Goans In Zanzibar: Excerpt From Guts, Glory and Empire

At the intersection of Indian money-lenders, Arab slavers and European imperial ambitions, lay Zanzibar wreathed in cloves and coconut. The crescendo of public opinion against slavery was mounting in Britain. The news filtering back from Zanzibar roused the Anglican conscience into action. The impressively suave Bartle Frere was appointed as special envoy to head the Zanzibar Mission. Much was made of Frere’s ‘suavity’ as a means to convincing Barghash. Frere, son of Mary Anne and Edward Frere, manager at Clydach Ironworks, was reluctant at first suggesting former Consul Lewis Pelly instead.130 But Pelly was disregarded and his view that it was best not to involve Britain and leave the whole sordid business alone was dismissed as an ‘Indian view of things.’ Frere soon became a willing foot-soldier. As ex-governor of Bombay, Frere was well versed in the politics of the region and acutely aware of Zanzibar’s long struggle to unknot itself from the ruling family in Muscat. He was a formidable man, already subscribed to the view that Britain’s role should be that of educator and enforcer, planting Christian colonies along the African coast from which ‘civilisation and freedom’ would spread.

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Before Bartle Frere set out for Zanzibar, he had familiarised himself with the intelligence gathered, and summarised it in a Memorandum on connection of British subjects with East African slave trade. It was the despatches and opinions of European explorers, notably Livingstone and Stanley, which had formed the crux of intelligence gathering. Although, Frere insisted that he had gathered information independent of Livingstone to corroborate Livingstone’s testimony. More damning perhaps was the evidence of former British consuls on the island, particularly Rigby and Churchill’s determined crusade against Indian slave holders.

The report though ‘exhaustive,’ was heavily biased and far too damning of Indian traders, a floating population sailing back and forth between Africa and India in their weather-worn dhows. Frere pointed out they were ‘loosely and generically’ called ‘Banians’ (today referred to as Bania). Frere with years of experience in India knew the precise ethnographic distinctions between castes, regions and religions, and knew full well the term Bania included ‘several castes and classes.’

Frere thought of the Banias as a constant in the mercantile community of East Africa, but he did not consider them to be permanent residents. ‘Few have their homes anywhere but in India,’ he wrote, and that, ‘they generally go to Africa as young men, and if married rarely, until quite lately, thought of taking their families with them.’ This semi-permanence ensured India remained as primary home or headquarters, and Zanzibar as only a point of contact. Frere would later remark, that for some of these men, ‘trade in E.A seems to have the same charms as colonising has for some of our own countrymen at home.’ It seems absurd that peaceful trade could be compared to military occupation, and yet the commercial domination of Indian merchants was so fierce, so stifling, indigenous populations in Africa thought of it as colonisation without occupation. The oppressive farming of Zanzibar’s Customs House, for instance, was commanded by Jairam Shivji. Because of the sultans’ money-lending arrangements with the Customs House, they fell into deep debt to Jairam. But it was Jairam’s appointed customs agent Luddha, who managed the Customs House, who became invaluable on the island, the go-to man for anything that needed doing both for the British and the sultan.

The principal merchant houses of the Bania community, Frere noted, were from Karachi, Kutch, Kathiawar, Surat, Bombay, Mangalore and Cannanore, among others. A strong link was established between the slave trade and the Bania traders. Frere was convinced the influence of the Bania was so widely asserted, that if ‘an Arab, Portuguese or half-bred adventurer,’ wished to set up a commercial or elephant hunting expedition into the interior, they got an advance from the Bania in cloth, beads, copper, to which a certain number of muskets and ammunition were added. When Frere uses the word ‘half-bred,’ he is referring to men of mixed Arab and African descent not ‘half-caste’ Goans.

There is scant evidence of Goans being involved in the slave trade on this route, except for stray incidents. In 1883, a dhow owned by the Goan merchant Aleixo Mascarenhas living in Bagamoyo, was apprehended with four male and two female slaves on board. Dhow owners did not always know what cargoes their dhows may be carrying. Neither has archival evidence come to light of Goan traders advancing money or goods for slaving expeditions. However, these expeditions left under the guise of hunting expeditions, and it is improbable that Goan traders would not have been involved, either knowingly or unknowingly, in outfitting them. The adventurers after procuring ivory proceeded deeper into the interior to buy slaves. On return, the Bania capitalist was repaid partly by the ivory and partly by the dollars earned on sale of slaves to Arab exporters and others. The evidence that this was the ordinary course of trade, Frere declared, was ‘overwhelming.’

(Excerpted with permission from Speaking Tiger Books)