Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World

Gwyn Campbell is Canada Research Chair and Founding Director of the Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University, Canada. He is also the editor of the Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, and a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award (2017-2019).

• 1. Introduction: Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World.- 2. Abolition in the Midst of Turmoil: The Case of Tan Emperor Wu Zong (814-846 CE).- 3. Environment and Enslavement in Highland Madagascar, 1500-1750: The Case for the Swahili Slave Export Trade Reassessed.- 4. Volcanoes, Refugees and Raiders: The 1765 Macaturin Eruption and the Rise of the Iranun.- 5. The Environment and Slave Resistance in the Cape Colony.- 6. A Local View on Global Climate and Migration Patterns: The Impact of Cyclones and Drought on the Routier Family and their Slaves in Ile Bourbon (La Réunion), 1770-1820.- 7. The Cyclone, the Meteorologist, the Planter and the Indentured Immigrant. The Strange Story of Selective Cyclone Damage in Reunion Island, 1840s-1870s.- 8. Egypt’s Slaving Frontier: Environment, Enslavement, Social Transformations and the Local Use of Slaves in Sudan, 1780-1880.- 9. Environmental Knowledge and Resistance by Slave Transporters in the Nineteenth-Century Western Indian Ocean.- 10. Environmental Disaster in Eastern Bengal: Colonial Capitalism and Rural Labour Force Formation in the Late Nineteenth Century.-  11. Famine and Slavery in Africa’s Red Sea World, 1887-1914.

“The long-term climate cycles of the rather expansive “Indian Ocean World” covered here, citing an impressive array of technical climate studies, attempts to distinguish debt-bondage from slavery … . World historians of many persuasions will accordingly find useful reminders of the climate component … in which they work and of the essential historicity of slaving.” (Joseph C. Miller,Journal of World History, Vol. 29 (4), December, 2018)