The Role of Kilwa in the Trade of the Western Indian Ocean

Abstract

This article surveys the role of Kilwa, a small offshore island of present-day Tanzania, in the Indian Ocean World (IOW) economy, over the longue durée. Kilwa’s position close to the southern limits of the monsoon system ensured that it played a pivotal role linking the regions of the southwestern Indian Ocean, notably Mozambique, the Comoros, and Madagascar, to the wider IOW. It rose to preeminence in the second major boom in the IOW global economy, from the ninth to thirteenth centuries, when the major export commodities were East African ivory and gold. However, with the rise of the plantation economy on the Mascarenes from the mid-eighteenth century, the imperial Merina economy in Madagascar from the 1820s, and early nineteenth-century demand from Cuba and Brazil, the export of slaves assumed an increasingly important role, one that expanded in the mid-nineteenth century in the guise of an engagé trade to the French islands of the western Indian Ocean. As an important commercial hub, it was highly valued and contested by indigenous and western commercial groups alike.