French Slave Trade on Madagascar: A Quantitative Approach

This article provides a better understanding of the volume of the French slave trade on Madagascar. Indeed, while research on the European slave trade in the Atlantic has benefitted much from statistical data, the slave trade in the Indian Ocean still lags behind, despite new scholarship. Based on detailed archival research, this article systematically analyzes different aspects of this commerce, including the organization of the trade, the age-sex ratio of the enslaved, and their mortality during the middle passage. Taking the number of French expeditions as a basis, we are able to determine the number of slaves traded with greater accuracy than was previously possible. Through this calculation, this article will shed new light on the patterns of slave trade in the Indian Ocean.