Making Identity on the Swahili Coast
Urban Life, Community, and Belonging in Bagamoyo

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

Steven Fabian (Author)

9781108710046, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 October 2021

369 pages, 10 b/w illus. 4 maps
23 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.542 kg

'This history of one of East Africa's most important nineteenth-century urban centers has been worth the wait. Fabian offers a nuanced study that links the emergence of the 'local' in Bagamoyo to the everyday interactions of residents and itinerants from both of its hinterlands: the Indian Ocean world and the East African interior. This is a much-needed corrective to the overburdening of 'Swahili' identity found in many previous studies of the East African coast.' Stephen Rockel, University of Toronto, Scarborough

Situated at a crossroads of trade in the late nineteenth century, and later the economic capital of German East Africa, the thriving caravan and port town of Bagamoyo, Tanzania is one of many diverse communities on the East African coast which has been characterized as 'Swahili'. Seeking an alternate framework for understanding community and identity, Steven Fabian combines extensive archival sources from African and European archives alongside fieldwork in Bagamoyo to move beyond the category of 'Swahili' as it has been traditionally understood. Revealing how townspeople - Africans, Arabs, Indians, and Europeans alike - created a local vocabulary which referenced aspects of everyday town life and bound them together as members of a shared community, this first extensive examination of Bagamoyo's history from the pre-colonial era to independence uses a new lens of historical analysis to emphasize the importance of place in creating local, urban identities and suggests a broader understanding of these concepts historically along the Swahili Coast.

Introduction
1. Owners of the town: Shomvi, Zaramo, Nyamwezi, and Indians
2. Owners of the town: Baluchis, Omanis, and Spiritans
3. Becoming Wabagamoyo: a local vocabulary for a Swahili town
4. The particularities of place: space, identity, and the Coastal Rebellion of 1888–1890
5. Colonial power, community identity, and consultation
6. 'Curing the cancer of the colony': undermining local attachments.

Subject Areas: African history [HBJH], History [HB]