1873 — The Slave Market Closed

On June 5, 1873, the Sultan of Zanzibar bowed to British pressure and closed the island's great slave market, then the largest open slave market in the world, where up to fifty thousand captive Africans were sold each year. The treaty followed Sir Bartle Frere's mission and years of pressure from missionaries like David Livingstone.

Royal Navy patrols then blockaded the trade, and Zanzibar's notorious market fell silent. Silence in such a place meant something immense. A market that had measured human lives by the tens of thousands each year was shut, and a trade built on suffering lost one of its greatest open stages.