https://orcid.org/0009-0004-7248-3408
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Abstract
In February 1866, Sultan Thuwaini bin Said Al bu-Said of Muscat and Oman was murdered by his son, Salim. This royal patricide had clear destabilizing effects, triggering a series of events beyond the sultanate. It had important geopolitical repercussions across the western Indian Ocean, from the East African coast to Persia and India. These shaped British policy in this maritime region during a period of administrative reshuffling after the dissolution of the East India Company in 1858. Examining British responses to Thuwaini’s death in the context of wider transformations since the mid-1850s becomes an avenue for exploring a range of increasingly regulated maritime connections, from piracy to slave trading, and the ways in which these were interpreted at a British imperial level. Reading colonial records, I advance an argument for considering this episode and its multifocal repercussions as geopolitical in nature, giving an impetus for the British to redefine the terms of their presence using a language of “threat”. The events following the murder, I argue, are telling of a larger issue of administrative crisis, which forced colonial agents to renegotiate the terms of British imperialism in the late 19th century western Indian Ocean.
Disclosure statement
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Notes
1 The term “piracy” being a key example (more is discussed later in this article). See also: Risso, “Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Piracy: Maritime Violence in the Western Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf Region During a Long Eighteenth Century”, Journal of World History 12.2 (2001), pp. 293–319.
2 The following states became British protectorates or protected states during this period: Aden in 1872; Bahrain in 1880; Zanzibar in 1890; Muscat and Oman (informally) in 1891; the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates) in 1892; British East Africa (now Kenya and Uganda) in 1895; and Kuwait in 1899.
3 See: Fuccaro, “Knowledge at the Service of the British Empire: The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia”, in Brandell, Carlson and Cetrez (eds), Borders and Changing Boundaries of Knowledge (2015), pp. 18–34.
4 Frere, “Memorandum on the Drafts of Despatches Regarding the Affairs of Muscat and Zanzibar”, 15–20 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/3, p. 4, British Library, London.
5 The move of the Omani capital to Zanzibar can be seen as a result of Britain’s seizure of the commercial privileges that Muscat had in India, as well as a response to British and French threats in Oman’s East African territories. This shift has been analyzed as a “desperate attempt to save what commercial links remained to Muscat not only in East Africa but in the Indian Ocean region as a whole” [Bhacker, Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: The Roots of British Domination (1994), pp. xii].
6 McDow, Buying Time: Debt and Mobility in the Western Indian Ocean (2018), p. 63.
7 Kaye, “Zanzibar, Muscat, and Persia. Memorandum by Political Secretary”, 1 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/1, p. 1, British Library, London.
8 G.C. [George Clerk, Council of India, London], “Persian Gulf; Muscat and Zanzibar”, 17 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/4, p. 4, British Library, London. In 1859, Sultan Thuwaini, together with his younger sibling, Barghash, who later became Sultan of Zanzibar, attempted to overthrow their brother and capture the island. With Britain’s assistance, however, Majid was able to stop the attack with the support of the Royal Navy [Frankle, “Rigby, Christopher Palmer (1820–1885): Diplomatist and Army Officer”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004].
9 Kaye, “Zanzibar, Muscat, and Persia. Memorandum by Political Secretary”, 1 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/1, p. 1, British Library, London.
10 Sulivan, Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters: Narrative of Five Years of Experiences in the Suppression of the Slave Trade ([1873] 1967), p. xxxii.
11 Letter No. 50 of 1865 from Lewis Pelly (Political Resident in the Persian Gulf) to Charles Gonne (Secretary to Government, Political Department, Bombay), Mss Eur F126/38, ff. 5–6, British Library, London.
12 McDow, Buying Time, p. 80.
13 Letter No. 98 of 1866 from Lewis Pelly (Political Resident Persian Gulf) to Charles Gonne (Secretary to Government, Bombay), Mss Eur F126/38, ff. 109v, British Library, London.
14 Frere, “Memorandum on the Drafts of Despatches Regarding the Affairs of Muscat and Zanzibar”, 15–20 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/3, p. 1, British Library, London.
15 Ibid, p. 2.
16 Al-Naqeeb, Society and State in the Gulf and Arab Peninsula: A Different Perspective (1990), p. 47.
17 Abdul Sheriff, Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam (2010), p. 10.
18 Al-Naqeeb, Society and State in the Gulf and Arab Peninsula, p. 48.
19 Prinsep, “Zanzibar, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf”, 15 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/5, p. 2, British Library, London.
20 Copy of letter No 1662/694 of 1872 from Colonel Lewis Pelly (HBM’s Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Viceroy’s Camp, Bombay) to His Excellency Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere (Aden), 28 December 1872, Mss Eur F126/39, pp. 1–2, British Library, London.
21 Thomas, Alarms and Excursions in Arabia (1931), p. 237.
22 Kaye, “Zanzibar, Muscat, and Persia. Memorandum by Political Secretary”, 1 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/1, p. 2, British Library, London.
23 Letter No. 17 of 1866 from Lewis Pelly (Political Resident in the Persian Gulf) to Charles Gonne (Secretary to Government, Political Department, Bombay), Mss Eur F126/38, ff. 38–45, British Library, London.
24 Hopper, Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in the Age of Empire (2015), p. 35.
25 At the same time, slaves served a double function as “items of consumption” and as “domestics or living displays of wealth – as of production” [Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (1977), pp. 6, 37]. For Zanzibar, Elizabeth McMahon’s work shows how specific terms could be used to identify whether the person was enslaved at birth (mzalia / wazalia) or later in life (mjinga / wajinga). Being born as a slave implied coming from the more “civilized” coast, and therefore implied higher hierarchy. Other categories identified age and gender, as well as position as concubine (suria / masuria), domestic slave (watumwa wa nyumba), day laborer (kibarua / vibarua), porter (hamali), or skilled artisan and carpenter (mafundo) [McMahon, Slavery and Emancipation in Islamic East Africa: From Honor to Respectability (2013), pp. 10–13].
26 Glassman, “Racial Violence, Universal History, and Echoes of Abolition in Twentieth- Century Zanzibar”, in Peterson (ed.), Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic (2010), pp. 175–205.
27 Letter from the Chairman to the Duke of Worcester to the Court of Directors, 4 April 1821, IOR/H/521, p. 4, British Library, London.
28 Letter from the Imam of Muscat to Mountstuart Elphinstone, Governor of Bombay, 13 December 1821, IOR/R/15/1/26, pp. 15–17, British Library, London.
29 “The African Institution in London request the East India Company to Use Their Good Offices with the Imam of Muscat to Put an End to the Slave Traffic There”, 26 July 1815, IOR/F/4/617/15321, pp. 16–19, British Library, London.
30 Zanzibar’s trade was composed of 50 vessels with 10,000 tons of merchandise, plus many coasting crafts constantly arriving and departing. In some seasons, there were over 100 large dhows from India and the Gulf. The Sultan collected MT$150,000 in duties [Ibid.].
31 Al-Naqeeb, Society and State in the Gulf; Bose, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (2006); Mathew, Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism Across the Arabian Sea (2016); Mirzai, “The Persian Gulf and Britain: The Suppression of the African Slave Trade”, in Suzuki (ed.), Abolition as a Global Experience (2016), pp. 113–129.
32 Al-Naqeeb, Society and State in the Gulf, p. 145.
33 Letter No. 257 of 1856 from Commander Felix Jones (Resident in the Persian Gulf) to Henry Anderson (Secretary to the Government of Bombay), 28 August 1856, IOR/R/15/1/157, ff. 208–209, British Library, London.
34 The first anti-slavery treaty between Britain and Oman was signed in 1822, when the Sultan agreed that “all external traffic in slaves shall cease”. “External” was to be defined as southward of the parallel of Cape Delgado, “His Highness’ most southern procession in Africa”, and eastward of a “line drawn from that cape, past the east point of the Isle Socotra, on to the Persian shore” [Thomas (ed.), Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, New Series 24 (1856, reprinted 1985), pp. 653–657]. In the late 1830s and 40s, anti-slave trade treaties were also signed with Persia and Ras al-Khaimah. In 1846, a new treaty was signed with Oman to further restrict the trade. In this document, the Omani Sultan agreed to prohibit the export of slaves from “any part of Africa into his possessions in Asia” [Ibid., pp. 660–662].
35 William Joseph Eastwick (Council of India, London), “Memorandum by Captain Eastwick”, 13 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/2, p. 7, British Library, London.
36 Kaye, “Zanzibar, Muscat, and Persia. Memorandum by Political Secretary”, 1 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/1, p. 2, British Library, London.
37 Mirzai, A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800–1929 (2017), pp. 41–42.
38 Kaye, “Zanzibar, Muscat, and Persia. Memorandum by Political Secretary”, 1 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/1, p. 2, British Library, London.
39 Ibid, 4.
40 Eastwick, “Memorandum by Captain Eastwick”, 13 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/2, p. 2, British Library, London.
41 Regarding the Opium trade, Persian speculators “allured by the profits” on their increasing cultivation of opium. Its quality was “already appreciated” as far as Java. Exports to the island were carried on via British vessels sailing from Bushire. By this point, they were actively looking for other markets, and although Persian opium could be seen as detrimental for British India revenues, British “remonstrating against this competition […] is out of the question” [G.C. (George Clerk, Council of India, London), “Persian Gulf; Muscat and Zanzibar”, 17 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/4, p. 1, British Library, London].
42 Eastwick, “Memorandum by Captain Eastwick”, 13 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/2, p. 2, British Library, London.
43 G.C. [George Clerk, Council of India, London], “Persian Gulf; Muscat and Zanzibar”, 17 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/4, p. 4, British Library, London.
44 Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914 (1993), p. 413.
45 Mirzai, A History of Slavery, p. 51.
46 Ibid, p. 57.
50 “Map of Routes from Europe to Upper India and Central Asia via Red Sea, the Euphrates Valley, and Kurrachee”, c.1850, IOR/X/2963, British Library, London.
47 The Persian Gulf became strategic for linking various lines with India and Britain, with the potential of serving as a hub for submarine extension lines connected to Australia and China. After the agreement, a series of surveys and explorations examined the areas from Bandar Abbas to Jask in 1864, and from Bandar Abbas to Gwadar in 1865, with further extensions in the Makran coastline explored between 1867 and 1868 [Stapley, “Telegraphy: The Gulf’s Most Admired Means of Communication in the 1860s”, Qatar Digital Library, 22 November 2017].
48 Moon, “The India Office: The Government, in London, of British India”, Qatar Digital Library, 13 August 2014.
49 Gwadar, in Makran (costal Baluchistan, modern-day Pakistan), was similarly under Omani control from the mid-18th century until 1958. The port played a strategic role in relation to the spice, ivory, and slave trade between East Africa and the Persian Gulf [Nicoli, “Historical and Political Links between Gwadar and Muscat from 19th-Century Testimonies”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 32 (2002), pp. 281–286.
51 Stapley, “Telegraphy”.
52 In 1888, Mackinnon formed the Imperial British East Africa Company, which was appointed with administering Kenya and Uganda, later becoming the East Africa Protectorate [Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, pp. 388–390].
53 Ibid, pp. 386–387.
54 Statement by A.F. Bellastis (Commissioner of Customs, Bombay) on the Value of Trade between Bombay and the Persian Gulf (including Muscat), 1844–1845; 1860–1861; 1864–1865 in Frere, “Memorandum on the Drafts of Despatches regarding the Affairs of Muscat and Zanzibar”, 15–20 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/3, p. 14. British Library, London. Since 1859, the government of India doubled the import duties on cotton goods as an attempt to meet the costs of the uprisings [Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 335]. These duties, coupled with the cotton famines in India during the 1860’s, helped boost the Persian cotton industry for “global” consumption [Stapley, “Economy in Turmoil: Gulf Trade Hit by Piracy and Famine”, Qatar Digital Library, 18 July 2014].
55 More than a religious marker, Hindoo often meant a British Indian subject [Letter No. 21 of 1866 from Lewis Pelly, Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Bombay to Charles Gonne, Secretary to Government, Political Department, Bombay, Mss Eur F126/38, ff. 50v–51r, British Library, London].
56 Prinsep was a prominent East India Company official who later served on Company’s Court of Directors in London (1850–58) and then the Secretary of State for India’s Council of India (1858–74) [Arbuthnot and Bingle, “Prinsep, Henry Thoby (1792–1878): East India Company Servant”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 10 December 2020].
57 Danna Agmon’s microhistory situates a local intermediary at the heart of tensions between contested visions of empire, represented by mercantilist and missionary projects. Using a scandalous legal case as a prism to argue for empire as a negotiated enterprise, Agmon highlights how non-European agents made claims using French legal terms, ultimately succeeding in metropolitan courts. Agmon stresses how “relations that were always symbiotic and reciprocal, in which the balance of influence and reliance occasionally shifted, such that the French could be patrons one day, clients the next”. This work shows how a Hindu became the chief commercial broker for the French India Company despite the Jesuit royal mandate of conversion [Agmon, A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conversion, and Scandal in French India (2017), p. 166].
58 Nurfadzliah Yahahya writes of Indian Ocean actors, in general, and minority groups, in particular, as having the potential to influence the shape of colonial law. Arab communities used their position as “outsiders” to help colonial powers accumulate legislative power, while also using Islamic law in colonial courts. This case is generative in that it contributes to seeing colonial jurisdictions as fluid, even during the period of “high imperialism”. In the Malay world, Hadhramis “expanded and modified Islamic law, while at other times they policed the boundaries of Islamic law even as mere translators.” In Dutch East Indies, where colonial categories played a particularly important role limiting mobility, Hadhramis were sometimes “forced to hide their true identities in order to retain or gain rights and privileges. Those who managed to pass as Natives were especially able to take advantage of this. At other times, Arabs came together as a stronger constituency to obtain or regain their rights” [Yahaya, Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial Law and Arabs in Southeast Asia (2020), pp. 163, 194].
59 One example is the failed 1871 military expedition to bring under direct control and “pacify” Hasa, which was linked to securing Iraq. Anscombe shows how British-Ottoman adversity was strategically exploited by the local rulers of modern-day Kuwait and Qatar, who shifted between a theoretical Ottoman hegemony and formal British protection. Britain ultimately had a permanent naval presence and was more engaged with Persian Gulf actors [Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (1997), pp. 28–32].
60 Eric Tagliacozzo examines the experiences of groups in modern-day Myanmar, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines [Tagliacozzo, The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (2013), p. 10].
61 Low, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (2020).
62 Thomas Metcalf has made an argument for considering India, and Indians, as fundamental for the maintenance of British imperialism. His work explores the role of a variety of actors ranging from Indian clerks, traders, and soldiers, to British officers with a formative experience in India in carrying overseas many ideas and institutions that were developed in their Indian colony. During the “British Raj” period, between the 1857 Indian uprising and the Great Depression of the 1930s, Metcalf shows how central borrowing and adaptation were for empire building. Part of this project develops along a conceptual framework of a “horizontal web”, by which British were colonies connected to each other through trading, migratory, administrative processes. See: Metcalf, Imperial Connections: India and the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (2007), pp. 6–7, 47.
63 McDow, Buying Time, p. 80.
64 Letter No. 21 of 1866 from Lewis Pelly (Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Bombay) to Charles Gonne (Secretary to Government, Political Department, Bombay), Mss Eur F126/38, ff. 50v–51r, British Library, London.
65 Prinsep, “Zanzibar, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf”, 15 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/5, p. 4, British Library, London.
66 Inclosure 2 in No. 56. Draft Despatch to the Governor General of India, n.d., IOR/L/PS/18/B83, p. 54, British Library, London.
67 Bose, A Hundred Horizons, p. 80.
68 For an overview of continued contacts, see: Risso, “India and the Gulf: Encounters from the Mid-Sixteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Centuries”, in Potter (ed.), The Persian Gulf in History (2009), pp. 189–205.
69 Surat was the dominant commercial port in the Early Modern period. By the late 18th century, it was superseded by Bombay. With the decline of Surat, other ports in the Gulf of Kachchh, like Mandvi or Bhavnagar, rose in significance [Alpers and Goswami, “Introduction”, in Alpers and Goswami (eds), Transregional Trade and Traders: Situating Gujarat in the Indian Ocean from early times to 1900 (2019), pp. 1–14].
70 “Memorandum on the Conexion of Indian Traders on the Eastern Coast of Africa with the Slave Trade”, by Kazi Shahabudin, Dewan of the Rao of Kutch, 14 February 1870, FO 881/2314, p. 1, The National Archives (TNA), London.
71 Pedro Machado has traced the Gujarati Vaniya merchants between northwestern India and Mozambique helping define and create Indian Ocean trade within an imperial Portuguese system from 1750 to 1850 [Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c.1750–1850 (2014), p. 25]. Within the Muscat-Zanzibar networks, Kutchi capital and involvement with dates, cloves, and slaves, was of great importance for developing those markets in the 19th century [Goswami, The Call of the Sea: Kachchhi Traders in Muscat and Zanzibar, c.1800–1880 (2011)].
72 Ibid., p. 66.
73 “The African Institution in London request the East India Company to Use Their Good Offices with the Imam of Muscat to Put an End to the Slave Traffic There”, 26 July 1815, IOR/F/4/617/15321, pp. 16–19, British Library, London.
74 Lt. Col. C.P. Rigby’s Notice Forbidding the Purchase and Sale of Slaves by British Indian Subjects in Zanzibar, and Emancipating All Slaves in Their Possession, 15 February 1860, FO 881/2314, p. 1, TNA, London.
75 In Zanzibar, khiyar sales became the most popular instrument to mobilize property for capital. A khiyar was a “form of pawnship”, rather than a mortgage, where a person could “sell” his property for a price, which would work as the loan. He would have to repay in a certain timeframe in order to reclaim the property. Only rent was transferred to the creditor, and the debtor could retain possession In Fahad Bishara’s work the Western Indian Ocean is compellingly characterized as “a sea of debt”. He uses contracting deeds (waraqat) and credit instruments (like the khiyar) from Muscat and Zanzibar to argue for an interconnected world centered on relationships of debt and trust in the late 18th to the mid-20th centuries [Bishara, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950 (2017), pp. 90–91].
76 Treaty of Alliance between the East India Company and His Highness the Rao of Kutch, 4 December 1819, FO 881/2314, p. 1–2, TNA, London.
77 Proclamation by the Rao of Kutch, abolishing Slavery in his Dominion, 1836, FO 881/2314, p. 1, TNA, London.
78 Persian Gulf Residency, “Bahrain; Abu Dhabi; Sharjah, Ras al-Khaimah; Hamriya; Muscat and Bandar Abbas; Slave Trade”, 7 December 1855 to 21 March 1857, Vol. 224 (1856/57), IOR/R/15/1/157, pp. 358–388, British Library, London.
79 Rigby was stationed in India for most of his life and became fluent in eight “oriental and African languages”. He became an interpreter in the 1854 British expeditionary field force to Bushehr, where he later served as superintendent of police. By 1858 he was back in Bombay, and soon after he was appointed as British Agent and Consul in Zanzibar, which had recently separated from Muscat. He was active in the enforcement of the 1845 treaty restricting the slave trade, which was signed by his predecessor, Atkins Hamerton [Frankle, “Rigby, Christopher Palmer (1820–1885)”].
80 Lt. Col. C.P. Rigby’s Notice Forbidding the Purchase and Sale of Slaves by British Indian Subjects in Zanzibar, and Emancipating All Slaves in Their Possession, 15 February 1860, FO 881/2314, pp. 1–2, TNA, London.
81 Ibid.
82 Notice Issued by Mr. Churchill, Abolishing Slavery Among Natives of India in Zanzibar, but Allowing Them to Retain Domestic Slaves, 20 January 1869, FO 881/2314, p. 1, TNA, London.
83 Proclamation of His Highness the Rao, Permitting the British Government to Liberate, Without Compensation, Slaves Held by Natives of Zanzibar, 24 April 1869, FO 881/2314, pp. 1–2, TNA, London.
84 Articles of Agreement Entered into between His Highness Sayyid Majid bin Said, Sultan of Zanzibar, of the First Part, and Hugh Alexander Fraser, Representing the Firm of Messrs H.A. Fraser & Co., of Zanzibar, Merchants, of the Second Part [Great Britain, House of Commons, Accounts and Papers: Pilotage; Trade; Slave Trade. Session:19 November 1867 – 31 July 1868, vol. LXIV (1868)].
85 Letter from Mr. Fraser to Mr. Egerton [Ibid].
86 Letter from Stanley Edwin Seward (Foreign Office, London) to Messrs Fraser & Co., 14 June 1867 (labelled “Slave Trade No. 4”), FO 881/2314, p. 4, TNA, London.
87 Eastwick, “Memorandum by Captain Eastwick”, 13 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/2, p. 7, British Library, London.
88 Currie, “Zanzibar and Muscat”, 24 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/6, p. 1, British Library, London.
89 Kaye, “Zanzibar, Muscat, and Persia. Memorandum by Political Secretary”, 1 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/1, p. 4, British Library, London.
90 G.C. [George Clerk, Council of India, London], “Persian Gulf; Muscat and Zanzibar”, 17 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/4, p. 4, British Library, London.
91 Prinsep, “Zanzibar, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf”, 15 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/5, p. 3, British Library, London.
92 Ibid, p. 2.
93 Kaye, “Zanzibar, Muscat, and Persia. Memorandum by Political Secretary”, 1 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/1, p. 3, British Library, London.
94 Eastwick, “Memorandum by Captain Eastwick”, 13 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/2, p. 8, British Library, London.
95 G.C. [George Clerk, Council of India, London], “Persian Gulf; Muscat and Zanzibar”, 17 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/4, p. 5, British Library, London.
96 Benyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, First Baronet (1815–1884): Colonial Governor”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 3 January 2008.
97 After the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58, Lawrence became a national hero in Britain. He played on the Sikh’s “traditional antagonism” toward the Mughals, and was able to hold on to Punjab, “rescuing” the British in northern India. After the mutiny, he returned to Britain to occupy a seat in the Advisory Council to the Secretary of State for India. In 1869, he was appointed Viceroy of India [Steele, “Lawrence, John Laird Mair, first Baron Lawrence (1811–1879), Viceroy of India”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 6 January 2011.
98 Letter from Sir Bartle Frere to Sir John Lawrence, 13 April 1866, Mss Eur D1162, p. 1, British Library, London.
99 Letter from Sir John Lawrence to Sir Bartle Frere, 21 April 1866 [Ibid, pp. 1–2].
100 Letter from Sir Bartle Frere to Sir John Lawrence, 29 April 1866 [Ibid, pp.1–4]
101 Ibid.
102 Blyth, “Redrawing the Boundary between India and Britain: The Succession Crisis at Zanzibar, 1870–1873”, The International History Review 22.4 (2000), pp. 785–805.
103 G.C. [George Clerk, Council of India, London], “Persian Gulf; Muscat and Zanzibar”, 17 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/4, p. 6, British Library, London.
104 Kaye, “Zanzibar, Muscat, and Persia. Memorandum by Political Secretary”, 1 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/1, pp. 1–2, British Library, London.
105 Currie, “Zanzibar and Muscat”, 24 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/6, p. 1, British Library, London.
106 Frere, “Memorandum on the Drafts of Dispatches Regarding the Affairs of Muscat and Zanzibar”, 15–20 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/3, p. 4, British Library, London.
107 Prinsep, “Zanzibar, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf”, 15 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/5, p. 4, British Library, London.
108 Letter from Sir Bartle Frere to Sir John Lawrence, 12 June 1866, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/3, p. 22, British Library, London.
109 Ibid.
110 Ibid, p. 23.
111 Prinsep, “Zanzibar, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf”, 15 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/5, p. 1, British Library, London.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid., p. 4.
114 McDow, Buying Time, p. 81.
115 Prinsep, “Zanzibar, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf”, 15 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/5, p. 4, British Library, London.
116 McDow, Buying Time, pp. 236–266.
117 Prinsep, “Zanzibar, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf”, 15 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/5, p. 2, British Library, London.
118 Currie, “Zanzibar and Muscat”, 24 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/6, p. 1, British Library, London.
119 Letter from Sir Bartle Frere to Lewis Pelly (Political Resident in the Persian Gulf), 19 November 1872, FO 96/175, p. 2, TNA, London.
120 Pelly further explains that dhows would travel to East Africa with cargoes of salt, fish, and dates, and would return using the southwest monsoon with a proportion of slaves concealed among miscellaneous goods. In some cases, merchants would “risk a slave cargo” [Letter from Lewis Pelly to Sir Bartle Frere (Aden), 28 December 1872, FO 96/175, p. 2, TNA, London].
121 Benyon, “Frere, Sir (Henry) Bartle Edward, First Baronet (1815–1884)”.
122 British Govt, “Treaty between Her Majesty [Queen Victoria] and the Sultan of Muscat for the Abolition of the Slave Trade”, 14 April 1873, British State Papers (BSP) 63/172/0: 0.
123 British Govt, “Treaty between Her Majesty [Queen Victoria] and the Sultan of Zanzibar for the Suppression of the Slave Trade”, 5 June 1873, British State Papers (BSP) 63/173/0: 0.
124 McMullen, “Kirk, Sir John (1832–1922), Naturalist and Political Agent”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 6 January 2011. During his time in Zanzibar, Kirk was active in helping other Europeans and Americans to develop commerce, as he was “very emphatically a Free Trader.” It was in this context that he also became Consul for the Hamburg Republic in Zanzibar, and later Consul-General for Portugal and Italy in Zanzibar until presumably 1885 [Johnston, “Obituary: Sir John Kirk, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., F.R.S., M.D., LL.D., D.Sc., D.C.L.”, The Geographical Journal 59.3 (1922), pp. 225–228.
125 Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 387.
126 House of Commons, “Commons Sitting of Monday, 20th July 1874”, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 20 July 1874, vol. 221, columns 294–296.
127 Anon., “The Geographical Conference”, The Times of London, 16 September 1876.
128 Anon., “We Are Glad to Announce … ”, The Times of London, 16 June 1873.
129 Loftus, Elton and the East African Coast Slave-Trade: Being Extracts from the Diary of Captain James Elton (1958), p. 5.
130 Eastwick, “Memorandum by Captain Eastwick”, 13 July 1868, IOR/L/PS/18/B2/2, p. 3, British Library, London.
131 Ibid, p. 9.
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Notes on contributors
Emilio Ocampo Eibenschutz
Emilio Ocampo Eibenschutz is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History, Cornell University, McGraw Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA, [email protected].