Violence and Vulnerability in East Africa before 1800 CE: An Agenda for Research

Abstract

AbstractLittle is known about the history of violence and vulnerability in east Africa before 1800 CE despite its obvious importance to virtually any larger theme in the region's history. This essay suggests that although the fraught moral valences of violence and vulnerability – especially with respect to their importance in modern African history – may explain this state of affairs, historians must meet the challenge of studying the earlier histories of violence and vulnerability as part of a full‐fleshed sense of the African past. With a focus on east Africa before the nineteenth century, the essay considers some of the particular transitions which a regional history of violence and vulnerability might cause us to rethink. It closes with a broad definition of violence crafted in the light of the value of a long‐term regional history of such fraught categories.