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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Creole nationalists and the search for nativist authenticity in twentieth-century Zanzibar: the limits of cosmopolitanism
Author:Glassman, JonathonISNI
Year:2014
Periodical:The Journal of African History (ISSN 0021-8537)
Volume:55
Issue:2
Pages:229-247
Language:English
Geographic term:Tanzania
Subjects:Zanzibar
nationalism
Creoles
identity
political parties
External link:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853714000024
Abstract:The founders of the Zanzibar National Party can be understood as creole nationalists, who imagined their political authority as stemming from membership in a transnational Arab elite. But in the mid-twentieth century, prompted by the rising hegemony of territorial nationalism and by subaltern challenges informed by pan-Africanism, they crafted a new historical narrative that depicted their movement as having originated with indigenous villagers. Party leaders then related this narrative to Western scholars, whose publications helped reproduce the myth throughout the rest of the century. This article traces the genesis of this masquerade and asks what it implies about the nature of the creole metaphor and its supposed link to discourses of cosmopolitan hybridity. The conventional contrast between 'créolité' and nativist essentialism is shown to be illusory. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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