Page 186 - Gulf Precis (III)_Neat

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apprenticeship in some older firm, he starts a shop of his own, with goods advanced
credit by some larger house, and after a few years, when he has made a little money,
generally returns home to marry, to make fresh business connections, and then comes back
to Africa to repeat on a larger scale the same process.
With rare exceptions all these Indian traders are birds of passage. The houses they
belong to may be of old standing, and we met a few old men who had been in Africa all
their lives ; but they were exceptions. The Hindus never bring their wives or families
to Africa. The Bohras and Khojahs do frequently, but even they seem to have as little idea
of settling, or adopting the country for their own, as a young Englishman in Hong-Kong.
Of all these races it may be observed that they have been less affected than the upper
classes of Indians in general by European education in India. All are so devoted to trade
that the boy goes into the counting-house as soon as he can read and write ; and, in the
case of the Khojahs, I am assured that the pontifical authority of Agha Khan has been
actively exerted to prevent any of his followers from attending an English school.
In Zanzibar itself the relation between the European or American House aod the
" Banian ” very much resembles that with which we are familiar in India. The European
merchant buys and sells with the aid and advice of a “ Banian ” who sometimes stands to
the foreign firm in a relation moro like that of a partner than a mere broker, agent, or
go-between.
Away from Zanzibar the 11 Banian " or “Hindu” is more of a retail dealer, bartering
bis import wares for country produce, which he sells wholesale at Zanzibar to the exporter.
In the outports and country marts he does little wholesale business, except by making
advances of import goods to adventurers going up the country, on engagements to be re-paid
by returns of up-country produce.
The Banians generally keep to the ports or within a short journey of the coast or
navigable parts of large rivers. The trade with the far interior is almost exclusively in the
hands of Arab, or Arab half-castes, and Swahili or Coastmen, who push as rapidly as they
can across the first 200 miles from the Coast, halting little by the way. Livingstone tells of
their having penetrated far beyond his furthest into Cascmbe’s country ; he had found them
years before on the Upper Zambezi, and the Governor-General of Mozambique told me that
when he was at Koanda two or three years ago, two Zanzibar Arabs from Kilwa appeared in
Angola, about the same time that some natives sent from Loanda reached Ibo, on the east
coast, taking two years to go and return.
I may remark in passing that the stock in trade which we usually found in the Banians'
shops was as frequently of German or American as of English origin. The cotton fabrics
were English, American, or German, with smaller quantities of Indian or French. The best
hardware was English, but much inferior in make, was of continental manufacture, coarse
crockery of German, brass and copper-ware of American make, beads, English and German
(Venetian ?) ; guns, old, of Euglish make, new of German or French, some as low as lor. or
12s. each in retail price.
Total extent of trade carried on by Indians.—Of the total extent of the trade which
passes through Indian hands, it would be difficult to form any reliable estimate. Dr. Kirk
shows* that the Zanzibar Customs House returns
• Vidt Administration Report for 1870.
are a very fallacious guide, nor will Indian or
English returns be a better index ; for the German and American, the French, Arabian,
Persian, and Malagash trade, which comes direct, as well as the English and Indian trade,
passes through the same bands.
Dr. Kirk was, however, good enough to show me the details of transactions of a single
Indian house whose affairs had been the subject of judicial investigation in his court. The
books showed a capital of about £434,000 invested in loans and mortgages in East
Africa. Of this about £60,000 had been advanced in various ways to the Sultan and his
family, a rather larger sum to Arabs in the interior of Africa, a somewhat smaller amount to
Arabs in Zanzibar and on the Coast, but the total of advances and loans to Arabs and
natives of Zanzibar, all slave-owners, and most of them slave-dealers, was little less than
£200,000. This sum had been lent and advanced in various ways by loans, advances, and
mortgages on every kind of property, real and personal, and on various kinds of security,
by advances of goods for trade, etc. Loans and advances to Europeans and Americans
were set down at about £140,000 and those to Indians in Africa at about £100,000.
These were African assets, and did not include stock in trade, or the capital of the
Indian corresponding firms, composed of members of the same family, and doing a very
large business with Africa at Maudavie and Bombay, so that, as far as I could judge, e
capital employed in African trade and banking by this one family must be reckone y
millions sterling.
Other Indian firms are said to be doing business on a similar scale, and Or,
calculates the British-Indian capital, now invested in Zanzibar Island alone, at no
than £1,600,000.
j unencumbered by
Iam assured that few of the larger Arab estates in Zanzibar are
mortgages to Indian capitalists, and that a large propprtion are so deeply mortgaged as
virtually to belong to the Indian mortgagee.