Tippu Tip: Ivory, Slavery and Discovery in the Scramble for Africa

344 Pages·2018·4.27 MB·English

by  Stuart Laing

TIPPU TIP
Hamed bin Mohammed al-Murjabi, also known as Tippu Tip, sits for his formal studio portrait in Zanzibar,
ca. 1890s.
He was described by the Briton Herbert Ward as “a very remarkable individual in every way – of
commanding presence, and a wonderful degree of natural ease and grace of manner and action. He stands
nearly six feet in height, has brilliant, dark, intelligent eyes, and bears himself with an air of ultra-imperial
dignity.”
(Ward 1890: 491)
TIPPU TIP
Ivory, Slavery and Discovery in the Scramble for Africa
Stuart Laing
Contents
List of maps
List of illustrations
Foreword and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 A Young Arab in East Africa
2 Nile-seekers, Africa-crossers
3 Boy Trader
4 Business Start-up
5 The Far Side of the Lake
6 Between the Two Rivers
7 Down the Lualaba: Nile or Congo?
8 Tippu Tip and the Scramble
9 Fourth Journey: Back to the Centre
10 Fifth Journey: What a Relief!
11 The British and the Germans: Protection or Occupation?
12 Arabs versus the Congo Free State
13 Last Judgements
Appendices
1 Tippu Tip’s Family Tree
2 British Residents, Agents and Consuls in Muscat and Zanzibar
3 Sultans of Muscat and Zanzibar
4 Timeline
Notes
Bibliography and Notes on Sources
Index
List of maps
East Africa in the 19th century
Explorers’ routes
Tippu Tip’s First and Second Journeys
Tippu Tip’s Third Journey, 1870–82
Tippu Tip’s Third Journey, final part
Africa: possessions and spheres of influence, 1885–86
Tippu Tip’s Fourth Journey, August 1883 – December 1886
The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition
East Africa, 1886
List of illustrations
Tippu Tip. Studio photograph taken in Zanzibar; by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge
University Library
Zanzibar waterfront, 1874. Engraving from Stanley 1878
David Livingstone. Portrait engraving from Waller 1874
Bagamoyo. Engraved view from Cameron 1877
Maria Theresa thaler. By courtesy of Clara Semple
Central African weapons. Engraving from Stanley 1878
Chief Mirambo. Engraving from Becker 1887
Chief Kasongo. Engraving from Cameron 1877
Juma Merikani’s hut. Engraving from Cameron 1877
Henry Morton Stanley in explorer’s headgear. Engraving from Ward 1890
Stanley and Pocock tossing coins. Engraving from Stanley 1878
“Tippu Tip’s grand canoes going down the Congo.” Engraving from The Illustrated London News, 21
December 1889; by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
Sayyid Barghash bin Saʿid. Portrait engraving from a book of letters of Dr Christie; by kind permission of
the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
Fort Leopold on Lake Tanganyika. Engraved view from Becker 1887
Le Stanley being carried in sections upriver. Engraving from Stanley 1885
Taria Topan. Engraving from Stanley 1878
Emin Pasha. Portrait engraving from Stanley 1890
Carl Peters. Photograph by courtesy of the Bundesarchiv-Bildarchiv (Federal Archives of Germany)
Tippu Tip’s house at Stanley Falls. Line drawing from Ward 1890
Tippu Tip in old age. Photograph by courtesy of Zanzibar Archives
Between pages 178 and 179
1. Tippu Tip. Portrait photograph taken by ‘GPA’, published in Hoffmann 1938
2. Sayyid Saʿid bin Sultan. Painting; by courtesy of Bait al-Zubair Museum, Muscat
3. John Hanning Speke. Full-length portrait painted by James Watney Wilson; by courtesy of the Royal
Geographical Society, London 4. Richard Burton. Photograph, from the portrait by Lord Leighton in the
National Portrait Gallery, London; by courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society, London 5. Verney
Lovett Cameron. Portrait photograph; by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University
Library 6. Livingstone in swamp near Lake Bangweolo. Engraving from Waller 1874
7. Ivory caravan. Photograph from the Fisher Collection; by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge
University Library 8–11. Ivory objects. From the author’s family collection
12. Henry Morton Stanley in Makata swamp. Engraving from Stanley 1872
13. Ujiji, Lake Tanganyika. Engraved view from Hore 1892
14. Henry Morton Stanley. London studio portrait; by courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society, London
15. Tusks in doorway of merchant’s house, Zanzibar. Photograph from the J.A. Grant Collection; by
kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library 16. The front door of Tippu Tip’s
house, Zanzibar. Photograph by the author 17. The plaque beside Tippu Tip’s front door, Zanzibar.
Photograph by the author
18. Detail of wood carving, Tippu Tip’s front door, Zanzibar. Photograph by the author
19. Ivory warehouse, Zanzibar. Photograph from the Christie Collection; by kind permission of the Syndics
of Cambridge University Library 20. Sayyid Barghash with his delegation visiting England, 1875.
Photograph; by courtesy of Zanzibar Archives 21. John Kirk. Photograph reproduced from Foskett 1946
22. Dr James Christie. Photograph in a book of his letters; by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge
University Library 23. Princess Salme bint Saʿid. Photograph; by courtesy of Zanzibar Archives
24. King Leopold II of the Belgians. Portrait engraving; from Stanley 1885
25. Hermann von Wissmann. Sketch portrait; from Brown 1892–95
26. Jérôme Becker. Portrait engraving; from Becker 1887
27. Tippu Tip’s majlis, probably in Nyangwe. Engraving; from Ward 1890
28. Walter Deane escaping from Stanley Falls. Illustration; from Ward 1890
29. The steamboat Le Stanley. Engraving; from Ward 1890
30. Rooftop view of Zanzibar, early 20th century. Photograph, from the Royal Commonwealth Society
Collection; by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library 31. Zanzibar
waterfront, early 20th century. Photograph, from the Royal Commonwealth Society Collection; by kind
permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library 32. View from the roof of Bait al-Ajaib,
2012. Photograph by the author
Foreword and Acknowledgements
THE AIM OF THIS BOOK is to introduce the reader, through the life of Tippu Tip,
to the extraordinary world of East Africa in the second half of the 19th
century – the time of the ‘Scramble for Africa’ when European powers took over
huge areas of the continent in a largely unplanned campaign of colonial and
imperial expansion. Tippu Tip both spearheaded the Arab effort to open up
Central Africa from the east, and watched from a ringside seat as Arab influence
in the region was whittled away. In the latter process he played a significant role
by co-operating with Western explorers, most notably with Henry Morton
Stanley. His ability to face both ways found its most piquant expression when
King Leopold II of Belgium engaged him as a governor in the eastern Congo. By
following Tippu Tip’s life, we can begin to understand how and why these
momentous events unfolded – processes which have left strong traces in Africa
still today.
I first came across Tippu Tip when researching for a dissertation on the
abolition of slavery and the slave trade in East Africa and the Indian Ocean in
the 19th century. He immediately seemed an intriguing character. Dismissed in
some accounts as a ‘notorious slave trader’, there was obviously more to him
than that. For one thing, the evidence suggests that he was primarily interested in
ivory, not slaves. Not that this makes him an angel, since the quest for ivory had
disastrous effects on elephant herds even in (and before) Tippu Tip’s time, long
before the terrible depredations we are seeing today. But he stands out from his
Arab contemporaries. Partly this is because he engaged more closely with the
world outside Africa. Mainly, however, it is because he left memoirs (the
Maisha, which cannot quite be called an autobiography), through which the
voice of a 19th-century Arab is clearly heard.
The book also fills a gap in the English-language bibliography of Africa of
the Scramble. In François Renault, Tippu Tip has had his biographer in French,
but in a form not easily accessible to the general reader. I hope that, through this
book, more will come to enjoy a knowledge of this interesting episode in African
(and European) history, with its cast of remarkable characters.
Acknowledgements
No author works alone. I have been helped by my wife, Sibella, and family
members, all supportive of my apparent obsession with Tippu Tip. I am grateful
to a number of Africanists who pointed me in the right direction in my research,
and particularly to Felicitas Becker in Cambridge, who helped sort out
discrepancies in the translations of Tippu Tip’s memoirs. Clara Semple helped
me with illustrations, and on information about the Maria Theresa dollar. Staff in
the Cambridge University Library, especially in the Munby Rare Books Room,
were invariably helpful in digging out source material. My editor, Will Facey,
ironed out many wrinkles, and helped make the book more accessible. I thank
them all.
Transliteration and presentation
References to Tippu Tip’s memoirs (see the Bibliography and Notes on Sources)
are given in the form Maisha § [paragraph number], using the paragraph
numbers in the Smith/Whiteley edition.
I have wanted to make this book accessible to the general reader, and so have
not used an academic style of transliterating all Arabic words and names, and
have minimized diacritical markings, i.e. lines above letters or dots above/below
them. In any case, the names of most of the characters in this book took on a
Swahili form, in which the Arabic ʿayn and the hamza disappear. Familiar
Arabic names, of people and places, are spelt in a way used normally in English
writing (e.g. Mohammed rather than the correct Muḥammad; Oman, not
ʿUmān), or in the form that they appear in Swahili writings. I have written the
name of the Omani ruling family as Al Bu Saʿidi, although it is also found in the
form al-Busaʿidi and other variants. Where I have wanted to show the Arabic
letter ʿayn, it is shown as ʿ, but omitted in names beginning with ʿAbd or ʿAbdul
(which are normally shown in the form Abdul Rahman, Abdul Karim, etc, and
not ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, etc), and in other words with widely accepted familiar
transliterations. For plurals of Arabic words or names, I have used a final s, and
not the Arabic inflected plural, e.g. the Al Bu Saʿidis. I have normally used bin
for ‘son of’, rather than ibn (which is equally correct) or b. (often used in
scholarly writing).
Swahili nouns are prefixed to denote singular or plural, and (in some cases)
place. For example, a Swahili person is a Mswahili; several are Waswahili. The
prefix U denotes territory. In this book I have used Wa and U for peoples and
territories, e.g. Wanyamwezi (Nyamwezi people), Unyanyembe (the land of
Nyanyembe).
I have aimed at consistency of spelling of African, Swahili and Arabic names,
but may not have achieved it; the sources are wildly inconsistent, to the extent
that interpreting both people and places is often difficult or speculative, or both.
Where an alternative spelling is often found in the literature, I have referred to it
in brackets without further explanation, e.g. Sayf (or Sefu).
Most of the places named in the text are shown on the maps – but not all.
Both Tippu Tip and the explorers often included names of villages which no
longer exist; the earnest researcher can find these on the detailed (and very
beautiful) maps in 19th-century editions of their travels. Names of Indian places
are given with the spelling conventionally used before 1947, e.g. Bombay not
Mumbai, Calcutta not Kolkata.
Stuart Laing
Corpus Christi College
Cambridge 2017