In 1840, a single dhow owned by a Khoja merchant named Jairam Sewji was intercepted by the British Navy off the coast of Zanzibar. On board were 142 enslaved Africans, bound for the clove plantations of Pemba. The incident sparked a diplomatic crisis between Sultan Said bin Busaid and Captain Atkins Hamerton, the British consul. This episode unpacks the secret world of the watoro — enslaved runaways who risked everything to reach freedom in the interior — and the role of Indian merchants like Sewji, who financed the slave trade even as they funded the British abolitionist agenda. We trace the dhow's route from the Swahili coast to the Mrima hinterland, and the brutal logic of the shamba system that kept the trade alive. A story of collusion, resistance, and the hidden economy of the Indian Ocean.
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