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At the coast of equatorial Africa, divided from the mainland for a channel width of only thirty miles, lies the island of Zanzibar (Unguja). The regular recurrence of the monsoon allowed to continue contacts with India, the Red Sea and the Gulf, the proximity of the coast represented a strategic position for trade between the interior of Africa and the Indian Ocean, Zanzibar was in the nineteenth considered 'the depot of the richest trade in Eastern Africa'. Special opportunities for trade in goods and slaves, controlled by the Omani dynasty of Al Bu Sa'id, could not escape the political and commercial interests of France and England.

- In the late 18th and early 19th century information in English in European hands regarding the lands between Persia and the western borders of British India was scarce at best, completely absent at worst. It was at the outbreak of a European crisis that the absence of cartographic and topographic documents on those lands - now part of Pakistan - suddenly became the centre of concern and tension, above all for the political and military governors of British India.

AbstractThe power of the Al Bu Sa'id Sultans of Oman was widely known as based on delicate balances of forces (and ethnic-social groups), deeply different among them. In fact, the elements that composed the nineteenth century Omani leadership were, and had always been, generally 'divided' amongst three different ethnic groups: the Baluch, the Asian merchant communities and the African regional leaders (Mwiny Mkuu). Within this framework, the role played by European Powers, particularly by the Treaties signed between the Sultans of Oman and the East India Company for abolishing slavery, and by the arms trade was crucial for the development of the Gulf and the Western Indian Ocean international networks They highly contributed to the gradual 'shifting' of the Omanis from the slave trade to clove and spice cultivation – the major economic source of Zanzibar Island – along the coastal area of Sub-Saharan East Africa. The role played by the Omani Sultans – the myth – within the western traditional historiography, which often described them as firmly controlling both the Arabian and African littorals and the major trading ports of the Western Indian Ocean during the nineteenth century, will be reexamined in this paper, taking into account recent research studies and international debates in the topic. The new hypothesis consists of a different perception of the concepts of power and control (political and territorial) of the Western Indian Ocean littorals by the most famous of the Sultans of Oman during the nineteenth century: Saiyid Sa'id bin Sultan Al Bu Sa'id.

This article examines European perceptions and misperceptions, distortions, exaggerations and misunderstandings of western Indian Ocean societies in the 19thcentury. For this work I have combined research on European sources, both published and manuscript, and mostly from the British archives, with field research that I have carried out in southwest Asia, Arabia, and east Africa. The fact that most European observers of Indian Ocean societies in the 19thcentury carried the baggage of British and French colonial policy, and that they tended to lack deep knowledge of the region as well as empathy for the people, combined to produce a certain historical, political and cultural approach to local realities, which, in some cases, is still unmodified today. Through my own field research I have met with local tribal elites in Makran, Baluchistan and Oman, and with leaders of the major Swahili families of Zanzibar. I have shared tea and stories with old women. These contacts provide an invaluable insight into local interpretations of regional history, through the historical memory preserved in rituals and tales. This research also makes possible a new understanding of the significance of places, and the historical events associated with them.