ABSTRACT
The Zanzibar blockade, lasting from December 1888 to October 1889, was allegedly set up by Britain and Germany to end the slave trade in East Africa. Following Bismarck and Salisbury's political rhetoric, this chapter will first show how, in times of colonial expansion, great leaders could manipulate key elements of the humanitarian discourse against the slave trade to defend a colonial military intervention. However, serious critics were raised in Britain to question the sincerity of the alleged philanthropic motives publicized by the British government to justify the operation. Finally, this chapter will demonstrate that the blockade was more a military operation designed to bring down an anti-colonial uprising than a genuine example of ‘intervention for humanity’ as contemporaries then called it.
