Muscat in Rural Tanzania: Omani Arabs, Identity, and Citizenship in Post-Slavery Tanzania, 1920s-1960s

Studies on post-slavery in East Africa often concentrate on the aftermath of slavery for the formerly enslaved. By contrast, former owners' experiences after abolition and during emancipation are rarely explored. This article examines the trajectories of Omani Arabs in western Tanzania during a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:African historical review Vol. 56; no. 1; pp. 89 - 116
Main Authors: Nyanto, Salvatory S., Becker, Felicitas M.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Pretoria Routledge 02.01.2025
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects:
19th century
20th century
Abolition of slavery
Arab people
Citizenship
Cultural change
Cultural identity
Descendants
Economic depression
Emancipation
identity
Networking
Omani Arabs
Owners
Plantations
post-slavery Tanzania
Rural areas
Rural communities
Slavery
Social networks
Uncertainty
Villages
Tanzania
ISSN:1753-2523, 1753-2531
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Studies on post-slavery in East Africa often concentrate on the aftermath of slavery for the formerly enslaved. By contrast, former owners' experiences after abolition and during emancipation are rarely explored. This article examines the trajectories of Omani Arabs in western Tanzania during and after the end of slavery, ca. 1910 to the late twentieth century. Having settled and built slavelabour plantations along the central caravan route in the nineteenth century, they relocated to rural areas between the 1920s and 1930s following the legal abolition of slavery and great economic depression. To tell their story in postslavery Tanzania, we drew examples from primary sources deposited in the archives of Tanzania and the United Kingdom, and oral interviews collected from the many villages in rural western Tanzania where the Omanis' descendants now live. We show that the history of the Omani Arabs and their identity in twentieth-century western Tanzania was shaped by economic dispossession and uncertainty about citizenship, but also by evolving cultural identities and sustained social networking.
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ISSN:1753-2523
1753-2531
DOI:10.1080/17532523.2025.2455784