Liebst, Michelle; (2024) Brokering abolition by land and sea: Africans in the British consulate and navy in Zanzibar, c. 1860-1907. Slavery and Abolition: a journal of slave and post-slave studies (In press).

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Abstract

Particularly over the last decade, historians have been curious to learn about these African intermediaries who enforced colonial law and provided colonial actors with intelligence. Yet the role of African intermediaries in ending slavery and enforcing anti-slavery laws remains unstudied. While power holders in the Zanzibar dominions were usually anti-abolition, given that their claim to power rested on the support of slave trading elites, the enslaved were so disempowered that they could only resist slavery or rebel against it. Most would not have had the power to abolish slavery, or to enforce its abolition. Intermediaries, however, occupied a space in between. Many were employed at the British Consulate and navy in Zanzibar to develop and enforce anti-slavery laws. This paper offers an insight into two individuals who worked for the British consulate abolishing slavery. The first, Baraka, was a naval officer who helped catch and convict slave traders. The second, Salim bin Azan, an interpreter on British anti-slavery vessels and later the British consulate, who worked closely with the Sultans of Zanzibar. These individual stories illuminate the diversity and complexity of African perspectives on slavery and abolition and convey how much is left to understand about African abolitionism.

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