Mapping ‘Gabriel’: Space, Identity and Slavery in the Late Sixteenth-Century Indian Ocean*

This article maps the life of an Ethiopian slave in the late sixteenth century Indian Ocean world, whose life is known to us through the records of two trials in the Inquisition of Goa. The case study allows an exploration of the connections between regimes of slavery within the interior of South Asia and the oceanic networks of enslavement of the European powers, specifically the Portuguese in this case. Unlike methodological approaches focused on mining subaltern subjectivity, this article traces Gabriel’s life based on Fernand Deligny’s method of mapping lignes d’erre. In doing so, it shows how Gabriel’s life unsettles given categories of space and identity by which the analysis of the history of the Indian Ocean usually proceeds.