History of Zanzibar
In 1698, Zanzibar fell under the control of the Sultanate of Oman, which developed an economy of trade and cash crops, with a ruling Arab elite and a Bantu general population.
The Omani Sultan of Zanzibar controlled a substantial portion of the African Great Lakes coast, known as Zanj, as well as extensive inland trading routes.
A 2005 excavation at Kuumbi Cave in southeastern Zanzibar found heavy duty stone tools that showed occupation of the site at least 22,000 years ago.
On Zanzibar, the evidence for the later farming and iron-working communities dating from the mid-first millennium AD is much stronger and indicates the beginning of urbanism there when settlements were built with mud-timber structures (Juma 2004).
They had belonged to various Bantu ethnic groups from the mainland, and on Zanzibar they lived in small villages and failed to coalesce to form larger political units.
[3] Traders from Arabia (mostly Yemen), the Persian Gulf region of Iran (especially Shiraz), and west India probably visited Zanzibar as early as the 1st century AD, followed by Somalis during the Middle Ages with the emergence of Islam.
They used the monsoon winds to sail across the Indian Ocean and landed at the sheltered harbor located on the site of present-day Zanzibar Town.
A phase of urban development associated with the introduction of stone material to the construction industry of the African Great Lakes littoral began from the 10th century AD.
In 1503 or 1504, Zanzibar became part of the Portuguese Empire when Captain Ruy Lourenço Ravasco Marques landed and demanded and received tribute from the sultan[who?]
With an excellent harbor and no shortage of fresh water, Stone Town (capital of Zanzibar) became one of the largest and wealthiest cities in East Africa.
Every year, hundreds of dhows would sail across the Indian Ocean from Arabia, Persia and India with the monsoon winds blowing in from the northeast, bringing iron, cloth, sugar and dates.
When the monsoon winds shifted to the southwest in March or April, the traders would leave, with their ships packed full of tortoiseshell, copal, cloves, coir, coconuts, rice, ivory, and slaves.
Adding to the beauty were the gleaming white minarets of mosques and the sultan's palaces in Stone Town, making the city appear from the distance to Westerners as an "Orientalist" fantasy brought to life.
Besides for the pervasive foul odor of Stone Town, accounts by visitors described a city full of slaves on the brink of starvation and a place where cholera, malaria, and venereal diseases all flourished.
[7] A captain from a ship owned by the East India Company who visited Zanzibar in 1811 and witnessed these marches wrote about how a buyer examined the slaves: The mouth and teeth are inspected, and afterwards every part of the body in succession, not even excepting the breasts, etc, of the girls, many of whom I have seen examined in the most indecent manner in the public market by the purchasers...The slave is then made to walk or run a little way to show that there is no defect about the feet; after which, if the price is agreed to, they are stripped of their finery and delivered over to their future master.
I have frequently counted twenty or thirty of these files in the market at one time...Women with children newly born hanging at their breasts and others so old they can scarcely walk, are sometimes seen dragged about in this manner.
The Omani Arabs who ruled Zanzibar had in the words of the American diplomat Donald K. Petterson a "culture of violence", where brute force was the preferred solution to problems and outlandish cruelty was a virtue.
[7] The Sultan of Zanzibar controlled a large portion of the African Great Lakes Coast, known as Zanj, as well as trading routes extending much further across the continent, as far as Kindu on the Congo River.
In November 1886, a German-British border commission established the Zanj as a ten-nautical mile (19 km) wide strip along most of the African Great Lakes coast, stretching from Cape Delgado (now in Mozambique) to Kipini (now in Kenya), including Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, and several offshore Indian Ocean islands.
[7] Zanzibar had the distinction of having the first steam locomotive in the African Great Lakes region, when Sultan Bargash bin Said ordered a tiny 0-4-0 tank engine to haul his regal carriage from town to his summer palace at Chukwani.
This treaty made Zanzibar and Pemba a British protectorate (not colony), and the Caprivi Strip (in what is now Namibia) part of German South West Africa.
This led to a showdown, later called the Anglo-Zanzibar War, on the morning of 27 August, when ships of the Royal Navy destroyed the Beit al Hukum Palace, having given Khalid a one-hour ultimatum to leave.
[14][15] Despite the merger with Tanganyika, Zanzibar retained a Revolutionary Council and House of Representatives which was, until 1992, run on a one-party system and has power over domestic matters.
[14] The revolutionary government also instituted social reforms such as free healthcare and opening up the education system to African students (who had occupied only 12% of secondary school places before the revolution).
[14] The government sought help from the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), and P. R. China for funding for several projects and military advice.
[21] A multi-party system was eventually established in 1992, but Zanzibar remains dogged by allegations of corruption and vote-rigging, though the 2010 general election was seen to be a considerable improvement.
Those forces, accompanied by ruling party officials and militias, also went on a house-to-house rampage, indiscriminately arresting, beating, and sexually abusing residents.
The most notable of these took place in April 2008, when the CUF walked away from the negotiating table following a CCM call for a referendum to approve of what had been presented as a done deal on the power-sharing agreement.
[35] A proposal to amend Zanzibar's constitution to allow rival parties to form governments of national unity was adopted by 66.2 percent of voters on 31 July 2010.
ACT-Wazalendo joined a coalition government with the islands’ ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi in December 2020 after Zanzibar disputed elections.
