Making Identity on the Swahili Coast

Making Identity on the Swahili Coast

Author: Steven Fabian

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-11-07

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1108492045

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A re-examination of the historical development of urban identity and community along the Swahili Coast.


Feasts and Riot

Feasts and Riot

Author: Jonathon Glassman

Publisher: James Currey

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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This work, which draws on substantial interviews, is a study of economic history from below. It focuses on the cultural and social history of Indians in Durban, exploring such topics as: why did the Indian peasantry rise and decline like the African peasantry, but with a different chronology?; what was the economic logic of the Indian family and to what extent do new interests in the politics and economics of gender help us to understand that logic?; why did Indian workers become intensely militant and why did this military subside?; and, above all, what can this history tell us about the changing nature of South African capitalism in the 20th century? This concern underlies the whole book.


The Swahili World

The Swahili World

Author: Stephanie Wynne-Jones

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-16

Total Pages: 672

ISBN-13: 1317430166

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The Swahili World presents the fascinating story of a major world civilization, exploring the archaeology, history, linguistics, and anthropology of the Indian Ocean coast of Africa. It covers a 1,500-year sweep of history, from the first settlement of the coast to the complex urban tradition found there today. Swahili towns contain monumental palaces, tombs, and mosques, set among more humble houses; they were home to fishers, farmers, traders, and specialists of many kinds. The towns have been Muslim since perhaps the eighth century CE, participating in international networks connecting people around the Indian Ocean rim and beyond. Successive colonial regimes have helped shape modern Swahili society, which has incorporated such influences into the region’s long-standing cosmopolitan tradition. This is the first volume to explore the Swahili in chronological perspective. Each chapter offers a unique wealth of detail on an aspect of the region’s past, written by the leading scholars on the subject. The result is a book that allows both specialist and non-specialist readers to explore the diversity of the Swahili tradition, how Swahili society has changed over time, as well as how our understandings of the region have shifted since Swahili studies first began. Scholars of the African continent will find the most nuanced and detailed consideration of Swahili culture, language and history ever produced. For readers unfamiliar with the region or the people involved, the chapters here provide an ideal introduction to a new and wonderful geography, at the interface of Africa and the Indian Ocean world, and among a people whose culture remains one of Africa’s most distinctive achievements.


Port Cities and Intruders

Port Cities and Intruders

Author: Michael N. Pearson

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2003-01-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780801872426

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Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In Port Cities and Intruders, historian Michael Pearson explores the role of port cities and their orientation, relations between the coast and the interior, the place of the coast in the world economy, and the impact of the Portuguese in the early modern period.


The Swahili

The Swahili

Author: Derek Nurse

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 9780812212075

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"As an introduction to how the history of an African society can be reconstructed from largely nonliterate sources, and to the Swahili in particular, . . . a model work."—International Journal of African Historical Studies


World on the Horizon

World on the Horizon

Author: Prita Meier

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13:

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The multiauthored book accompanying the World on the Horizon exhibition organized by Krannert Art Museum is the first interdisciplinary study of Swahili visual arts and their historically deep and enduring connections to eastern and central Africa, the port towns of the western Indian Ocean, Europe, and the United States. At once exhibition catalogue and scholarly inquiry, the publication features eighteen essays in a mix of formats - personal reflections, object biographies, as well as more in-depth critical treatments - and includes never before published images of works from the National Museums of Kenya and Bait Al Zubair Museum in Oman. By approaching the east African coast as a vibrant arena of global cultural convergence, these essays offer compelling new perspectives on the situated yet mobile and deeply networked social lives of Swahili objects. Moving between the broader structural relations of political economic change to more intimate narratives through which such change is experienced, the essays throw light on the ways in which the material fabric of the arts structure Swahili people's sense of self and community in an ever-changing world of oceanic and terrestrial movement.


African Merchants of the Indian Ocean

African Merchants of the Indian Ocean

Author: John Middleton

Publisher: Waveland Press

Published: 2003-11-07

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1478609680

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This new monograph serves as an authoritative introduction to an unusual people of eastern Africa known as Swahili. Middleton, who has known these people for a half a century, describes their highly stratified, merchant society and civilization, documenting their importance both for anthropologists and for others interested in Africa. Swahili continue today their centuries-old role as merchants in long-distance international trade, a role that has led them to form a society very distinct from any other in Africa. Middletons brief, personal treatment discusses Swahili recorded history as an integral part of their rich tradition and civilization. He clears up past confusions and mistaken assumptions without trying to define a single Swahili identity. His lucid approach unravels contradictions about Swahili being merchants and yet fishermen, who live in both cities as well as small villages, and who reckon various kinds of kinship and marriage. Swahili are often considered by non-Swahili as being both Africans and Arabs, but Middleton shows that they remain African despite having long adopted Islam and many aspects of Arab and Asian cultures.


A History of the East African Coast

A History of the East African Coast

Author: Charles Cornelius

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 9781461166160

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The history of the Swahili coast is laced with political intrigue, scandal, international commerce, war, invasion and terrorism. Stretching from Somalia in the north, through Kenya and Tanzania, to Mozambique in the south and to the great offshore islands of the coast, it is home to the Swahili people, a unique blend of Arab, African and Persian, whose story stretches back more than two thousand years and which forms the backdrop to one of Africa's oldest and greatest civilizations. Drawing on archaeology, the civic chronicles of the Swahili towns and accounts of the coast written by explorers, traders and colonialists from as far afield as Italy, China and Britain, this illustrated book tells the story of the Swahili coast. Moving from the slave markets and clove plantations of Zanzibar, to the stone towns of the Lamu Archipelago, to the fight for control of Mombasa and its great bastion, Fort Jesus, it tells the stories of Zanzibar sultans, Swahili traders, Portuguese conquerors and Christian missionaries.


The Rise and Fall of Swahili States

The Rise and Fall of Swahili States

Author: Chapurukha Makokha Kusimba

Publisher: Altamira Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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The Swahili civilization was a fascinating and complex system_a group of advanced cultures with large economic networks, international maritime trade, and urban sophistication. This book documents the growth of Swahili civilization on the eastern coast of Africa, from 100 B.C. to the time of European colonialism in the sixteenth century. Using archaeological, anthropological, and historical information, Chapurukha M. Kusimba describes the origins of this unique and powerful culture, including its Islamic components, architecture, language, and trading systems. Incorporating the results of his own surveys and excavations, Kusimba provides us with a remarkable African-derived study of the rise and collapse of societies on the Swahili Coast.


Swahili People and Their Language

Swahili People and Their Language

Author: Dainess Mashiku Maganda

Publisher: Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd

Published: 2014-03-22

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 191223470X

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History is a testament to what happened to a people or a place. It shows how things were and their transformation while explaining why the changes happened. Not only does history allow human beings to trace their trajectory in dealing with specific issues they face in the affairs of making a living, it also highlights movements between people around the world while showing their role in creating systems still in place today. History reveals to us major contributors of the trading systems along the east coast of Africa, documenting the role of the Swahili people and their interactions with different people of the world.The Swahili People and Their Language discusses ways in which the Swahili people came to occupy a prominent position in the world's trading system and how they lost their wealth through their contact with the outside world. The book highlights the strategic position occupied by the Swahili people, their natural resources, their skills and their rich cultural mix and how the contact with the outside world played a major influence that is clearly noticeable to date. The book contributes to the on-going discussion about Africans and their participation in today's development and reminds readers that the creation of the current economic, social and political situation of the Swahili people mirrors the history and positioning of many other formerly independent societies that became colonized nation-states. The authors provide discussions that shade light on critical questions such as: Who are the Swahili people and why are they important? Is there such a thing as a Swahili Civilization? If so, what is it and how does it relate to modern civilization? What place does the Swahili language occupy both in its history and usage on the continent and in the rest of the world?