The making of a slaving zone. Slave raiders and traders in Southeastern Arabia (1920s-1960s)

The thesis analyses the slave trade and the processes of enslavement in Southeastern Arabia. The timeframe of previous research ranges between the 19th century and the 1920s, connecting the slave trade with the pearl diving industry. From a chronological point of view, this thesis aims at covering the “blind spot” of the decades between the late 1920s and the early 1960s. Spatially, rather than considering the Gulf as a whole, it would focus on the area between the present day United Arab Emirates and Oman and its local specificities. This thesis argues that economic distress, coupled with political fragmentation, stimulated the transformation of the area into a slaving zone, in which people were captured and sold to the richest Saudi kingdom. The lack of significative alternative means of income stimulated town dwellers to collaborate with slave traders, who mostly belonged to independent tribes of the interior. This situation persisted until the development of the oil industry allowed the Trucial rulers and the Sultan to both extend their control over the interior and invest money in welfare and new employments for their subjects. The main sources for this work are the administrative reports from the British Political Agencies in the Gulf and the manumission demands presented by enslaved people to these offices. These documents are fragmented and generally are mere snapshots of individual captures. Nevertheless, an analysis of these sources allow to find patterns and commonalities in the processes of capture, enslavement and traffic and the evolution of these phenomena during the decades under analysis.