ABSTRACT
As early as 1834 Said b Sultan had indicated to the British that ‘he wished above all things to have an English person always with him to guide him’.1 However, when Hamerton arrived in Zanzibar on 4 May 1841,2 far from being the long-awaited guide, he proved himself to be a downright nuisance to the ruler. Described by the British merchant Cogan, who had himself wished the presence of a British consul in Zanzibar, as ‘quick-tempered and overbearing in his conduct towards the Prince and the people of Zanzibar’,3 Hamerton, from the beginning, felt the overt hostility of the local people engendered by British policies towards the slave trade. These policies had affected the very livelihood of the Zanzibaris necessitating no less than a revolution in their traditional lifestyles. Hamerton, on the other hand, coming from a milieu of British dominance in India and Arabia where he had seen the British whip and diplomacy at work and where the British way of thinking had been imposed without too much difficulty, immediately felt isolated in Zanzibar. Soon after his arrival he was lamenting: ‘Our influence at Zanzibar is at the lowest possible ebb while that of the French and the Americans is very considerable, particularly the latter’.4
