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In 1867, a solitary diamond was picked up by chance near the appropriately named settlement of Hopetown on the Orange river frontier of the northern Cape Colony. It was sent to the nearest magistracy, Colesberg, and from there by post to Grahamstown, where it was identified. When it arrived in Cape Town, Richard Southey, colonial secretary to the Cape government, declared in words both celebrated and prophetic: ‘Gentlemen, this is the rock on which the future success of South Africa will be built.’ New finds were reported daily from alluvial diggings along the Orange and Vaal rivers and their tributaries, and more importantly by 1870 diamonds were also being found in the open veld around the area to become known as Kimberley. Within five years it had become the world's largest producer of diamonds, outstripping even Brazil. A new era in the history of southern Africa had begun. In 1870, the political economy of Southern Africa was characterised by tremendous regional diversity. African kingdoms, Afrikaner republics and British colonies co-existed in a rough equilibrium of power, but pursuing widely differing social and economic goals. Although most Africans lived in largely self-sufficient agrarian societies, few were untouched by the coming of the merchant and the missionary. South of the Limpopo, much of the region was dominated by the operations of commercial capital derived from the mercantile enclaves of the coastal Cape Colony and Natal. Trading insinuated itself into the largely pre-capitalist agricultural economies of African peoples and into the proto-capitalist agricultural economies of the Afrikaners on the highveld, while the demands from Cape merchants for cattle and the firearms they brought in exchange profoundly affected the pastoral societies of south-western Africa, transforming the nature of warfare in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Africa in 1870 is best defined as the economic hinterland of the commercial entrepôt of Zanzibar. This area included much of what is now Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, as well as parts of Rwanda, Burundi, Zaïre, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Somalia. The region was criss-crossed by trade routes which converged on the Swahili towns of the east coast. It was along these paths of Swahili expansion that Europeans in the later nineteenth century began to penetrate and occupy the interior. By 1905 Britain and Germany had divided most of East Africa between them, and they had achieved overall command in military and strategic terms. But their new colonial governments exercised a very uneven control over the African population, while the new colonial economies had only partly deflected local labour and capital from older systems of production and exchange. New economic structures were emerging, but their impact was only just becoming evident. Thus the period under study here is very much one of transition. To understand it, we need to consider not only the European innovation but also the local and regional economies, and the wide-ranging Swahili commercial and cultural network. We must also acknowledge the importance of individuals. The changes of the period gave much scope for the exercise of leadership and the pursuit of political rivalry. Initially, African horizons of statecraft were much enlarged, though often one early effect of colonial rule was to narrow them. What follows, then, is a synthesis stressing processes of differential integration in the immediate pre-colonial period, the dynamics of the decade of military conquest, 1888–99, and the terms of reconstruction preparatory to systematic state formation which occurred from the turn of the century until 1905. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through all the changes introduced after 1873, coastal townspeople and their religious leaders were not, of course, supine. Occasionally, one catches a brief glimpse of popular resistance to measures implemented by Europeans or their instruments, the Sultans. Such popular expressions of anger often were whipped up by the harangues of local qadis, walimu, and wazee. For example, at Zanzibar there was one case of an Ibadi qadi, Sh. Ali b. Msellum al-Khalassy, who dared to stand alone in open defiance against the ban on the status of slavery in 1909. In addition, the 1888–90 Abushiri resistance to German takeover of the Tanganyika coast received a great deal of popular support through the Qadiriyya tariqa. On the northern coast, Sh. Mbarak obtained varying degrees of assistance from Miji Kenda and Swahili elders. Such open acts of defiance, however, were doomed to failure in the face of determined efforts by the Sultans and the European Powers. Resistance, especially after 1896, largely was passive. One Provincial Report, for instance, termed the general attitude of Lamu towards colonial rule as ‘not very satisfactory’. While apparently law-abiding and peaceful, Lamuans were ‘nevertheless experts in the art of passive resistance’. Offences for which many ‘Arabs and Bajuns who [were] more or less educated’ stood accused included leaving the district to avoid taxation and failure to give assistance to ‘improving the health and sanitation of the town’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is as difficult in East Africa as it is in other parts of Africa to say exactly when the colonial era began. European influence had been waxing long before 1885. The Sultans of Zanzibar signed successive anti-slave trade treaties with Great Britain in 1828, 1873, and 1876, for example, in addition to treaties of trade and friendship with America (1832), Britain (1839), and France (1844). For decades, these treaties had made European sailors, merchants, and consular officials increasingly familiar sights in coastal towns like Lamu, Mombasa, and Zanzibar. However, 1885 usually is considered to mark the formal onset of the colonial phase in East African history, since it was in 1885 that Kaiser Wilhelm issued the Schutzbrief taking under German protection the territories acquired by Karl Peters through treaties. This single action perhaps more than any other ignited Anglo-German rivalry on the coast and in the interior. Colonial rule did as much to transform coastal life as anything else in the previous history of the coast. Stated directly, the East African coast was transfigured radically and permanently. Furthermore, the most crucial changes occurred in the initial years of actual colonial rule, 1885–1914. In these three decades, the British managed to affect gravely the relationship of the Sultans to their subjects; to re-create the form and function of the old Sultanate to resemble something more like the European notion of a proper governing institution; and, finally, to alter the essential socio-economic underpinnings of life within the coastal towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secularity of the Sultanate, the increasing availability of religious texts, the appearance of new ʿulamaʾ from other parts of the coast and from abroad, and the new contacts established from expanding trade opened up coastal towns to changing religious perceptions. Religion became less parochial in the nineteenth century; Islamic perceptions and practices became less reflective of the individual town. The impact of religious beliefs produced by such an opening up of society has been studied by Professor Monica Wilson, and her observations seem especially appropriate to the situation of the nineteenth-century coast. In general, the phenomena which Wilson considers to be characteristic of societies experiencing such an expansion include problems of accommodating a local judiciary to the needs and claims of immigrant strangers, an increased specialization of local productive forces and an ensuing secularization of society, and a gradual abandonment of locality spirits and a growing monotheism. Concerning the first point, Wilson shows the problems frequently encountered by local judges in introducing testimonies of strangers into courts and the consequent difficulties of forming legal opinions on the basis of evidence so provided. When viewed in such a context, one easily can imagine how towns like Mombasa, Zanzibar, and Lamu in the nineteenth century would have required less localized bases for qadis to make judgements in cases involving immigrant strangers. Such qadis would have needed access to legal source materials which had a wider cultural and historical scope than would have been present in most coastal towns previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coming of the Busaidi Sultanate marked a new departure for townspeople from purely local concerns and views to a new internationalism. Certainly this was true in the realm of economics for most towns, and was true of Lamu before the 1820s. Yet, what started in coastal economy slowly worked its way into the social and ideological spheres. Local reactions to these alterations, as should have been apparent in the preceding chapter, were ambivalent, even contradictory. While some chose to embrace the new order of things from the start, others were slow to reconcile themselves to the changes. And while a new social condition was of obvious benefit to newcomers and outsiders in the towns, as Mannheim explains matters, the old elite found accommodating themselves a more difficult matter. Although changes were being introduced from the time of Sayyid Said onwards, matters advanced by several quantum steps in the reign of Sayyid Barghash. While Said b. Sultan simply introduced the prevailing political and economic order of Muscat to his new capital at Zanzibar, Sayyid Barghash conscientiously and actively sought changes in the ideological realm. It is for this reason that he is remembered on the coast as the first modernizer in coastal history, and it is to his reign and those of his successors that the subject matter of this chapter is especially applicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The previous chapter was devoted to doctrinal aspects of the fusion between the African and Islamic religious traditions which took place in coastal towns. This chapter considers the economic and sociological underpinnings of leadership in the towns, with particular emphasis on the relationship between religious and political authority. AFRICAN MATERIALISM AND THE ‘RIGHT PATH’ IDEAL What is real in most pre-industrial societies is what works best in assuring their material well-being. Hence, in the past, African civilizations evolved as adaptations to prevailing environmental conditions, and these adaptations largely were the result of the dialogues people established with their natural surroundings. Thus, the character of a particular African civilization and the ideology which derived from it were influenced heavily by what worked best in that particular environment in bringing material comfort to human society and the resources people had on hand for its mastery. Naturally, among such resources was the collective knowledge of the world as it was handed down generation after generation and which formed a large part of a society's historical tradition and religious beliefs. Historical tradition, religious belief, and wealth were all directly linked. An idea common among Africans, whether or not they were Muslims, was that the person who had wealth had baraka, whereas he who was impoverished was ‘wrongly guided’ and ‘had no power with God’. The world-view underlying this was one which viewed the natural and supernatural worlds as correlative and reciprocal sides of the same reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far, this book has depicted the evolution of coastal culture up to the late eighteenth century. Attention has been focused more narrowly on East African coastal Islam as a religion which was fixed in this wider cultural framework. The remainder of this work will demonstrate how this cultural and religious edifice was reduced to relative unimportance in the early history of the modern East African nations. What this entails, especially, is an analysis which centres on one overriding problem: how did the gradual imposition of the Busaidi Sultanate at Zanzibar and European imperialism affect culture and Islam on the coast in the nineteenth century? THE POLITICAL SITUATION, 1698–1888 To appreciate better the cultural and religious changes which took place under the Busaidi Sultanate, a summary of political developments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is useful at this juncture. However, since such an undertaking is helpful solely as a way of further illuminating cultural and religious history, only the barest description is needed. The reader who is interested in greater (and perhaps more precise) detail is referred to some of the works by Bennett, Coupland, Gray, Nicholls, and Ylvisaker listed in the bibliography. With the temporary eclipsing of Mombasa in the sixteenth century, Pate became the greatest Swahili power on the coast. Nevertheless, the Portuguese remained as great a problem for Pate as they had been for Mombasa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laʿilmu ridda illaʾ llah (Any knowledge save that of God is apostasy). Such is the view of a mwanachuoni mkubwa (‘big’ ʿalim) concerning the inclusion of ancestral spirits, territorial spirits, or saint worship in Islam. Such views might be encountered anywhere in the Islamic world, for everywhere within it, ‘high’ Islam, reflective of an absolute view of transcendence, and ‘popular’ Islam, which often treats transcendence merely as being relative, are to be found coexisting in single communities. The implicit antagonism between these two cosmic dispositions has produced widely divergent opinions within Islamic communities concerning what sins one can commit and still be accepted as a Muslim. In the century or so after the Prophet Muhammad's death, opinions on these questions varied greatly from the relative tolerance of early Shiʿites to the highly exclusive views of some Khariji groups. In spite of these differences, all Muslims shared one common notion: the idea that certain enlightened personalities or societies enjoy God's special favour, and that for one to expect eternal salvation he must attach himself to these individuals or communities. Muslim theologians, however, learned to deal with such religious differences among the Faithful by ‘leaving’ the final judgement in such matters to God (that is, constituting the thesis of ‘suspended judgement’). Out of this developed the conviction that, through a condign and enlightened leadership, God extends his special dispensation to all members of the Islamic community (umma). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the oral traditions of the northern coast dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries to see what they reveal about the evolution of northern coastal culture and religion in the early ‘modern’ period. Since much of this history centred on changes introduced when high-status immigrants settled among a local social core of ‘Shirazi’, it is important, first, to briefly review who or what these Shirazi represent in coastal traditions. Next, some attention will be given to information available from external (Arabic and Portuguese) sources concerning the nature of these immigrants and the impact they made on East African societies. Finally, a particular effort will be made to elucidate the meanings of the northern (especially Lamu) traditions themselves in light of the previous two sections. THE SHIRAZI The history and character of coastal towns, of course, developed not only from the relationships obtained with their natural environments, but also from those established among the various groups of people who settled the towns. A primary social ingredient of each town was a core of relatively ancient descent groups who were in fact often spread throughout several villages and towns of an entire region. These autochthonous clans underpinned larger economic, social, and political communities which might be characterized as confederations, alliances, or city-states. The ultimate unity of such communities of settlements depended on the type and degree of cooperation and coordination there was among these locally acknowledged indigenous ‘families’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of the cultural history of the northern coast in the ‘medieval’ period encounters two major difficulties, the information available for assessment and the terminology. (Thus, any resolution of the earlier part of this period, especially, has to be very speculative and stated in the broadest terms possible.) Coastal historians are not faced with the usual problem of paucity of sources. Indeed, they are, if anything, especially fortunate among Africanists for having a comparatively large number of written documents and recorded oral traditions at their disposal, all of which have been augmented in the past twenty-odd years by the published results of various crucial archaeological and ethnolinguistic studies. Each type of source used, be it oral tradition(s), written eyewitness accounts, archaeological reports, or linguistic studies, presents its own peculiar set of strengths and pitfalls of which the historian must be aware if he is going to use it effectively. Fortunately, these various sources of historical data often complement each other in terms of their relative strengths and in the nature of the information they provide. The historian, then, draws upon as wide a range of information as possible, if he is wise, in his historical interpretations. While this usually is quite rewarding, problems inevitably appear in efforts to reconcile different types of data and the terminology applied to these data, which are often at some variance with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North of Mombasa the coast stands out as a separate ecological zone from the interior. Rendering it especially dramatic definition is the nyika, a parched and jejune wilderness behind the coastal fringe which served throughout history as a natural barrier to all who contemplated travel inland. The nyika usually remains about 15 kilometres from the sea, but as one moves north of the Lamu archipelago it begins approaching the seaside itself. Around the present Kenya–Somalia border, this ‘coastal fringe’ effectively disappears. Thus, the so-called Benadir coast of southern Somalia consists largely of coral outcrops and a sandy shore covered by gigantic dunes of up to 150 metres in height. North of the Jubba River there are few natural harbours and even the best of them, Mogadishu, is of mediocre quality. As one moves southwards, however, soils and topography improve. The barren dunes gradually yield to a flatter terrain covered with grasses, bush, doum palm, and some savannah vegetation in the region of the Lamu archipelago itself, while the appearance of mangrove swamps grows more and more common. In this region north of the Tana River, soils generally are unsuitable for intensive cultivation and, being essentially sandy, shifting cultivation techniques with long fallow periods of up to fifteen years are required. Such land is suitable for herding activities and for cultivation of dryland cereals (for example, sorghums and millets) and some fruits. Some forests still exist, though it is likely that more extensive forests and, perhaps, somewhat better soils existed before the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of coastal culture outlined in this work differs significantly from past interpretations. Prior to the nineteenth century, at least, coastal urban culture and religion were uniquely local phenomena essentially dominated by their African physical and intellectual ambience, while remaining open and responsive to transoceanic intellectual stimuli. This, of course, implies certain things about coastal Africans and Islam. It means, for one thing, that their intellectual and cultural traditions were substantial enough to continue having ‘meaning’ for them even when and where pressures for change were greatest. It means that these people and their traditions were sufficiently strong and supple to respond positively to new opportunities while maintaining control over potentially destabilizing changes they brought with them. It means that monotheism (in the form of Islam) presented supplementary doctrines and symbols to which local traditions could be adapted and which were suitably representative of this changing intellectual environment to an extent that cannot be ignored. In the end, it also implies that ‘Arabs’ were rarely, if ever, in a position to impose change so much that local peoples more frequently adapted to it. Exactly what were the ‘origins’ of coastal culture and when they emerged are contentious issues among scholars. It is admittedly a matter of definition, for example, to say just when coastal towns were ‘founded’. One obvious approach is to note when and under what conditions various features usually associated with this culture can be said to have manifested themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]