Page 187 - Gulf Precis (III)_Neat

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II.
In a word, throughout the Zanzibar coast line, extending along 14 degrees of latitude,
with numerous large and fertile islands, all banking and mercantile business passes through
Indian hands. Hardly a loan can be negotiated, a mortgage effected, or a bill cashed
without Indian agency ; notan import cargo can be distributed, nor an export cargo collected,
of which almost every bale docs not go through Indian hands. The European or American,
the Arab or Swahili, may trade and profit, but only as an occasional link in the chain bet-
ween producer and consumer, of which the Indian trader is the one invariable and most
important link of all.
Thus avast commerce has grown up or rather revived during the last 50 years on these
coasts, which has been, in a great measure, recreated, and silently monopolised by a few
of the less prominent classes of Indian traders. I know nothing like it in the history of
commerce, and it is difficult to convey to those at a distance an adequate idea of the extent
or completeness of the monopoly. We wonder at the vast development of Greek com­
mercial industry during the same period, but though their business may be on a larger scale
in individual transactions, nowhere have the Greeks the same sort of monopoly which the
Indians enjoy on the East Coast of Africa.
I have spoken here merely of the Zanzibar Coast line; but it must be remembered
that the preponderating influence, if not monopoly, of the Indian trader is equally great as
far as the Portuguese possessions extend to the south and on the north-western, coasts of
Madagascar. Northward it extends with rare intervals along all the shores of Africa,
Arabia, Persian Gulf and Baluchistan to the western frontiers of India. Along some
6,000 miles of sea coast in Africa and its islands, and nearly the same extent in Asia, the
Indian trader is, if not the monopolist, the most influential, permanent and all pervading
element of the commercial community. 1 doubt whether along the whole coast from
Delagoa Bay to Kurrachi there are half a dozen ports known to commerce, at which the
Indian traders are not better able as a body to buy or sell a cargo, than any other class, and
at most of the great ports a cargo can only be sold or collected through them.
It may be asked how it is possible that such a trade can have grown up so little noticed
by the commercial world elsewhere ? The explanation is to be found in the fact that the
Indians engaged in it all belong to the commercial classes, which, less than any others in
India, have assimilated their methods of commerce to ours. The Parsis and many other
mercantile classes in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, even when they have not adopted our
habits, join our commercial associations, and, so to speak, make more or less common cause
with the European merchant. But this has not been done by any of the classes who have
absorbed the African trade ; and our European merchants and officials and Chambers of
Commerce know probably less of their proceedings than of any other class in the mercantile
community.
Then the European and American commerce to Africa has been almost a secret mono­
poly in a very few hands, The greatest pains have been taken to keep everything quiet,
and though some of the houses traded on a great scale and employed quite a fleet of
rnerchaut vessels, the extent of their business was known to none but themselves, and was
not fully realized by any but the most observant of their neighbours at Zanzibar.
Complicity of Indian Traders in Slave-trade.—As regards the extent to which the
Indian traders are connected with slave-trade, I would premise that I found the question
one which was regarded, as might be expected, with the utmost interest by the large and
influential body of Indian merchants at Zanzibar. I had repeated conferences and dis­
cussions with the leading men, and the subject was one which was never lost sight of in ray
intercourse with this class of traders on the coast and in the islands off it
I would refer to the two enclosed papers, as giving, in a readable form, statements of
two extreme views. The one is a paper drawn up by the Cazi Sahib Shahab-ud-deen,
Dewan to His Highness the Rao of Rutch, who accompanied me to Zanzibar, paid great
attention to the subject, and embodied in this paper the results of his enquiries, which
amount to a verdict “not proven.”
The other is a paper sent me by an Indian merchant, long resident on this coast, and
introduced to me as a person intimately acquainted with all the details of Indo-African
commerce. For obvious reasons I have omitted his rtame. It will be seen that whilst he
suggests impossible remedies he regards his countrymen as deeply implicated in the traffic.
In judging between these two opposite inclusions, It must be borne in mind that slaves
are throughout this coast a great article of commerce and investment ; that they are dealt
in without any feeling of legal or moral responsibility, by most natives of the coast and by
their Arab rulers ; and that the Indian traders are, to a great extent, the capitalists, and
almost monopolise the functions of collecting and distributing all articles of trade in this
country.
This being the case, we may judge how nearly impossible it is for any one so employed
to feel sure that no part of his commercial transactions is connected, directly or indirectly,
with slave dealing.
If we take, for instance, the firm of whose affairs we have just seen a summary, how
can the trader, who has made such large advances to Arab borrowers, feel sure that no
part of his loans goes to replenish the slave labour on the mortgaged estate, or to be