Appendix: Note on Archival Documents

APPENDIX: NOTE ON ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS This book relies heavily on documents from a number of different archives—a multi-archival approach proved to be key for seeing the shape of slave traders in the western Indian Ocean. Slave traders had few opportunities to leave any written record of their own, so their existence is recorded only in documents written by others, more precisely in the records compiled by Europeans and Americans. However, each single document, of course, reveals only a fragment of the information available to us. In fact, such sources are rather like a jigsaw puzzle, in which a pic- ture emerges clearly only when a number of pieces—that is to say documents extracted from the sources—are put together. In other words, the greater the number and variety of sources selected the more clearly we can see the slave traders and their activities. The documents used in the book range across government records, private papers and the reports of religious missionaries. The three major government records used in this book are those of the British, the French and the Americans, and there are clear differences between them. As to France, rivalry with the British was not only limited by the competition for hegemony in the western Indian Ocean, but also grounded in different national policies on the slave trade. While, for the British, the abolition of slavery and the slave trade were established policy, the French, who ruled Bourbon Island, opposed abolition because of their critical need for labour. So we learn different things from British and French records, which approach the slave trade from different angles. Furthermore, it is worth © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 195 H. Suzuki, Slave Trade Profteers in the Western Indian Ocean, Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-59803-1 196 APPENDIX: NOTE ON ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS remarking on the considerable internal variation of British documents. Indian Political Service offcers were posted to the British Consulate in Zanzibar, but because Zanzibar was not under British protection, they reported to both the Indian Foreign Department and the Foreign Offce in London.1 Because of the different interests of both parties,2 the Consulate at Zanzibar often sent varying information on the same sub- ject. For example, on the matter of the Indian residents, the consulate sent detailed reports to Bombay, but often only cursory ones to London. Similarly, certain details were available only locally, such as Rigby’s list of slaves, made at the time of his emancipation of them in 1860–1861, which is only available in Zanzibar’s National Archives. On the other hand, unlike both the British and the French, the fore- most motivation of the Americans in the western Indian Ocean was not political but commercial,3 and American Consuls in Zanzibar were often infuential merchants. A large proportion of the American documents relate to some commercial matter or other, even though naturally most of them were reports of purely consular business, and although the Americans did not involve themselves in the suppression campaign they monitored it carefully. I also consulted the National Archives for offcial documents and the Phillips Library of the Peabody and Essex Museum for private documents while researching for this book. Private documents naturally tend to contain more details of the social conditions of Zanzibar and the western Indian Ocean, and the American documents provide a quite different insight into the relationships between slave traders and the campaign to suppress them. This appendix, then, is a brief introduction to each of the archives I consulted and a list of the series which this book uses. AMAE: Archives de Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, France. This is an archive of communications between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its consulates, including consular reports from Zanzibar. They are sorted according to consulate and the documents are divided into economic and political matters. In addition, Sulṭān b. Muḥammad al-Qāsimī (ed.), Wathā’iq al-‛arabīya al-‛umānī fī marākiz al-arshīf al-faransīya, s.l., 1993, is a selected collection of Arabic documents held in this archives. APPENDIX: NOTE ON ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS 197 AMAE CCC/Zanzibar/volume no./page no.: Documents on commerce received and dispatched from Masqaṭ and Zanzibar Consulates. AMAE CP/Zanzibar/volume no./page no.: Documents on politics received and dispatched from Masqaṭ and Zanzibar Consulates. CAOM: Centre des Archives d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France. The French, who possessed Bourbon Island and several other colonies in the western Indian Ocean, left a number of documents related to this region. CAOM mainly holds the documents related to French over- seas territories. In addition, reports from expeditions conducted by the French Navy in the nineteenth century around the western Indian Ocean are also held in these archives. CAOM FM/GEN/box no./fle no./page no.: General reports related to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. CAOM FM/SG/MAD/box no./fle no./page no.: Reports and let- ters related to Madagascar and its adjacent islands. CAOM FM/SG/OIND/box no./fle no./page no.: Reports and let- ters related to the Indian Ocean and its surrounding regions. MAHA: Mahārāshtra State Archives, Mumbai, India. This archive holds the documents received and dispatched by the Political Department of the Bombay Government, which was in charge of most of the regions surrounding the western Indian Ocean. MAHA PD/year/volume no./compilation no./page no.: Documents received and dispatched by the Political Department of Bombay Government. MLUB: Main Library, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. This library preserves the documents of CMS, which sent missionaries to various places in the western Indian Ocean during the nineteenth century. The documents include communications between missionaries and CMS headquarters as well as certain private documents such as diaries. The library possesses the copies which were made by CMS headquarters, but this book relies only on original material. 198 APPENDIX: NOTE ON ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS MLUB CMS/CA5/O24/fle no./page no.: Documents related to the missionary Johannes Rebmann, who was stationed at Rabai Station near Mombasa. NAUK: National Archives, Kew, UK. FO84/fle no./page no.: This series contains documents relating to slave trade sent from consulates all over the world. NAUK ADM1/fle no./page no.: Offcial correspondence directed to the Secretary of the Admiralty, including materials for Vice-Admiral Court. NAUK ADM123/fle no./page no.: Documents related to Africa Station between 1797 and 1932. It includes communications between the ships engaged in the suppression campaign and the shore station, as well as between patrols and consulates. NAUK FO54/fle no./page no.: Documents related to Masqaṭ and Zanzibar between 1834 and 1905. However, most of those related to the slave trade are to be found in FO84. NAUK FO78/fle no./page no.: Documents related to the Ottomans between 1780 and 1905. NAUK FO84/fle no./page no.: Documents related to the slave trade between 1816 and 1892. Documents are sorted by year and coun- try. The archive covers not only reports on the slave trade but also documents on its suppression, relating to the Indian Navy. NAUK FO800/fle no./page no.: Secret documents related to the Foreign Ministry between 1824 and 1968. NAUK FO881/fle no./page no.: Confdential printed papers of the Foreign Ministry between 1827 and 1914. NAUS: National Archives, College Park, USA. As already stated, American documents have an enormous advantage in that they provide a different perspective on the situation of the western Indian Ocean from both British and French documents. Many of the American documents are lodged in both the NAUS and Phillips Library. The NAUS preserves consular records. The records from Zanzibar contain not only dispatches to Washington, but also communications with the Bū Sa‛īd. Furthermore, it contains miscellaneous shipping records APPENDIX: NOTE ON ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS 199 from consulates other than the American Consulate; some of them are not available in other archives. I also referred to the compilation of the documents related to the Bū Sa‛īd, ‘Abd al-Fattāḥ Ḥasan Abū ‘Alīyah (ed.), Mukhtārāt min wathā’iq tārīkh ‘umān al-ḥadīth qirā’a wathā’iq al-arshīf al-amrīkī, al-Riyāḍ: Dār al-Marīkh, 1984. NAUS RG84/Zanzibar/volume no./page no.: Documents sent and received by the Zanzibar Consulate between 1846 and 1912. OIOC: Oriental and India Offce Collection, British Library, London, UK. This collection, formerly held at the India Offce Library, contains documents from the India Offce (later the Indian Government) as well as consular correspondence from Oman and the Persian Gulf. OIOC IOR/F/volume no./page no.: Documents dispatched from the British East India Company to the Board of Control between 1784 and 1858. OIOC IOR/L/P&S/volume no./page no.: Documents related to the Public and Judicial Department of the Indian Government between 1795 and 1950. OIOC IOR/R/15/volume no./page no.: Documents related to agents and Consuls stationed at Bandar-e Būshehr, Baḥrayn, Kuwayt, Masqaṭ, Trucial Coast between 1763 and 1951. OIOC IOR/R/20/volume no./page no.: Documents related to the Aden protectorate between 1837 and 1967. PPEM: Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, USA. The collection includes private documents of Salem merchants, which were donated to the Peabody Museum as well as the Essex Institute. Private documents are sorted by individuals and families. They include not only correspondence with family members and other merchants but also numerous commercial contracts made in Zanzibar, Madagascar Island, Aden and so on, as well as various log books from so-called east- ern voyages.

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