ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how the image of Zanzibar was mediated in the metropole and how it subsequently informed British imperial policy and identity, and influenced the 'performance' of empire in the new protectorate. A priority for the British Protectorate Government after 1890 was to improve living and health conditions. British officers going to Zanzibar described themselves as going 'to the East', while adventures into the interior were a different prospect entirely. In the nineteenth century, the Victorian public became more directly familiar with Zanzibar through Sultan Barghash's visit to London in 1875. Oriental splendours of the past and the British and Arab predilection for ceremony influenced the development of a culture of ornamentalism in the first decade of the twentieth century. European residents and travellers intermingled with the elite Arab and South Asian groups, many of whom were immensely wealthy and cosmopolitan.
