Settled Strangers

Asian business elites in East Africa (1800-2000)

Bibliographic Data

ID6026637
AuthorsRitesh Shah (0000-0002-2890-252X, Film Independent, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume113
Issue451
Pages319-320
Publication date2014-04-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrican Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9909 • E-ISSN: 1468-2621
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/afraf/adu016
OpenAlexW2325029016
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Gijsbert Oonk is the author of several works on East African Asians, also known as South Asians of East Africa or Asian Africans, all basically of Indian sub-continental origin. The period covered by his latest book coincides with that of his earlier commissioned biography of The Karimjee Jivanjee Family: Merchant Princes of East Africa, 1800–2000 (2009), which underlines the complementary project of these books as their author places a successful community's history under scrutiny. As Oonk puts it in the Preface, ‘despite their great importance in terms of economic development, the building of the Ugandan Railway, the civil service, the military, the press and the independence movement, these people are rarely mentioned in the history textbooks of the area’ (p. xi). He draws analogies with the Chinese in South-East Asia and the Lebanese in West Africa (with a passing reference also to Jews in Europe) as economically dominant but politically weak minorities, and considers that researching ‘elites is a rather neglected pursuit’, and that ‘rich and powerful people are still a little studied group’ (p. 51)

China · East Asia · Geography · Independence (probability theory · Middle East · Political science · Scrutiny · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

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