Omani empire placed friend, Olmsted was named superintendent of the proposed 800-acre park in 1857 Months later, Olmsted teamed up with Calvert Vaux, a protégé of Andrew Jackson Dowling, America’s first professional landscape designer, to win the park design competition with a proposal titled “Greensward.” Central Park was the first of many Olmsted projects that would meld natural features and human artifice to create a peaceful yet energizing “balanced irregularity” that seemed to appeal to people of every class and condition It was an immediate success, despite serious cost overruns In 1859 Olmsted married Mary Perkins, widow of his beloved brother John, adopting his two nephews and a niece (They would have four children together.) As the Civil War erupted, Olmsted, as first general secretary of the U.S Sanitary Commission, used his considerable organizational talents to save lives by improving medical care for Union soldiers and others endangered by the war Eager to repay his father’s many loans and captivated by northern California’s natural beauty, Olmsted in 1864 accepted the post of manager at Mariposa Estate, a productive but troubled gold mining operation While in California, Olmsted helped to promote “Yo Semite” and its huge sequoias as a future national park By 1868 Olmsted had resumed his landscape and planning career with Vaux and others Major projects of these post-war years would include a park system for Buffalo, park designs for Chicago before and after the 1871 Chicago Fire, and the site plan for Chicago’s 1893 World Columbian Exposition Olmsted designed a campus for Stanford University in California and pursued projects at other major universities including Cornell and Yale Olmsted suffered from bouts of depression and endured dementia in his final years His central role in shaping and improving so many cities faded from public recollection Not until the 1980s, as New York City began to refurbish its dangerously neglected Central Park, would Olmsted’s “People’s Park” and the genius of its creator reemerge to astonish a grateful public See also abolition of slavery in the Americas; newspapers, North American; political parties in the United States Further Reading: Rosenzweig, Roy, and Elizabeth Blackmar The Park and the People: A History of Central Park Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992; Rybczynski, Witold A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century New York: Scribner, 1999 Marsha E Ackermann 315 Omani empire The Omani empire in East Africa, which dominated the East African coast between Somalia and northern Mozambique, entered a new phase after 1800 It faced new challenges as Britain, the United States, France, and Germany abolished the slave trade in the 1800s Yet, in the 19th century, the Omani empire was centered at Zanzibar, and was known as Zanzibar because it was the center of a vast rich empire, based on trade in spices and slaves The suzerains of the empire had been traders for many centuries and used Zanzibar as their main port, originally for slaves and ivory However, in 1812 it was discovered that cloves grew very well in the south of Zanzibar and the neighboring island of Pemba The demand for cloves and other spices was high Sultan Seyyid Said of Oman saw the possibilities in this trade and began to invest in clove plantations starting in 1820 In order to maximize production of cloves, he used slaves from much of east and central Africa Ultimately most of Africa between the East African coast and the Congo River basin, or an area of over million square miles, was affected by the slave trade which persisted to the 1890s In order to gain cheap labor, the Omani Arabs, beginning with Seyyid Said, encouraged African tribes to turn on each other so as to provide slaves through prisoners of war By the 1820s 8,000 slaves a year were brought to Zanzibar and Pemba This was opportune as the market for slaves was drying up because of pressure from Europe (By 1873 before the British forced the end of the slave trade by sending a naval squadron, the number of slaves brought to Zanzibar/Pemba to work the plantations had reached 30,000 per annum.) Slavery was not abolished until the British made Zanzibar a protectorate in 1890 The sultan repeatedly promised to end slavery and the slave trade, but never kept his promise He also used slave labor to transport ivory He buttressed his position by getting rid of his only rivals, the Mazrui family of Mombassa, Kenya, in 1837 Moreover, he signed huge commercial treaties with America, Britain, and France He maintained his position by playing America, Britain, and France against each other He enforced his authority through wholesale purchases of European and American arms, a navy of 15 ships, and a force of 6,500 soldiers Sultan Seyyid Said moved his headquarters from Muscat, Oman, to Zanzibar between 1832 and 1841 In the latter year Zanzibar became the capital of the Omani empire both in Africa and Arabia The profits