Abstract

Excerpted From: Michelle Liebst, The Sultans of Zanzibar and the Abolition of Slavery in East Africa, 42 Law and History Review 49 (February, 2024) (120 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Understandings of abolitionism in Anglophone East Africa have shifted considerably since the legal abolition of the slave trade, and later, slavery. For most of the twentieth century, Britain was celebrated as a benevolent nation by virtue of the triumphant achievement of abolishing slavery not just in East Africa, but throughout its empire. This position was voiced clearly by the historian Reginald Coupland, who in 1939 commended abolition in East Africa as a “revival of the British humanitarian tradition” that justified British imperialism. According to him, “the British people had come to the rescue of the African people on the east of the continent as in earlier days on the west.” In 1976, R. W. Beachey's depiction of Britain's role was much the same, though he dropped the congratulatory tone. Contemporaneous with Beachey in the wave of postcolonial historical work critiquing empire, and as an African himself, Moses D. E. Nwulia carefully dismantled the fictions of British philanthropy by analyzing the regime's sluggishly adopted antislavery policies. Frederick Cooper's 1980 study of Zanzibar and coastal Kenya went further to show not only that abolitionists were driven by economic rationale, but also that the emancipatory gains of the abolition laws were extremely limited. More recently, Matthew Hopper, in his 2015 account of the Indian Ocean slave trade, highlighted the failings of the British Navy in enforcing the abolition laws, and explained that the end of the slave trade in East Africa was owed largely to global political and economic factors outside of British control. Historians focusing on emancipation in the region, such as Felicitas Becker (mainland Tanganyika), Elizabeth McMahon (Pemba), Elke Stockreiter (Zanzibar), Patricia Romero (Lamu), and Marie-Pierre Ballarin (Mombasa) have also shown how, even if the abolition laws stopped slavery, they failed to end its systemic political, social, and economic effects, which meant that emancipation was--and to some extent still is--extremely difficult to grasp.

As in almost every part of the world where slavery has ended, the abolition of slavery in East Africa is understood to be a European project or project of European imperialism. The scholarship therefore tells us that-- though not all Europeans were abolitionists--all abolitionists were Europeans. These European abolitionists were, the scholarship also tells us, often ambivalent about abolishing slavery altogether and preferred to gradually limit and control slavery and the slave trade. Yet East African leaders who were involved in the legal processes of abolition (writing, signing, and negotiating abolitionist acts, decrees, and treaties, in spite of their political and economic interests in keeping slavery going) are portrayed unambivalently as the obstacles to abolition. The problem with this narrative is not only that it is incorrect, but that it highlights how little we know about the history of African ideas and legal frameworks with regards to slavery and abolition. We need to find and explore examples of East Africans restricting, ending, and challenging the legitimacy of slavery through legal, economic, political, and cultural means. One place to start is with the East African power brokers who issued anti-slavery legislation; and the Sultans of Zanzibar are key examples of such authority figures as they signed and passed eleven anti-slavery treaties and decrees between 1856 and 1897.

As historians have largely neglected to closely analyze the role of the Sultans of Zanzibar in passing anti-slavery legislation, accounts that consider whether the Sultans might have willingly and collaboratively passed these laws are scarce. Throughout the historiography on anti-slavery legislation on the East African coast, there is a tendency to assume that the Sultans of Zanzibar were being coerced into developing anti-slavery policies. There are only a handful examples of texts that highlight the role of the sultans in ending slavery. Bernard K. Freamon describes how during the reign of Seyyid Sa'd bin Sultan (r. 1807-1856) groups of aristocratic Omani including many “ulam ” merchants, plantation owners, and the Sultan's officials were beginning to form a consensus on limiting and ending slavery. The evidence for this appears to be limited to two facts: firstly, that Seyyid Sa'd supported the legal measures to limit the slave trade and, secondly, that there is no evidence that the “ulam” protested these actions. Freamon's account suggests that a consensus might have been arrived upon, had it not been for the pro-slavery seafaring and physically threatening so-called “Northern Arabs” who were known for kidnapping enslaved persons in Zanzibar and integrating them into the slave trade.

Meanwhile, William Clarence-Smith's Islam and Abolition is unusual for implying that the sultans were passing the legislation of their own accord. He argued that, although most Sultans were opposed to passing anti-slavery legislation, Seyyid<>amd bin Mu<>ammad (r. 1896-1902) did pass the 1897 abolition decree out of his own personal conviction. However, the evidence of this conviction is based entirely on how Seyyid<>amd did not own slaves before coming to power. In reality, it might have been the case that there was no need for a prince to own slaves when they had ready access to those in the palaces. Moreover, Seyyid<>amd's involvement with the drafting of the decree was limited to his insistence that concubines should be excluded from it (to which the British sympathized and eventually acquiesced).

This article builds on the historiography by critically analyzing the role of Seyyid Ali bin Sa'd (r.1890-1893) in the 1890 Abolition Decree. Although the 1890 decree, on which this article centers, was essentially a dead letter, the Seyyid's expression of support for anti-slavery legislation was uniquely explicit and has been entirely neglected by historical accounts. This article will explain how the decree was created by taking a lens to the events surrounding it, the relationships involved in it, and the language used in the draft and final versions. The latter part will explore the obstacles to the decree's enforcement and contextualize its amendments.

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The sultans of Zanzibar, especially Seyyid Ali (r. 1890-1893), were abolitionists in the sense that they engaged in political action aimed at bringing about the legal and actual suppression of slavery and the slave trade. This is not to say that Seyyid Ali was not under intense duress to produce some kind of antislavery decree, but he had a say in what shape that decree would take. At the same time, both he and the British administration had an interest in showing that Seyyid Ali was willing to issue this edict and that the edict came directly from him, not the British. Therefore, even though the sultans of Zanzibar were usually under an enormous amount of diplomatic pressure from the British to issue anti-slavery edicts, they used these moments to try to shape the way that abolition would come about. In other words, just because they were left with little option but to (slowly) end slavery does not mean that they did not influence the content, communication, pace, and enforcement of the edicts. In addition, abolition served colonial political interests while, for local power holders, engaging with abolitionism usually involved a much higher degree of risk. When local power holders, such as Seyyid Ali, engaged in abolitionism, their actions came at a great political, economic, social, and personal cost.

Acknowledgements. This article was written as part of the project, “African Abolitionism: the rise and transformations of anti-slavery in Africa.” This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant agreement No. 885418. I also wish to acknowledge the excellent translation work carried out by Dr Paul Naylor and Ziddy Issa, which greatly enrichens our understanding of the sources and the way in which they were produced.

Michelle Liebst is a postdoctoral research fellow at the History Department at University College London. She completed her doctorate at the University of Cambridge and is the author of “Labour and Christianity in the Mission,” which was published in 2021 by James Currey.