# The coast and the Sultan: how Britain leased Kenya's shore from Zanzibar

How Britain took the Kenyan coast without conquering it: the Omani sultanate of Zanzibar that ruled the Swahili shore, the ten-mile strip Britain leased from the Sultan and ran through a protectorate and a thirty-eight-minute war, and its cession to independent Kenya in 1963.

*This story parallel: Colonization: the making of the modern world*
*This story part of: The Scramble for Africa*
*This story part of: Kenya: from the Swahili coast to the republic*
*This story parallel: Precolonial Kenya: peoples, states, and faiths*
*This story parallel: The colonial map of Kenya: neglected regions and regional inequality*
*This story parallel: Indians in Kenya: the railway, the dukawalla, and the exodus*
*This story part of: Military and security*
*Slavery on the Kenyan coast parallel this story*
*Mombasa and the coast: port, strip, slavery and land continues this story*
*Infrastructure and logistics parallel this story*

## 1698 — Oman Drives the Portuguese from the Coast

After a long siege, Omani Arab forces captured Fort Jesus in Mombasa in 1698, ending nearly two centuries of Portuguese control of the Swahili coast. The shore now fell under the Sultanate of Oman.

## 1840 — Seyyid Said Moves His Capital to Zanzibar

Sultan Seyyid Said of Oman moved his court from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1840, making the island the centre of an Indian Ocean empire. It was built on cloves, ivory, and slaves.

## c. 1840 — Zanzibar's Clove, Ivory, and Slave Economy

Under the Busaidi sultans Zanzibar grew rich on clove plantations worked by slaves and on caravans that carried ivory and captives from the interior to the coast. Indian financiers, especially the customs-master firms, bankrolled the trade.

## 1861 — The Canning Award Splits Zanzibar from Oman

When Seyyid Said died in 1856 his sons disputed the succession. In 1861 a British arbitration, the Canning Award, formally separated Zanzibar and its coast from Muscat and Oman, with Britain already the arbiter of the sultanate's affairs.

## 1873 — Britain Presses Zanzibar to End the Slave Trade

Under pressure from Sir Bartle Frere and the Royal Navy, Sultan Barghash signed an 1873 treaty closing Zanzibar's slave market and banning the seaborne slave trade. It was an early lever of British control over the sultanate.

## 1886 — The Anglo-German Agreement Divides East Africa

The 1886 Anglo-German Agreement carved the East African interior into British and German spheres. It recognized the Sultan of Zanzibar's authority over only a narrow ten-mile coastal strip.

## 1888 — The Company Leases the Coastal Strip

In 1888 the Imperial British East Africa Company obtained a concession to administer the Sultan's ten-mile coastal strip. Britain ruled the coast as the Sultan's agent rather than annexing it outright.

*Source: Fort Jesus, Mombasa*

*Source: Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests*

*Source: Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda*

*Source: From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925*

*Source: Kenya Railways: History*

## 1890 — The Heligoland Treaty Makes Zanzibar a British Protectorate

In the 1890 Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty Germany dropped its claims to Zanzibar in exchange for the North Sea island of Heligoland. Zanzibar, and with it the coast, became a British protectorate.

## 1895 — The East Africa Protectorate Takes Over the Coast

When the British East Africa Company failed, the Crown took over in 1895 as the East Africa Protectorate. It administered the coastal strip still in the name of the Sultan of Zanzibar.

*Source: Fort Jesus, Mombasa*

*Source: Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests*

*Source: Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda*

*Source: From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925*

*Source: Kenya Railways: History*

## 1896 — The Anglo-Zanzibar War

When a sultan Britain disliked took the throne in 1896, the Royal Navy bombarded the palace and installed a compliant ruler in about thirty-eight minutes. It is remembered as the shortest recorded war in history.

## 1897 — Slavery Abolished in Zanzibar

In 1897 Britain abolished the legal status of slavery in Zanzibar. Former slaves had to apply for their freedom, and labour conditions on the plantations changed only slowly.

## c. 1920 — The Ten-Mile Strip Stays the Sultan's

Even as the interior became the Kenya Colony in 1920, the ten-mile coastal strip remained nominally the sovereign territory of the Sultan of Zanzibar. It was leased to and administered by Britain, a legal fiction that lasted to independence.

## c. 1961 — Mwambao: the Coast Asks to Stay Apart

As independence neared, a coastal autonomy movement known as Mwambao argued that the strip's distinct history and Muslim identity meant it should not simply be absorbed into up-country Kenya. The claim was set aside, but coastal grievance over land and marginalization has recurred since.

*Source: Fort Jesus, Mombasa*

*Source: Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests*

*Source: Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda*

*Source: From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925*

*Source: Kenya Railways: History*

## 1963 — The Sultan Cedes the Coast to Kenya

In 1963 the Sultan of Zanzibar gave up his sovereignty over the ten-mile strip, and it became part of the newly independent Kenya. It ended 275 years in which the coast was tied to Oman and Zanzibar rather than the interior.

*Source: Fort Jesus, Mombasa*

*Source: Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests*

*Source: Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda*

*Source: From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925*

*Source: Kenya Railways: History*