Edward A. Alpers

Recollecting Africa: Diasporic Memory in the Indian Ocean World

Abstract: The African presence in the Indian Ocean world represents one of the most neglected aspects of the global diaspora of African peoples. Yet very significant numbers of people of African descent today inhabit virtually all the countries of the western Indian Ocean littoral. It is evident, however, that African voices have been actively silenced in this diaspora both by the cultural contexts of their host societies and by the way in which the scholarly production of knowledge has reflected such cultural domination. Consequently, to get at the experiences of Africans in the Indian Ocean world and assess their sense of being of or belonging to Africa, we must look to popular culture. In this paper I examine some of the evidence for recollecting Africa in the Indian Ocean world, citing examples of music, song, dance, religion and healing, language, and folkways from both first generation diaspora Africans and their descendants. I conclude by cautioning us not to impose paradigms developed from the experience of Africans in the diaspora of the Atlantic world, with its particular forms of Euro-American racism and concomitant black responses.

Trade, State, and Society Among the Yao in the Nineteenth Century

D URING the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Yao were the greatest long-distance traders in East Central Africa. Through their involvement with the coast they became subject to external economic pressures. In the eighteenth century these pressures combined to produce several major changes in the routing of Yao trade goods to the coast.2 In the nineteenth century the continued expansion of Yao trade and its changing nature led to a variety of important political and social changes, with which this paper is concerned. Most of what we know about the Yao before the imposition of colonial rule was recorded by contemporary European observers, nearly all of them Portuguese; and until Livingstone travelled through Yaoland in 1866 these Europeans only knew the Yao in their role as traders to the coast. Consequently the Yao appear only as people who arrived annually at the mainland opposite Mo9ambique Island or at Kilwa to trade ivory, slaves, and other less valuable products of the land, and who then retreated into the interior until the next dry season. Clyde Mitchells major study of the Macinga Yao in southern Malawi, The Yao Village (Manchester, I956), provides us with a valuable model of Yao social structure in the twentieth century, but it cannot be used indiscriminately to project a picture of Yao social structure back into the nineteenth century. Much of what I have to say, therefore, is based on two essential works: Duff MacDonalds Africana

Gujarat and the Trade of East Africa, c.1500-1800

One of the more persistent problems confronting historians of East Africa remains the lack of reliable standard histories of the Indian Ocean world. Topics which are especially affected by this lacuna in the historical literature are the problem of Indonesian contacts, the history of Islam on the coast, and the economic history of both the coast and the interior. Only in the case of the Portuguese seaborne empire do we possess a series of studies which places East Africa squarely in the context of the Indian Ocean system.1 In this respect Indian Ocean studies lag far behind those of the Atlantic Ocean.2 Although we are aware of close commercial links existing between East Africa and India throughout the better part of the present millennium, we know little

'Ordinary Household Chores': Ritual and Power in a Nineteenth-Century Swahili Women's Spirit Possession Cult

This paper concerns a womens spirit possession cult that was described at Zanzibar in 1869 by an Alsatian Catholic missionary.1 It is my contention that the ritual which he observed encapsulates certain fundamental aspects of the historical experience of Zanzibari women at that time and, moreover, that the ritual explicitly declares what it is about the domestication of women. Attempting to understand this cult, which was dedicated to a spirit named kitimiri, and to place it in its specific historical context has caused me to think through much more critically than ever before what we know both about Swahili society and about Swahili women during this period. On the one hand, we know a great deal about Zanzibar and the coast in the nineteenth century with reference to the intensified penetration of merchant capital and the

Dynasties of the Mutapa-Rozwi Complex

The two most obvious conclusions to be drawn from this material are that interlocking relationships and reasonably accurate dating are most reliably established for the very early and the very recent periods. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in particular, seem to be a period of confusion. Even in the best of circumstances this result might reasonably be expected as a consequence of the telescoping of events in a coherent body of genealogical evidence. In this instance, coincidentally, the hiatus in knowledge from traditional sources corresponds to a parallel decline in contemporary Portuguese knowledge of the region. More positively, on the basis of Abrahams scattered notes, there does seem to be a solid base line linking the ‘princely’ dynasties which were established in the eastern part of this zone to the parent Mwene Mutapa dynasty. The mfekane , too, constitutes a major point of reference in a great many of the traditions analysed above. If more dynastic traditions and genealogies can be systematically collected, evaluated, and published for the Mutapa–Rozwi complex, the original goal of this inquiry may yet be fulfilled.

Africa Reconfigured: Presidential Address to the 1994 African Studies Association Annual Meeting

1994 has witnessed the demise of apartheid in South Africa, thus signaling the end of an era in the history of Africa—the long night of European colonial rule. This momentous event, and the challenging process of transformation that it has set in motion, vividly illustrate the power of the rubric chosen for this years annual meeting, Africa Reconfigured. But the reconfiguration of Africa is certainly not something new. So on this occasion I propose to look back selectively at some aspects of that reconfiguration as it relates to the European mapping and consequent representation of Africa; the political configuration of Africa; and, finally, the future of Africa and African Studies. “Where is Africa?” asks Ali Mazrui in a characteristically provocative dissection of European ethnocentric projections about the mapping and perception of Africa (Mazrui 1986, 23-4). To which we might add, “And what do we know about it from maps?” For as Peter Barber emphasizes in his discussion of the European discovery of Africa, “it should always be borne in mind that maps show only what their makers wished to show and not necessarily all that they actually knew” (Barber 1987, 37). Indeed, the history of mapping Africa reflects virtually all of the problems one is likely to face in examining the representation of Africa. Ancient knowledge of the continent was limited to the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean coasts, as well as the Nile Valley. Bound up with the acquisition of commercial information about the products of Africa, and then with the staking out of colonial claims from as early as the first Portuguese explorations down the Atlantic coast of the continent in the fourteenth century, Africa was arguably more thoroughly misrepresented than it was accurately mapped during the first millennium and a half of the Christian era.

Africa and the West: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to Independence

Preface Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade From Abolition to Conquest Colonialism and Its Critics The Contradictions of Post-Colonial Independence Index

Food traditions and landscape histories of the Indian ocean world: Theoretical and methodological reflections

Environmental histories of plant exchanges have largely centred on their eco- nomic importance in international trade and on their ecological and social impacts in the places where they were introduced. Yet few studies have at- tempted to examine how plants brought from elsewhere become incorporated over time into the regional cultures of material life and agricultural landscapes. This essay considers the theoretical and methodological problems in inves- tigating the environmental history, diversity and distribution of food plants transferred across the Indian Ocean over several millennia. It brings together concepts of creolisation, syncretism, and hybridity to outline a framework for understanding how biotic exchanges and diffusions have been translated into regional landscape histories through food traditions, ritual practices and articu- lation of cultural identity. We use the banana plant - which underwent early domestication across New Guinea, South-east Asia and peninsular India and reached East Africa roughly two thousand years ago - as an example for il- lustrating the diverse patterns of incorporation into the cultural symbolism, material life and regional landscapes of the Indian Ocean World. We show that this cultural evolutionary approach allows new historical insights to emerge and enriches ongoing debates regarding the antiquity of the plants diffusion from South-east Asia to Africa.

‘Portuguese’ Diasporas: A Survey of the Scholarly Literature

The task we have set for ourselves is to provide an introduction to the range of historical and social science scholarly literature that addresses the global diasporas of Portuguese-speaking people and the formation of a Lusophone world.2 Our chapter is organised chronologically to reflect the three principal phases of this long history, beginning with Portuguese expansion up to the end of the 18th century, continuing through the second and third Portuguese Empires, and concluding with the period following the end of the corporatist state in Portugal. Since we are historians, our approach to the subject matter is primarily historical and historiographical, although the most recent work tends to be sociological or anthropological. Since we are, however, well aware of the fact that not all subjects of the former Portuguese colonial empire speak Portuguese, our survey transcends Lusophonia to include such non-Lusophone diasporic communities. In general, however, while we include the Atlantic African islands in our analysis, except where noted in the text, we make no systematic attempt to discuss migrations by African colonial subjects of Portugal or African citizens of those postcolonial nation-states. Thus, although we use both Luspohone and Portuguese in the body of the text, the title of our chapter refers to Portuguese diasporas to indicate the range of migrations we discuss, rather than assuming there to be a monolithic Portuguese diaspora.

Falola Toyin and Odhiambo E. S. Atieno, eds. The Challenges of History and Leadership in Africa: The Essays of Bethwell Allan Ogot. Trenton and Asmara: African World Press, Inc., 2002. Ixvi + 684 pp. Bibliography. Index.

pie. Opportunities change, local expertise may decline, but the environment still persists with its attendant value. So should this book. It offers a fresh chronological outlook for this region and speaks to issues of state discourse, land, and common livelihood raised similarly in the recent work of Diana Wylie and Charles van Onselen. It is a valuable contribution to the growing literature on environmental history in southern Africa. Christopher J. Lee Stanford University Stanford, California