Transition from Slavery in Zanzibar and Mauritius ─ A Comparative History

Two directors of the Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institute (ZIORI), Sheriff and Teelock, initiate a research project on the comparative history of slavery and its transition to free labor in two islands—Zanzibar and Mauritius. The former, close to the eastern African coast, was settled about 30 centuries previously, while the latter, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, was uninhabited when Europeans came upon it in the sixteenth century. Wahab and Peerthum are two scholars who conducted intensive research in their respective countries vis-a-vis the comparative study of slavery and the transition from it during the nineteenth century in Mauritius and Zanzibar, representing, respectively, the Atlantic and Indian Ocean tendencies, bringing out similarities as well as differences. They trace the similarities from the hegemony exercised by the capitalist mode of production over both these islands in the Indian Ocean and the differences from various cultural environments in which they were reared. Distributed in North America by the African Books Collective Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)