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[^0]:    7 Surveys were conducted in 2004 and 2008 in the coastal region between Morondava and Mahajunga, the last great bastion of the illegal slave trade in Madagascar.
8 Only 400 kilometres separate Mozambique from the Saint André Cape in Western Madagascar. The duration of the enforced crossing by dhow varied between $4-5$ days to in excess of 10 days.
9 Natural History Museum of Paris (MNHN), Grandidier Foundation. 3259. Unpublished manuscript notes. Book 18, Notes de Majunga à Tananarive. Du 15 au 30 août 1869, p. 1043.
10 The myth of cannibalism was widespread on the slave trading routes of the Indian Ocean.  
the north west of Madagascar and was surprised by a British warship (Houlder, 1877). In the context of illegal slave trading, shipments were riskier for traffickers, and more gruelling for the captives. In order to evade British patrol ships, the masters of slaving vessels would prolong the journey. Captives were disoriented by the numerous navigational manoeuvres. During the crossing itself, there was resistance among captives, creating connections between themselves that were recorded as a bond of kinship. Oral Makoan tradition recalls the memory of 'brothers' and 'sisters' transported in the same dhow. Established in conjunction with deportation, this notional kinship was socially reinterpreted in Madagascar in the form of affiliation. Any union between the descendants of these Makoan 'brothers' and 'sisters' continued to breach the taboo of incest, which lies at the origin of the development of the institution of kinship (Lévi-Strauss, 1949). The shared experience of the 'Middle Passage' forged links between captives that were sustained thereafter, notwithstanding their dispersion upon arriving in the Great Island.