5/5 Al-fahad R. 1 year ago on Google
People
have
lived
in Zanzibar for
20,000
years.[citation
needed] History properly
starts
when
the
islands
became
a
base
for
traders
voyaging
between
the African
Great
Lakes,
the Somali
Peninsula,
the Arabian
peninsula, Iran,
and
the Indian
subcontinent. Unguja offered
a
protected
and
defensible
harbor,
so
although
the
archipelago
had
few
products
of
value, Omanis and Yemenis settled
in
what
became Zanzibar
City (Stone
Town)
as
a
convenient
point
from
which
to
trade
with
towns
on
the Swahili
Coast.
They
established
garrisons
on
the
islands
and
built
the
first mosques in
the
African
Great
Lakes
Region.
During
the Age
of
Exploration,
the Portuguese
Empire was
the
first
European
power
to
gain
control
of
Zanzibar,
and
kept
it
for
nearly
200
years.
In
1698,
Zanzibar
fell
under
the
control
of
the Sultanate
of
Oman,
which
developed
an
economy
of
trade
and cash
crops,
with
a
ruling Arab elite
and
a Bantu general
population.
Plantations
were
developed
to
grow
spices;
hence,
the
moniker
of
the Spice
Islands (a
name
also
used
for
the Dutch
colony the Moluccas,
now
part
of Indonesia).
Another
major
trade
good
was ivory,
the
tusks
of
elephants
that
were
killed
on
the Tanganyika mainland
-
a
practice
that
is
still
in
place
to
this
day.
The
third
pillar
of
the
economy
was
slaves,
which
gave
Zanzibar
an
important
place
in
the Indian
Ocean
slave
trade,
the Indian
Ocean equivalent
of
the
better-known Triangular
Trade.
The
Omani Sultan
of
Zanzibar controlled
a
substantial
portion
of
the
African
Great
Lakes
coast,
known
as Zanj,
as
well
as
extensive
inland
trading
routes.
Sometimes
gradually,
sometimes
by
fits
and
starts,
control
of
Zanzibar
came
into
the
hands
of
the British
Empire.
In
1890,
Zanzibar
became
a
British protectorate.
The
death
of
one
sultan
and
the
succession
of
another
of
whom
the
British
did
not
approve
later
led
to
the Anglo-Zanzibar
War,
also
known
as
the
shortest
war
in
history.
The
islands
gained
independence
from
Britain
in
December
1963
as
a constitutional
monarchy.
A
month
later,
the
bloody Zanzibar
Revolution,
in
which
several
thousand
Arabs
and
Indians
were
killed
and
thousands
more
expelled
and
expropriated,
led
to
the
formation
of
the People's
Republic
of
Zanzibar.
That
April,
the
republic
merged
with
the
mainland
Tanganyika,
or
more
accurately,
was
subsumed
into Tanzania,
of
which
Zanzibar
remains
a
semi-autonomous
region.
Recent
decades
in
Zanzibar
have
seen
political
violence
related
to
contested
elections,
with
a
major
massacre
in
2001.
1 person found this review helpful 👍