Matthew Hopper has written an important book—one that deserves a wide readership among historians of the Indian Ocean, to be sure, but also by historians of the Arabian Peninsula and of global capitalism. The product of a Ph.D. dissertation, Hopper’s book reads like anything but that; it is an impressively polished piece of work, worthy of inclusion in the libraries of specialists and the general public alike. Indeed, the book takes an incredibly difficult subject and manages to present a narrative that is both simple in its outlines and compelling in its broad dimensions and implications—a coup if there ever was one.
First, to summarize the book: after an introduction that is in part colourful vignettes and in part a survey of the historiographical lay of the land, Hopper begins by charting out, in broad strokes, the East African slave trade to Arabia over the course of the nineteenth century. His account familiarizes readers with the outlines of the debate on slavery but also interrogates many of the figures that historians have ascribed to the “northern slave trade”. The main context for Hopper’s narrative, however, comes in Chapters Two and Three—arguably the most important chapters, particularly for historians of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula. Here, Hopper lays out the emergence of markets for Gulf pearls in Europe and Omani dates in the United States—markets, he argues, that prompted an expansion in date production and pearl fishing within the Gulf and, presumably (though he never explicitly says so), led to an increased appetite for slave labour among the region’s merchants.
Chapter Four grounds this context in the lived experiences of African slaves, digging deeply into slave narratives preserved in the archival record. From these, he draws out more general themes on slave life in the Gulf: work, marriage and divorce, manumission, as well as broader issues of identity. For those looking for a sense of how slaves experienced the dislocations and transformations he maps out in the first three chapters, this will be the most satisfying part of the book.
Hopper finishes with two processes that marked the end of the slave trade, split up into two chapters. Chapter Five examines British antislavery efforts in the Indian Ocean, but with a critical eye Where other historians have perhaps placed too strong an emphasis on their ability to disrupt the slave trade, Hopper shows them for what they were: largely ineffectual, deeply biased and marred by miscommunication from the top to the bottom. The real end to the slave trade from Africa to Arabia, Hopper argues in Chapter Six, came from the very forces that brought it into existence to begin with: globalization. Pegged as it was to the emergence of global markets around the world, slavery in the Persian Gulf crashed alongside those same markets—the development of the Japanese cultured pearl, the emergence of date gardens in the United States and the onset of the worldwide economic depression all brought about the slow end of the slave trade to the Gulf. He ends with a brief but deep reflection on the ways in which the slave past has been incorporated (and largely silenced) in the national narratives of Gulf countries like Bahrain and Oman.
It should by now be clear that Hopper’s book is going to make a tremendous impact. Slaves of One Master does the foundational work of linking the Persian Gulf—long seen as little more than an uninteresting appendage of the Indian Ocean, or even worse, a backwater in the historiography of the Middle East—to the rhythms of the world economy. This is path-breaking in every meaning of the term: the narrative arc he sketches out and linkages he painstakingly details will open up avenues of research for years to come, if not longer. I can scarcely imagine having carried out my own work on law and economic life in the Indian Ocean without relying on what was then Hopper’s dissertation.
Hopper is also a gifted writer and his way with words shines through again and again throughout the book. Every chapter is animated with vignettes that bring the story to life, taking the reader from the date plantation in Oman to the confectioner in New York; from the streets of Paris to the pearl banks of Arabia; on the deck of a British naval patrol boat; and into the households of Gulf families. It is through these vignettes that Hopper sketches out the broad contours of the story that he wants to tell and the amount of detective work he has done to pull them together is thoroughly impressive. In a sense, his book is a model for how engaging historical writing can be.
However, the book is not without its shortcomings. At times, the book’s very strengths seem to be its weaknesses: his reliance on vignettes to animate the story, for example, tends to obscure the analysis and cover up the substance of his work. They are seductive but the accompanying analysis is not always as compelling as the example itself; I often found myself wanting a little more depth than his (deeply engaging) storytelling allowed for. This is a shame since there are enormous implications to the narrative that he sketches out–for historians of the Indian Ocean and of global capitalism but especially for historians of the Arabian Peninsula.
There is also a distinct Eurocentrism to the story—one that is surprising for a history grounded in the lives of Africans in Arabia. In this telling, the main forces that determine the Gulf date and pearl booms come from Europe or the United States. Although Hopper acknowledges the importance of the Indian market for both of these goods, the narrative tends towards the emergence and influence of Western markets rather than those of the Indian Ocean. This wouldn’t be a problem were it not for the continued importance of the Indian market for dates until well after the period Hopper describes. The story of the linkages between Arabian and Indian Ocean markets in this time of expanding trade, then, remains to be told.
Slightly less problematic is Hopper’s usage of the term “globalization” to describe the forces at work in his story. His engagement with the concept is minimal beyond the standard narrative that globalization meant an increase in the scale, scope, and speed of connections around the world. It is thus unclear what the purchase of the term is here: what work does it do that other, more historiographically-dense terms like “capitalism” might not? Hopper engages with some of the literature on slavery and capitalism—the work of Walter Johnson makes more than one appearance in the text—but his framing of even that work as one on “increased global connectivity” rather than the social, economic, political and legal reconfigurations that a transition to modern capitalism brings along with it.
But none of that should detract from the book’s impact or importance; these are merely quibbling points. Historians working on the economic history of the Western Indian Ocean would be well-advised to read Hopper’s book; those working on the Persian Gulf or Arabian Peninsula would be foolish to ignore it. Slaves of One Master lays out the groundwork for a research agenda whose significance will be felt for years to come and offers up intriguing possibilities for those working within it. Besides that, it is a deeply enjoyable read—the sort you want by your bedside at night and certainly the kind you want your undergraduates reading.
