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Murzuk and the Saharan Slave Trade in the 19th Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

John Wright
John Wright*
Affiliation:
Richmond, Surrey
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Abstract

In 1840 the British Foreign Office decided to open a Vice-Consulate at the oasis of Murzuk, then still the main entrepot of the central Saharan trade in black Slaves from the Sudan to Tripoli and Benghazi. The post was to make first-hand reports on the slave traffic and promote British ‘legitimate’ trade and wider regional interests. A similar post was opened at Ghadames in 1850. Between 1843 and 1854, Vice Consul Giambattista Gagliuffi in Murzuk provided the Foreign Office with a series of yearly slaving statistics which formed the basic raw material for London's case for the abolition of this traffic. It still stands as a unique record of the central Saharan slave trade at probably its most active phase. Gagliuffi's attempts at trade promotion were not so successful, and when it also became clear that the Saharan slave trade would not, after all, be as easily eradicated as had once been supposed, the Foreign Office decided in 1860–61 to close both the Murzuk and Ghadames posts.

Type
Articles
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 29 , 1998 , pp. 89 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1985

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References

Notes

1. Adu Boahen, A.Britain, the Sahara and the Western Sudan, 1788–1861, Oxford (1964): 160–180Google Scholar; 213–234.

2. Gagliuffi's biographical details are to be found at the Public Record Office, Kew, London, Foreign Office Papers: FO 101/20, Governor of Malta to Earl Grey, 25th November 1848, enclosed Gagliuffi's Memorial and Application for British Naturalisation.

3. FO 84/486, Warrington to [Foreign Secretary, Lord] Aberdeen, 2nd June 1843.

4. FO 84/486, Warrington to Gagliuffi, 24th January 1843, enclosed in Warrington to Aberdeen, 5th February 1843.

5. FO 101/9, Warrington to Bakir Bey, 17th March 1843; Bakir Bey to Warrington, 26th April 1843, both enclosed in Warrington to [Supervisor, FO Consular Department, John] Bidwell, 26th April 1843.

6. See, for example, Map by Arrowsmith, J., North Western Africa, London (1834)Google Scholar; Boahen, , Britain, the Sahara, Map opposite p. 102Google Scholar, ‘The Caravan and Sudan Trade Routes of the Nineteenth Century’; see also FO 935/356: Africa 1889 ‘Map Indicating Areas from which Slaves are Obtained and Routes of Traders’. Penfold, P. A., Maps and Plans in the Public Record Office. 3: Africa, London (1979), Item 46Google Scholar.

7. Barth, H., Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, 5 Vols., London (1857) Vol. I: 169–70Google Scholar. See also Nachtigal, G., Sahara and Sudan (Trans, and ed. Fisher, A.G.B., and Fisher, H. J., 4 Vols., London (1971–1988), Vol. I: 87Google Scholar; Hornemann, F., in Proceedings of the African Association, London (1810) Vol. II: 135Google Scholar. Ralph Austen argues that ‘the general insecurity and inefficiency of desert transport made it virtually impossible to undertake the kinds of planning necessary to maintain such large enterprises’. African Economic History, London/Portsmouth, NH. (1987): 41Google Scholar.

8. A conclusion he drew from the discussions at ‘The Workshop on the Long-Distance Trade in Slaves across the Sahara and the Black Sea in the Nineteenth Century’, held at Bellagio, Italy, 10th–16th December 1988. See Renault, F., ‘Colloque sur la traite transsaharienne’, Africa [Rome], Anno XLIV, n. 2, giugno (1989): 295–6Google Scholar.

9. Ingram, E. (ed.) Allan Cunningham, Eastern Questions in the Nineteenth Century: Collected Essays, 2 Vols., London (1993), Vol. 2: 76Google Scholar.

10. Toledano, E., The Ottoman Slave Trade and its Suppression, 1840–1890, Princeton (1982): 92–5, 126–9Google Scholar; Boahen, , Britain, The Sahara: 145–59Google Scholar.

11. Fisher, A. G. B. and Fisher, H. J., Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa, London (1970) Chapter VGoogle Scholar, ‘The Domestic Scene II: Slaves in the Family’. See also Gordon, M., Slavery in the Arab World, New York (1989): 57–9Google Scholar and Chapter 4, ‘Sex and Slavery in the Arab World’.

12. See, for example, FO 84/949 [Consul-General, Tripoli] Herman to [Foreign Secretary, Lord] Clarendon, 22nd January 1855, enclosed Gagliuffi: Prospetto del numero di Schiavi arrivait in Mourzouk nel corso dell'anno 1854.

13. See Lyon, G. F., A Narrative of Travel in Northern Africa in the Years 1818–1819 and 1820, London (1821): 326Google Scholar: ‘I always observed that the females were much less exhausted by travelling than the males; the former walked together and sang in chorus, nearly the whole day, which enlivened them and beguiled the way …’.

14. See Wright, J., Libya, London (1969Google Scholar): plate 9: (Rosario Casella) showing an iron bar with ten shackles, by which five slaves could be restrained at night stops.

15. FO 84/598, Gagliuffi to Warrington, 4th January 1845, enclosed in Warrington to Aberdeen, 1st February 1845.

16. FO 84/693, [Consul General, Tripoli, George] Crowe (quoting Gagliuffi despatch, n.d., but probably 31st December 1846) to [Foreign Secretary, Lord] Palmerston, 10th February, 1847.

17. FO 84/919, Gagliuffi to Herman, 31st December 1853: Quadro di Schiavi arrivati in questa Città nel 1853, enclosed in Herman to Clarendon, 20th January 1854. Gagliuffi's total of prices is added incorrectly, the mistake also being reproduced in Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers, 1854, Vol., LXXIII, pp. 810–11Google Scholar. Ghadames slave statistics are nothing like as full as those for Murzuk, and yearly figures have to be ‘reconstructed’ from various consular despatches.

18. FO 101/16, J. Richardson report: ‘The Slave Trade of Ghat and the Great Desert’, Tripoli, 11th 05 1846Google Scholar.

19. FO 160/12, Gagliuffi to [Acting Consul General, Tripoli, John] Reade, 14th September 1849; FO 84/815, Crowe to Palmerston, 20th January 1850.

20. FO 84/949, Herman to Clarendon, 22nd January 1855, Enclosed, Prospetto del numero di Schiavi, etc.

21. FO 84/540, Gagliuffi to Warrington, 22nd January 1844, enclosed in Warrington to Aberdeen, 28th February 1844.

22. FO 84/598, Gagliuffi to Warrington, 4th January 1845, enclosed in Warrington to Aberdeen, 1st February 1845.

23. FO 84/949, Herman to Clarendon, 22nd January 1855, enclosed Gagliuffi's Prospetto del numero di Schiavi etc.

24. FO 84/737, Crowe to Palmerston, 28th February 1848, quoting Gagliuffi despatch, n.d.

25. FO 84/919, Gagliuffi to Herman, 31st December 1852, enclosed in Herman to Clarendon, 14th March 1853. Such a ratio seems to have allowed each slave less than half a pound of food a day.

26. FO 84/919, Ibid.

27. FO 84/774 [British Ambassador, Constantinople, Sir Stratford] Canning to [Turkish Foreign Minister] Ali Pasha, 4th November, 1849. See also Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade: 112.

28. See Johnson, P., The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815–1830, London (1991): 342Google Scholar.

29. See, for instance, FO 160/12, Gagliuffi to Palmerston, 20th February 1851.

30. For instance, the Sardinian Consul in Benghazi reported on 2nd June 1850 that five or six thousand slaves had died on the road from Wadai that year. (Rossi, E., Storia di Tripoli e della Tripolitania dalla conquista Araba al 1911, Rome (1968): 316–17 and n. 14.Google Scholar)

31. FO 84/1029, Herman to Clarendon, 10th September 1857; ‘…l so long as a vent can be found for it, the slave trade will continue to flourish’.

32. Boahen, , Britain, the Sahara: 233Google Scholar.