A British diarist on the Arab-African slave trade

Devereux, William Cope. A Cruise in the "Gorgon;" or, Eighteen months on H.M.S. "Gorgon," Engaged in the Suppression of the Slave Trade on the East Coast of Africa.

€ 4.500,00

First edition in its original binding; a scarce and desirable work. "The Gorgon was a paddle-wheel sloop dispatched to the east coast of Africa to stop the illegal slave trade in the region. The vessel made its way up the Zambesi to meet the famous missionary explorer David Livingstone" (Czech). In doing so, it so happened that the sailors aboard the Gorgon bore witness to many major political players and forces along the Eastern coast of Africa: David Livingstone (1813-73) breakfasts aboard the Gorgon in the midst of his infamous Zambezi Expedition; the first Sultan of Zanzibar Majid bin Said (1834-70) demands a gun salute from the British; the exiled cousin of the Sultan of Anjouan is encountered attempting to maneuver his way back home.

Devereux, an unsympathetic but detailed diarist, describes the history of Zanzibar and its Arab rulers, including how "in 1698 the Portuguese were driven out of Mombasa by the Sultan of Oman" (p. 98) and how "the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba, and Monfia fell under the Imaum", that is Said bin Sultan (1791-1856) of Muscat and Oman. In numerous encounters, Devereux describes firsthand the slave trade as he witnesses it, including very detailed scenes of the inspection and sale of enslaved people. He encounters the grave of Mary Livingstone, and witnesses the tensions between Swahilis and Arabs and between the European colonial powers vying with each other in the Scramble for Africa. Pulled from Devereaux's diaries and written "chiefly amid the noise and bustle of the gun-room of Her Majesty's ship 'Gorgon'", the work is not a nostalgic revery but rather a detailed and immediate series of impressions, and a significant primary source on the East African slave trade, especially as it affected the Arab world.