Both Zanzibar and Pemba have been known since the earliest explorers tales as “the land of Zenj ”. “Bar” is the Arab word for coast, it was literally known as the “black coast”, or “the coast of the blacks”.

By 900 ad Pemba , Zanzibar and the whole Swahili coast was a vibrant trading region. This was long before Europeans appeared (Portuguese, Spanish, English and Dutch).  The trade in this part of the Indian Ocean was well established and connected China with the coast of Africa via Yemen and as far south as Mozambique.

For a long time the islands were only interesting to traders as safe havens; just far enough from the mainland to stay out of reach of malicious local chiefs, fertile enough to produce fresh food and supply water, and sporting enough hide-aways and deep anchoring bays to give a ship a few days respite – or to allow suspicious cargo ships to hide away from prying eyes.  

The Arab traders came down the coast with each monsoon, and life had a quiet rhythm based on these rules of transport. Goods, peoples, techniques, language and religions were all handed over, tried, weighed, balanced, kept, rejected or adapted. Today, the Swahili people eat curries like Indians, tell stories and poetry like the old Persians, sail in boats which are almost exact copies of ancient Indonesian boats, count in Arabic and are, overall, united by the Islamic faith.

Besides the trade in commercial goods like perfume, spices, gold and cloth, Zanzibar rose to the height of her power because of her darker side. The slave markets. Thousands of slaves were bought or raided in the interior of east and central Africa , marched to the coast and then shipped to Zanzibar to be auctioned and further transported.  The trade in slavery was so profitable, that when the Sultan of Muscat had a minor altercation with his people and his couriers, there was little to hold him from moving his entire court to Shangani in 1832. He handed over Muscat to his eldest son. This started a direct administrative link between the Trucial Coast and East Africa . The sultan built himself a palace and considered Pemba as an attached, small, interesting but not so profitable back yard…. Good for hunting or sailing trips.

The Sultan decreed that every inhabitant of the island was to plant 3 clove trees before he came to settle on the islands, because he loved the scent of cloves. By the time he moved, 2 years later, there were already a quarter of a million trees on the islands, all originating from the Moluccas (even today, most of the old trees on Pemba can still be traced to their ancestor trees – they are over 100 years old and form a magnificent sight)  The Sultans’ focus was on the slave trade of Zanzibar, and thus Pemba was quietly left to its own devices.  

When you look at a map of the Indian Ocean, both Pemba and Zanzibar stand out as the first landfall point coming from the East. This meant that even though Pemba was now under Omani Arab control (via Zanzibar), it was still exposed to trading dhows from all corners, and gave it the characteristic Swahili mixture of cultural traits.

With the coming of the Europeans to the Indian Ocean , the rules of the game changed. For centuries, the Arabs, the Indians and the Africans had traded. Naturally conflicts  were a regular thing, but their uniting faith and mission (trade) kept the game more or less fair. The Europeans came in looking for the passage to the east, to find the famous lands where spices came from and, in the process, make the world a Christian place. The former traders of The Indian Ocean never had the latter idea, trade was merely the unifying idea, and in times, most traders became Muslim as a natural process.

The only access European powers had to Eastern trade goods was via Constantinople , or the passage through the Red Sea . The Europeans had engaged in endless wars against the Muslim traders, and were adamant that they wanted to find the way to the East on their own.

The European explorer/traders were involved in countless schemes against their own Nations to keep any knowledge about this passage secret. This created a breed of explorers focused on brutal warfare, power and commerce. This disrupted trading links and inevitably changed the roles of Zanzibar and Pemba .

Zanzibar remained a major centre of Slave trade for anther century or so, but with the coming of Dr.Livingstone, the European public exercised an enormous pressure to eradicate this trade (in 1873 Sultan Bhargash agreed to the eradication of slavery).

Both islands resisted this pressure for a long time. Pemba, with more distance to the coast, came to play a greater role in the now illegal slave trade.  Because of this, more and more Bantu people from the mainland came and stayed on Pemba, and a new ethnic mix was created.

Slavery was officially abandoned in Zanzibar (and Pemba ) in the year 1873 and other sources of income had to be found. The European Powers now practically ran Zanzibar but Pemba’s dark secret crept on unnoticed.

Pemba was, for another century, undisturbed. It remained a lightly populated island, surviving on fishing and farming, but with a trade network stretching as far North as the Red Sea. The island made a name for itself with its boat builders, (the “stitched” boats of the Swahili Coast), the clove trees (sailors would smell Pemba in the clove harvesting season), its witchdoctors and beautiful women.  

Consequently the Pembans had enormous exposure to the larger world surrounding them, either through their trade, their relatives or the neighbouring Zanzibaris. In many ways, the Pembans were better off than the Zanzibaris.

Europeans rarely landed on Pemba , except for food, water and a few days rest from a storm. This was in direct contrast to Zanzibar where the Europeans exerted influence and in some cases administrative control. 

Pemba continued to be a backwater, until the value of cloves was discovered and she made fortunes for her people by selling these spices.