Muscat in Rural Tanzania
Omani Arabs, Identity, and Citizenship in Post-Slavery Tanzania, 1920s–1960s
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12916670 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Salvatory S Nyanto (0000-0003-1457-8893, University of Dar es Salaam, corresponding author), F Becker (0000-0002-8210-7252, Ghent University Hospital) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-28 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-09 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1753-2523 • E-ISSN: 1753-2531 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17532523.2025.2455784 |
| OpenAlex | W4408278276 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 26 |
Studies on post-slavery in East Africa often concentrate on the aftermath of slavery for the formerly enslaved. By contrast, former owners’ experiences after abolition and during emancipation are rarely explored. This article examines the trajectories of Omani Arabs in western Tanzania during and after the end of slavery, ca. 1910 to the late twentieth century. Having settled and built slavelabour plantations along the central caravan route in the nineteenth century, they relocated to rural areas between the 1920s and 1930s following the legal abolition of slavery and great economic depression. To tell their story in postslavery Tanzania, we drew examples from primary sources deposited in the archives of Tanzania and the United Kingdom, and oral interviews collected from the many villages in rural western Tanzania where the Omanis’ descendants now live. We show that the history of the Omani Arabs and their identity in twentieth-century western Tanzania was shaped by economic dispossession and uncertainty about citizenship, but also by evolving cultural identities and sustained social networking
Ancient history · Art · Citizenship · Ethnology · Geography · Identity (music · Political science · Politics · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Tanzania · African history and culture analysis · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts
Buying Time
Plantation slavery on the east coast of Africa
The Home and the World
Slavery and Emancipation in Islamic East Africa
Making Identity on the Swahili Coast
Revolutionary State-Making in Dar es Salaam
War of Words, War of Stones
African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania
Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Post-Colonial Africa
Carriers of Culture
The Politics of Environmental Control in Northeastern Tanzania, 1840-1940
Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania
The Landscapes of Slavery in Kenya
Crossing Multiple Borders
Researching the Aftermath of Slavery in Mainland East Africa
A triangle
Sisters in Spirit
Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar
People and Production in Late Precolonial Tanzania - History and Structures
Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa
People and Production in Late Precolonial Tanzania
Self-Reliance and the State
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |