“Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire” by Seema Alavi

Palace of the Sultan in Zanzibar (Wikimedia Commons)

Oman and the connected history of Zanzibar is something those of us of a certain age (and especially those of us who used to collect stamps) perhaps knew to at least some extent, but then (also perhaps) largely forgot as the Arabian Peninsula rearranged itself around the ever-increasing political and economic clout of Saudi Arabia and Gulf states. Oman isn’t an oil power, nor does it host major global sporting events or own iconic football teams or airlines.

But it wasn’t all that long ago (1964 in fact) that Omani Arabs ran Zanzibar as a sultanate; Gwadar, the site of a major Belt and Road port project in Pakistan, was Omani territory until 1958. Furthermore, this Omani “empire” was of relatively recent (ca 1700 or later) vintage and resulted in no small part from the retreat of the Portuguese: Europe’s march to imperial domination wasn’t always linear.

 

Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire, Seema Alavi (Penguin India, May 2023)
Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire, Seema Alavi (Penguin India, May 2023)

Sovereigns of the Sea by Seema Alavi, a professor of history at Ashoka University, tells the story of “Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire”, focusing primarily on the half-century centered around 1850-60. The book is awash in fascinating details, for example, that the capital was moved from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1832, reminiscent in some ways of a similar move of the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro a couple of decades earlier: Zanzibar, like Brazil, was richer than than the imperial mother country. Muscat also controlled the now very much inalienably Iranian Bandar Abbas, while Zanzibar ruled over a great extent of the East African coast, and was still expanding well into the latter part of the 19th century into places taken over (soon after) by Britain and Germany.

Alavi structures the book by sultan, starting with Sayyid Sa‘īd, the dynasty’s patriarch, who ruled both Oman and Zanzibar from 1804 to 1856. On his death, the Sultanate was split, ultimately in a British-brokered deal, between one son Majid in Zanzibar and another Thuwayni in Oman. Thuwayni died in suspicious circumstances in 1866, the suspicions falling on his son Salim, who made himself sultan. Salim, who only lasted a couple of years, doesn’t merit a chapter. The next two chapters cover Turki in Oman and Barghash in Zanzibar, taking the narrative to, more or less, the century’s ¾ mark. Oman and Zanzibar both became British protectorates in the last decade of the 19th century.

Penguin positions the book on “the Sultans of Oman” as “a thrilling historical account of their action-packed battles, daring expeditions, epic triumphs and ingenious politics”. This is something of a misrepresentation. Most of the narrative focuses on the 1850s and 60s and is very granular rather than thrilling, with detailed discussion of agreements, individual British officials, who was supporting whom, who traveled where when, taxation, telegraph lines and the like. The British seem to have done a good job of heading off any daring expeditions or epic triumphs before they happened. The book could have used a more comprehensive edit, because there is considerable repetition, and the chronology can be hard to follow as Alavi jumps forward and backwards. But Alavi nevertheless manages to give a good idea of the political dynamics of the period and the reader can glean something of the various sultans’ often quite different personalities.

One is left feeling that there is much more about the region and its history to be written about.

More importantly perhaps, Alavi situates Oman writ large within an Indian Ocean (ie non-eurocentric) context. India, and more importantly perhaps, Indians are major players, economically certainly, but politically as well. Indeed, Indians seemed so crucial to the economic functioning of the Indian Ocean littoral, including East Africa, that one is left wondering why current-day India seems to have allowed China to steal a regional march on it.

One difficulty a non-specialist reviewer has is knowing whether Alavi has represented the material accurately. There is no reason to think she hasn’t, but for all her attempts to portray Oman as an imperial player of its own with considerable agency, neither Oman nor Zanzibar come across in the book as particularly admirable places, but instead as rather grubby (Zanzibar literally so: it had major problems with sewage and cholera was rampant; Dr Livingstone called it “Stinkibar”). And they had in fact had little agency at all: not much of significance happened without British involvement (out of India for the most part, rather than London), concurrence or, in a number of cases, instigation.

More seriously to modern eyes, such agency as they did have seems to have been largely focused on maintaining the trade in slaves from Africa—a trade on which the economies of both places was largely based—long after it was supposed to have been abolished. Alevi devotes many (largely non-judgemental) pages to this. While one can appreciate the nous and wiles of local rulers in their efforts to evade subjugation (something both places managed; neither became colonies), one’s sympathy is tempered when it is the slave trade that underpins the effort. Not that Britain had much to feel superior about: rhetoric aside, it prioritized commerce and stability.

One is left feeling that there is much more about the region and its history to be written about.


Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books.