however, want to lose tax revenues or offend those who were profiting from the slave trade.
Eventually the British negotiated a series of treaties that restricted the export slave trade, each treaty more restrictive than its predecessor (see timeline; for details see Cooper 1977: 270-71; for a map see Sheriff 1987: 36). Seyyid Said agreed to these very reluctantly. The treaties of 1822, 1839, and 1845 (effective in 1847) were difficult to enforce, but they did result in lower prices. These treaties provided cheap labor for Zanzibar's and Pemba's clove plantations, for Malindi's grain plantations, for Mombasa's slave villages, and for small estates up and down the coast. They did not ban the trade within Zanzibar's African possessions.
During the late 1840s, as the export trade faced more severe restrictions, the growth of slave imports into Zanzibar itself reached its peak. (Feierman 1995: 353). Additional regulations and decrees affecting trade that was still legal were announced in the 1860s. In 1873, when the British were negotiating the treaty that would ban all shipments of slaves by sea, thereby ending mainland exports to Zanzibar, Sultan Barghash pleaded for more time with a poignant metaphor: "A spear is held at each of my eyes. With which shall I choose to be pierced?" He agreed to the treaty under pressure, but only after discussions with John Kirk. And he closed Zanzibar's slave market. This treaty cut off the supply of slaves from Kilwa, but revived the slave trade in areas closer to Zanzibar. In 1876, as part of another treaty, Barghash issued a proclamation making it illegal to organize slave caravans, but raiding continued. The export tapered off although smuggling did occur.
Four Great Ironies
Four great ironies emerge from a study of British efforts to restrict and abolish the East African slave trade (Feierman: 353-54).
The first irony is that these efforts, regardless of their humanitarian impulses, actually pushed the raiding frontier into new areas. Each restriction that was imposed on the export trade inspired new ways to use slave labor because slaves were not only cheaper, but also available in greater numbers.
The "legitimate trade" that was supposed to replace the slave trade was usually commerce in commodities—cloves, copra, coconut oil, grain—produced by slave labor. Slaves dug up copal and collected wild rubber or they farmed so that their masters go out and collect commodities for export. (In West Africa slaves produced palm oil, a staple of "legitimate trade" but peasant farmers grew other export commodities such as peanuts.)
The European and American demand for ivory—an almost insatiable desire for luxury goods (as "trivial" as combs and billiard balls)—illustrates very ironically the profound disparity between the economic development of Africa and that of the West. It is mind-boggling to think that ivory "revolutionized the economy of an entire region."
Finally, a great opportunity for substantive development slipped away in the ships carrying ivory to India, Europe, and America. The ivory trade depleted a limited resource that was exchanged for cloth and for the firearms that were used to kill more elephants, to raid for slaves, and to wage war. This provided no basis for long-term development. This outcome is even more ironic when viewed alongside the statistical data that demonstrate how the terms of trade favored Eastern Africa throughout the nineteenth century (for details see Sheriff 1987). During the course of the nineteenth century, the export price of ivory increased steadily (rising by six percent annually during the period 1823 to 1873), while the prices being paid for cloth were generally low and often decreasing (Sheriff: 88: 102).