Thread by @HistoryKE

#HistoryKeThread After Britain and Oman had signed the Moresby Treaty in 1822, two British ships under the command of Captain William Fitzwilliam Wentworth Owen were dispatched to the Indian Ocean to survey the East African coast and Arabia.

The captain's mandate was to monitor and stamp out any slave trade activity in the region. Owen was a man so fervently committed to the cause of ridding the world of slavery that he sailed to Muscat on his ship, HMS Leven, to harangue Seyyid Said about the horrors of slave trade.

The other ship under his command, HMS Barracouda, paid a visit to Mombasa to stock up on supplies. The Barracouda sailed into Mombasa harbour on December 4th 1823.

At the time, a lone Omani ship was attempting to enforce a blockade at the (old Mombasa) harbour. But since The Barracouda belonged to an ally, it was allowed in.

The Mazrui were prepared to provide the British ship with a lot more than food and water, once again offering the coast to Britain.

Again the offer was turned down at a consultative meeting inside Fort Jesus. The officer who was forced to spurn the Mazrui offer reportedly feared for his life as he broke the news.

Rejected a third time, the Mazrui considered other tactics.

As The Barracouda sailed over the horizon, the Mazrui hastily knitted their own home-made version of the Union Jack and hoisted it above Fort Jesus, much to the consternation of the Omani watching from a distance.

If this had surprised the Omani, it was nothing compared to the reaction of Captain Owen when he sailed into Mombasa two months later.

Owen, who would later describe Sheikh Mazrui as “an old dotard who had outlived every passion but avarice”, was curious to know why a Union Flag - a rather odd-looking one - was fluttering above Fort Jesus.

He was presented with the desperate pleas and offers of the Mazrui and saw in them a golden opportunity to rid much of the Swahili coast of slavery.

On behalf of Britain, and in a move that would later have major ramifications on the future of Kenya, Owen agreed to establish a British protectorate over Mombasa, along with a 200 mile stretch of coastline that probably wasn't even the Mazrui's to give away in the first place.

In return, the Mazruis agreed to end the slave trade within the new protectorate.

The Omani anxiously monitored developments, and were suddenly forced now to back off.

Owen departed, leaving his deputy, a South African lieutenant called John James Reitz, in command of Britain's latest imperial possession.

Always eager to literally bend over backwards to appease their new allies the British, Mazrui gave Reitz a sizeable plot of land on the mainland north of Mombasa, an area occupied today by English Point Marina.

Owen wasn't as generous, offering the Mazrui a garrison of only five men, a force far incapable of enforcing the terms of the pact, which the Mazrui broke almost as soon as Owen had left.

Perhaps to quench his curiosity, Reitz, after whom Port Reitz in Mombasa is named, embarked on a suicidal familiarization tour of the malaria-infested coastline. He would die within four months, leaving the governorship of the protectorate...

... in the hands of a sixteen year old midshipman, George Philips, whom the Mazrui never liked, especially after he managed to seize a slave dhow, free its cargo and establish the first colony for freed slaves on the coast.

Eventually, Britain's first imperial venture into East Africa came to an end. Seyyid Said made a diplomatic complaint to the British headquarters in Bombay, which, when they heard what was going on in Mombasa, must have regarded Owen's actions as...

...a little short of gross insubordination, given that he had put at risk the delicate alliance between Great Britain and Oman.

In 1826, the protectorate was annulled, leaving the Mazrui to face the Omani on their own.

But Seyyid Said was in no hurry to make any moves. In 1828, he paid his first visit to his East African realm and, while savouring the beauty of the islands and its beaches there, set out to oust the Mazrui from Mombasa.

This he did after a protracted guerilla-like war.

Muscat forced the Mazrui to sign a treaty recognising the pro-Omani al Busaidi family overlordship. The sultan left for Oman, leaving behind a force of 300 troops in Fort Jesus under the command of Nassir bin Suleiman.

With Seyyid Said back in Muscat, once the Mazruis and their backers besieged the Omani troops inside the fort, starving them into surrender. Nassir was murdered and the Mazrui were once again back in control of Mombasa.

The Omani made two attempts to recover Mombasa in the years that followed, but it was not until the Mazrui suffered bitter family feuds in 1837 that Seyyid Said was finally able to occupy Mombasa without a drop of blood being shed.

The Mazrui were rounded up, arrested and deported to Persia. Some fled to Pate and Siyu where, in 1843, there was a short-lived episode of triumph during which one of Seyyid Said's greatest generals was killed by a hail of poisoned arrows.

Said ordered the construction of a fort at Siyu (pictured) to subdue any further resistance, leaving him in total control of the Swahili coast from Pate to Cape Delgado.

Seyyid Said could now breathe easy, exploit and develop the commercial opportunities of the region.