The Indian Ocean Slave Trade: East Africa to Arabia and Beyond

The transatlantic slave trade (1500–1900) is the best-documented forced migration in history, but it was not the largest or the longest. The Indian Ocean slave trade — carried out by Arab, Swahili, Persian, and Indian traders for over 1,300 years (roughly 700 CE to the early 20th century) — transported an estimated 4–17 million East Africans to the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, India, and the islands of the Indian Ocean. This trade produced culinary synthesis traditions that are almost entirely absent from English-language culinary scholarship.

The Indian Ocean slave trade and its culinary transmissions.

• West African diaspora (same mechanism — different ocean, different destinations), Portuguese colonial routes (overlapping Indian Ocean presence), Indian Ocean culinary synthesis (the shared spice trad