Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: The Roots of British Domination

by M. Reda Bhacker

M. Reda Bhacker looks at the role of Oman in the Indian Ocean prior to British domination of the region. Omani merchant communities played a crucial part in the development of commercial activity throughout the territories they held in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially between Muscat and Zanzibar, using long established trade networks. They were also largely responsible for the integration of the commerce of the Indian Ocean into the nascent global capitalist system. The author, himself a member of an important Omani merchant family, looks in detail at the complex relationship between the merchant community and Oman's rulers, first the Ya'ariba and then the Albusaidis. He analyses the tribal and religious dynamics of Omani politics both in Arabia, where he looks especially at the Wahhabi/Saudi threat, and in Oman's sprawling `empire', with particular reference to Zanzibar where the Omani ruler Sa'id b Sultan had his court from 1840. His aim is to consider all Oman's overseas territories as a single entity, without the usual misleading compartmentalisation of African and Arab history. Dr Bhacker finds that despite their prestige and influence in the region neither the merchant communities nor the government were able to respond to Britain's determined onslaught. Bhacker traces the local and regional factors that allowed Britain to destroy Oman's largely commercial challenge and to emerge by the end of the nineteenth century as the commercially and politically dominant power in the region.

312 pages, Hardcover

First published October 29, 1992

Reviews

[s. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only review it's ever going to get, so I'll try to do it justice.
I came to read it on a chance recommendation from my uncle, because
a. my ancestors are from the subcontinent, where british rule in the 19th, 20th century has a strong undercurrent over cultural sociology
b. I was born and raised in deserts of Saudi arabia where wahhabis and their exploits are in everyday conversation
c. fascinated by everything about the British east india company.

It is a good way to spend an afternoon, reading about the roots of a systematic british takeover in the trade of a region that is distrustful of them from the outset but cannot resist
a. the strong urgency of,
b. sense of inevitability in
c. and at the very center of it all,far more advanced in
the way the british approached competition, commerce and politics.