IOR/R/15/1/200

The volume contains correspondence between Government of India officials and the Political Resident of the Persian Gulf, on the question of the disposal or repatriation of slaves manumitted in the Gulf region, in response to concerns from the Government of Bombay over the potential social consequences of settling further Africans in the city (folio 5). British government officials in London and India discussed the practicalities of sending freed slaves to Britain’s possessions in East Africa, where freed slaves could be employed in the region’s agricultural plantations (folio 13 onwards).

In December 1897 Captain Hugh Daly, Deputy Secretary to the Government of India, wrote to the Political Resident (Lieutenant-Colonel Malcome Meade), requesting him to liaise with Her Majesty’s acting Consul-General at Zanzibar, Basil Cave, to arrange for the dispatch of freed African slaves to be repatriated at Zanzibar (folio 23). A batch of correspondence from 1899/1900 documents the arrangements made by the Political Resident (then Major Percy Cox) to send eleven liberated slaves to Zanzibar. Particular attention is paid to keeping the cost of the freed slaves’ passage back to Africa to a minimum.

The remainder of the file covers the period 1897 to 1905, and deals with specific cases of emancipated slaves being dispatched to Zanzibar, either from the Political Residency in Bushire or the Political Agency in Muscat. This includes a report written by the Political Resident (Major Charles Kemball) in Nov 1902 outlining the numbers of slaves transported over a two year period (1900-1902) from Muscat to Zanzibar, including method and cost of transport (folio 82).