Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar. Abdul Sheriff
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important in Britain’s interests for political and economic reasons, and since the Qawasima had allied with the Wahhabis, ‘the preservation of that independence appears to turn upon the cooperation of the British power against the Joasmee [Qawasima] pirates.’ An additional consideration was the need to counteract the influence of the French, who had signed a commercial treaty with Oman in 1807. While the British government refused to accept the Sultan’s interpretation of the Anglo-Omani treaties as amounting to an offensive and defensive alliance, it was nevertheless prepared to underwrite the survival of its surrogate to ensure British dominance over the area. Between 1806 and 1820 the British, with the ready cooperation of their junior partner, the Omanis, attacked the Qawasima three times, finally breaking the backbone of their resistance against the Omanis and their British overlords. The subordinate role played by the Omani forces in all these engagements further confirmed the depths to which the Omani state had sunk by 1820. The General Treaty of Peace with what were called the Trucial States concluded at the end of these hostilities excluded all reference to the Omani role in the Persian Gulf.34 The British had finally decided to come out from behind the Omani veil.
The subjugation of the Swahili coast
Oman was a monsoon-using alien power dependent on easy communication with the homeland. With the fragmented commercial economy of the Swahili coast, and with each city-state controlling its own narrow hinterland as well as sharing in the coastal trade, the Omanis needed control over strategic points along the coast to dominate its trade. Mombasa appeared to be an ideal headquarters, with the impregnable Fort Jesus and a secure harbour dominating the northern approaches to the coast. It was in fact the first seat of Omani governorship. However, the spillover of the Omani social revolution to East Africa was to deprive the new Busaidi dynasty of control over this port. The Mazrui governors of Mombasa appointed by the previous Omani dynasty, the Ya’rubi, refused to offer their allegiance. Instead they attempted to indigenise their power base and to embark upon their own Mombasa-based expansion to resist the inevitable Omani invasion. The most stable base of Mazrui rule rested on an intricate hierarchy of relationships between the Mazrui dynasty and the rival Swahili confederacies of Mombasa between whom the Mazrui held the balance, and on a system of patronage that linked the various Swahili and Mijikenda ‘tribes’ of the immediate hinterland on whom depended the economic well-being of the city.35 These relationships proved sturdy enough to withstand nearly a century of struggle, but without a more secure economic base, and before longdistance trade links were forged with the deep interior, the immediate hinterland of Mombasa provided too narrow an economic base to withstand the full weight of Omani pressure.
Map 1.3 The East African coast
Unable to dislodge the Mazrui from Mombasa immediately, the Busaidi were forced to turn to Zanzibar which offered good sheltered harbours and a weak Shirazi dynasty which had learned during the preceding century to swim with the changing political tides. After initially resisting the Portuguese in 1509, Zanzibar is said to have remained friendly to them, even during the 1631 revolt by Mombasa. However, in 1652 the kings of Zanzibar and Pemba destroyed Portuguese settlements and asked for help from Oman, though they were subdued the following year. With the capture of Mombasa by the Omanis in 1699 Zanzibar fell under Omani control, but when Mombasa was reoccupied in 1728 Zanzibar is stated to have offered allegiance to the Portuguese once again. However, this was short-lived. The following year, Zanzibar joined the other Swahili city-states in the final overthrow of Portuguese rule over the Swahili coast.36 By 1744 the Omanis had installed their governor but the local ruler, the Mwinyi Mkuu, was retained as the chief of the indigenous subjects. From their Zanzibari base the Busaidi continued their struggle against the Mazrui. During the eighteenth century they were unable to subjugate Mombasa militarily, though the latter was forced to pay tribute more than once to the Busaidi. But it was the economic struggle for hinterlands that was to prove decisive in the nineteenth century for the subjugation of Mombasa and the whole coastline, and the erection of the Omani commercial empire.37
The Kilwa area was not as critical in the Busaidi-Mazrui struggle though it was to form one of the bases of the commercial empire.38 The Lamu archipelago, on the other hand, was much more critical, and it was here that the tide turned in the struggle. This was the heartland of Swahili resistance to the Omanis just as previously it had been a centre of opposition to the Portuguese. The extension of the conflict into the archipelago set off disastrous internecine warfare during which, according to the ‘History of Pate’, ‘for five years they were not able to cultivate or to trade or do any work whatsoever. So a great famine raged.’ The decline of Pate culminated in the disastrous battle of Shela in 1813 when the Busaidi-backed Lamu routed the combined forces from Pate and Mombasa. As a result Mombasa had to surrender any pretence to control the rich hinterland of the Lamu archipelago, though the Busaidis found it by no means easy to assert their dominance. Calamities at home may have driven the people of the archipelago to seafaring pursuits, acting as coastal traders all along the coast, and even settling abroad. During the first half of the nineteenth century they were found settled along the coast of southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique, as ‘the most recommendable’ local merchants, and in places as chiefs.39
The final act of the struggle was to be played out at Mombasa itself, and it was to demonstrate once more the proverbial weakness of the Swahili merchant class, but also the compradorial character of the Omani state. In 1823 the Omanis captured Pemba, Mombasa’s granary, a move which a British naval officer, Lieutenant Boteler, believed was ‘a great step towards the subjugation of that power by the Imam’. In 1825 they captured the northern Mrima ports, Mombasa’s last commercial outlets outside its territories; this deprived Mombasa of a share of the lucrative trade of what was to become the centrepiece of the Omani commercial empire. The bell of Mombasa’s independence had begun to toll loudly in the ears of the Mazrui who began desperately to look around for external allies. Johanna in the Comoros was itself too weak to be of much help, and the Qawasima of Ras al-Khayma had just been subjugated by the paramount British power. The Mazrui, who in essence differed little in their economic interests and world outlook, therefore, did not hesitate to embrace the same foreign power. They had offered to place themselves under British overlordship as early as 1807–8, and in 1823 they again begged for the British flag so that
beneath its protecting shade we may defy our enemies. As the lamb trembles at the lion’s roar, so will the Imam shrink from that which is the terror of the world.40
This was a rather neat analogy of the relationship between the Mazrui, the Busaidi and the British.
Plate 3 Fort Jesus, Mombasa, overlooking the town and the harbour, c. 1857
Through the impetuous mouth of a Royal Navy captain, W.F. Owen, the British lion did indeed seem to roar. In 1824 he negotiated with the Mazrui an unauthorised declaration of a British protectorate over Mombasa. Under the terms of the convention Owen not only guaranteed the ‘independence’ of Mombasa and the perpetuation of the Mazrui dynasty under British suzerainty, but also promised to reinstate it in its former possessions, Pemba, Lamu, Pate, and the Mrima coast as far south as the Pangani river. In return the Mazrui agreed to abolish the slave trade, a policy in line with what had become the constant preoccupation of the rising industrial capitalists in Britain. They also offered the British half the customs revenue of Mombasa, and freedom to British subjects to trade with the interior. This seemed to offer the prospect of a new market for British goods. As the British Governor of Mauritius, Sir Lowry Cole, put it:
I am inclined to consider it as presenting a favourable means for putting down the Slave Trade as well as for opening a commerce with the eastern coast of Africa which might ultimately be of advantage to the mercantile interests of Great Britain. . . .41
For good measure Captain Owen used the old and potent argument of the threat of French intervention, and he capped it all with an ideological justification that barely camouflaged