II. The Bartle Frere Mission to Zanzibar, 1873

Abstract

On 12 January 1873 the British yachtEnchantressentered the harbour of Zanzibar. On board were a former Governor of Bombay and a suite of six government officials—the Resident in the Persian Gulf, two men from the Foreign Office, a military and a naval attaché and one of the country's foremost Arabic scholars. What had brought such an important group into such an unimportant eastern backwater? The answer is only partly to be found in the state of British public opinion on the slave trade question. The origin of the mission is to be sought not in Exeter Hall but in the Huṣns on the bare slopes of the Jabal Akhḍar.