Introduction of British consular jurisdiction to Zanzibar

Zanzibar in East Africa was a major port city in the nineteenth-century western Indian Ocean, along with Bombay, Muscat and Aden. The nineteenth century was a transitional period in East African history. The major political change was the expansion of the Arab polity Busaid of Oman. Its sovereign Sayyid Said (Saidbin Sultan al-Busaidi) made efforts to expand his dominions in the East African littoral from the 1820s and transferred his ordinary residence from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1840. From an economic viewpoint, the major change was development of inter-regional commerce with India, Western Europe and North America.