"معاملة العبيد واحتجازهم من قبل الكوتشيين في زنزبار" [و‎‎١‎١‎٤] (٦٣/١٦)

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Extract Letter from Colonel Rigby to the Secretary of State for India,
dated 1st May (No. 3) 1860.
Para. 23. During the past year I have redeemed 3,562 slaves from slavery to
British subjects residing at Zanzibar, and have furnished each individual with a
certificate of freedom, signed and sealed by myself; and I trust that this will
prevent any British subjects from purchasing slaves, or aiding this detestable
traffic in the Zanzibar dominions in future.
Extract Bombay Political Consultation for September 1861.
No. 47 of 1861.
•No. 6545.
Political Department.
Letter from Lieutenant-Colonel C. P. Rigby , Her Majesty's Consul and British
Agent at Zanzibar, to A. K. Forbes , Esq., Acting Secretary to the Bombay
Government.
British Consulate, Zanzibar,
Sir, July 12th, 1861.
I have the honour to report, for the information of His Excellency the
Honourable the Governor in Council, that, in consequence of a great number of
plantations on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba being mortgaged, together with
the slaves attached to such plantations, by the Arab proprietors to British sub
jects, I have issued a notice addressed to all British subjects residing in the
Zanzibar dominions, directing that, whenever a mortgaged plantation is taken
possession of by the mortgagee, he must immediately bring all the slaves on such
plantation to the British Consulate, to be emancipated and registered.
2. In a notice which I issued to the British subjects at Zanzibar, dated 10th
February 1860, warning them of the penalties of trafficking in slaves, they are
likewise forbidden to receive slaves in pawn or pledge, and since that date, there
fore, they have discontinued including the slaves in mortgages of plantations.
3. Probably three-fourths of the immoveable property on the islands of
Zanzibar and Pemba are either already in the possession of British subjects or
mortgaged to them. The Arabs are all wasting their substance in drunkenness
and debauchery, the degraded victims of the system of slavery, by which they
regard any kind of honest industry as beneath an Arab, and only befitting negro
slaves.
I have, &c.,
(Signed) C. P. Rigby , Lieutenant-Colonel,
Her Majesty's Consul and British Agent,
Zanzibar.
Extract Enclosure to Bombay Political Letter, dated 12th April (No. 27) 1862.
Extract Letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Felly , Acting Consul and Agent at
Zanzibar, to the Bombay Government, dated 1st February (No. 113) 1862.
The value of landed property came to be estimated by the amount of slave,
labour on the estate; the value of house property depended of course upon the
demand, and this upon the thriving condition or otherwise of commerce. When
we emancipated the slaves of our British Indian subjects, nearly all the estates
held by them were held in mortgage for value advanced to Arab proprietors at a
time when these estates were valuable on account of their slaves. But when these
slaves were emancipated, the value of the estates fell proportionately; heavy loss
was sustained by our subjects; credit was shaken ; no person but apprehended
that the past emancipation was but the prelude of a general abolition throughout
the State, and hence no man would advance on security of any landed estate. The
circulation of money was checked in the source; commerce in general became
affected; the value of all property, house or landed, fell, and seemed likely, under
11532. D