the Lamu archipelago, and the landscape would have changed.
We do not know how Arabian migrants saw this, but the verdant shores may have struck them as the view struck a British captain sailing this route in 1811: “The numerous richly-clothed islands which line the shore separated by beautiful and frequently spacious inlets and bounded behind by a delightful continent, rich in all the charms of luxuriant vegetation, present to the eye a prospect extremely enchanting, and would seem to indicate a degree of natural wealth equal of the most favored regions of the known globe.”3 Sailing past Mombasa, travelers could not have helped but see the massive Fort Jesus, built by the Portuguese in the late sixteenth century to anchor their burgeoning Indian Ocean empire. The Portuguese had constructed similar forts in Muscat. In the seventeenth century, when the Omanis expelled the Portuguese from Muscat and then from Mombasa, the Omanis took over the Portuguese thick-walled forts. In the 1830s, Fort Jesus was once again the site of dispossession, but this time rival Omani factions, emissaries of Said bin Sultan, seized the fort from the Mazrui ruler, killing some and exiling others to the gulf. Thus, Said bin Sultan, the Busaidi ruler in Zanzibar, could claim control of this entire coast, from southern Somalia to Lamu and Mombasa; including the island of Pemba (Mombasa’s bread basket) and, south of that, Zanzibar.
Ras Nungwi at the northern tip of Zanzibar provided the first sight of the island, but sailing vessels had to continue down the island’s western edge, skirting the small island of Tumbatu, before spotting the large white buildings of Zanzibar town. These multistory buildings were the visible markers of Zanzibar’s boom. While they shared an architecture with Omani buildings, they shared space with the waddle and daub houses—thatched with palm fronds—that were interspersed in the narrow lanes and neighborhoods of the town’s tidal peninsula. During the nineteenth century, the mix of buildings shifted. The big houses built of coral rag predominated, and the humbler dwellings disappeared. The process of becoming “Stone Town”—as the city became known in the twentieth century—had its roots in the economic prosperity of the nineteenth century and in the market for land (and mortgages) that developed during this period.
For first-time visitors, figuring out the underlying order of Zanzibar would have been difficult. While travelers who were familiar with other Indian Ocean ports would have found some similarities, the first British agent (representative) assigned to Zanzibar in the 1840s did not believe that the city’s port or its commercial aspects were ordered or rational. He reported in 1844 that the port had no quarantine regulations, no charges for wharfage or buoys, and no regular supply of local pilots. It was assumed that the captains either knew the reefs on the approaches to the port or could send someone up the mast to point them out. The merchants employed several currencies at no fixed rate of exchange, but the Spanish dollar and the German crown were considered equal in the 1840s. It seemed as though the only rule was that all goods, whether they were coming or going, had to pass through the customs house, a small thatched shed near the shore.4
The unpresuming thatched shed belied the vital role of the customs master, who was the linchpin of the economic, social, and political orders. His constant access to cash and elaborate networks of patronage made him the island’s apex creditor. Indebtedness—both fiscal and social—became the common language of this multiethnic society, connected through webs of patron-client relations that stretched far from Zanzibar, to the African interior, the islands of the Indian Ocean, and the shores of Arabia. Within this network in 1840, the customs master Jairam Shivji was a vital node. He lent money to the sultan and bought houses from freed slaves. He underwrote American merchants and oversaw a network of Indian financiers. Not surprisingly, his name was among the most common written on the contracts, sales, and mortgages that are left from this period. These documents—an archive within an archive—reveal intriguing details about the social and financial interconnections of Zanzibar and its hinterlands. Let us first look at Jairam Shivji’s role in financing both the Zanzibar state and foreign trade before turning to his dealings with the more common African and Arab people living in or passing through Zanzibar.
FIGURE 2.1. Zanzibar waterfront, 1847. Image courtesy of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Winterton Collection, Northwestern University.
JAIRAM SHIVJI FROM KUTCH TO ZANZIBAR
Jairam Shivji, a Banyan Hindu, was born in 1792 in Kutch, on the west coast of India. The Indian Ocean entrepôt trade shaped his family’s life. His father, Shivji Topan, was part of the Banyan merchant community in Muscat, and from there, Shivji Topan traveled to East Africa in 1785 in the company of the Muscati ruler Said bin Ahmad al-Busaidi. In the following years, Shivji Topan moved his business to East Africa. His decision was influenced by Muscat’s new ruler, Seyyid Said bin Sultan, who had his sights on Zanzibar. Early Omani governors in Zanzibar had either been slaves of the royal family or appointed from loyal Omani clans. These governors were also responsible for collecting customs duties. One of Seyyid Said’s innovations in East Africa was to remove the customs duty from the portfolio of the governor and to transfer it to a merchant house. In 1835, Shivji Topan won the contract to “farm the customs” at Zanzibar for 84,000 Maria Theresa dollars.5 This meant that his firm paid an advance to the ruler and then kept all customs revenue for themselves. His son Jairam took over this duty from Shivji, and although they paid increasingly higher prices for the privilege, Jairam and his family firm held this vital (and remunerative) position for fifty years. The family firm also maintained branches in Muscat, Bombay, and Kutch.6
From the 1830s until his retirement in 1853, Jairam remained focused on his firm’s revenue and the customs house in Zanzibar. As a Kutchi merchant, this was not unusual. An observer noted in 1836 that the port of Mandvi, in Kutch, was connected to the entire western Indian Ocean: “From Manda-vee a maritime communication is kept up from Zanguebar and the whole east coast of Africa, with the Red Sea and Arabia, with the Persian Gulf, Mekrom, and Sinde, and with India as far as Ceylon.”7 Jairam’s commitment was legendary. In 1837, a visitor who called on him when he was ill noted that Jairam had ivory stored under his sickbed. This was evidence of his “ruling passion,” which remained “strong in sickness.”8
Jairam did indeed indulge his ruling passion for finance. An American merchant in Zanzibar estimated that Jairam Shivji earned $100,000 profit in 1839.9 One historian guessed that Jairam had thirty million dollars in a Bombay bank.10 While this may be exaggerated, he was the wealthiest man in East Africa, in part because of his extensive commercial network. From his post in Zanzibar, Jairam controlled customs collectors in many of the major ports on the Swahili coast. Thus, he was well informed about prices and news from every part of the sultan’s realm. His financial heft and his intelligence networks made him a formidable ally and daunting foe. Foreign merchants were keenly aware of the importance of staying on Jairam’s good side. One foreign merchant noted Jairam’s ominous power over traders in 1842: “Refuse to comply with his terms and they would be driven from the market with doing little or nothing.”11 The ruler and the foreign merchants in Zanzibar were indebted to him, and they needed his capital to run their ventures.
CREDIT AND STATECRAFT IN EARLY BUSAIDI RULE IN EAST AFRICA
The availability of credit was essential to the commercial expansion of Zanzibar. This credit, largely supplied by Indian Ocean commercial firms originating in India, financed the expansion of American and European firms in East Africa and of the Arab state in Zanzibar.12 The wealthiest Indian merchants at Zanzibar provided staggering amounts of credit.13 In 1849, Jairam Shivji, the customs master and head of his eponymous firm, was “the best and only certain way of obtaining a supply of cash for immediate service.”14 Shivji stood out among merchants of that time. The other merchants and traders required fifteen to twenty days to collect MT$300,15 whereas Jairam could secure MT$5,000 in a matter of hours.16 His firm used its substantial wealth to dominate Zanzibar for the first three quarters of the nineteenth
