Buying Time. Thomas F. McDow
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Barghash asked for transport and a mediator who could help him with Majid. He vowed “that no objectionable act will ever be committed by me,” and he appealed to a notion of homeland and property, writing that he could not abandon Zanzibar because it was his birthplace and he had estates there.49 Barghash returned to Zanzibar in 1861 and took up a life in seclusion; “resid[ing] in his old house, and attend[ing] durbar; ‘but is it is well understood throughout town that Syud Barghash is a marked man and that no person is to call on him or address him.’” Receiving no salary, in part because Majid was unable to afford it, Barghash was more of a state prisoner than a principal courtier.50
In this situation, Barghash opted to bide his time in Zanzibar and wait out Majid. The new British agent, Pelly, had made arrangements to send Barghash abroad, but Barghash did not want to depart and arouse Majid’s suspicions.51 Having returned from exile, Barghash’s most direct path to power was not mobility but patience. In 1870, his stoicism was rewarded when Majid died, and almost a decade and half after he had tried to bury his father in secret, Barghash bin Said was the ruler of Zanzibar. In time, he became Zanzibar’s modernizing sultan, famous for his improvements in the technology and infrastructure on the island. For instance, he brought printing presses from Bombay, and as historian Anne Bang has argued, the Ibadi nahda (renaissance) took place in Zanzibar rather than Oman in part because of Barghash’s leadership. Barghash seems to have imbibed the lessons of Bombay’s modernization from his time in exile. Majid, constrained by his success in Zanzibar, had been less mobile and had no such exposure, so his British allies had contrived a trip to inspire him.
MAJID AND THE MODERN CITY, 1861 TO 1865
In aftermath of the 1859 rebellion and the 1861 Canning Award, Majid bin Said was the undisputed sultan of Zanzibar and his father’s African dominions. British forces had helped him protect his rule, and now they sought to influence it by refocusing his ambitions from Arabia to within the East African sphere. The key to this, however, was a trip to Bombay. The city had become a key point in the new geography of power in the Indian Ocean: a waypoint for mobile sultans.
The new British agent, Pelly, who arrived in 1862, contemplated the results of the Canning Award, which untethered Omani rule in East Africa from Muscat. Despite this political division, East Africa was not territorially distinct from long-standing Indian Ocean processes, including the movement of Indian merchants, slaves, and credit. How could the British coach their new client to adapt to changes and continuities? Pelly believed the biggest question the British had to answer was, “Is it the permanent intention of Government to accept an Arab State of Zanzibar?” And, if so, how should the British exert pressure upon it? Pelly understood credit as Zanzibar’s lifeblood and recognized three flaws with the sultanate. First, Indians—who he called British Indian subjects—were the center of the economy, and the wealth of Zanzibar depended on them.52 Second, Majid lacked modernizing impulses, while Pelly wanted him to build roads, clear jungles, clean up the towns, and drain swamps. Third, the place of slaves in both the economic and social order was distasteful and difficult to address. Pelly understood the role of credit in the economy as well as the emerging role of fixed property. He warned the British government to avoid any action “to shake credit in the Zanzibar market or to unsettle the value of landed property or to disturb society by any sudden or sweeping radicalism, such as the dictatorial abolition of slavery.”53
Pelly made plans to turn Majid into a modern ruler by focusing on the African mainland and drawing inspiration from India. This transformation would require mobility, both within his realm and beyond it. Majid’s power on the mainland was “very slight and undefined” because, like the Portuguese of an earlier era, he held islands and forts along the coast. Majid held more authority among people along the coast—Pelly referred to them as “the softer & agricultural tribes & mixed breeds of the low shore”—than he did in the interior. Beyond the coast, the frontier of his realm was ill-defined and relationships were based only on commercial exchanges. The remedy to this situation necessitated both travel and force. Pelly suggested to the Indian government that for Majid to consolidate his hold on the mainland, he “should himself travel through it from time to time, at the head of a sufficient Force, requiring, en route, the salaams of the Chiefs in token of submission & if necessary taking Hostages there!”54 Thus, Majid’s new territorially subscribed rule would require crossing the Zanzibar channel to the African mainland and crossing the Indian Ocean to Bombay.
To build a modern city, Majid had to see a modern city, and for the western Indian Ocean, this meant Bombay. Majid’s trip to Bombay in 1865 was the culmination of three years of planning. The two goals for the trip were to reconcile Majid with his younger brother Abdulaziz and to expose Majid to Bombay and its Public Works Department. Abdulaziz bin Said had initially departed Zanzibar with Barghash in 1859, but after their return in 1861 Abdulaziz offended Majid and was sent away again. A meeting in Bombay would set the stage for Abdulaziz’s return.
R. L. Playfair, Pelly’s successor, was even more enthusiastic about impressing Majid with the infrastructure of Bombay, but he realized some delicacy would be required in introducing a conservative Ibadi ruler to the region’s cosmopolis. The plan was to waive docking fees, borrow a private rail car from a wealthy Parsi businessman, and “show him everything of interest in Bombay & Poona.” Playfair was conscious that opulence and development of Bombay, not to mention habits of everyday living, might be out of step with the sultan’s practices. Playfair warned the officials that no one should smoke in Majid’s presence because it was “abhorrent” to Majid and “all belonging to his sect.” Playfair claimed that Majid had “never seen a road or a carriage” and believed that, in Bombay, the sultan of Zanzibar might hire a surveyor and builder from the Public Works Department to oversee road building efforts in Zanzibar.55 Majid left Zanzibar on September 13, 1865, among a convoy of four ships.56
In Bombay, Majid presented the governor with gifts, including diamond ornaments, and the governor gave Majid a screw steam yacht with a dubious history.57 In the official account of this exchange, the yacht was valued at 45,000 rupees, while Majid’s gifts were only estimated to be worth 26,000. The disparity attracted official scrutiny, but the Indian government allowed the difference in light of “the extreme liberality of the Sultan in all his dealings with the British Government.”58 Majid returned to Zanzibar after an absence of nearly three months..59
Although the idea for a city on the mainland had been talked about since the 1862, building a trading port that would allow Majid to tap into the caravan trade did not begin until the year Majid returned from Bombay (1865) or the next year. He built this city near a fishing village on the mainland southwest of Zanzibar and called it Bandar al-Salaam, the haven of peace, generally shortened to Dar es Salaam. Historians James Brennan and Andrew Burton’s argument that Majid modeled the city on his experience in Zanzibar fails to account for the peregrinations of a mobile sultan and his Indian Ocean itinerary.60 In the years that Majid was building a new city, however, his less mobile brother, Thuwayni in Muscat, was struggling with many forces that were nearly out of his control. He lacked a haven of peace.
THUWAYNI’S TROUBLES IN MUSCAT, 1856 TO 1866
The decade from 1856 to 1866 was a trying one for Thuwayni bin Said. He had aspired to be ruler of all his father’s dominions: in the Persian Gulf, along the Makran coast, in Oman, and also in Zanzibar and its opposite coasts where customs agents collected massive revenues. His aborted mission to invade Zanzibar, however, and his capitulation to the Canning Award hemmed him in Muscat, where he faced multiple threats and had few allies. As territorial boundaries became more rigid in the western Indian Ocean, Thuwayni in Arabia was highly circumscribed. His inability to maneuver makes clear the reasons that his father had moved his capital from Muscat in the 1830s. Thuwayni had begun as the wali (governor) of Muscat and learned the exigencies of the Arabian capital during his father’s frequent trips to Zanzibar. As governor, Thuwayni maintained his rule by negotiating with Arabs from both interior Oman and the coast. He tried to stave off incursions from the Sunni orthodox Wahhabi of central Arabia, sought conciliation with the Persian Shah over Muscat’s control of the gulf port of Bandar Abbas, and engaged with the British. After his father’s death these challenges were amplified.
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