Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy, 1770-1873

In the 17th century, Oman drove out the Portuguese, who had occupied key coastal forts, and abandoning both their isolation and religious puritanism, became a commercial power in the Indian Ocean. Over the 18th century, through a combination of military and commercial means, not to mention propitious marriages, they came to control the East African coast from what is now southern Somalia, down to Mozambique. Their rule, centered on the island of Zanzibar, was limited to a series of ports and forts, seldom extending far inland. The Omanis made a lot of money from the slave trade, exporting them to Arabia, India, and the burgeoning sugar islands of Mauritius and La Reunion. As a rising power in the region, Britain attempted to suppress the slave trade, not always from the purest motives. When the export of Africans became difficult, the Omanis turned to clove plantations, using slave labor to work the crop. They also grew sugarcane and coconuts in Zanzibar and on Pemba, a neighboring island, and grain and oilseeds on the mainland. After a period of great profits, overproduction collapsed the clove business, plus the Omani slaveowning landords had become indebted to Indian moneylenders and customs agents. British power,looming ever larger, succeeded in separating Zanzibar from Oman, making two weaker kingdoms. But luckily for the Zanzibari ruling class, the rapidly industrializing West and its newly rich bourgeois craved exotic products. At the same time, industrial goods were coming down in price, thanks to wider and higher rates of production. Ivory, culled from Africa's then-magnificent herds of elephants, filled the gap left by the decline of clove growing. A vast trade network, dealing both in ivory and slaves, grew up covering a huge area from southern Sudan to the Caprivi Strip in Namibia and emerging from the roadless bush to a number of traditional ports on the east coast. Zanzibar traded in goods derived from the mainland (78% of exports came from there in the 1860s), and prevented other powers from dealing with the Africans directly. The British eventually suppressed the slave trade completely, ruining the country economically and forcing Zanzibar into protectorate status in 1890. That is the story in brief. Dr. Sheriff has written a detailed history from the economic point of view, rather than from the more conventional direction of rulers, diplomats, treaties, and military moves. He studies classes, products, and means of production and does not offer any moral lectures on the evils of slavery. I would guess that it was a mighty job to gather all the material, especially since, as he notes in just one small place, he could not get access to the Zanzibar records. This is reflected in the bibliographic notes, where he lists the archives he consulted-in the UK, USA, France, and India. The book abounds with maps, charts, diagrams, old lithographs and photographs (though his chapter on the hinterlands is full of place names