Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar. Abdul Sheriff

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       One

       The Rise of a Compradorial State

      The East African coast was a part of the commercial system in the Indian Ocean for at least two thousand years. But its role in that system for most of that period was largely that of an intermediate zone of exchange between various producing and consuming zones around the ocean. Commerce, rather than production, formed the basis of the civilisation that flourished there. It was cosmopolitan and urbane; it was prosperous but compradorial. The coast was a zone of interaction between two cultural streams, one coming from the African interior and one from across the Indian Ocean, from which emerged a synthesis, the Swahili¹ civilisation, that at every step betrays its dual parentage. But that civilisation was mercantile. It gave rise to city-states that were like beads in a rosary, each forming a distinct entity, and yet threaded together by maritime communication and a common culture and language. Their mercantile ruling classes prospered from the middleman’s profit which they cornered. They were utterly dependent on international trade, with no control over either the producing or consuming ends. The rhythm of Swahili coastal history was not internally generated but was synchronised with the wider rhythm of international trade in the Indian Ocean, and of some of the dominant social formations in that system.

      The East African coast forms a fairly distinct geographical entity, bounded on the west by a belt of poor, low-rainfall scrub known in Kiswahili as the nyika (wilderness). The nyika runs just behind the narrow coastal belt in Kenya. Further south, it is more broken, being penetrated by the eastern rim of mountains and by river valleys which form corridors into the interior. The nyika recedes further into the interior, virtually disappearing in southern mainland Tanzania. The character of the narrow coastal belt, especially in the north, meant that it failed to provide an adequate productive base for many of the city-states, some of which were confined to offshore islands. Moving from north to south, however, there is a progressive enlargement of the immediate hinterland, and the potential for production and trade. On the other hand, the nyika imposed not so much an absolute barrier as a premium on the costs of communication between the coast and the interior, a price that could be paid only at certain times and places in the history of East Africa.

       Map 1.1 The western Indian Ocean

      The sea defines the eastern border of the coastal belt, but it is the end of the world only to an incorrigible landsman. To coastal people it is an arena of production, an avenue of communication, a zone of commercial contact and cultural interaction. Such interaction, of course, presupposed the development of a suitable technology which included not only marine engineering but also the harnessing of the winds and the currents. In the Indian Ocean this meant, above all, the monsoons. They are marked by a seasonal reversal of winds showing great regularity, forming a highly dynamic system of which the East African coast forms only a fringe. The north-east monsoon begins to build up from November when it covers the western Indian Ocean as far south as Mogadishu. The winds are steady and light, and they permit the departure of the early dhows from the Arabian coast, taking thirty to forty days to reach their destinations in East Africa. With a greater frequency of tropical storms in the eastern half of the Arabian Sea in October and November, suitable sailing conditions from India occur in December. By then the monsoon is well established as far south as Zanzibar, allowing for a faster and more direct voyage taking twenty to twenty-five days. This pattern of circulation is reinforced by the equatorial current which flows southwards after striking the Somali coast, thus facilitating the voyage from the north. But since the African coast is at the fringe of the monsoon system, the constancy of the monsoon decreases dramatically as it encounters the south-easterlies blowing towards Mozambique. The convergence of the two wind systems creates a region of variable winds and unstable weather prone to tropical cyclones in the Mozambique channel, making the voyage both arduous and dangerous south of Cape Delgado.²

      By March the north-east monsoon begins to break up, and it does so earliest in the south. By April the wind has reversed to become the southwest monsoon. The equatorial current at this time strikes the coast near Cape Delgado and splits into the strong north-flowing current which facilitates the northward journey, and the south-flowing current which hinders exit to the north from the Mozambique channel. This is the season of departure from East Africa, but there is an interruption between mid-May and mid-August when the weather is too boisterous for Indian Ocean shipping. Dhows therefore sail either with the build-up (Musim) of the monsoon in April, if commercial transactions can be completed in time, or with the tail-end (Demani) in August. The latter strategy becomes increasingly necessary if dhows have to proceed south of Zanzibar.

       Map 1.2 The monsoons

      The spatial extent and the differential pattern of the monsoons thus helped define the normal radius of action of Indian Ocean dhows. They tended to favour the northern part of the East African coast which enjoyed a longer trading season between the two monsoons, especially for Indian dhows. The southern coast, on the other hand, is at the extreme periphery of the monsoon system, and it thus experienced a shorter trading season, forcing dhows to ‘winter’ in East African waters and sail back with the tailend of the south-west monsoon in August or September. This required a more elaborate entrepôt system for effective exploitation of the commercial resources of the southern coast, especially that beyond Cape Delgado.

      On the one hand, therefore, the narrow coastal belt failed to provide an adequate productive base for the economies of the city-states. They were thus dependent on the transit trade between the African interior and the regions beyond the Indian Ocean. On the other hand, the longitudinal alignment of the coast accessible to the monsoon, even if access was differential, provided the various ports with potentially independent commercial bases. This imprinted on the coastal economy and politics a generally acephalous and even fissiparous tendency, and a spirit of political independence despite, or because of, the individual economic dependence of the city-states on international trade.

The mercantile civilisation of the Swahili coast

      From the beginning of the Christian era African social formations along the East African coast, which were initially geared to production of use values for direct consumption or barter, were induced by international trade to produce surplus products for exchange. A surplus of food grains and mangrove poles was exported to the food- and timber-deficient south Arabian coast and the Persian Gulf at various times, though these mundane staples are hardly ever mentioned in the few available sources before the sixteenth century. External demand, however, also induced the production of certain luxuries for which there was probably no local use. While new sources of wealth were thus opened up, they may have entailed the diversion of labour from other СКАЧАТЬ