Mozambique Island, Cape Town and the Organisation of the Slave Trade in the South-West Indian Ocean, c.1797–1807

In the 1780s, French merchants developed a systemic trade in slaves to and around the Cape of Good Hope. But a decade later the trade passed into the hands of a cosmopolitan group of merchants at Mozambique. These men developed various strategies as a way of raising the funds needed to acquire, outfit and insure slave ships. They particularly built up trade links with agents and partners in several ports of the western Indian Ocean and the south Atlantic. This article concentrates on the organisation and operation of the slave trade at Mozambique Island in the decade around 1800. It is particularly concerned to examine the role in this trade on the part of merchants at the Cape, who serviced slave ships and bought their human merchandise, and who mounted their own expeditions in search of slaves. It ends by suggesting ways in which new directions in the trade, following its piecemeal abolition, and the growing dominance of Brazil, contributed to long-term developments in the region.