Runaway Slaves and the Aftermath of Slavery on the Swahili Coast

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-313
Author(s):  
Clélia Coret
Keyword(s):  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
Plantation Economy ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Regional Dynamics ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
City State ◽  
The 19Th Century

Abstract Along the East African coast, marronage increased in the 19th century as a consequence of the intensification of the slave trade and the development of a plantation economy based on slave labor. Research on the fugitive slaves on the Swahili coast has been conducted since the 1980s and has mainly highlighted the ambivalent relationship (between rejection and belonging) of maroons with the dominant coastal culture—that of the slave owners, shaped in particular by Islam and urbanity. This article goes beyond the existing interpretations by showing that the aftermath of slavery often consisted of a range of options, less static than those described so far and less focused on opting either into or out of coastal culture. Relying on a case study in present-day Kenya and drawing from European written sources and interviews, I examine what happened to escaped slaves in the Witu region, where a Swahili city-state was founded in 1862. Their history is examined through a spatial analysis and the modalities of their economic and social participation in regional dynamics, showing that no single cultural influence was hegemonic in this region.

History of Zanzibar to 1890

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Sheriff
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
City States ◽  
A Minor

The East African or Swahili coast is at the confluence between the continental world of Africa and the maritime world of the Indian Ocean, giving rise to a cosmopolitan culture. The Zanzibar archipelago is geographically at the center of the East African coast, and was ideally located in terms of the monsoons for trade and social interaction with the African mainland as well as across the Indian Ocean. The first golden age of the Zanzibar archipelago blossomed from the middle of the first millennium ce when transoceanic connections began to be forged between the western seaboards of the Indian Ocean as far as China in the east. It was spearheaded by Unguja Ukuu, followed by a number of ports on Pemba and Unguja, including Kizimkazi with its unique 12th-century Kufic inscription. The Portuguese intervened from the 15th century to monopolize and divert Indian Ocean trade to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope, although they did not succeed. Nevertheless, they disrupted the former patterns of trade and social interactions in the Indian Ocean. After the Portuguese interlude, the Swahili civilization tried to recover its initiative, but it could no longer hold its own. The Swahili city states had to seek assistance from Oman. Zanzibar developed as the seat of a vast commercial empire in the 19th century based on the clove economy on the islands and commerce that extended from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean, and a vast hinterland that extended as far as the African Great Lakes. It flourished, but it could not withstand the onslaught of the European colonial powers in their scramble for Africa to monopolize its natural resources and markets for their industrial revolution. With the colonial partition of Africa, Zanzibar was reduced to a minor British protectorate by 1890.

The Swahili in the African and Indian Ocean Worlds to c. 1500

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Sheriff
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
City States ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
Two Sides

The East African coast is an interface between the continental world of Africa and the maritime world of the Indian Ocean, and the monsoons provided a convenient wind system to link them. It was inhabited by a littoral society that was best placed to play a leading role in economic, social, and cultural interaction, including intermarriage, between the two worlds. Its written history goes back at least to the beginning of the Contemporary Era, and it can be termed Swahili from the beginning of the second millennium when this branch of the Bantu languages spread down the coast to give it linguistic unity. Its speakers were organized in towns and villages from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, which developed into city-states when there were major upturns in international trade and were integrated in the wider Indian Ocean world. The citizens spoke an “elegant” language that was further embellished through its interactions with Arabic and other Indian Ocean languages and literature. Islam spread with that trade, and mosques became a prominent part of the archaeological remains along the Swahili coast. In the process, the Swahili became thoroughly cosmopolitan. Any attempt to disentangle the different strands, “oriental” or “African”—which are two sides of the dense cultural fabric of the littoral people—is bound to be futile. They are two sides of the Swahili coin. This civilization was partially disrupted by the entry of the Portuguese in the 16th century when they tried to divert the spice trade to their channel around the Cape of Good Hope, but it revived during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Ulster and the Indian Ocean? Recent maritime archaeological research on the East African coast

Antiquity ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (290) ◽  
pp. 797-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Breen ◽  
Wes Forsythe ◽  
Paul Lane ◽  
Tom McErlean ◽  
Rosemary McConkey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Maritime Archaeology ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Kenyan Coast

In January 2001, a team of researchers from the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland) conducted an innovative maritime archaeology project on the East African coast in partnership with the British Institute in Eastern Africa and the National Museums of Kenya. Its focus was Mombasa Island on the southern Kenyan coast, a historical settlement and port for nearly 2000 years (Berg 1968; Sassoon 1980; 1982). The East African seaboard, stretching from Somalia in the north to Madagascar and Mozambique in the south, was culturally dynamic throughout the historical period. This area, traditionally known as the Swahili coast, is culturally defined as a maritime zone extending 2000 km from north to south, but reaching a mere 15 hi inland. The origins of ‘Swahili’ cultural identity originated during the middle of the 1st millennium AD, following consolidation of earlier farming and metalusing Bantu-speaking communities along the coast and emergence of a distinctive ‘maritime’ orientation and set of cultural traditions (eg Allen 1993; Chami 1998; Helm 2000; Horton & Middelton 2000). Previous research produced evidence of exploitation of marine resources for food and an early engagement in longdistance exchange networks, linking parts ofthis coast with the Classical world by at least the BC/AD transition.

Reflections on Historiography and Pre-Nineteenth-Century History from the Pate “Chronicles”

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 263-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall L. Pouwels
Keyword(s):  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Coastal City ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
Demographic Shifts ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

The period from 1500 to 1800 was a particularly busy phase in the history of the East African coast. It was a time which witnessed massive demographic shifts in the interior regions, as well as heavy southern Arab immigration and external meddling from Portuguese and Umani interlopers. It saw the destruction of the medieval entrepot of Kilwa Kisiwani and a decline, followed by a slow resurgence, in the fortunes of another medieval powerhouse, Mombasa. Throughout this phase, the ancient northern coastal city of Pate enjoyed a pivotal, even at times a paramount, role in the affairs of the coast. Before the middle 1500s the town seems to have been of insufficient consequence to attract much attention. Thereafter, however, the city-state capitalized on mainland alliances with powerful Orma confederations like the “Garzeda” to become a major center for regional trade, as well as a crucial strategic location in the competing religious and political ambitions of Portugal and various Arab states. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Pate clearly was the most important state in the Lamu archipelago. Arguably, too, it was the most powerful Swahili sultanate on the entire coast.Given the significance of Pate in the affairs of the East African coast from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries, scholars long have realized that a history of the sultanate is exigent to an understanding of the entire coast during this time. What would seem to be fortunate to this end is that historians have the Pate chronicles as a research aid. Taken together, these constitute the most detailed indigenous history of any coastal city-state up to the onset of the colonial era. However, as attested by the difficulties Chittick encountered in his attempts to work with them, these documents present the historian with a superabundance of (often confusing) information. Confronted with this, Chittick concluded that the only possible value of these chronicles was as a source of/for children's fables. Thus surmised, a historian of this important Swahili sultanate would seem to be left with very little indeed.

Urbanization in East Africa, circa 900–2010 CE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Burton
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
East African ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Intermediary Role ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Rates Of Growth

East Africa’s urban past is broken down into five historical periods. The first (c. 900–1500 ce) saw the emergence of an urban Swahili culture on the East African coast that flourished thanks to its role as economic and cultural arbiter between the African interior and the Indian Ocean world. Between 1500 and 1800, as in other parts of the world, the intrusion of Europeans (and other outsiders) appears to have had a detrimental impact on “classical” Swahili civilization, although several important urban centers continued to flourish. Inland there is negligible evidence of urbanization before 1800. From around this time, however, important settlements did arise in the interior, thanks largely to the region’s growing integration in an international economy that emerged in the course of the 19th century—with various coastal (Swahili) cities prospering once again through their intermediary role. The situation was transformed with the onset of European colonial rule (c. 1890–1960), which prompted historically unprecedented rates of urban growth and witnessed the emergence of what would become a number of important world cities. Toward the end of the colonial period, from the 1940s, East Africa’s urban centers experienced another upward jolt in their rates of growth; however, the full repercussions of this demographic revolution, which resulted in a substantial (and growing) proportion of the population claiming urban residence for the first time, did not become fully apparent until after independence; with rapid urbanization proving one of the most important features of postcolonial East Africa.

Knowledge and Intellectual Practice in A Swahili Context: ‘Wisdom’ and The Social Dimensions of Knowledge

Africa ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 148-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Kresse
Keyword(s):  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Social Responsibilities ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
The Social ◽  
Basic Features ◽  
Use Of Knowledge

This article investigates ‘wisdom’ from an ethnographic perspective that pays attention to the ways in which knowledge is performed, appreciated, negotiated and questioned in everyday life in Mombasa, on the Swahili coast. It discusses the baraza setting (daily meeting points for male social peers) as a venue for intellectual practice and the appreciation of wisdom. Basic features of communicative interaction identified there can also be found to be in play when looking at case studies of individuals and their performances. The article looks at how two genres (didactic tenzi poetry and Ramadhan lectures) are used by Swahili intellectuals who are regarded as exceptional in their field. Verbal, performative and social skills are found to be crucial aspects of wisdom, which also has to do with being able to engage with common social concerns in a manner that leads to further insight and intellectual orientation for others. In this sense, social responsibilities and moral obligations in the use of knowledge play an important role. Overall, the article seeks to contribute to a general discussion of wisdom, based on insights gained on the East African coast.

scholarly journals Ngoma Memories: How Ritual Music and Dance Shaped the Northern Kenya Coast

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 21-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gearhart
Keyword(s):  
East African ◽  
East African Coast ◽  
Ritual Music ◽  
Northern Kenya ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spirit World ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Coastal Residents

Abstract:This essay integrates ethnographic data collected between Mombasa and the Lamu archipelago in Kenya into the growing body of scholarship on Swahili music and dance (ngoma) traditions. The analysis underscores how the Swahili have used ngoma events to stake claims to higher positions on the social ladder, negotiate difference, create socioeconomic security networks, establish and mark group identity, connect to the spirit world, and pass through various stages of the life cycle. Through a rich array of historical accounts by visitors to the coast, whose texts complement oral histories of coastal residents, the importance of ngoma in the Swahili-ization of the East African coast becomes apparent. A comprehensive understanding of the part ngoma organizations have played in the recreation and re-creation of Swahili society is possible only when one factors in the contributions made by residents of the northernmost portion of the “Swahili coast.”

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