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Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar, 1860-1970: 1860-1970 (Eastern African Studies) by Erik O Gilbert is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar, 1860-1970: 1860-1970 (Eastern African Studies) about?

The dhow and the steamship symbolised the struggle for control of Zanzibar's economy. The dhows were the craft which carried the triangular trade on seasonal winds between Arabia, East Africa and India. The colonial government saw dhows as a threat to their wish to modernise Zanzibar's economy. Dhows hampered the Royal Navy's anti-slave trade campaigns in the second half of the nineteenth century. During the twentieth century the British tried to force dhow owners out of specialist businesses such as the economically critical clove trade. Sometimes it was the dhows which drove out the steamers from the trade. Erik Gilbert compares the resilience of the dhow economy, with its ingenious evasions of government control and taxation, to the informal or second economy of the post-colonial era. The long-distance sea trade kept Zanzibar and the East African litoral connected to the broader world of the Western Indian ocean. Dhows gave Zanzibaris access to markets, goods and capital which were effectively outside the control of the colonial state. It was only the rise of the oil economy of the Persian Gulf in the 1960s which brought about the demise of the long-distance dhow trade. Even now

Author

Erik O Gilbert

Publisher

Oxford: James Currey, Ltd. ; Athens, OH: Ohio University Press

Published

2004

Language

EN

ISBN

9780821415580

Subjects

Economics, Business