A trade with India, which in the past has been the raison d'être of more strife and bitterness than any subject—excepting religious intolerance, for which nations have contended—had been established for centuries, and the glamour of the East pervaded the whole atmosphere of social and commercial relations.
When the European nations started competing for supremacy in the east coast trade, which had always been a valuable one, the Arabs made the Island of Zanzibar the centre of their activities.
The island was only chosen as the headquarters of the supreme Sultan of the east coast and his palace built there at a comparatively late date, when the Powers had already begun to bring under their direct administration lands to whose native rulers they had hitherto only extended a "protection," a benefit which had not been sought with any spontaneity.
The selection of Zanzibar as the Sultan's headquarters was due to the fact that it afforded a much-needed secure place of retreat; but a trade between Zanzibar, India, and the African mainland was built up that rivalled that of the British East India Company.
The trading expeditions of the Arabs, moreover, took the form of devastating raids, and their territory on the coast was but precariously held.
The importance of Zanzibar grew apace, and more and more of the adjoining coast, sixteen miles distant, came under the sway of the Sultans, whose caravans pushed farther and farther into the interior, returning laden with ivory and accompanied by gangs of slaves, for which Zanzibar became the market of the world.
The slave trade indeed assumed enormous proportions, was almost entirely in Arab hands, and although an international movement for the suppression of the iniquitous traffic had been on foot from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British Government alone took active measures in East Africa to apply their humanitarian principles of freedom.
With the wane of Portugal's power the influence of Great Britain in Zanzibar and its dependencies, the chief centres of which were the Island and Bay of Pemba and Witu, grew and intensified until Great Britain became, as was meet on account of her possession of India, supreme in the Zanzibari regions—a British Consul at Zanzibar being appointed as early as 1841.
Up to 1884, although there had been no definite annexation of territory, British influence was extending in every direction, as British explorers ventured farther and farther into the interior—adventurous spirits stirred by the reports of the Arabs of the great lakes existing in what was then unknown Africa.