Zanzibar and the Clove Industry was released in November 1925 as part of the first set of British Instructional Film’s ‘The Empire Series’ (Kinematograph Weekly, 19 November 1925). The series comprised films ‘taken by the colonies’ that had been shown as part of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley and films taken by British Instructional Films during the Empire Cruise of the Special Squadron. Footage from Zanzibar was included in British Instructional’s official 1925 film of this cruise, Britain’s Birthright.

In July 1925, The Times reported that New Era Films, the distributors, had exhibited ‘some examples of a new short series of films dealing with different parts of the British Empire’ and mentioned Zanzibar as one of the areas from which the subjects were drawn (The Times, 28 July 1925, 12). However, when the films were trade shown in November, Zanzibar and the Clove Industry was seemingly not one of the six films – from a series of twelve – screened and as a result the film was not reviewed in the press. The film was however shown to the press in 1927 at the Imperial Institute in preparation for the launch of the new cinema there (The Times, 29 June 1927, 14). The film was also subsequently available for hire, and was included – under the title Zanzibar – in British Instructional’s 1928 catalogue of films for non-theatrical exhibition. The catalogue stated that the film ‘gives some scenes suggestive of the history of Zanzibar, and then pictures the present-day clove industry. The varied population of Zanzibar is also shown’.

An article entitled ‘Zanzibar Trade’ in The Times in 1928 began by claiming that ‘in the trade of the Zanzibar Protectorate cloves rank first in importance, and supply over 90 per cent. of the world’s demand’. The article further stated that the average output over the past five years had reached ‘over 9,000 tons’, while production in the coconut industry – which ‘ranks next in importance’ – was said to have ‘considerably increased in recent years’ (The Times, 13 March 1928, 21). Although the production of cloves and the country’s export earnings reached their peak in the early 1920s, Andrew Roberts argued that ‘in marked contrast to mainland East Africa, the economy of the Zanzibar Protectorate scarcely expanded at all between 1905 and 1940’ and nor was there any marked increase over this period in the ‘output of the principal crop, cloves’ (Roberts, 1986, 699).

By 1925 the clove industry in Zanzibar was still closely tied to the economics of slavery. The British had abolished the legal status of slavery in Zanzibar in 1897, but they did not emancipate the existing slaves and, to an extent, encouraged legally free but economically tied labour. Frederick Cooper has examined the development of this plantation society under British rule, and while much remained unchanged, by the 1920s indigenous Africans owned nearly a quarter of the clove trees on Zanzibar island and half of those on the more lucrative Pemba (Roberts, 1986, 699). Contract labour was imported from mainland areas, ensuring that plantation labour now consisted of several racially distinct communities. The Times wrote in 1920 that ‘Zanzibar is unique, in that it is here that Africa, Arabia, India and Persia may be said to meet’ (The Times, 25 May 1920, 29). Yet, for the most part, the social position of local Africans remained largely unchanged as the British officials continued in their support of Sultan Khalkifa – who features in the film – and the Arab minority, while by 1933 half of the clove trees in the Protectorate were said to be mortgaged to Indians (Roberts, 1986, 700).