In 1888, a handful of German adventurers bungled and attempt to conquer the Muslim towns of the East African coast. Their intrusion sparked a political crisis that led to the collapse of all civil authority in the Swahili towns.

This work, which draws on substantial interviews, is a study of economic history from below. It focuses on the cultural and social history of Indians in Durban, exploring such topics as: why did the Indian peasantry rise and decline like the African peasantry, but with a different chronology?; what was the economic logic of the Indian family and to what extent do new interests in the politics and economics of gender help us to understand that logic?; why did Indian workers become intensely militant and why did this military subside?; and, above all, what can this history tell us about the changing nature of South African capitalism in the 20th century? This concern underlies the whole book.

In 1888, a massive rebellion erupted when German colonial officials attempted to establish a civil administration in the Muslim towns of the East African coast. This book examines this rebellion.

In 1888, a massive rebellion erupted when German colonial officials attempted to establish a civil administration in the Muslim towns of the East African coast. This book examines this rebellion.

“ Ingeniously stands the study of globalization and trade on its head.”—Edward Alpers, Chair of Department of History, UCLA

This is the first interdisciplinary history of Lake Tanganyika and of eastern Africa's relationship with the wider Indian Ocean World during the nineteenth century. Philip Gooding deploys diverse source materials, including oral, climatological, anthropological, and archaeological sources, to ground interpretations of the better-known, European-authored archive in local epistemologies and understandings of the past. Gooding shows that Lake Tanganyika's shape, location, and distinctive lacustrine environment contributed to phenomena traditionally associated with the history of the wider Indian Ocean World being negotiated, contested, and re-imagined in particularly robust ways. He adds novel contributions to African and Indian Ocean histories of urbanism, the environment, spirituality, kinship, commerce, consumption, material culture, bondage, slavery, Islam, and capitalism. African peoples and environments are positioned as central to the histories of global economies, religions, and cultures.

"The first history of photography from Africa's Swahili coast, revealing the images' complicated relationships to colonialism and global influence"--