# Movements of resistance to enslavement in European colonial possessions  
As we have seen, although on-board revolts posed a genuine threat, they could often be brought under control provided that discipline was properly maintained, even if the number of enslaved people far outweighed the number of crew members. The same was true in European destinations, where the number of enslaved people could reach the levels seen in the sugar plantations of the Antilles. In Salida, the site of gold mines situated on the western coast of Sumatra, there were 482 enslaved people and forty-six employees of the Dutch East India Company in 1691, a ratio of approximately 10 to $1 .{ }^{6}$ In the French Mascarene Islands, at the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1788, there were 12,290 whites, 3,375 freemen and -women and 75,180 enslaved people - eighty-three per cent of the total population. ${ }^{7}$ In the Cape, the white population was higher, as enslaved people accounted for only fifty-three per cent of all inhabitants in 1795 (Van Duin and Ross, 1987, p. 115).  
The demographics were thus weighted in favour of the servile population and it was not long before enslaved people from Madagascar began to exploit this, as they did on the island of Mauritius, which was colonized in 1638. Some years later, Adriaan van der Stel led the first Dutch slave ship expedition to Madagascar, landing in Antongil Bay. ${ }^{8}$ However, of this cargo of 105 enslaved people, sixty escaped to the Mauritius hinterland (Heeringa, 1895). Desertion was one of the scourges that constantly haunted the Dutch, who struggled to establish agriculture and ebony-logging activities. It culminated in violent and fierce opposition to the social order: in 1695, enslaved people set fire to the main Dutch residence and, in 1706, Piet van Bali led a band of deserters who engaged in constant violence. ${ }^{9}$ The VOC abandoned the island of Mauritius in 1710.  
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