Stuart Laing | |
---|---|
16th British Ambassador to Kuwait | |
In office 2005–2008 | |
Monarch | Elizabeth II |
Prime Minister | Tony Blair Gordon Brown |
Preceded by | Chris Wilton |
Succeeded by | Michael Aron |
9th British Ambassador to Oman | |
In office 2002–2005 | |
Preceded by | Ivan Callan |
Succeeded by | Noel Guckian |
13th British High Commissioner to Brunei | |
In office 1998–2002 | |
Preceded by | Ivan Callan |
Succeeded by | Andrew Caie |
Personal details | |
Born | 22 July 1948 |
Occupation | Diplomat |
Stuart Laing (born 22 July 1948) [1] is a British former diplomat and was Master of Corpus Christi College,Cambridge from 2008 to 2018.
Laing entered the diplomatic service in 1970. During his service in the Diplomatic Service,Laing held the following offices: [2]
Laing graduated from Corpus Christi College,Cambridge in 1970 having studied Classics. [3] He was appointed Master of his old college Corpus Christi on 1 October 2008 succeeding Oliver Rackham, [4] and retired from that position in August 2018. He researches and writes on Arab and East African history and in 2012 he published,jointly with Robert Alston,Unshook till the end of time,a book on the history of Britain's relationship with Oman. [5] [6] The degree of M.Phil. was conferred to him in 2013 [7] for a thesis on the ending of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean. [8] In 2017 he published a biography of the ivory trader Tippu Tip (Hamed bin Mohammed al-Murjabi). [9] [10]
Laing is a keen amateur musician;he plays keyboard instruments and the oboe. His other recreations are desert travel and hill-walking. [11] Laing is married to Sibella (daughter of Sir Maurice Henry Dorman,herself a graduate in History of Newnham College,Cambridge) and has a son and two daughters. [4]
Oman is the site of pre-historic human habitation,stretching back over 100,000 years. The region was impacted by powerful invaders,including other Arab tribes,Portugal and Britain. Oman once possessed the island of Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa as a colony. Oman also held Gwadar as a colony for many years.
Corpus Christi College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. From the late 14th century to the early 19th century it was also commonly known as St Benet's College.
The Scramble for Africa,as used by historians,describes the invasion,annexation,division,and colonization of most of Africa by seven Western European powers during an era known as "New Imperialism". The 10 percent of Africa that was under formal European control in 1870 increased to almost 90 percent by 1914,with only Liberia and Ethiopia remaining independent.
Tippu Tip,or Tippu Tib,real name Ḥamad ibn Muḥammad ibn Jumʿah ibn Rajab ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd al Murjabī,was an Afro-Omani ivory and slave owner and trader,explorer,governor and plantation owner. He worked for a succession of the sultans of Zanzibar and was the Sultan of Uterera,a short-lived state in Kasongo,Maniema ruled by himself and his son Sefu who was an Emir with local WaManyema.
The Royal African Company (RAC) was an English trading company established in 1660 by the House of Stuart and City of London merchants to trade along the West African coast. It was overseen by the Duke of York,the brother of Charles II of England;the RAC was founded after Charles II ascended to the English throne in the 1660 Stuart Restoration,and he granted it a monopoly on all English trade with Africa. While the company's original purpose was to trade for gold in the Gambia River,as Prince Rupert of the Rhine had identified gold deposits in the region during the Interregnum,the RAC quickly began trading in slaves,which became its largest commodity.
Colonization of the Congo Basin refers to the European colonization of the Congo Basin of tropical Africa. It was the last part of the continent to be colonized. By the end of the 19th century,the Basin had been carved up by European colonial powers,into the Congo Free State,the French Congo and the Portuguese Congo.
The Luba people or Baluba are an ethno-linguistic group indigenous to the south-central region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The majority of them live in this country,residing mainly in Katanga,Kasaï,Kasaï-Oriental,Kasaï-Central,Lomami and Maniema. The Baluba consist of many sub-groups or clans.
Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa in ancient times,as they were in much of the rest of the ancient world. When the trans-Saharan slave trade,Indian Ocean slave trade and Atlantic slave trade began,many of the pre-existing local African slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa. Slavery in contemporary Africa is still practiced despite it being illegal.
Retford Oaks Academy is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form located in the market town of Retford,Nottinghamshire,England,situated in the district of Bassetlaw.
Sir Archibald Duncan Wilson was a British diplomat and Master of Corpus Christi College,Cambridge.
The Congo Arab war or Arab war was a colonial war fought between the Congo Free State and Arab-Swahili warlords associated with the Arab slave trade in the eastern regions of the Congo basin between 1892 and 1894.
Muhammad bin Khalfan bin Khamis al-Barwani,commonly known as Rumaliza,was an Arab trader of slaves and ivory,active in Central and East Africa in the last part of the nineteenth century. He was a member of the Arabian Barwani tribe. With the help of Tippu Tip he became Sultan of Ujiji. At one time he dominated the trade of Tanganyika,before being defeated by Belgian forces under Baron Francis Dhanis in January 1894.
The Omani Empire was a maritime empire,vying with Portugal and Britain for trade and influence in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. After rising as a regional player in the 18th century,the empire at its peak in the 19th century saw its influence or control extend across the Strait of Hormuz to modern-day Iran and Pakistan,and as far south as Cape Delgado. After the death of Said bin Sultan in 1856 the empire was divided between his sons into two sultanates,an African section ruled by Majid bin Said and an Asian section ruled by Thuwaini bin Said.
Slavery existed in the area which was later to become Oman from antiquity until the 1970s. Oman was united with Zanzibar from the 1690s until 1856,and was a significant center of the Indian Ocean slave trade from Zanzibar in East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and Iran,a central hub of the regional slave trade,which consitituted a large part of its economy.
The Sultanate of Utetera (1860–1887),also referred as Tippu Tip's state,was one of the Arab sultanates established in eastern Africa. It was a 19th century short-lived state ruled by the infamous Swahili slave trader Tippu Tip and his son Sefu. The capital of the state was the town of Kasongo,located in modern Maniema Province,Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tippu Tip's controlled territory reached as far to eastern Kasai and to Aruwimi Basin in the west.
The history of black people in Cambridge,UK cannot easily be separated from the history of Cambridge University. The university has attracted students from Africa and the African diaspora to the town of Cambridge for more than two centuries. Several notable black people had a Cambridge association in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,and at the end of the eighteenth century Cambridge became a centre of abolitionist sentiment. From the end of the nineteenth century the university started to admit black students in larger numbers. In recent decades,however,the relatively low number of black students admitted to the university has become a topic of media comment and public concern.
Slavery existed in Morocco since antiquity. Morocco was a center of the Trans-Saharan slave trade route of enslaved Black Africans from sub-Saharan Africa,as well as a center of the slave trade of Barbary slave trade of Europeans captured by the barbary pirates. The slave trade was suppressed in Morocco in the 1920s.
Afro-Omanis are Omani people of African Zanj heritage. Most live in the coastal cities of Oman,with many speaking Arabic and adhering to Islam. Their origins date back to the time of the Arab slave trade and era Slavery in Oman,and when Zanzibar was a part of the Omani Empire.
Open slavery existed in Kuwait until the 1940s. Slavery was formally abolished in Kuwait in 1949. In practice,slavery was not actually abolished as such,but the law no longer recognized it after 1949,which meant that every slave who applied for manumission was guaranteered to be freed. Many members of the Afro-Arabian minority are descendants of the former slaves. Slavery of people from Africa and East Asia was succeeded by the modern Kafala system of poor workers from the same region were slaves had previously been imported.