ON SLAVE TRADE (EAST COAST OF AFRICA^.
95
Appendix^ No. 3.
PAPER handed in by the Honourable C. Vivian, 24 July 1871.
DRAFT REPORT upon the Questions regarding the Kutcheesíu ^a?iziba7-, submitted Appendix No. 3
to the Committee upon the East African Slave Trade.
My Lord, _ Foreign Office, April 1870.
By your Lordship’s directions we have considered the Papers which have been referred
to us as to the right of jurisdiction possessed by Her Majesty’s Government over certain
natives of Kutch, resident in Zanzibar, as well over those who have, as over those who have
not enrolled themselves on the British Consular Register, in accordance with the provisions
of Her Majesty’s Order in Council of the 9th of August 1866.
The Order in Council states that “A Register shall be kept by Her Majesty’s Consul of
all British subjects, and of all natives of British-protected States in India who may claim
British protection, residing within the dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar;” and that
“ any British subject who shall refuse or neglect to be so enrolled, and who shall not excuse
such refusal or neglect to the satisfaction of the Consul, shall not be entitled to be
recognised or protected as a British subject in respect to any suit, dispute, or difficulty in
which he may have been, or may be, engaged or involved within the dominions of the
Sultan of Zanzibar, at any time when he shall not have been or shall not be so enrolled.”
The Kutchees seem to have thought that by neglecting to inscribe themselves on the
consular register they were at liberty to elect the Sultan’s protection in lieu of that of Her
Majesty’s Government, and so to accomplish their object of placing themselves under the
laws of Zanzibar, which permit the acquiring and ho'ding of slaves ; and we observe, from
the Papers submitted to us, that the Governments of Bombay and of India, and the political
agents at Zanzibar, have taken different views of the question.
In 1860, before the Order in Council was passed. Colonel Rigby, after giving a month’s
notice of his intention, emancipated without further notice or difficulty all the slaves in the
Island of Zanzibar belonging to natives of India under British protection, and he induced
the Sultan to issue orders that all slaves belonging to natives of India on the mainland
should be at once freed, and that no slaves should in future be sold to them.
Colonel Rigby’s proceedings were at that time entirely sanction d and approved by the
Bombay Government. Subsequently to the departure of Colonel Rigby from Zanzibar in
1862, and before the arrival of Mr. Churchill in 1867, a distinction was made between
Kutchees who had registered themselves at the consulate and those who had not done so,
the latter being allowed to place themselves under the Sultan’s protection, and to hold
slaves.
Mr. Churchill, however, soon after his arrival at Zanzibar, brought the matter to the
notice of the Government of Bombay, in a Despatch of 22nd December 1867, in which
he says ;—
“I learn from an attentive perusal of the instructions, 1st, That up to Colonel Rigby’s
departure from Zanzibar, no native of India dared to possess a slave.
“ 2. That Colonel Rigby had received the approval of Government in all his proceedings
\\ith regard to the emancipation of the slaves above alluded to.
3. That it was af'er Colonel Rigby’s departure that natives of India were allowed to
place themselves under the Sultan’s protection.”
Mr. Churchill was in doubt as to the course he should pursue with respect to the slaveholding
natives of India who had declined to avail themselves of the British protectorate,
while the Sultan of Zanzibar held “ that had not Mr. Churchill’s predecessors allowed it,
Ho native of India would be holding slaves in his dominions, but that having been told that
Kutchees and other subjects of British protected States in India might be looked upon in
the same light as his Arab subjects, he had allowed them to purchase slaves, and that it
Was not fair to punish them for having innocently done what they did not know to be
'vrong.”
The opinion of the Bombay Government upon this question was that Her Majesty’s
Government had no right to interfere with those subjects of the Rao of Kutch who had not
^vailed themselves of the option of registering their names as entitled to British protection,
Hr, at all events that, if we could interfere, it must be by agreement with the Rao of Kutch,
Hnd after granting the owners compensation for the loss of their slaves, but they held that
0.116. M 4 British
