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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean to 1800: Reviewing Relations in Historical Perspective |
Author: | Pouwels, Randall L. |
Year: | 2002 |
Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
Volume: | 35 |
Issue: | 2-3 |
Pages: | 385-425 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Indian Ocean East Africa |
Subjects: | Swahili history ethnic groups History and Exploration international relations |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3097619 |
Abstract: | For at least 2000 years trade goods have passed with the monsoons between African and Asian ports. While these regions have shared an ocean highway that has facilitated such material exchanges, differences in their respective hinterlands have made Arabia, Persia and India exporters of finished wares and Africans suppliers of primary commodities. For East Africa, the periodic arrivals of Asian settlers had significant social and ideological consequences. This article assesses these connections in detail, especially as they affected East Africans. It gives an overview of the first contacts and the Swahili emergence, c. 100-950, patterns of contact and coastal development, c. 950-1200, commercial expansion in the late Middle Ages, c. 1200-1500, and new patterns of contact after the appearance of the Portuguese, c. 1500-1800. It argues that past scholars of the East African coast committed a serious error in believing that Swahili civilization was fundamentallly outward looking and 'Arab' in its origin. New 'standard' interpretation places Africans at the beginning of Swahili civilization late in the first millennium as well as at the core of its subsequent development. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |