Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: The Roots of British Domination

by M. Reda Bhacker

Overview

M. Reda Bhacker looks at the role of Oman in the Indian Ocean prior to British domination of the region. Omani merchant communities played a crucial part in the development of commercial activity throughout the territories they held in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially between Muscat and Zanzibar, using long established trade networks. They were also largely responsible for the integration of the commerce of the Indian Ocean into the nascent global capitalist system.

The author, himself a member of an important Omani merchant family, looks in detail at the complex relationship between the merchant community and Oman's rulers, first the Ya'ariba and then the Albusaidis. He analyses the tribal and religious dynamics of Omani politics both in Arabia, where he looks especially at the Wahhabi/Saudi threat, and in Oman's sprawling ‘empire', with particular reference to Zanzibar where the Omani ruler Sa'id b Sultan had his court from 1840. His aim is to consider all Oman's overseas territories as a single entity, without the usual misleading compartmentalisation of African and Arab history.

Dr Bhacker finds that despite their prestige and influence in the region neither the merchant communities nor the government were able to respond to Britain's determined onslaught. Bhacker traces the local and regional factors that allowed Britain to destroy Oman's largely commercial challenge and to emerge by the end of the nineteenth century as the commercially and politically dominant power in the region.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415079976
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/29/1992
Series:	Exeter Series on Arabic and Islamic Studies
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dr. M. Reda Bhacker (Author

Table of Contents

Part I Prelude to the rise of the Albusaidi Dynasty in East Africa 1 Oman’s links with India and East Africa: historical problems and perspectives 2 The importance of commerce to the early Albusaidi rulers 3 The emergence of British policy towards Oman: 1798–1804, 4 British policy towards Oman under the first Wahhabi threat: 1804, 5 Commercial, political and strategic attractions of East Africa 6 The suppression of Omani interests in the Gulf and the Albusaidi move to Zanzibar Part III The development of Omani commerce and British reaction 7 The re-emergence of British policy towards Oman: post-1833, 8 The ‘Omani’ and the ‘Indian’ roles in the nineteenth-century commercial expansion 9 Beginnings of the integration of Muscat and Zanzibar into the world economy, Part IV Internal and external factors in the subjugation of Oman 10 Commercial and political rivalry and British encroachments in East Africa 11 The subordination of Muscat’s rulers and their associates from India 164 British consul’s exploitation of the nationality question and the antislavery crusade, The subjugation of the ‘Indians’ 12 Post-1856 succession dispute and British intervention

Editorial Reviews

‘This is an informative, stimulating and interestingly written comprehensive study of a neglected subject at the interface of many historical issues on one of the roads of colonialism.' - Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies

From the Publisher