ABSTRACT
IN a dispatch to Lord Lansdowne in 1901, Mr. Cave, the Consul-General, recapitulated the various estimates that had been made of the population of Zanzibar as follows:
"The earliest estimate that we have is that of Captain Smee of the Indian Navy, who reported in 1811 that the population of these islands amounted to 200,000, of whom two-thirds, or 133,000, were slaves. The population of Zanzibar Island was estimated by Dr. Ruschenberger in 1835 at 150,000, by Dr. Krapf in 1844 at 100,000, and by M. Guillain in 1846 at 60,000 to 200,000. Then, in 1858, Sir Richard Burton gave the number of residents in both islands as 400,000, of whom two-thirds, or 266,000, were slaves, and a similar estimate was made by the Sultan, Seyyid Barghash, in 1873. These figures were considerably reduced by Mr. Consul Smith, who believed that twenty years later, in 1894, the number of inhabitants did not exceed 150,000, and that this number did not include more than 75,000 slaves. And, lastly, in February, 1895, Sir Lloyd Matthews gave it as his opinion that the population of the Sultanate amounted to about 208,700 souls, of whom 140,000 were slaves."
