Abstract
For a little over forty years in the middle of the nineteenth century the agency at Zanzibar represented the furthest limit of British India’s formal responsibilities within the western sphere. The debate over this outpost illustrated the tensions between the governments of Bombay and India regarding the direction and control of external affairs. Indian policy was thrown into further confusion by the frequently conflicting approach of the India Office, which had to contend both with its own internal disputes and with the different agenda of Whitehall. In addition, Zanzibar also became a point of considerable friction between the Indian and Imperial spheres. During the 1860s and 1870s, the range of Foreign Office interests along the East African coast grew and came to eclipse the more static concerns of India. Because of the opposing strategies and overlapping responsibilities of the departments and governments involved in the supervision of Zanzibar, it became a focus for significant shifts in the relationships between, and relative positions of, these agencies. Beyond the initial reasons for the Indian and Imperial connections with Zanzibar, the process leading to the eventual transfer of control to the Foreign Office can be divided into three key stages. The first examines the changes in Indian policy towards the outpost and the increasing divergence of Indian and Imperial objectives.
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Notes
C.U. Aitchison, A collection of treaties, engagements, and sanads relating to India and neighbouring countries, 11 vols, (3rd edn, Calcutta, 1892), x, pp. 127–31.
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© 2003 Robert J. Blyth
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Blyth, R.J. (2003). ‘A Conflict of Directions’: The British Indian Agency at Zanzibar, c. 1856–1883. In: The Empire of the Raj. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599116_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599116_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-42308-8
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