Abstract
This chapter employs a transoceanic scale of historical connectivity to examine African-Asian encounters in the twentieth century. These relationships are often characterized in scholarship and public imagination as distinct from Western nation-state models of social integration. A western Indian Ocean setting, featuring dense networks of collaboration and conflict among a cosmopolitan array of actors, reveals a significantly different situation. This chapter deploys a bottom-up approach to illustrate the lived experiences of Africans and Indians in a single East African city, Dar es Salaam. The two case studies in the chapter—one of a contested shark meat market in the city and the second of the production and consumption networks around a popular women’s garment—reveal vigorous interactions among communities with deeply interlocked economic, political, social, and cultural lives.
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Notes
- 1.
The chapter builds on several ideas from my recent monograph, although all of the evidence included here is unpublished material. See Bertz (2015).
- 2.
Pearson (1998, pp. 36–37) memorably suggested that it would be better to refer to the Arabian Sea portion of the western Indian Ocean as the ‘Afrasian Sea’.
- 3.
For a survey of evidence of early connections between East Africa and India, see Gregory (1971).
- 4.
For the early history of Dar es Salaam, see Brennan et al. (2007, pp. 16–31).
- 5.
For example, separate school systems, with unequal levels of funding, were established for the three major racial groups in the territory. For more, see Chaps. 2 and 4 in Bertz (2015).
- 6.
Tanzania does not track communal data in its census, so these numbers and those in the next paragraph for the Indian population are common estimates.
- 7.
According to the 2013 census, the Dar es Salaam region has a population of 4,364,541. See United Republic of Tanzania (2013).
- 8.
Almost all of the evidence for this case study, except where noted differently, is drawn from Tanzania National Archives File No. 540/1/51, ‘Land – Application by [His Highness the] Aga Khan for Mosque site at Shark Market, 1953–1958’. Unfortunately, this source privileges European voices, but also can be read for the perspectives and agency of other groups.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Ibid. The two sentences are taken from pages 70 and 56A, respectively.
- 11.
Ibid, 70. Italics represent underlining in the original.
- 12.
Ibid, 15/2.
- 13.
Ibid, 31A.
- 14.
Ibid. East African shillings were pegged at twenty to one pound sterling. The total government expenditure and revenue from the shark and offal markets in 1953 were £287 and £512, respectively. For all Municipal markets in 1953, the total expenditure was £9881, with receipts totalling £10,658. This means that the shark meat market represented almost three per cent of all government expenditures on municipal markets and almost five per cent of all receipts.
- 15.
Ibid, 56A.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Quotes in this and next paragraph from Tanzania National Archives File No. 540/11/56, ‘Land – Proposed New Police Station at Kariakoo’.
- 23.
Tanzania National Archives File No. 540/1/51, ‘Land – Application by [His Highness the] Aga Khan for Mosque site at Shark Market, 1953–1958’.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Ibid. It appears that later in 1956 some of the vendors did in fact take out licences to pursue other trading lines such as textiles , furniture, hardware, and iron goods.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
These included the size of the new plot, complaints from a neighbouring dairy and petrol station, logistics involving temporary storage (offered and then withdrawn after opposition by the Medical Officer because of concern over proximity to a tea market), and a rejection of the initial market proposal on public health grounds that ‘it was necessary that the building should be completely roofed in with a flue to carry away the smell.’ (ibid.)
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
The police station and the Ismaili jamatkhana stand today in the same locations as settled upon in the 1950s. Other mosques dating to this period also reside in the vicinity, although it is unclear whether they had their origins in the proposed pan-Islamic Friday mosque. Petrol pumps as proposed at the time did eventually open and remain in place along busy Msimbazi Street. While a dedicated shark meat market no longer exists in Dar es Salaam, the trade remains active to this day in the city, and old-timers of Kariakoo still recall the original market in the shadow of the police station (Fieldwork notes, July 2016).
- 34.
For more on this topic, see Metcalf (2007).
- 35.
Statistics are from Gregory (1971).
- 36.
- 37.
Tanzania National Archives File No. 540/28/27, ‘War Measures – Inscriptions to be used in khangas, 1949–57’.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Ibid.
- 44.
Ibid. At the risk of insensitivity or explaining the obvious, it is useful to remember that women wear kangas with the image and inscription visible across various body parts.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
Sometimes economic concerns were also raised, as in the case where a kanga featuring Ford motor vehicles was ordered scrapped by the Crime Officer in 1955 (ibid.).
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Ibid.
- 50.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetpur,_Navagadh (accessed on 23 May 2016).
- 51.
Interview with Rajesh Patel, Oceanic Exports, Bombay, 12 September 2002; and interview with Sanjaybhai Paragbhai and Vimalbhai Patel, Oceanic Exports, Jetpur, Gujarat, 12 November 2002.
- 52.
Oceanic Exports maintains a website that indicates it has shifted emphasis from producing kangas to kitenges—thicker but similar East African fabrics worn by women (http://www.oceanicexports.com, accessed on 23 May 2016).
- 53.
Interview with Rajesh Patel, Oceanic Exports, Bombay, 12 September 2002.
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Bertz, N. (2018). Of Shark Meat and Women’s Clothes: African and Indian Everyday Encounters in Twentieth-Century Dar es Salaam. In: Cornelissen, S., Mine, Y. (eds) Migration and Agency in a Globalizing World. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60205-3_7
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