abor. These slaves lived in slave villages, while their masters lived in town. Like slaves on Zanzibar, they grew their own food. With very little supervision, they worked both their own fields and their masters' fields. When their owners demanded it, they had to turn over a portion of their grain. However, small farms and garden plots were more typical in and around Mombasa. On small plots, slaves tended coconut trees and grew subsistence crops. Taking care of coconut trees was not a difficult task as little labor was required. These farms persisted because land was scarce, making it profitable to grow grain or coconuts on a small scale. The situation in Malindi favored the development of grain plantations. More land was available, so greater returns were possible if slaves worked more efficiently. Slave owners turned to a form of closely supervised gang labor. The supervisors, usually slaves, put a great deal of pressure on both male and female slaves. Despite these more rigid conditions, slaves were still expected to cultivate crops for their own subsistence. The demand for slaves was high in Malindi. Its plantations were capable of absorbing a thousand slaves in a single year.
Restriction of Export Slave Trade
The slave trade was so lucrative that British efforts to stop it were strongly resisted by nearly all participants. From 1780 to 1840, the dynamics shaping relations between the British government, the British in India, the French, the Omanis, and the Swahili were very complicated (Were and Wilson 1970:103). The British governor in Bombay was expected to influence the Omani ruler, but British interests in India were better served by cordial relations. To satisfy French colonists on Mauritius who wanted slaves, France tried to improve relations with Oman, growing ever more vexed by Oman's growing ties to Britain. Oman's treaty with Britain in 1799 set the stage for a close relationship. By the 1820s, Seyyid Said was determined to assert Omani control over Mombasa, but needed British support. He did not, 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 ex