By Satyendra Peerthum, Historian, Writer, and Lecturer
UNESCO’s International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition was commemorated for the first time on 23rd August 1998 in Haiti, therefore, this year marks the 26th year of its first commemoration anywhere. A year later, it was observed on the island of Gorée, Senegal, where a major World Heritage Site intimately associated with the slave trade and slavery in West Africa is located. In our country, it was only recently, more specifically a decade and a half ago, that the Government of Mauritius started, not only commemorating, but also understanding the historical importance of this particular international day.
Ever since 18th July 2008, this commemoration takes on an even greater significance with the inscription of the Le Morne Cultural Landscape on UNESCO’s World Heritage List and the setting up of the Truth and Justice Commission in 2009. At the same time, for many years now, Mauritius has formed part of a major UNESCO initiative of having slave monuments erected in different countries of the Indian Ocean such as Mozambique, Madagascar, Reunion Island and India where the slave trade took place. Furthermore, in recent years, our country has been an active participant in UNESCO’s Slave Route Project and more so next year an international slave trade conference will be held in February 2025 to mark the 190th anniversary of the abolition of slavery.
The Mauritian Slave Trade
In 1974, Jean M. Filliot, a French slave historian, indicated that between the 1720s and 1790s, around 160,000 slaves were transported from East Africa and Madagascar to the Mascarene Islands. During the late 1990s, late Professor Pier Larson of Johns Hopkins University, a former American slave historian, explained that between the 1720s and 1820s, over 200,000 slaves were introduced into Mauritius and Réunion Island from East African and Malagasy ports. It should be noted that recent archival research by historians has shown that from 1811 to 1827, between 50,000 and 65,000 slaves were illegally introduced into Mauritius.
During the 1970s, Dr. Auguste Toussaint, a Mauritian historian and former Director of the Mauritius National Archives, observed that there was a high rate of mortality on slave ships operating in the western part of the Indian Ocean. Between 1775 and 1807, the mortality rate on 27 slave vessels which sailed from the ports of Madagascar to Mauritius and Réunion Island was 12%. Between 1777 and 1808, the death rate on 64 slave ships sailing from the coast of East Africa to the Mascarene Islands was 21%.
The slave mortality rate remained high during the early British period, when the slave trade to Mauritius became illegal. In early 1818, the Hélène lost 20% of her slave cargo, while sailing from Kilwa in East Africa to Mauritius. Later that same year, 19% of the slaves on board the St. Jean perished during the journey from Tamatave in Madagascar to Mauritius. Furthermore, in early 1821, the Succès lost 8% of its cargo on its voyage from Zanzibar to Mauritian shores.
Between the 1980s and the 2020s, or over the past four decades, Dr. Richard Allen, an international historian of indentured labour and slavery and retired university professor, has written extensively on slavery and the slave trade in Mauritius and the Indian Ocean World. According to him, between 1811 and 1827, anywhere from 60,000 to 70,000 slaves were illegally brought to Mauritian shores with thousands dying on the way and hundreds perishing shortly after their arrival.
It should be noted that the mortality rate among the slaves was much higher on the Arab dhows or small ships than on the European slave ships operating in the western Indian Ocean. Gradually, it becomes evident that during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Mauritian slave trade was responsible for the deaths of a large number of slave men, women, and children. It is their memory, this terrible human tragedy and the significant place which the slave trade occupies in our history which is commemorated each year on 23rd August.
The International Slave Route Project
In June 2005, a Slave Route National Committee was set up under the aegis of the ministry of Arts and Culture which included several organizations such as the Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture, the Le Morne Heritage Trust Fund, the Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund and the University of Mauritius. One of the major objectives of this local Slave Route Project was to create a greater awareness about the important role the slave trade and slavery played in shaping Mauritian history however, this local chapter lasted only a short time. It was only during the last several years with Dr. Vijaya Teelock, Mauritian historian and writer as chairperson of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project, and the launching of the Intercontinental Slavery Museum that the 23rd August remembrance has taken an even more important significance within a Mauritian context.
At the behest of Haiti and Senegal, the General Conference of UNESCO approved, at its 27th Session in 1993, the implementation of the ‘Slave Route Project’ as a way of remembering the slave trade and slavery. The project was launched officially during the First Session of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route in September 1994 in Ouidah, Benin, one of the former major slave markets on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa.
UNESCO explains that the idea of a ‘Route’ basically expresses ‘the dynamics of the movement of peoples, civilizations and cultures’ while that of the ‘slave’ addresses ‘not only the universal phenomenon of slavery, but also, in a more precise and explicit way, the importance of the slave trade in the history of the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean’. The Slave Route Project looks at the causes and consequences of slavery and the slave trade in various parts of the world including Mauritius. It also explores themes such as the African Diaspora and the interaction of peoples from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas.
A Crime Against Humanity
Over the past several years, one of the results of UNESCO’s Slave Route Project is that it has clearly shown that slavery and the slave trade were crimes against humanity. On 8th September 2001, one of the major resolutions which was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Intolerance in Durban mentioned that slavery and the slave trade were crimes against the human race.
In July 2003, during a speech on Gorée Island, President G.W. Bush acknowledged that slavery was the greatest crime in human history and that it was the African slaves who helped to build the United States or the world’s only superpower. On 8th August 2004, the Parliament of Mauritius approved a parliamentary motion which, for the first time, recognised that slavery and the slave trade were crimes against the humanity.
Between 2008 and up to the present day, successive Mauritian governments, institutions, local and overseas scholars have undertaken initiatives such as research projects/programs, publications, conferences, and studies in order to show the importance of slavery and the slave trade in the fashioning of modern Mauritius and its place in Mauritian historiography. These are some of the major reasons behind the annual 23rd August commemoration marking the abolition of the slave trade and its remembrance in Mauritius.