Zanzibar clove plantations
Plantaciones de clavo de Zanzíbar
- Date
- c. 1818 · confidence medium
- Place
- Unguja Island, Zanzibar, Tanzania
- Credited to
- Omani planters under Sultan Said bin Sultan
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Large-scale cultivation of the clove tree (native to the Moluccas), introduced from Réunion and Mauritius by Omani planters. It made Zanzibar and Pemba the world's leading clove producers in the 19th century.
The introduction is attributed to an Omani planter around 1818, backed by Sultan Said; the exact year and the protagonists are debated among sources. Plantation expansion went hand in hand with the mass enslavement of Africans from the mainland.
What it led to
- plantation economy and slave labour on the Swahili coast
- wealth of the Omani sultanate in Zanzibar and the shift of its capital
- a spice-export industry that persists today