: Exploring a range of studies regarding the ' invention of tradition ', the ' making of customary law ' and the ' creation of tribalism ' since the s, this survey article argues that the case for colonial invention has often overstated colonial power and ability to manipulate African institutions to establish hegemony. Rather, tradition was a complex discourse in which people continually reinterpreted the lessons of the past in the context of the present. Colonial power was limited by chiefs' obligation to ensure community well-being to maintain the legitimacy on which colonial authorities depended. And ethnicity reflected longstanding local political, cultural and historical conditions in the changing contexts of colonial rule. None of these institutions were easily fabricated or manipulated, and colonial dependence on them often limited colonial power as much as facilitating it.
“Strange foreign jewels on a mournful silent shore”Historians have frequently viewed the Swahili-speaking peoples of the East African coast as members of an Arab diaspora that spread around the Indian Ocean with trade over the last two thousand years. The interpretation flowed easily from the apparent “Arab” nature of Swahili culture--a written language using Arabic script, elaborate stone buildings and mosques constructed in urban settings, Islam, and genteel social behavior--especially when contrasted with the culture of mainland Africans, members of preliterate, uncentralized communities. Since the Swahili culture of the islands and coastal fringes bore little apparent resemblance to the cultures of the mainland, historians reasoned, its development could only have been the product of Persian and Arab merchants bringing to the “mournful silent shores” of East Africa the “jewels” of their own Muslim civilizations.The perspective was essentially diffusionist in assuming that cultural innovation and historical development in Africa could only have come from elsewhere, and racist in assuming that race and culture were so inextricably linked that a separate “race” of immigrants had to carry these new ideas. As a result, historians failed to investigate the possible African roots of Swahili culture in their Bantu language, their religious beliefs and values, their economy, or their social structure. But this charge applies not only to European historians; Swahili oral historians have long recounted the development of their societies in essentially the same terms in involved genealogies tracing the development of different Swahili families, communities, and institutions back to Persian or Arabian ancestors. When European historians came to study the oral traditions of the Swahili (usually in written, chronicle form), they thus found ready confirmation of their own assumptions and interpretations.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies. "Maasai farmers" is not an oxymoron. While people commonly associate the Maasai of East Africa exclusively with pastoralism, more than one-third of all East African Maa-speakers farm, ranging from intensive irrigation farmers like the Arusha and Chamus to mixed agro-pastoralists like the Parakuyo (Baraguyu). Nevertheless, most Maasai studies stress pastoral Maasai aversion to farming, and Maasai in general are often taken as a paradigm for "pure pastoralists." Maasai culture and values, it is asserted, are uniquely related to a pastoral mode of production and are sharply distinguished from the cultures and values of Bantuspeaking farmers who live in the highlands interspersed among and surrounding Maasai pastoralists on the plains. Maasai all speak relatively homogeneous dialects of Maa, an Eastern Nilotic language unrelated to the more heterogeneous Bantu languages spoken by farmers. Pastoral Maasai herd exclusively, while the farmers of the highlands practice intensive, often irrigation-based, agriculture and keep little stock. Maasai practice an age-based form of social organization that unites men of the same age across different territorial sections, while Bantu-speakers have localized descent-based systems tied to specific land holdings. Maasai venerate cattle and the God who oversees them; Bantu-speakers, the land and the ancestors who settled it. And Bantu-speakers have been farming the highlands for over 2,000 years, while Maasai are relatively recent arrivals on the plains.1 Given this perceived dichotomy between Bantu-speaking highland farmers and Maa-speaking plains pastoralists, Arusha Maasai appear to be an anomaly. * The following paper is based on historical for their helpful comments, and especially to Christopher Ehret and Rainer Vossen for their invaluable assistance with linguistic materials. 1 For a general survey of the northeast, see Thomas Spear, Kenya's Past (London, 1981), 33-43. This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Fri, 9 May 2014 00:28:59 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THOMAS SPEAR AND DEREK NURSELiving on the southwestern slopes of Mount Meru in Tanzania, they are intensive irrigation farmers who value land and the abundant crops the fertile volcanic soils produce as well as cattle. As one walks around the mountain, Arusha often appear more similar to Bantu-speaking Meru farmers who live on its southeastern slopes than they do to Kisongo Maasai pastoralists who inhabit the surrounding plains. But as Maa-speakers, Aru...
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