On 23rd AUGUST of each year, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) commemorates the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. The 23rd August was chosen by Unesco because it commemorates the mass uprising of the African slaves in Bois Caïman, in the northern part of the then French colony of Santo Domingo (or present-day Haiti), on the nights of 22nd and 23rd August 1791. That particular event marked the beginning of the greatest and only successful slave rebellion in modern colonial history.

- Unesco & the Slave Trade

On this special day, Unesco encourages its member states to pay homage to the memory and sufferings of millions of African slaves who died during their transportation to European colonies in the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. In August 2001, just a week before the historic World Conference on Racism was held in Durban, South Africa, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, the Secretary-General of Unesco, called on the world community to reflect on the link between slavery and racism. The slave trade had three distinctive features: its duration of more than 500 years, its legal organisation, and the formulation of racial theories to justify it. Mr Matsuura declared: ?This deep rooted link between slavery and racism is generally acknowledged by historians??

After all, Jean-Michel Deveau, a renowned French historian, has called modern slavery and the slave trade ?the greatest tragedy in the history of humanity in terms of scale and duration?. This fact is not surprising because between the 1440s and 1880s, 10 to 15 million Africans were transported from Africa to various European colonies in the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean islands like Mauritius. Furthermore, during that same period, over 100 million Africans were affected, either directly or indirectly, by the long-term consequences of this terrible human tragedy.

- The Slave Route Project

At the behest of Haiti and some African countries, such as Senegal, the General Conference of Unesco approved, at its 27th Session in 1993, the implementation of the ?Slave Route Project? as a way of remembering the slave trade and slavery. The project was launched officially during the First Session of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route in September 1994 in Ouidah, Benin, one of the former slave markets on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa.

Unesco explains that the idea of a ?Route? basically expresses ?the dynamics of the movement of peoples, civilizations and cultures?, while that of the ?slave? addresses not only the universal phenomenon of slavery, but also, in a more precise and explicit way, the importance of the slave trade in the history of the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. The Slave Route Project looks at the causes and consequences of slavery and the slave trade in various parts of the world including Mauritius. It also explores themes such as the African Diaspora and the interaction of peoples from Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

- A Crime against Humanity

Over the past several years, one of the results of Unesco?s Slave Route Project is that it has clearly shown that slavery and the slave trade were crimes against humanity. On 8th September 2001, one of the major resolutions which were adopted at the United Nations Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Intolerance in Durban clearly mentioned that slavery and the slave trade were crimes against humanity.

In July 2003, during a speech on the famous Island of Gorée, off the coast of Senegal, President G.W. Bush acknowledged that slavery was the greatest crime in human history and that it was the African slaves who helped to build the United States or the world?s only superpower. Almost a month later, on Friday, 8th August, the Parliament of Mauritius approved a parliamentary motion which, for the first time, recognised that slavery and the slave trade were crimes against the human race.

- The Mauritius Slave Trade

In 1974, in La Traite des Esclaves vers les Mascareignes au XVIIIe Siècle, Jean M. Filliot indicated that between the 1720s and 1790s, around 160,000 slaves were transported from East Africa and Madagascar to the Mascarene Islands. During the late 1990s, Pier Larson explained that between the 1720s and 1820s, over 200,000 slaves were introduced into Mauritius and Réunion Island from East African and Malagasy ports.

Three decades earlier, Auguste Toussaint, a Mauritian historian and former Director of the Mauritius Archives, showed that, in general, there was a high rate of mortality on slave ships operating in the south west Indian Ocean. Between 1775 and 1807, the mortality rate on 27 slave vessels which sailed from the ports of Madagascar to Mauritius and Réunion Island was 12%. Between 1777 and 1808, the death rate on 64 slave ships sailing from the coast of East Africa to the Mascarene Islands was 21%.

The slave mortality rate remained high during the early British period, when the slave trade to Mauritius became illegal. In early 1818, the Hélène lost 20% of her slave cargo, while sailing from Kilwa in East Africa to Mauritius. Later that same year, 19% of the slaves on board the St.Jean perished during the journey from Tamatave in Madagascar to Mauritius. Furthermore, in early 1821, the Succès lost 8% of its cargo on its voyage from Zanzibar to Mauritian shores. Gradually, it becomes evident that during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the slave trade to Mauritius was responsible for the deaths of thousands of slaves.

- The Horror of the Slave Voyage

Between 1811 and 1826, all the African and Malagasy slaves who were rescued from slave ships by the British Royal Navy and landed in Mauritius were physically, mentally, and emotionally traumatized after experiencing the unspeakable horror of the slave voyage. This fact is clearly reflected in contemporary sources which emanate mostly from British colonial officials. In April 1818, Major General Hall, the Acting Governor of Mauritius, vividly described in a dispatch to Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, the inhumane condition of Malagasy captives on slave ships coming to Mauritius:

?The height of the deck from the water-casks is only two feet, and those unfortunate negroes are obliged to lie down with the head between the thighs of the other who is placed behind him, and so on to the extremity of the vessel and the numbers stowed in a small space exceed any calculation which your Lordship can form.?

Over a decade later, in June 1829, Commissioners Colebrooke and Blair, after their lengthy and detailed investigation into the illicit slave trade to Mauritius, observed that when it came to conditions slaves on slave vessels:

?The practice of chaining the negroes together has been adopted in the vessels of this colony and Bourbon; and instances have been known of their jumping overboard, although secured in pairs of iron rings rivetted to their necks and ankles, and connected with bars of iron. Whatever may be the feelings which rouse the negroes to this effort to effect their escape, it does not appear that revolts during the passage have been frequent. The small-pox has sometimes occasioned great mortality; and it may be apprehended that great numbers have perished from suffocation by closing the hatches upon them??

Between December 1826 and November 1827, on various occasions, during his cross-examination by Thomas F. Buxton, Letord or Captain Dorval, the most notorious slave trader in the south west Indian Ocean, described the state of the African and Malagasy slaves on board slave vessels. The former Mauritian slave dealer mentioned that during the 1810s and 1820s, the slave vessels were always extremely overcrowded, diseases were rampant, and there was a high mortality rate. In general, these slaves were provided with barely enough water and food to survive and they were almost never brought onto the ship?s deck to breathe fresh air. Therefore, many of the African and Malagasy slaves as well as those who were captured by the British naval vessels reached Mauritius almost half-dead or in a terrible physical as well as psychological state.

In May 1826, while testifying before a parliamentary Select Committee on the Mauritius Slave Trade, Captain Fairfax Moresby, one of the famous slave catchers of the British Royal Navy during the early nineteenth century in the Indian Ocean, described how he captured the Succès, a notorious slave ship, in March 1821. The British naval officer provided important details about the terrible plight of the slaves on board:

?In what state was the Succès when you took her?---She was in a very dreadful state; the slaves have been confined during the whole of the chase, and I believe several of
them were on the very point of suffocation.

Do you remember how many had died previous to the capture?---I believe eleven or twelve.

Between the time of capture and your bringing her into port, how many died?---

Eighteen.

What was the time between her capture and her being brought into port?---I think she was captured on the 5th or 6th of March, and was brought in ten or twelve days.

Were the slaves sickly, diseased, debilitated, and in the last stage of dysentery?---There were many of them in the last stage of dysentery.

If you had not captured the Succès, would not, in your opinion, a much larger proportion have died?---Certainly.?

In fact, during the four weeks after the captured slaves of the Succès were landed in Port Louis, out of a total of 324 individuals, around 93 perished, 92 males and 1 female.

In conclusion, the slave trade was a crime against humanity and the thousands of slaves who died during and after the slave voyage to Mauritius must be remembered in this country each year on the occasion of Unesco?s International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

Satyendra Peerthum

?On Friday, 8th August, the Parliament of Mauritius approved a parliamentary motion which, for the first time, recognised that slavery and the slave trade were crimes against the human race.?