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Currency as Commodity, as Symbol of Sovereignty and as Subject of Legal Dispute: Henri Greffülhe and the Coinage of Zanzibar in the Late Nineteenth Century

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Currencies of the Indian Ocean World

Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

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Abstract

This chapter considers silver and copper coins issued for Zanzibar in the l880s in the name of Sultan Barghash. Minted in Belgium by a syndicate led by the French merchant Henri Greffülhe, these coins became the subject of a legal dispute involving Great Britain which was settled by international arbitration. Eagleton argues that these coins are more than just a numismatic curiosity and that this case study can be a way of understanding changing and competing ideas of sovereignty, connected to legal and territorial disputes during this critical period in East African history. The chapter ends by showing that this symbolic power of money endures, since Zanzibaris still saw these coins symbols of the Sultan’s sovereignty in the 1930s, after the island had been under British rule for more than 40 years.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On the background to the move from Muscat to Zanzibar, see Calvin H Allen, ‘The State of Masqat in the Gulf and East Africa, 1785–1829,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 14:2 (1982) 117–27. British colonial officials at Zanzibar in the early twentieth century wrote a number of histories of the island: for example, Robert Lyne, Zanzibar in Contemporary Times A Short History of the Southern East in the Nineteenth Century (1905); Francis Barrow Pearce, Zanzibar: The Island Metropolis of Eastern Africa (London, T Fisher Unwin, 1920); Reginald Coupland, East Africa and Its Invaders: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Seyyid Said in 1856 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1938).

  2. 2.

    The classic work on the economic history of Zanzibar before 1873 is Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (Oxford, James Currey, 1987), and on the role of Indian merchants, see in particular pp. 108–9. Marek Pawelczak, The State and the Stateless: The Sultanate of Zanzibar and the East African Mainland: Politics, Economy and Society, 1837–1888 (Warsaw, SOWA, 2010) discusses the relationship between Zanzibar Island and the mainland coast of Africa in the nineteenth century.

  3. 3.

    On the dhow trade and the economy of Zanzibar, see Erik Gilbert, Dhows & the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar: 1860–1970 (Oxford, James Currey, 2004).

  4. 4.

    This seems to sometimes have needed reinforcing—for example, in 1872 the Sultan sent a crier around Zanzibar town to issue a proclamation that no British subjects could trade beyond Zanzibar town: India, Mumbai, Maharashtra State Archives, Political 1872, Vol. 203, compilation 1214, 169–82.

  5. 5.

    Richard Francis Burton, Zanzibar: The City and the Island, 2 vols. (Tinsley, 1872) gives a first-hand description of imports and exports in 1860s Zanzibar (Vol. 1, p. 414), and the moneylending business there (Vol. 1, p. 407).

  6. 6.

    On American merchants at Zanzibar, see, for example, N.R. Bennett, ‘Americans in Zanzibar: 1865–1915,’ Tanganyika Notes and Records 60 (1963) 49–66; Norman Robert Bennett and George E. Brooks, New England Merchants in Africa: A History Through Documents, 1802 to 1865 (Africana Publication, 1965); N.R. Bennett, ‘France and Zanzibar, 1844 to the 1860s [part I],’ The International Journal of African Historical Studies 6:4 (1973) 602–32. On earlier relations between France and Zanzibar, see Norman R. Bennett, ‘France and Zanzibar, 1775–1844,’ in Eastern African History, ed. Daniel F McCall, Norman R. Bennett, and Jeffrey Butler, eds. (New York, 1969) 148–75. For a personal perspective on the British activity at Zanzibar in the 1860s, see Christopher Palmer Rigby, General Rigby, Zanzibar, and the Slave Trade: With Journals, Dispatches, etc. (Allen & Unwin, 1935), particularly extracts from his diary on pp. 100–1, complaining that British merchants were not willing to engage in trade at Zanzibar, and that French, German and American merchants were dominating. The American Consuls, on the other hand, complained about British influence being dominant even in the 1850s, and even that the English government would decide who the next Sultan would be: see, for example, Bennett and Brooks, New England Merchants in Africa: A History through Documents, 1802 to 1865, 482. With both Britain and France suspecting that the other was planning to take control of Zanzibar, the two countries agreed in 1862 to preserve the independence of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, on which see A Kieran, ‘The Origins of the Zanzibar Guarantee Treaty of 1862,’ Canadian Journal of African Studies 2:2 (1968) 147–66. The rivalry between the British and French at Zanzibar was so widely known that when children at Zanzibar played games in which two antagonists were needed, they would call themselves the English and the French: see W.E. Malcolm, ed., England’s East African Policy. Articles on the Relations of England to the Sultan of Zanzibar, and on the Negotiations of 1873, etc. (London, Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1875) 19.

  7. 7.

    Pawelczak, The State and the Stateless, 61–2 and 75, outlines the currencies in use on the East African coast.

  8. 8.

    Katrin Bromber, The Jurisdiction of the Sultan of Zanzibar and the Subjects of Foreign Nations (Würzburg, Ergon, 2001) 32–7.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 18–31. Some British Indian legislation was in force for British subjects at Zanzibar: John Molesworth Macpherson and Albert Williams, British Enactments in Force in Native States, 2nd ed. (Calcutta, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1899). However, some Indian merchants would claim to be subjects of the Sultan or of Britain as best suited their purposes at a particular time: Bennett and Brooks, New England Merchants in Africa: A History Through Documents, 1802 to 1865, 380.

  10. 10.

    J. C. Wilkinson, ‘The Zanzibar Delimitation Commission 1885–1886,’ Geopolitics and International Boundaries 1:2 (1996) 130–58, views the boundary commission as a “tool which allowed the Germans, French and British to strip the Sultan of his rights on the mainland and ultimately to deny the Arabs any independent rule in Africa” (on p. 131). Sultan Barghash was furious at the outcome of the Berlin conference, which he saw as having taken from him the most productive part of what he regarded as his possessions—the source of much of the ivory traded at Zanzibar (on p. 134, notes 6 and 7).

  11. 11.

    H.P. Merritt, ‘Bismarck and the German Interest in East Africa, 1884–1885,’ Historical Journal 21:1 (1978) 97–116, discusses the motivations behind the creation of the German Protectorate, and John S. Galbraith, ‘Italy, the British East Africa Company, and the Benadir Coast, 1888–1893,’ Journal of Modern History 42:4 (1970) 549–63, discusses Italian attempts to set up a concession. On the British East Africa Company, see below. There were at this time a series of treaties between Britain, France and Germany, recognising each other’s claims: see Sir Edward Hertslet and Great Britain, The Map of Africa by Treaty, 3 vols. (H.M. Stationery Office, 1894) 109–25; Marquess of Salisbury, ‘The Anglo-French Agreement,’ Hansard (House of Lords, August 11, 1890), http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1890/aug/11/the-anglo-french-agreement.

  12. 12.

    One near-contemporary commentator described Sultan Barghash’s last years as “embittered by the humiliations imposed upon him” in these years: Pearce, Zanzibar: The Island Metropolis of Eastern Africa, 269.

  13. 13.

    Eric Helleiner, The Making of National Money: Territorial Currencies in Historical Perspective (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2003) 163 and 177.

  14. 14.

    Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton University Press, 2000) 201.

  15. 15.

    This point was made explicitly in the mid-twentieth century, during the period of decolonisation: see Helleiner, The Making of National Money, 205, as well as Daniel Hammett and Paul Nugent, Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa (Leiden, Brill, 2007) 248; Emily Gilbert and Erik Helleiner, ‘Introduction—Nation-States and Money: Historical Contexts, Interdisciplinary Perspectives,’ in Nation-States and Money: The Past, Present and Future of National Currencies (London, Routledge, 1999).

  16. 16.

    To take just a few examples from the colonial period, see Virginia Hewitt, ‘A Distant View: Imagery and Imagination in the Paper Currency of the British Empire, 1800–1960,’ in Nation-States and Money, Gilbert and Helleiner, eds. (1999); Wambui Mwangi, ‘The Lion, the Native and the Coffee Plant: Political Imagery and the Ambiguous Art of Currency Design in Colonial Kenya,’ Geopolitics 7:1 (2002) 31–62, Igor Cusack, ‘Tiny Transmitters of Nationalist and Colonial Ideology: The Postage Stamps of Portugal and Its Empire,’ Nations and Nationalism 11:4 (2005) 591–612; Yair Wallach, ‘Creating a Country through Currency and Stamps: State Symbols and Nation-Building in British-Ruled Palestine,’ Nations and Nationalism 17:1 (2011) 129–47.

  17. 17.

    Jan Penrose, ‘Designing the Nation: Banknotes, Banal Nationalism and Alternative Conceptions of the State,’ Political Geography 30 (2011) 429–40.

  18. 18.

    On this and on colonial ‘lawfare’ more broadly, see Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Jaap de Moor, European Expansion and Law : The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Africa and Asia (New York and Oxford, Berg, 1992) 3–5, and the other chapters in the book.

  19. 19.

    For Zanzibar law in the Protectorate period: Sir Thomas Edward Scrutton (ed.), The Commercial Laws of the World, Comprising the Mercantile, Bills of Exchange, Bankruptcy and Maritime Laws of Civilised Nations (London, Sweet & Maxwell Ltd., 1911) 163.

  20. 20.

    Henri Greffülhe, ‘Voyage de Lamoo a Zanzibar,’ in Bulletin de la Société de géographie de Marseille (Marseille, Secrétariat de la Société de géographie, 1878) 209–17. Accessible online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb34349684z/date. Henri Greffülhe’s date of birth and other personal details are in France, Paris, Archives Nationales, LH/1195/35, Award of Legion d’Honneur to Lucien Henri Emile Greffülhe (1885).

  21. 21.

    France, Nantes, Archives Diplomatiques, 748 PO/A 151, 22 December 1882, letter from Minister of Foreign Affairs to French Consul. By 1888, Greffülhe’s letterhead listed him as agent for companies in France, England, Holland and Belgium: see examples in France, Nantes, Archives Diplomatiques, 748 PO/A 34.

  22. 22.

    In February 1879, Marseille-based merchant Alfred Rabaud wrote to Henry Morton Stanley, about Stanley’s fear of the British Consul Dr John Kirk creating obstacles for him at Zanzibar, and offering the services of Henri Greffülhe: Belgium Tervuren, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Stanley Archives 999. From 1879, Greffülhe was acting as an agent for the Association Internationale de Bruxelles for the exploration of the interior of Africa: France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, CCC/Zanzibar/4, letter of March 1879 from French Consul to Minister of Foreign Affairs, and CCC/Zanzibar/5, letter of 6 April 1881 from French Consul to Minister of Foreign Affairs.

  23. 23.

    The rupee had become the currency of eastern Africa due to a particular set of economic circumstances in the 1860s, on which see Catherine Eagleton, ‘When and Why did the Rupee become the Currency of East Africa?’ (forthcoming).

  24. 24.

    Zanzibar National Archives (henceforth, ZNA) AA 1/48, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, dispatch no 90 of 28 September 1883.

  25. 25.

    ZNA AA 1/48, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, dispatch no 113 of 19 November 1883.

  26. 26.

    ZNA AA 1/48, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, dispatch no 90 of 28 September 1883.

  27. 27.

    Images of the coins could not be included here due to the cost of securing image permissions, but they can be viewed at https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx. A silver riyal given to the British Museum by John Kirk, and therefore likely to be the example that prompted his comments on the coin’s design, is acquisition number 1886,0806.1; one of the copper pice struck at Brussels is acquisition number 1895,0202.7. The punches and matrices used for the coinage are still preserved in the collections of the Royal Belgian Mint: Ministere des Finances, Tresorerie, Monnaie Royale de Belgique, Catalogue des poincons & matrices du musee de l’hotel des monnaies (prepared by Cabinet des Medailles de la Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique) (Brussels, Monnaie Royale, 1977) 511, lists 5 obverse and reverse dies and matrices for the riyal, and 4 obverse and 5 reverse dies and matrices for the pice.

  28. 28.

    ZNA AA 1/48, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, dispatch no 90 of 28 September 1883.

  29. 29.

    ZNA, AA 1/46, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 10th May 1886, dispatch number 103; and ZNA, AA 1/49, Foreign Office to Zanzibar, dispatch number 224 of 1 July 1886, passing on a letter of thanks from the British Museum, for sending samples of the Zanzibar coins for their collections.

  30. 30.

    ZNA AA 1/48, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, dispatch no 113 of 19 November 1883.

  31. 31.

    ZNA AA 1/48, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, dispatch 125 of 5 December 1883.

  32. 32.

    ZNA AB 14/28, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, memorandum of 20 June 1897: “very few were put into circulation, and … no more were brought”.

  33. 33.

    ZNA AA 1/48, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, dispatch 125 of 5 December 1883.

  34. 34.

    France, Nantes, Archives Diplomatiques, 748 PO/A 177, letters of 26 April 1884 (on the deed of settlement for Roux, Fraissenet & Co affairs) and 8 April 1884 (case for $4000 brought against Greffülhe by a British Indian).

  35. 35.

    France, Nantes, Archives Diplomatiques, 748 PO/A 141, 25 Chaban 1302/9 June 1885, letter written by Mohamud ben Halem on behalf of Sultan Barghash, to King Leopold II of Belgium.

  36. 36.

    Table 6.1 is based on [Didier Vanoverbeek] “Zanzibar” in Monnaie Info 28 (2002) 8–9.

  37. 37.

    ZNA AA 2/42, Zanzibar to Secretary to Bombay Government, dispatch 174 of 11 May 1886.

  38. 38.

    ZNA AA 2/42, Bombay to Zanzibar code telegram, 20 May 1886, with handwritten notes of calculations added.

  39. 39.

    ZNA, AA 1/46, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 10th May 1886, dispatch number 103.

  40. 40.

    ZNA AC 1/8, John Kirk to Zanzibar, 1 February 1893.

  41. 41.

    Birmingham City Archives, MS 1623 18.3, copy letterbook, including 14 (letter of 2 January 1883 discussing visit by ambassadors from Madagascar) and 128 (30 November 1883, complaining about machinery standing idle).

  42. 42.

    Birmingham City Archives, MS 1623 18.3, copy letterbook, 227, 25 January 1886. Images of the copper pice struck at Birmingham can be seen at https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx—search for acquisition number 1895,0202.9.

  43. 43.

    Birmingham City Archives, MS 1623 40.4, file “Zanzibar 1887.”

  44. 44.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as 1ADC/595), Questions monetaires: Zanzibar, 29 October 1887, French Consul to Direction des Affaires Commerciales. See also France, Nantes, Archives Diplomatiques, 748 PO/A 65∗, letter from French Consul to Minister on 29 October 1887.

  45. 45.

    ZNA AB 14/28, memorandum from Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 20 June 1891.

  46. 46.

    India, Mumbai, Maharashtra State Archives, Political 1872 Vol. 203, compilation 1101, 19 February 1872, on pp. 183–86.

  47. 47.

    London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/1C, Grey, Dawes & Co to John Kirk, 9 February 1877. See also The History of Smith, MacKenzie and Company, Ltd (London, East Africa, Ltd, 1938) 10–19 and 28–9. The date of the foundation of the company at Zanzibar is given as 1877 on p. 9.

  48. 48.

    J Forbes Munro, ‘Shipping Subsidies and Railway Guarantees: William Mackinnon, Eastern Africa, and the Indian Ocean, 1860–1893,’ Journal of African History 28:2 (1987) 209–30. See also John S. Galbraith, Mackinnon and East Africa 1878–1895: A Study in the “New Imperialism” (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008).

  49. 49.

    London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/58, copy of letter from William Mackinnon to Dr Badger at Zanzibar, December 1877.

  50. 50.

    Much relevant correspondence is in London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/62 and PP MS 1/IBEA/1/9.

  51. 51.

    Galbraith (2008) Mackinnon and East Africa 1878–1895.

  52. 52.

    London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/1A, Mombasa Letters, letter of 14 November 1888. On currency and wage payments, see Jan Lucassen (ed.), Wages and Currency: Global Comparisons from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (Bern, Peter Lang, 2007).

  53. 53.

    London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/1A, letter of 23 October 1888.

  54. 54.

    Images of these coins can be seen at https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx—search for acquisition number 1904,0802.1 for the silver rupee, and 1993,1120.24 for the copper pice.

  55. 55.

    London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/16, letters of 10 May 1889 and 13 May 1889. London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/31, letter of 9 January 1890 on finance and banking details. London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/37, letter of 17 February 1890 regarding the currency order. This proposal initially prompted objections from the Treasury in London. However, the Government of India subsequently reassured the Treasury that the IBEAC coins would not be legal tender in India. ZNA AC 1/2, No 69, 15 April 1891, and copy of memo from the Finance and Commerce Department, Government of India, 15 July 1890.

  56. 56.

    London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/24, A. Dick (Mombasa) to William Mackinnon: “Notwithstanding the enormous quantities of copper and other coin lately imported there is still a very large field especially if we gradually get rid of the Indian and foreign coin”.

  57. 57.

    ZNA, AC 10/2, letter from George Mackenzie to Colonel Euan-Smith at Zanzibar about navigability of Juba river, ports north of Juba, and the Benadir Coast, 24 April 1890.

  58. 58.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monétaires: Zanzibar, 1 June 1888, letter from French Consul at Zanzibar to Direction des Affaires commerciales et Consulaires.

  59. 59.

    This was not the only contract that Sultan Khalifa denied knowledge of, and he complained that “neither the British nor the Germans had actually produced the treaties each claimed to have concluded with Sultan Barghash”: Umar al-Naqar, “Arabic Materials in the Government Archives of Zanzibar,” History in Africa 5 (1978) 377–82, description of SEC/017 on p. 379.

  60. 60.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monétaires: Zanzibar, 1 June 1888, letter from French Consul at Zanzibar to Direction des Affaires commerciales et Consulaires.

  61. 61.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monétaires: Zanzibar, 23 May 1888, letter from Greffülhe to Foreign Ministry, copy forwarded to Zanzibar.

  62. 62.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monétaires: Zanzibar, 22 May 1889, letter from Greffülhe to French Consul.

  63. 63.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monétaires: Zanzibar, 15 May 1889, letter from French Consul at Zanzibar to Direction des Affaires Commerciales et Consulaires, enclosing a copy of a letter just sent to him by Greffülhe.

  64. 64.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monetaires: Zanzibar, undated note by French Consul enclosed with letter of 15 May 1889 to Foreign Minister.

  65. 65.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monetaires: Zanzibar, 15 May 1889, letter from French Consul at Zanzibar to Direction des Affaires Commerciales et Consulaires, enclosing a copy of a letter just sent to him by Greffülhe.

  66. 66.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monetaires: Zanzibar, note of 28 May 1890.

  67. 67.

    Foreign Office, Printed Correspondence East Africa (London, HMSO, 1809), No. 220, 2 December 1890, and No. 261, 9 December 1890.

  68. 68.

    Nonetheless, IBEAC representatives were cautious enough to insert a clause in the draft agreement for the establishment of a bank at Mombasa, specifying that the Sultan renounced his right to profits from existing coinage contracts, making it his responsibility for these to be “settled and adjusted … with the said contractor”: London, SOAS, PP MS 1/IBEA/1/24, 2 December 1890.

  69. 69.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve, ADC/F/27a/5 (order as ADC/595), Questions Monetaires: Zanzibar, 9 September 1890, note for the English Ambassador to France.

  70. 70.

    ZNA AC 3/2, 2 January 1892 (Consul-General to Sultan) and 4 January 1892 (Abdul Azizi bin Mohamed replying on behalf of the Sultan).

  71. 71.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, Nantes, 748 PO/A 167/1, 11 May 1892, French Consul to Minister.

  72. 72.

    ZNA AC 1/2, undated copy of memo by John Kirk to Foreign Office.

  73. 73.

    ZNA AC 1/6, dispatch no 70, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 29 January 1891.

  74. 74.

    ZNA AB 14 28, memorandum from Consul-General Smith to the Marquis of Salisbury, 20 June 1891.

  75. 75.

    ZNA AC 1/4, anonymous table inserted before Despatch 293, and dispatch no. 309, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 29 December 1891.

  76. 76.

    ZNA AC 1/7, No. 105, 20 May 1892, and No. 106, 20 May 1892, both Zanzibar to Foreign Office. When later asked about this verbal agreement, the Sultan’s former Treasurer, Aben Omani, explained that nothing had been written down, and a search of the palace papers found no trace of it: ZNA AC 1/8, No. 92, 17 March 1893, Zanzibar to Foreign Office.

  77. 77.

    ZNA AC 1/8, No. 263 Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 3 December 1892.

  78. 78.

    ZNA AC 1/9, Foreign Office to Zanzibar, 7 January 1893.

  79. 79.

    ZNA AC 1/8, No. 309 Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 29 December 1891.

  80. 80.

    ZNA AC 1/7, No 130 Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 17 June 1892.

  81. 81.

    See, for example, ZNA AC 19/4, French Consul to Consul-General, 5 December 1892, and ZNA AC 1/7, Customs Master to Consul-General.

  82. 82.

    ZNA AC 1/8, telegram 259 Foreign Office to Zanzibar, 26 October 1892 and telegram 244 Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 3 November 1892.

  83. 83.

    ZNA AC 1/14, John Kirk to Foreign Office, 24 July 1893, copy sent to Zanzibar.

  84. 84.

    ZNA AC 1/19, Foreign Office to Zanzibar, 7 January 1893.

  85. 85.

    ZNA AC 1/14, John Kirk to Foreign Office, 24 July 1893, copy sent to Zanzibar.

  86. 86.

    ZNA AC 6/6, listing of telegrams sent, including Zanzibar to Foreign Office, on 6 July 1893, 25 October 1893, 2 and 7 December 1893, 9 and 25 January 1894; Foreign Office to Zanzibar on 25 October 1893, 10 November 1893, 8 January 1894. Payment was made in January 1894, see ZNA AC 2/11, Gray, Dawes & Co to Consul-General, 19 January 1894.

  87. 87.

    ZNA AC 1/14, No. 164 Foreign Office to Zanzibar, 5 October 1893, enclosing copy of letter from The Hague to London.

  88. 88.

    ZNA AC 1/14, copy of a letter from John Kirk to Foreign Office, 24 July 1893, copy sent to Zanzibar.

  89. 89.

    ZNA AA 12/9, Proclamations, notices, regulations, No. 69 of July 5, 1893, Number 70 of 30 August 1893. ZNA AC 3/5 First Minister to Consul General, No. 40, Copy of ordinances, Daressalaam, April 1st and September 18th, 1893.

  90. 90.

    ZNA AC 3/5, First Minister, to Consul-General, No. 40, Copper coinage in Zanzibar, report on situation and recommendations, Zanzibar, 18th July 1894.

  91. 91.

    ZNA AC 1/19, No. 15 of 1895—memorandum from Government of India, Finance and Commerce Department, Accounts and Finance, Mint, 16th January 1895, Calcutta, copy sent to Zanzibar on 15 February 1895.

  92. 92.

    ZNA AC 19/10, French Consul to Consul-General, forwarding letter from Greffülhe to French Consul, 6 April 1895. Greffülhe also offered 30,000 silver riyals that he had deposited in Bombay to the Sultan at a rate of 100 per 200 rupees: ZNA AC 1/9, Foreign Office to Zanzibar, 7 January 1893.

  93. 93.

    ZNA AC 1/8, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, typed memorandum by Lloyd Matthews, 2 May 1895.

  94. 94.

    ZNA AC 2/19, Smith, Mackenzie & Co to Consul-General, 9 October 1895.

  95. 95.

    ZNA AC 1/8, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 26 October 1895.

  96. 96.

    Emilie Ruete, Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar (Mineola, New York, Dover Publications, Incorporated, 2009), 121; John Hunwick “Islamic Financial Institutions: Theoretical Structures and Aspects of Their Application in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in Credit, Currencies and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective (Stockholm, Nordic Africa Institute, 2005) 78–102; Burton, Zanzibar: The City and the Island, 270–274.

  97. 97.

    Lyne, Zanzibar in Contemporary Times a Short History of the Southern East in the Nineteenth Century, 191.

  98. 98.

    Galbraith, ‘Italy, the British East Africa Company, and the Benadir Coast, 1888–1893,’ 558.

  99. 99.

    ZNA AC 1/8, Zanzibar to Foreign Office, 26 October 1895.

  100. 100.

    France, Archives Diplomatiques, Nantes, 748 PO/A 167/1, Bertelin on behalf of all the interested parties, to Greffülhe at Zanzibar, 10 December 1894.

  101. 101.

    London, National Archives, FO 107/116, includes correspondence relating to water rights, to a wharf that Greffülhe had leased, and to the administration of his estate. The estate took many years to sort out, and was still under consideration by the Sultan in 1903.

  102. 102.

    Administration of the East Africa Protectorate had passed in 1895 to a Council of Administration at Zanzibar, whose members were most of the senior British officials in the Zanzibar Protectorate government: see ZNA AC 2/118, general papers and correspondence, and ZNA AC 11/47, Minutes of Council of Administration, East Africa Protectorate.

  103. 103.

    ZNA AC 11/47, Minutes of Council of Administration, East Africa Protectorate, meetings of 29 August 1898 (p. 43) and 31 September 1898 (p. 44).

  104. 104.

    ZNA AC 4/6, Consul-General to First Minister, 30 October 1903. ZNA 12/9, Proclamations, notices, regulations, No. 131, 15 February 1899, and No. 171, 20 May 1903.

  105. 105.

    Emily Gilbert discusses the spatial dynamics of money in ‘Common Cents: Situating Money in Time and Place,’ Economy and Society 34:3 (2005) 357–88.

  106. 106.

    ZNA AB 14/32, undated petition to Sultan.

  107. 107.

    ZNA AB 14/32, petition of 3 April 1936, to British Resident.

  108. 108.

    ZNA AB 14/32, petition of 28 March 1936, to Sultan’s wife.

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  1. University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland, UK

    Catherine Eagleton

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  1. Catherine Eagleton
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  1. Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany

    Steven Serels

  2. Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Gwyn Campbell

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Eagleton, C. (2019). Currency as Commodity, as Symbol of Sovereignty and as Subject of Legal Dispute: Henri Greffülhe and the Coinage of Zanzibar in the Late Nineteenth Century. In: Serels, S., Campbell, G. (eds) Currencies of the Indian Ocean World. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20973-5_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20973-5_6

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