Indian North Agulhas Current

The northern Agulhas waters belong to the western Indian Ocean, a maritime world long connected with Africa's eastern ports. Swahili coastal cities maintained routes towards India and China before the Portuguese arrived. Commerce carried goods and people, while Muslim merchants and missionaries helped spread Islam and Arabic writing along the African shore.

These established networks supplied knowledge and pilots to later newcomers, sometimes through cooperation and sometimes through coercion. Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 and continued towards India with the assistance of a pilot supplied at Malindi. Portuguese expeditions subsequently attacked coastal towns and established imperial possessions, bringing new armed competition to the ocean. Their activities also expanded slave trading from Mozambique.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European companies and island plantations increased the demand for enslaved labour around the basin. French colonies in the Mascarenes linked southern island ports with African and Asian supplies. The sea surrounding the Agulhas system consequently formed part of a much larger historical network: voyages around Africa met older eastern routes, and commercial expansion was inseparable from contests over ports, navigation and human labour.