Book Excerpt: Guts, Glory and Empire- The Epic Story of Goans in Zanzibar, 1865–1910 by Selma Carvalho

An exclusive book excerpt from Guts, Glory and Empire- The Epic Story of Goans in Zanzibar, 1865–1910 by Selma Carvalho (Speaking Tiger, 2026).

Drunken Sailors

The township of Zanzibar lay to the west of the island where about 60,000 people lived, of which a considerable number were Banias, Khojahs and Bohras from Kutch, Surat and Bombay. The principal buildings—square, stone-walled, flat-roofed—all looked out to sky and sea, and others, unimpressive and mudwalled, crowded inland. As daylight broke native men sat on the baraza outside their homes, nodding to passers-by, greeting them with hujambo and habari gani, how are you? Any news? Down by the landing beach, the masts of docked ships clung to the horizon, their anchors dropped yards from the white surf coast. Without a pier or jetty trailing onto land, a small boat was the only way to come ashore rowing past lateen-sail dhows. There the onlooker watched as stevedores unloaded coffee, carpets, dried fruits, preserved meats, spices, soaps, sugar, tortoise shell, vermicelli, cotton fabrics, coarse German crockery, copper and brass, and beads, and loaded cloves, red peppers, coconuts, sesame seeds, copra, cocoa-nuts, copal gum, ivory, ebony and cowries.

A short walk from the landing beach and there appeared the sultan’s palace, an imposing fort, a customs house and the British consulate, a large, decaying pile susceptible to the spray of the sea when the tide came in. It belonged or rather was usurped by the ruler Sayyid Said al-busa’idi and presented to the British more or less as a gift. In the years to come the British consulate would become a hive of political manoeuvring. From within its walls came ultimatums, orders for bombardment, toppling of dynasties and chalking out empire’s fate in the region, the only predictable outcome of which was always going to be divesting the sultanate of its power. It was also the stronghold from where the fate of Goan lives would be decided. But that was decades into the future. For now, in the upper-rooms which provided some respite from the dank walls, surrounded by furniture of mostly ‘Calcutta make’ loomed the ‘tall, broad shouldered, and powerful figure’ of Consul Atkins Hamerton, who over the years slowly came undone by the ‘deadly damp of Zanzibar.’

Despite the inhospitable climate it was imperative, Hamerton had argued persuasively, that he be housed near the harbour. It was the harbour that was central to life in Zanzibar and if he was ‘not at hand serious consequences would probably result.’ As ships made landfall, Hamerton was convinced, consumed by frenzy, sailors ‘go off to the jungle, desert their vessels, sleep on the ground, catch the fever.’ The seafront was a perilous place of brawls, knife fights, and early death. Or, as General Lloyd Mathews, who played a formidable role in Zanzibar, described it some years later, a throng of ‘drunken sailors, Levantines and others of no status drinking heavily and a trouble to all.’ This far frontier on the Indian Ocean was where mid-century Goan sailors disembarked, spending the night on the beach or trooping up the road to find a tavernkeeper. If they were violently drunk, they might spend the night in a Zanzibar jail, like Miguel and Jacques Fernandes, who, in December 1891, were frog-marched to their ship the Juba after a night in jail, fined 4 rupees each, one rupee going toward the jail fund and the rest to the man they assaulted. On Sundays, the sailors made their way to the French mission housed not too far away from the seafront, where a Catholic priest would be celebrating Mass. Later in the day, a priest might tuck his cassock in his breeches and climb on board the docked man-o-wars and corvettes to tend to the pastoral needs of those who had not attended Mass.

On 5 July 1887, thirty-two-year-old Domingos Raphael Dias succumbed to an epileptic attack while working on board the SS Oriental off the coast of Zanzibar. These were the not-so lucky Goan sailors carried ashore trembling with fevers, writhing in agony, dying of dysentery, beriberi, or pulmonary failures, rushed to whatever medical care was available, which was not much save for the homes of some kindly Goans who took them in, or the faces of the Sisters of Mercy nuns peering down at them at the French Catholic Mission Hospital. Or, the likes of S. Cardoz, sore with venereal disease, discharged in 1886 from the SS Baghdad where he worked as a baker, with his final wages of 26.69 rupees. The French missionaries had a doctor within their ranks, who did what he could with the eight or ten beds at their French Mission Hospital as it became known, initially set up to care for French sailors and which administered to Goans. Once the English Universities’ Mission Hospital was built around 1890, Goans were treated there as well. For those that died a quick burial followed—the corpse brought to shore by a small boat paddling out to the docked ship, porters carrying it to the French Hospital, and later to the bleak end of a Christian cemetery. If they thought of their death at all, seldom would it have occurred to them that they would die so far from home with so little on them. Their bodies identified by some willing Goan, their clothes burnt for fear of infection, their meagre dues collected from the shipping lines they worked for, and sent to the grieving wife or parents back in Goa, would mark the end of their short life, most of it spent on the high seas.

Excerpted with permission from the author and publishers of Guts, Glory and Empire- The Epic Story of Goans in Zanzibar, 1865–1910 by Selma Carvalho (Speaking Tiger, 2026).

About the Book

A ground-breaking account of Goans who arrived in mid-nineteenth-century Zanzibar as sailors, cooks and clerks, and went on to become one of East Africa’s wealthiest and most influential communities. This is a sweeping human story of identity, ambition and the ambiguous nature of power.

Zanzibar, situated off the coast of East Africa, was for long a junction for monsoon-driven sea routes connecting Africa, Europe and Asia. By the mid-nineteenth century, it had risen to prominence as a busy, cosmopolitan trading post for cloves, ivory and, unfortunately, slaves. It became a beacon for missionaries, explorers, merchants, and a theatre of Europe’s imperial ambitions. It was at this time that Goans, who had long been travellers and traders to the East African coast, began settling in Zanzibar, flourishing under Sultan Barghash bin Said’s reign.

Among the early arrivals were C. R. Souza, D. B. Pereira and Brás Souza, who would all go on to become influential figures—ambitious, benevolent, but ultimately flawed characters. Their engagement with a host of lively per¬sonalities, including British arch-imperialists John Kirk and Gerald Portal, set in motion a compelling challenge of empire’s authority over ordinary lives. Mistaken as ‘half-caste Portuguese’, they were at times favoured by Britain as law-abiding and industrious, and at other times dismissed as natives needing supervision, even as they began to assert tremendous agency over their own individual lives, gaining influence as physicians, musicians and interpreters to the sultan. Aware of their rights as Portuguese citizens, and making intelli¬gent use of the privilege and protection extended to them by the sultanate, they pushed back against Britain’s erosion of their civil liberties.

In Guts, Glory and Empire, a compelling and unprecedented work of history set against the backdrop of Europe’s ascendancy in Africa, Selma Carvalho brings us the story of this remarkable community, and restores South Asian voices to Indian Ocean histories.

About the Author

Selma Carvalho is the author of three non-fiction books documenting the Goan presence in East Africa. Between 2011 and 2014, she directed a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, UK to record the oral histories of Goans from East Africa, now archived at the British Library. She curated the first ever East African Goan exhibition at the Nehru Centre, London and her work has been used in other exhibitions, such as ‘Documenting South Asian Histories’, Birmingham.