THE OMANI EMPIRE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF EAST AFRICA

Abstract

These Arabic traders through Sultan Said knew the importance of establishing plantations with the availability of slaves in the interior, irrespective of the British abolitionist position. By the time Sayyid Said had transferred his economic interest to East Africa, the slave traffic to Mauritius had been reduced by British The Omani Empire and the Development of East Africa 28 International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Studies V6 ● I7 ● 2019 intervention and the island had even been taken over by them in 1810. But Sayyid Said encouraged the expansion of clove and coconut plantations in Zanzibar and Pemba. By the time he transferred his capital to Zanzibar in the 1840s, clove plantations were already the dominant economic activity and were mostly operated by slave labour. This created a class of landowners, originally mainly Arabs, but by the 1860s including indigenous Shirazi and Indians as well. By the 1860s it is estimated that the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba were absorbing about 10 000 slaves per annum.