Memories of Resistance to Slavery in Southeastern Tanzania
Corresponding Author(s) : NANCY RUSHOHORA
Journal of Humanities & Social Science (JHSS),
Vol. 13 No. 2 (2024)
Abstract
Slavery is a topic that is part of Tanzania's history. Primary and secondary school textbooks emphasise the methods used to capture the people, including raiding the villages, selling war captives, and ambushing. Methods used to resist slavery are not part of history learning, at least at primary and secondary school levels. Local memories, however, are full of narratives elaborating evidence of resistance to slavery. Using Mgao, a 12th-18th century site, this paper presents the memory of resistance threefold. The first is the Kimbiji rock shelter for refuge and spiritual solace. Kimbiji is a wet cave about 20km from the coast that the people of Mgao associated with resistance against enslavement. The cave has a spiritual attachment related to protecting the people. Access to the site follows a special prayer believed to have turned people invisible whenever harm is approaching. The second resistance approach was relocation. The people of Mgao account that the incoming slavery forced the chief of Mgao—Chief Makunela, to relocate and obtain a verbal agreement that the Arabs would not enslave his people. The enslaved people collected in Mgao came from the Makonde plateau and interior. The last is a violent encounter where the Arabs were physically assaulted and killed in Mgao before force was used to establish the trade between the Arabs of Mombasa and the Swahili of Mgao. The juxtaposition of sources, including oral, archival, and archaeological, is used to account for resistance to slavery and discuss how different communities navigated through the woes of enslavement and their memories of this process.
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- Glassman, Jonathan. "Feasts and riot: revelry, rebellion, and popular consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888." (1995:199).
- Pesek, Michael. "The Boma and the Peripatetic Ruler: Mapping Colonial Rule in German East Africa, 1889-1903." Western Folklore 66, no. 3/4 (2007): 233-257.
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- Silayo, Valence Valerian. "Pre-colonial ethnic wars and the colonization of Northern Tanzania from 1800 to 1950 CE: The case of Chagga of Kilimanjaro." Archaeologies 12 (2016): 163-181
- Fukuyama, Francis. "The future of history: Can liberal democracy survive the decline of the middle class?." Foreign affairs (2012): 53-61. The development of military slavery preceded the Abbasid dynasty, further developing under the Mamluks and perfected by the Ottomans
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- Stampp, Kenneth M. "Rebels and Sambos: the Search for the Negro's Personality in Slavery." The Journal of Southern History 37, no. 3 (1971): 367.
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- Weik, Terry. "The archaeology of maroon societies in the Americas: resistance, cultural continuity, and transformation in the African diaspora." Historical archaeology 31 (1997): 84.
- González-Ruibal, Alfredo. "Subaltern assemblages. The archaeology of marginal places and identities." World Archaeology 53, no. 3 (2021): 370.
- Kusimba, Chapurukha M. "Archaeology of slavery in East Africa." African Archaeological Review 21, no. 2 (2004): 59-88.
- Alpers, Edward A., and Edward Alter Alpers. Ivory and Slaves: changing pattern of international trade in East Central Africa to the later nineteenth century. Univ of California Press, 1975:88.
- Alpers, Edward A. "The French slave trade in East Africa (1721-1810)." Cahiers d'études africaines 10, no. Cahier 37 (1970): 82.
References
Glassman, Jonathan. "Feasts and riot: revelry, rebellion, and popular consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888." (1995:199).
Pesek, Michael. "The Boma and the Peripatetic Ruler: Mapping Colonial Rule in German East Africa, 1889-1903." Western Folklore 66, no. 3/4 (2007): 233-257.
Deutsch, Jan-Georg. "Absence of evidence is no proof: Slave resistance under German colonial rule in East Africa." In Rethinking Resistance, pp. 170-187. Brill, 2003.
Silayo, Valence Valerian. "Pre-colonial ethnic wars and the colonization of Northern Tanzania from 1800 to 1950 CE: The case of Chagga of Kilimanjaro." Archaeologies 12 (2016): 163-181
Fukuyama, Francis. "The future of history: Can liberal democracy survive the decline of the middle class?." Foreign affairs (2012): 53-61. The development of military slavery preceded the Abbasid dynasty, further developing under the Mamluks and perfected by the Ottomans
Vencl, Sl. "War and warfare in archaeology." Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 3, no. 2 (1984): 116-132.
Stampp, Kenneth M. "Rebels and Sambos: the Search for the Negro's Personality in Slavery." The Journal of Southern History 37, no. 3 (1971): 367.
Alpers, Edward A. "Flight to freedom: escape from slavery among bonded Africans in the Indian Ocean world, c. 1750–1962." In Structure of slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, pp. 52-69. Routledge, 2004.
Weik, Terry. "The archaeology of maroon societies in the Americas: resistance, cultural continuity, and transformation in the African diaspora." Historical archaeology 31 (1997): 84.
González-Ruibal, Alfredo. "Subaltern assemblages. The archaeology of marginal places and identities." World Archaeology 53, no. 3 (2021): 370.
Kusimba, Chapurukha M. "Archaeology of slavery in East Africa." African Archaeological Review 21, no. 2 (2004): 59-88.
Alpers, Edward A., and Edward Alter Alpers. Ivory and Slaves: changing pattern of international trade in East Central Africa to the later nineteenth century. Univ of California Press, 1975:88.
Alpers, Edward A. "The French slave trade in East Africa (1721-1810)." Cahiers d'études africaines 10, no. Cahier 37 (1970): 82.