Zanzibar 1869 The Jairam Sewji Legacy and the Clove Crash

In the late 1860s, Zanzibar's clove boom turned bust, and the island's economy teetered on the brink. At the center of the storm was Jairam Sewji, the Khoja merchant who had bankrolled the Busaid Sultanate for decades. This episode follows Sewji's rise from a small trader to the Sultan's chief financier, and then his role in the crash of 1869, when clove prices collapsed and the Indian merchant community called in debts that nearly toppled the government. We explore how Sewji's moneylending and trade networks intertwined with the sultanate's finances, the daily life of the merchant class in Stone Town, and the scramble to recover when the bubble burst. With the clove industry in ruins and the slave trade still simmering, the episode reveals the fragile foundations of Zanzibar's prosperity and the man who held it all together. #Zanzibar #JairamSewji #CloveCrash #IndianOceanTrade #BusaidSultanate #KhojaMerchants #StoneTown #SultanMajid #ThariaTopan #MariaTheresaThaler #SlaveTrade #Unguja #Pemba #19thCentury #EconomicHistory #EastAfrica #FexingoHistory #History Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo