ABSTRACT
Zanzibar and Pemba remained distant spectators to the events of World War II, the protectorate government supervising closely life in the islands to allow the successful continuation of a general prosperity which ensured, as much as possible, local self-sufficiency as well as a contribution to the British war effort. During the 1942-3 agricultural season, for example, measures to maintain food production included the registration of all adult males, inspection of plots, and the distribution of free seed. About three-quarters of the average annual export of cloves was sustained. Pemba growers claimed that labour shortages cost them about one half of their crop, but the government disagreed since around 7,000 pickers had gone from Zanzibar to Pemba during the season. Continued experiments went on with new crops — including coffee, various vegetables and fruits, tobacco, cashew nuts, pawpaws, derris and chillies. Cocoa, introduced into the islands during the nineteenth century, was a particular concern of the Department of Agriculture: the rice harvest was also much increased during the war. And when world peace finally came, pent-up demand for cloves allowed an immediate boost in exports. But with the defeat of Germany, Japan and their allies, the changed position in world affairs of a weakened Britain, added to the general movement towards the ending of the colonial empires of
the western democratic states, Zanzibar became involved in continuing processes which transformed the Indian Ocean protectorate from a quiet agricultural backwater, shaken yearly into activity by its clove harvest, into a turbulent political cauldron wherein competing ethnic groups struggled for mastery.
