# Historiographical background  
Slavery and the slave trade in Madagascar existed well before the arrival of Europeans in the Indian Ocean. Notwithstanding similarities with the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean, there are clearly distinctive elements which make this trade unique, such as its role in regional trade networks. African and Asian traders would follow the Swahili Coast as far as the Comoro Islands in order to collect slaves for transport to Arabia and Persia (Vernet, 2009). This trade was not without its problems, as highlighted by the Zanj uprisings in Iraq in the ninth century, which involved enslaved people of partially African - possibly Malagasy - origin. This distinction is often difficult to make (De Silva Jayasuriya, 2003). These events curbed the slave trade but did not stop it altogether, as it continued until the mid-twentieth century (Beaujard, 2012, pp. 69-70, 249-250).  
Europeans steadily began arriving in the Indian Ocean by sea. Portuguese, Dutch, British, French and other nationalities spread throughout the area and established a presence in trade ports. Madagascar was an important stop-off point on the Indies route and was a major source of slaves. The Portuguese took enslaved people to Mozambique and Goa, the British to Bombay and Sumatra, and the Netherlands dispatched enslaved people to a multitude of its  
![img-11.jpeg](img_ref_12)  
Figure 1. Map of the Indian Ocean
possessions between 1641 and 1786. The French established tropical agriculture in the Mascarene Islands from the 1720s onwards, giving rise to a thriving trade with Madagascar between 1718 and 1810.