Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar. Abdul Sheriff
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thesis.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Zanzibar Commerce History 18th century.
2. Zanzibar Commerce History 19th century.
3. Slave-trade Tanzania Zanzibar History.
4. Spice trade Tanzania Zanzibar History. I. Title.
HF3897.S54 1987 382′.096781 87–12339
ISBN 0-8214-0871-2
ISBN 0-8214-0872-0 (pbk)
Typeset in 10/11pt Baskerville by Colset Private Limited, Singapore
ISBN 978-1-78204-777-3 (James Currey ePub eISBN)
ISBN 978-1-78204-978-4 (James Currey ePDF eISBN)
ISBN 978-0-8214-4021-6 (Ohio University Press eISBN)
To Suhail
Contents
Introduction: The Commercial Empire
One: The Rise of a Compradorial State
The mercantile civilisation of the Swahili coast
The subjugation of the Swahili coast
Two: The Transformation of the Slave Sector
The French slave trade and the re-subjugation of Kilwa, 1770-1822
The genesis of the slave system of production in Zanzibar, 1810-1840s
The development of the slave system on the northern coast
Three: Commercial Expansion and the Rise of the Merchant Class
The ivory trade to the end of the eighteenth century
The genesis of the Indian mercantile class
The expansion of foreign trade
The dynamo of merchant accumulation
Conclusion
Four: The Structure of the Commercial Empire
The entrepôt
Economic dependence
The capital: planter town or commercial centre?
Five: The Hinterland of Zanzibar
The southern hinterland
The northern hinterland
The core of the commercial empire
The moving frontier
Where the flag did not follow trade
The subordination of the Indian merchant class
The dismemberment of the Omani kingdom
The nationalist reaction: accession of Barghash
The slave trade under attack
‘I have come to dictate’
A: Bombay trade with East Africa, 1801/2–1869/70
B: Prices of ivory and merekani sheeting, 1802/3–1873/4
C: Ivory imports into the United Kingdom, 1792–1875
Preface
The publication of a book so many years after the completion of the doctoral thesis on which it is based requires an explanation, if not an apology. African historiography has been going through such rapid changes since the coming of independence from colonial rule in the early 1960s that any extended piece of research has had to contend with strong intellectual eddies if not outright contrary currents. History has become one of the battlegrounds for contending ideological forces trying to interpret the past in terms of the present, and vice-versa. The perspective depends very much on one’s vantage point, not only in geographical terms between Africa and the Western metropoles, but even more importantly in philosophical terms.
The research for the thesis was done in the late 1960s partly in the United States, France and India, but largely in London which has a well-established scholarly tradition and unrivalled research facilities. I owe to Professor Richard Gray, who supervised the thesis, as well as other scholars at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, an enormous debt in initiating me into what may be termed the SOAS school of African history which has obtained its fullest expression in the Cambridge History of Africa.
Halfway through my research I went to the University of Dar es Salaam to teach for a year, and I found myself in the middle of an intense philosophical debate on the nature of African history, reflecting the changes that Africa was then going through. It had already given rise to what came to be called the Dar es Salaam school of nationalist