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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Makings of a Tribe: Bondeo Identities and Histories |
Author: | Willis, Justin |
Year: | 1992 |
Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
Volume: | 33 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 191-208 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Tanzania |
Subjects: | Bondei ethnicity History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/182998 |
Abstract: | Since the mid-nineteenth century, there have been several changes in the paradigms of ethnic identity in the area around the modern town of Muheza in northeastern Tanzania. Such differing tribal schemas have been correlated with differing presentations of history, and today several varying ideas of identity and history coexist. One view holds that the Bondei are merely a part of a much larger group, which is centred on the Zigua. Those people in Bonde who present identity in this way usually also relate a family history of 19th-century migration from Zigua to Bonde. The histories they tell differ strikingly from those told by ex-members of the Bondei Central Union (BCU), formed in the 1940s to campaign on the issue of indirect rule, who define Bondei as all those whose ancestors were known to have come relatively recently to Bonde. The correlation between differing tribal schemas and differing presentations of history suggests that all discussions of history and identity are negotiations, in which individuals attempt to present ethnicity and history in ways which they perceive as consonant with their own interests. Notes, ref., sum. |