Tippu Tip: Ivory, Slavery and Discovery in the Scramble for Africa

Tippu Tip, notorious to some, intriguing to others, was a Zanzibari Arab trader living in the turbulent and rapidly changing Africa of the late 19th century. This biography transports the reader into his extraordinary world, describing its exotic cast of characters and the principal factors that shaped it.

Tippu Tip was chiefly an ivory trader, who pioneered for new sources through present—day Tanzania into the Congo basin. Slavery is part of his story, because Arab traders of the time used ...