In such stirring reports Europeans– explorers, missionaries, merchants, delegates and consuls– characterised the market as a place of brutal in- humanity where captured Africans were examined and treated like animals rather than beings with human dignity forming an undeniable, essential part of humankind. They used their outcry to attack especially the Arab slave dealers and to demand intervention against them, obviously forgetting that Europeans had engaged in exactly the same practice for hundreds of years in Africa and the Americas. Accordingly, special envoy Bartle Frere justified maritime action by Great Britain by “[...] seeing no other means open for securing their just and righteous demands in the interests of civilization and hu ma n it y ”.5 Thus, the Royal Navy intervened against the Sultan of Zanzibar forcing him to sign the abolition treaty, which led to the closure of the slave market in June1873.6 Subsequently, British missionaries built an Anglican cathedral on this ground as a symbol of the final triumph over the slave trade and the alleged transformation from a place of inhumanity into one of Euro-pean humanity.