European Slave Trading
BALLO Hermine – Richard B. Allen, “Satisfying the Want for Labouring People: European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850” - 02/27/2016
Richard Allen's article replaces the “want for labouring people” or slaves in its context. The French, British and Dutch colonies of the Indian Ocean had a strong need for an inexpensive labor, especially since the local workforce was every expensive. The article also refutes common misconceptions about the slave trading in the Indian Ocean and shows that this slave trading was actually more significant in the Indian Ocean than across the Atlantic Ocean. Allen uses European multinational companies' archives, such as the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, to determine where …show more content…
First of all, Richard Allen explains that “the historical significance of this traffic cannot be assessed only in terms of the numbers of men, women, and children who were caught up in it.”1 Despite this statement, the entire article is completely based on figures. It is in fact quite natural to use numbers to illustrate Allen's argument but the figures are repeated several times throughout the text and make it very hard to read. At some point, I got confused at what the figures refer to. Moreover, this huge amount of figures somehow drowns the dynamics Richard Allen wants to uncover in long sentences. Finally, these figures prevent the author from going deeper into how the indigenous societies handled the slave trade. For instance, Richard Allen briefly talks about the indigenous system of slavery, mostly because he had very few figures, if none, to use. For someone who expresses his will of not reducing slavery to number, this behaviour is very confusing. Likewise, when the author mentions the British abolitionist movements and the attempts to regulate and even ban the slave trading, he insists on the “strong sense of humanitarian disapprobation” about the slave trade, as if only British people disapproved of this trade, every other countries who momentarily tried to regulate the trade did it for monetary purposes.2 I found this view extremely reductive. The British efforts to suppress slave
Richard Allen's article replaces the “want for labouring people” or slaves in its context. The French, British and Dutch colonies of the Indian Ocean had a strong need for an inexpensive labor, especially since the local workforce was every expensive. The article also refutes common misconceptions about the slave trading in the Indian Ocean and shows that this slave trading was actually more significant in the Indian Ocean than across the Atlantic Ocean. Allen uses European multinational companies' archives, such as the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, to determine where …show more content…
First of all, Richard Allen explains that “the historical significance of this traffic cannot be assessed only in terms of the numbers of men, women, and children who were caught up in it.”1 Despite this statement, the entire article is completely based on figures. It is in fact quite natural to use numbers to illustrate Allen's argument but the figures are repeated several times throughout the text and make it very hard to read. At some point, I got confused at what the figures refer to. Moreover, this huge amount of figures somehow drowns the dynamics Richard Allen wants to uncover in long sentences. Finally, these figures prevent the author from going deeper into how the indigenous societies handled the slave trade. For instance, Richard Allen briefly talks about the indigenous system of slavery, mostly because he had very few figures, if none, to use. For someone who expresses his will of not reducing slavery to number, this behaviour is very confusing. Likewise, when the author mentions the British abolitionist movements and the attempts to regulate and even ban the slave trading, he insists on the “strong sense of humanitarian disapprobation” about the slave trade, as if only British people disapproved of this trade, every other countries who momentarily tried to regulate the trade did it for monetary purposes.2 I found this view extremely reductive. The British efforts to suppress slave