Episode 288 - Squabbling Europeans Dissect Africa and the Sultan of Zanzibar gets Shafted
About this episode
This episode explores the historical context of the late 1880s, focusing on the discovery of gold in South Africa and the economic dynamics of the Indian Ocean trade, particularly involving the Sultanate of Zanzibar.
In the last few episodes we have tracked the miraculous discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand — the importance of which cannot really be overstated. While diamonds placed South Africa on the map, gold was going to convert the struggling region into a financial paradise for British financiers — and therein lies the imperial rub. However, it’s time to step back a tad to provide an historical overview for the late 1880s and it’s also time to zoom out of southern Africa to take a good hard look at global events. For centuries before European powers drew border lines across maps of the continent, the western Indian Ocean functioned as a single economic basin. Fleets of dhow’s linked Gujarat, the Persian Gulf, the South Arabian coast, and the Swahili littoral, their journey’s dictated by the predictable rhythm of the monsoon winds which blow southwest toward Africa from November to March and reverse northeast toward Arabia and India from April to September, This was a commercial matrix of city-states fueled by the exchange of African ivory, timber, gold, and slaves for Indian textiles, Chinese porcelain, and Middle Eastern metalwork. The Sultanate of Zanzibar was born directly out of…
People in this episode
Host: Desmond Latham
Topics covered
- European colonialism
- African trade
- Sultanate of Zanzibar
- gold discovery
- historical overview
- economic history
Keywords
- gold
- Witwatersrand
- Sultanate of Zanzibar
- European powers
- trade routes
- ivory
- slaves
- textiles
- economic basin
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Sultanate of Zanzibar
Places: Zanzibar, Witwatersrand, South Africa, Gujarat, Persian Gulf, South Arabian coast, Swahili littoral
More episodes of History of South Africa podcast
- Episode 291 - The Miracle of South Africa’s Railways: Navvies, Gangers and Granny Mavis
- Episode 290 - Africanders, Afrikaners and the Sprigg/Hofmeyr/Rhodes Voter Disenfranchisement of 1887-1892
- Episode 289 - Black Velvet Opskop, De Beers’ Trojan Horse, an Historic Trick and a Multi-Racial Miner Protest
- Episode 287 - "Not Worth Hell Room" — JB Robinson, Widow Oosthuizen, and the Witwatersrand Gold Grab
- Episode 286 - German Mercenary von Brandis formally Proclaims Johannesburg
- Episode 285 - The Three Georges Gold Saga and a Bottle of Mampoer Vignette
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