LITMIR.BIZ

       One

       The Rise of a Compradorial State

      The East African coast was a part of the commercial system in the Indian Ocean for at least two thousand years. But its role in that system for most of that period was largely that of an intermediate zone of exchange between various producing and consuming zones around the ocean. Commerce, rather than production, formed the basis of the civilisation that flourished there. It was cosmopolitan and urbane; it was prosperous but compradorial. The coast was a zone of interaction between two cultural streams, one coming from the African interior and one from across the Indian Ocean, from which emerged a synthesis, the Swahili¹ civilisation, that at every step betrays its dual parentage. But that civilisation was mercantile. It gave rise to city-states that were like beads in a rosary, each forming a distinct entity, and yet threaded together by maritime communication and a common culture and language. Their mercantile ruling classes prospered from the middleman’s profit which they cornered. They were utterly dependent on international trade, with no control over either the producing or consuming ends. The rhythm of Swahili coastal history was not internally generated but was synchronised with the wider rhythm of international trade in the Indian Ocean, and of some of the dominant social formations in that system.

      The East African coast forms a fairly distinct geographical entity, bounded on the west by a belt of poor, low-rainfall scrub known in Kiswahili as the nyika (wilderness). The nyika runs just behind the narrow coastal belt in Kenya. Further south, it is more broken, being penetrated by the eastern rim of mountains and by river valleys which form corridors into the interior. The nyika recedes further into the interior, virtually disappearing in southern mainland Tanzania. The character of the narrow coastal belt, especially in the north, meant that it failed to provide an adequate productive base for many of the city-states, some of which were confined to offshore islands. Moving from north to south, however, there is a progressive enlargement of the immediate hinterland, and the potential for production and trade. On the other hand, the nyika imposed not so much an absolute barrier as a premium on the costs of communication between the coast and the interior, a price that could be paid only at certain times and places in the history of East Africa.

       Map 1.1 The western Indian Ocean

      The sea defines the eastern border of the coastal belt, but it is the end of the world only to an incorrigible landsman. To coastal people it is an arena of production, an avenue of communication, a zone of commercial contact and cultural interaction. Such interaction, of course, presupposed the development of a suitable technology which included not only marine engineering but also the harnessing of the winds and the currents. In the Indian Ocean this meant, above all, the monsoons. They are marked by a seasonal reversal of winds showing great regularity, forming a highly dynamic system of which the East African coast forms only a fringe. The north-east monsoon begins to build up from November when it covers the western Indian Ocean as far south as Mogadishu. The winds are steady and light, and they permit the departure of the early dhows from the Arabian coast, taking thirty to forty days to reach their destinations in East Africa. With a greater frequency of tropical storms in the eastern half of the Arabian Sea in October and November, suitable sailing conditions from India occur in December. By then the monsoon is well established as far south as Zanzibar, allowing for a faster and more direct voyage taking twenty to twenty-five days. This pattern of circulation is reinforced by the equatorial current which flows southwards after striking the Somali coast, thus facilitating the voyage from the north. But since the African coast is at the fringe of the monsoon system, the constancy of the monsoon decreases dramatically as it encounters the south-easterlies blowing towards Mozambique. The convergence of the two wind systems creates a region of variable winds and unstable weather prone to tropical cyclones in the Mozambique channel, making the voyage both arduous and dangerous south of Cape Delgado.²

      By March the north-east monsoon begins to break up, and it does so earliest in the south. By April the wind has reversed to become the southwest monsoon. The equatorial current at this time strikes the coast near Cape Delgado and splits into the strong north-flowing current which facilitates the northward journey, and the south-flowing current which hinders exit to the north from the Mozambique channel. This is the season of departure from East Africa, but there is an interruption between mid-May and mid-August when the weather is too boisterous for Indian Ocean shipping. Dhows therefore

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