Zanzibar Protectorate

The Zanzibar Protectorate was the British protectorate over the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, established in 1890 and terminated on 10 December 1963. Britain had long dominated the Sultanate of Zanzibar through trade, consular influence and the campaign against the slave trade, and the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty with Germany in 1890 formally recognised a British protectorate over the islands. The sultan remained as ruler, but real authority lay with British residents and advisers, who supervised finance, justice and defence while traditional viziers handled local administration. Zanzibar City, on the island of Unguja, was the capital and the centre of the clove trade that underpinned the economy. Britain abolished the legal status of slavery in the islands in 1897, and the protectorate's administration long depended on customs revenue from cloves. The protectorate was ended by the Zanzibar Act of 1963, and the islands became an independent constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth under the sultan. A revolution in January 1964 overthrew the sultanate, and later that year Zanzibar united with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.