Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:18:58.969Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Negotiation, Trade and the Rituals of Encounter: An Examination of the Slave-Trading Voyage of De Zon, 1775–1776

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2010

Andrew Alexander
Andrew Alexander
Affiliation:
Dept. of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The intention of this paper is to fill a gap in a rich yet underrepresented aspect of Indian Ocean slave history. I have elected to found this study on a close reading of a journal from a slave-trading vessel that sought slaves for the Cape in Madagascar in the mid-1770s. This vessel, De Zon, conducted a slave-trading operation on behalf of the VOC along the west coast of Madagascar from May 1775 to January 1776. I have undertaken a close reading of the journal maintained by the merchant of De Zon, so as to write a history sensitive to the daily experiences of the slave traders in Madagascar, as well as to the codes and discourse through which this experience was filtered.

This paper is primarily concerned with the experience of negotiation and trading as it was recorded by the VOC merchants on the vessels, and is drawn predominantly from the first trading encounter of the crew of De Zon when they arrived in Madagascar in 1775. In contrast to the surveys that comprise the majority of the English-language scholarship on slave trading in Madagascar, this paper is founded on a close reading of particular episodes; it thus represents an attempt at a micronarrative that illustrates and details the historical experience of VOC slave trading on the island at a particular juncture.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 39 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cape Archives (Roeland Street), Cape Town, South AfricaGoogle Scholar
Archives of the Council of Policy (Reference: C)Google Scholar
C 2250: Ships' and other journals 1757; 1759–1760Google Scholar
C 2251: Ships' and other journals 1760–1761; 1769–1770Google Scholar
C 2255: Ships' and other journals 1775–1776Google Scholar
Alexander, Andrew. “Commercial Diplomacy, Cultural Encounter and Slave Resistance: Episodes From Three VOC Slaving Voyages From the Cape to Madagascar, 1760–1780” (MA thesis, Cape Town, 2005).Google Scholar
Ravell, James J. 1979. “The VOC Slave Trade Between Cape Town and Madagascar, 1652–1795”. Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Armstrong, James C. “Madagascar and the Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century”. Omaly Sy Anio: Journal of the Département d'histoire, Uniuersité de Madagascar 17–20 (1983–1984): 211–33.Google Scholar
Boucher, Maurice. “The Voyage of a Cape Slaver in 1742”. Historia, 24:1 (1979): 50–58.Google Scholar
Brown, Mervyn. Madagascar Rediscovered: A History From Early Times to Independence. London: Damien Tunnacliffe, 1978.Google Scholar
Campbell, Qwyn. “Madagascar and the Slave Trade, 1810–1895”. Omaly Sy Anio: Journal of the Departement d'histoire, Universite de Madagascar 17–20 (1983–1984): 279–309.Google Scholar
Dash, Mike. Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny. London: Phoenix, 2002.Google Scholar
Larson, Pier M. History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar, 1770–1822. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 2000.Google Scholar
Salmond, Anne. The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas. London: Penguin Books, 2003.Google Scholar