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The Last Slave Market: Dr John Kirk and the Struggle to End the African Slave Trade. Alastair Hazell. Constable. [pounds sterling]16.99. [xii] + 352 pages. ISBN 978-1-84529-672-8. This is an enthralling account of the slave trade in Zanzibar in the nineteenth century and of the attempts of one man. Sir John Kirk, to end it. Kirk had been part of Livingstone's explorations in the 1860s and had had troubled relations with the great man. Where they agreed was in their opposition to slavery and the continuing trade in Africa, centred in Zanzibar and still flourishing in the 1870s. Using surviving MSS the author traces John Kirk's involvement with Livingstone, who could be difficult, to say the least, from the doomed Zambesi expedition. He then moves to Kirk's return to Africa in 1866, this time to Zanzibar as medical officer at the British consulate. The island was governed by the Mohammedan Sultan who benefited financially from the slave trade. Through a mastery of the trade's economics and through personal bravery Kirk was able to implement British policy to end the trade. He also helped Livingstone in his latest adventure and suffered at the hands of the egotistic missionary and the equally egotistic journalist, Stanley. While Kirk's work did not totally end the slave trade in East Africa--this only occurred in the 1890s--it was a major step forward. In this book we have not only the rehabilitation of a man who has been too frequently put into Livingstone's shadows but an account of the African slave trade seen at first hand by one who worked to end it.

Article on the kinds of punishments slaves received in Zanzibar during the 1800s

In particular, the freedom of enslaved women claimed as concubines was a topic of discussion among British officials as they pondered whether, when, and how to completely abolish slavery in the Zanzibar Islands. These discussions shed light on the gendered components of abolition as well as the action of women who had been sold into slavery who teamed up with Friends missionaries to press the British to abolitionize slavery entirely in the islands. Young women who sought their liberation by refuting the idea that their enslavement rendered them immoral, rather than a generous colonial power, claimed and demanded abolition.

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The following journal describes the progression of slavery in British East Africa and Zanzibar and how it came to an end in the 1800s.