Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gilbert, Erik
• Hazareesingh, Sandip
• Maat, Harro

Titel

Rice, Civilisation and the Swahili Towns: Anti-Commodity and Anti-State?

Ist Teil von

• Local Subversions of Colonial Cultures, 2015, p.170-186

Ort / Verlag

United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In the 1830s, coastal East Africa was drawn into an emerging global market for agricultural commodities. Long-distance trade was nothing new to the region, but prior to the 19th century the region’s main exports had been, at various times, ivory, rhino horn, turtle shell, slaves, rock crystal, gums, resins and gold. In the early 19th century the Omani Arabs who ruled Zanzibar and much of the coast began to create a plantation complex that used slave labour to produce cloves, coconuts and sugar. While sugar was only moderately successful, the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba quickly became the world’s largest producer of cloves. Almost the entire clove crop was exported to India and Indonesia. The coconuts, which were grown on the mainland as well as the islands, were processed into copra and coir and exported to India and Europe. Alongside the clove plantations of the islands was a less well-studied plantation sector that produced grain on the mainland of what is now Tanzania for export to the islands and to South Arabia. These coastal plantations produced mostly millet and sorghum and like the clove plantations also relied on slave labour.