In the Spotlight
The French Navy’s fight against the slave trade in the Indian Ocean during the second half of the 19th century

An article written by Raphaël Cheriau, Historian.

A Portuguese brig, the Pocha, was captured on 25th August 1840, not far from Mayotte in the Mozambique Channel, by the Prévoyante, a French naval vessel acting in accordance with the Act of 4th March 1831 which sought to put an end to the slave trade in all French territories. The Pocha had 220 men, women and children on board, all of whom had been enslaved. The crew of the Prévoyante ‘freed’ them, took them into their care and then disembarked them on 13th October at the port of Saint-Denis in Réunion, in order to hand them over to the island’s colonial authorities.

The case of the capture of the Pocha, as well as the fate of the enslaved people following their ‘liberation’, leads us to examine the nature and results of the French navy’s efforts to suppress the slave trade in the Indian Ocean between the 1840s and 1900. It also sheds light on the many legal and political issues surrounding the suppression of the slave trade in the 19th century.