The Tutsi and the Nyamwezi: Cattle, Mobility, and the Transformation of Agro-Pastoralism in Nineteenth-Century Western Tanzania

Abstract

Abstract:The key role of the Nyamwezi in the nineteenth-century caravan trade of East and Central Africa is well known. The convergence of rapid change in Unyamwezi, a region connecting areas of economic specialization, is more obscure. The development of agro-pastoralism in Unyamwezi was an adaptation and an opportunity forged by (unequal) partnerships between the Nyamwezi commercial elite and Tutsi immigrants. Patron-client relationships reflected prevailing economic and political forces, reversing the pattern of pastoral dominance in the Great Lakes region. Two different agro-ecological, sociological and political regions – the East African woodland savannah and the Great Lakes zone – were interlinked in a trans-regional cattle, salt, and labor economy intertwined with global capitalism. Human mobility stimulated change but so too did movements of livestock, diseases, agricultural regimes, and ecological boundaries.