports in the 1780s, but only from
the mid-1790s did the southern slave export trade gain momentum. Increased Indian
involvement is reflected in the increased number of ship passes issued to Indian
merchants for travel to these ports. While in1781, three passports were issued to Indian
merchants for travel to Quelimane, in 1794 ten and in 1795 nine vessels, half of which
were owned or commissioned by Indian merchants arrived there from Mozambique
Island.
46
This pattern persisted until the late 1820s.
From 1795 to 1801, Indian connections with Quelimane slackened due to the
danger of attack in the Mozambique Channel by French corsairs, although those like
Laxmichand Motichand and Shobhachand Sowchand who could afford the risk managed
to continue trading for slaves. From 1800 to 1810 an estimated 20,800 slaves were
shipped from Quelimane, mostly to Mozambique Island which over the same period
exported 50,000 slaves(Liesegang,1983). However, slave imports into Diu by Indian
merchants dipped in this decade to approximately 220, possibly due to a reduced number
of voyages to Quelimane. The difference between the Diu and Daman slave-trades
reflects different commercial structures.
The slave-trade to Portuguese India was small by comparison, on average only 46
slaves a year being exported to Diu from 1811 to 1820, while in 1815 there were 52
slaves shipped to Daman. Working from D. Bartolomeu dos Martires' figures for 1819,
mortality at sea reduced the number of slaves from Mozambique arriving in Portuguese
45
Quelimane is a seaport in Mozambique.
46
The increase also reflected further relaxation of Portuguese controls over foreign trade.
20
India from 350 to about 287. While continuing to fluctuate at comparatively low levels,
Mozambique slave exports to Portuguese India increased in the 1820s and demand for
African slaves increased in western India. Thus in 1821 the ruler of Bhavnagar
47
'hired to
a merchant' who shipped slaves from Mozambique(Tod,1839). However, Mozambique
slave exports to Diu were sharply curtailed in 1830-31 due to British pressure and,
although slave exports to Daman peaked in1833 at 69, slave imports into Portuguese
India from the east African coast had effectively ended by 1840.
Anti-slave-trade
48
measures from the mid-1820s increasingly impacted on Indian
commerce with Mozambique, notably on Gujaratis whose cloth trade was inextricably
linked to the slave-trade from the interior of Mozambique. In 1829, Diu stated
despondently: The trade with the capital of Mozambique is the only way open to make
this island prosper but the news of the ending of the slave trade has meant that most of
the goods exported last year have not been successfully traded; as a result, the return has
been very small, and has discouraged the trade of the merchants (Campbell, 2004).
All this information, undoubtedly, links India with East Africa through the ages and
the descendants of early traders who had settled and intermarried with other races over
the years form an important cluster of the ethnic grouping at various places. However, all
the settlers did not come to India on their own. Many were brought as slaves for several
centuries and their history is indeed a tale of sufferings on one side, the colourful episode
of their rise and fall on the other. Nevertheless, some of them played unexpected, crucial
and unique roles in shaping the history of the regions.
47
In Gujarat.
48
Abolitionism was a political movement of the 18th and 19th century which sought to make
slavery illegal, particularly in the United States and British West Indies.
21
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*DR.Manish karmwar is Assistant professor at Shyam Lal College (Eve.), University of Delhi and
associated with Department of African Studies.
