The Swahili World

Abstract

Geographically positioned between inland eastern and central Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Swahili coast has fascinated scholars for centuries if not millennia. One of the earliest texts addressing this region is the frequently cited Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a mid-first century ce text detailing trade and navigational information for the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Western scholars have struggled with how to categorize coastal east Africa, at times claiming it as part of a broader Middle Eastern cultural sphere, and at others labelling it as specifically African. Stephanie Wynne-Jones and Adria LaViolette's The Swahili World adds to and complicates these discourses by presenting fifty-six studies by sixty-one authors on various topics related to the study of coastal eastern Africa. This edited volume works across a broad time period, ranging from the first century ce to the present day. Through these collected studies Wynne-Jones and LaViolette bring together varied discourses in order to highlight the complex historical and historiographic processes that come to bear on Swahili coast studies.Wynne-Jones and LaViolette divided their volume into three broadly defined sections roughly organized according to theme and chronology: environment, background, and Swahili historiography; the Swahili age; and the early modern and modern Swahili coast. Within these sections, various subsections highlight the environment, scholarship on the Swahili world, the formation of the Swahili coast, urbanism, daily life, trade, architecture, and colonialism. This project brings together researchers working in a variety of fields from institutions across the globe. As both Wynne-Jones and LaViolette are archaeologists, these studies are more heavily weighted towards archaeological work, including contributions by Thomas Biginagwa, Paul Sinclair, Jeffrey Fleisher, Felix Chami, and Dashu Qin, among many others. However, it also includes studies by historians, art historians, anthropologists, independent scholars, museum professionals, and environmental scientists. These are individuals working in the United States, Kenya, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, China, Sweden, Germany, France, Norway, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Italy, Spain, and Madagascar. Such a diverse assemblage represents a truly novel undertaking in Swahili coast studies, bringing together disciplines that often draw from each other, but may not be in direct communication as they are here.Within these sections a number of themes regularly surface throughout the edited volume, namely, the complex nature of Swahili coast historiography, the diversity and plurality of notions of the Swahili coast, urbanism and stone architecture, trade and connectivity, and the colonial legacy. The continued emergence of these themes encourages readers to reconsider the nature of area studies boundaries, cultural property, historiographic privilege, and eastern Africa's place in a global world order.Questions of historiography arise early on, with Wynne-Jones and LaViolette's introductory chapter raising the question of how the term “Swahili” is applied, when, and to what effect. They argueDespite this, Swahili, proto-Swahili, and pre-Swahili are all used regularly throughout the volume, regardless of time frame, and the hunt for an “originary moment” for the formation of the Swahili coast plagues several studies. In “Decoding the Genetic Ancestry of the Swahili,” Ryan L. Raaum and his coauthors use DNA sampling to definitively argue for a largely African ancestry to Swahili coast urbanism and cultural development with “a trickle of non-African males into Swahili communities over a long period of time” (p. 98). In contrast, Paul Sinclair argues against “searching for the original spark that resulted in the florescence of Swahili architectural, economic, trading and literary achievements” and instead emphasizes the “likelihood of a multi-centered developmental trajectory of urban complexity in the region,” which means “acknowledging the abilities of agropastoralist and farming communities along the coast in creating conditions to attract and actively participate in trade and exchange, with all of its ensuing consequences” (p. 190).Rather than developing a definable framework for who the Swahili are and when and where they originate, what emerges throughout these chapters is a truly diverse sense of Swahili geographies and cultures. As Abungu et al. note, the Swahili coast has been classically defined as the “area between the southern Somalia coast and northern Mozambique … dotted with stone-built settlements of domestic houses, mosques, tombs, wells and well-planned narrow streets running north-south and east-west” (p. 642). However, various authors throughout this volume add to and contest this narrow definition. For instance, Anneli Ekblom and Paul Sinclair include Chibuene in south-central Mozambique as part of this diverse coastal trading culture. Similarly, Henry T. Wright states that “The Comorian Archipelago is an intimate part of” the Swahili world (p. 266), and Chantal Radimilahy shows the interconnections between Mahilaka in northern Madagascar and coastal Kenya and Tanzania.Within this expanding geography, internal differentiations and divisions have also become increasingly important. City-states participated in maritime trade to varying degrees at different points in time. For instance, Zanzibar saw unprecedented levels of maritime trade between 1100 and 1400 ce and again when the Omani Būsa’īdī Sultan Sa’īd named Zanzibar as his capital in the nineteenth century. In contrast, Pawlowicz notes thatIt was not until the sixteenth century that these communities adopted a more Indian Ocean-centric outlook, a time that saw economic decline for many other major cities in this region, such as Kilwa and Zanzibar. Within these cities, we also see varying degrees of class and gender distinction. Wynne-Jones highlights how women likely played a more active public role in the early modern period (p. 295). And several articles note that the distinction between upper and lower classes was less structured prior to the nineteenth century. Stone and earthen architecture were often built side-by-side, Bissell noting that “Swahili structures could be expanded and solidified over time” to effectively become stone (p. 593).This purported distinction between stone and earthen architecture is at the center of Swahili coast studies, where stone is seen as a necessary quality of urban formation. However, several authors in this volume reference the ongoing relationships and continuities between cities, towns, and villages, as well as the continuities and coexistence of stone and earthen architecture. There was never a simple divide between wealthy, urban patricians with stone homes and poor, rural farmers with earthen ones. Cities depended on neighboring towns and villages for trade goods and sustenance, and individuals often moved within and between these spaces quite freely.Various authors demonstrate throughout this volume how mobility and exchange are visible in the transfer of raw goods, finished products, people, and ideas across Africa and the Indian Ocean. Ceramics represent one of the largest assemblages in the archaeological record, and they demonstrate a broad exchange of technologies and designs from southern Somalia to Mozambique to the Comoros. A type of low-fired ceramic with incised geometric decoration known as Triangular-Incised Ware (TIW) or Early Tana Tradition (ETT) ceramics was popular across these sites, indicating a high degree of communication relating to production and design practices. More broadly, Morales and Prendergast point out that the local and global uses of cowries show the incredible importance of Swahili coast sites in regional and transregional trade networks (p. 345). Indeed, mobility and exchange were such a regular fixture of coastal life that it can be difficult to assign meaningful geographic or cultural labels to objects and ideas. Erik Gilbert discusses this in his chapter on dhow trading vessels, in which he notes that the distinction between an “eastern African” or “South Arabian” ship is rarely clear cut. Indeed, the dhow's “owner might be from one place, its captain from another, its crew from yet another, and the ship itself might be constructed someplace that neither owner, captain, nor crew called home” (p. 383). Clearly, traditional area studies boundaries fall short in addressing the complex ways in which residents of east Africa associated with their environments.At the heart of each of these themes, the impact of colonial policy making can be readily felt. The desire to define “the Swahili” emerged from colonial processes of classification, ordering the world into neat categories of “African” or “Arab,” categories which residents of the Swahili coast casually and purposefully resisted. Claiming a Swahili identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries implied an urban, civilized identity. However, Daren Ray notes that by the second quarter of the twentieth century, many who had previously claimed a Swahili identity had subsequently adopted the label “Shirazi” because Swahili had acquired an implied inferior status (p. 70). The legacy of these labels is particularly well addressed in Lydia Wilson Marshall and Herman Kiriama's “The Legacy of Slavery on the Swahili Coast.” In this chapter, the authors explore the ties between ethnic labels, land ownership, and political rights in nineteenth and twentieth century eastern Africa. Their study shows how the oft-cited abolition date of 1897 obscures the ongoing legacies of forced labor, land dispossession, and political and social alienation faced by those with slave descent throughout east Africa.In many instances, these chapters do not necessarily present newly documented research, but rather a synthesis of the various projects undertaken on particular cities or topics related to Swahili coast studies. Exceptions to this include LaViolette's chapter on “Craft and Industry” or William Cunningham Bissell's interrogation of “The Modern Life of Swahili Stonetowns.” Additionally, the fact that many of these chapters provide synthesis of and commentary on established research should not detract from their value. Indeed, the amassing of these studies into a single, coherent volume represents an enormous undertaking on the part of Wynne-Jones and LaViolette and should mark The Swahili World as the standard text for newcomers to the field, as well as established scholars.Considering the diverse and complex views approached throughout Wynne-Jones and LaViolette's volume, The Swahili World will appeal to a range of audiences. However, it will hold special interest for students and scholars of the Arabian Peninsula, Indian Ocean, and East Africa. At times the language assumes a specialist's knowledge. For instance, Wright's chapters on the Comoros repeatedly use the terms “Dembeni phase” and “Hanyundu phase” without defining them. And the confusion caused by the changing uses of Swahili, pre-Swahili, and proto-Swahili by different authors could have been alleviated with disclaimers in the introduction or with authors each defining the terms used for themselves. Indeed, Radimilahy's assertion that Mahilaka was originally a Swahili town begs the question of why such a descriptive marker is significant, particularly for the time period she is discussing (roughly 900–1500 ce). Why should Radimilahy want to claim the term “Swahili” for northern Madagascar?Additionally, for those consulting it as a coherent volume rather than as individual studies, a stronger framing in the introduction and conclusion could have added more depth to the text as a whole. Unsurprisingly, given the diverse topics and scholars represented, a number of the studies reflect conflicting and contradictory viewpoints. For instance, Tom Fitton's assertion that “Zanzibar's history can be seen as a microcosm of the wider Swahili coast,” (p. 239) is at odds with the plural histories presented elsewhere in the volume. Jeffrey Fleisher's investigation of “Town and Village” underscores the very different urban trajectories of Mtwapa, Pemba, Kilwa, Lamu, Songo Mnara, Mikindani, and the Comoros, trajectories seemingly at odds with the claim that Zanzibar is a microcosm of the history of coastal eastern Africa. Fitton's understanding of Zanzibar is not unpopular within the field of Swahili coast studies, where stonetowns such as Kilwa, Zanzibar, Mombasa, and Lamu are seen as paradigmatic icons of Swahili history and culture. For many, however, such views obscure the fact that cities, towns, and villages were temporally, geographically, and economically contingent spaces with different access to and engagement in maritime and terrestrial trade. Highlighting these conflicting historiographic trends might have allowed for a more productive tension between chapters.Ultimately, The Swahili World presents a fascinating overview of the complex and, at times, contradictory nature of Swahili coast studies. The various articles, written by a diverse set of authors, provide thoughtful and nuanced investigations, which effectively link together the fields of archaeology, anthropology, art history, and environmental science, among others. The range of approaches and material covered should make The Swahili World a standard text for scholars of eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean alike. Through their work, Wynne-Jones and LaViolette have brought together a truly thought-provoking volume that will continue to prompt new conversations about Africa's role in medieval and early modern globalization.