A number of Islamic Swahili city-states located along the east coast of Africa, in southern Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and northern Mozambique (most notably Kilwa, Mogadishu, Mombasa, Sofalo, and Zanzibar) have been independent from 1000 A.D. until 1800 A.D.
ABDUL RAHMAN JUMA -- Ph.D. -- Professor at
Dear Dr. Jonathan M. Kolkey,
Thank you for your email.
I absolutely brace your viewpoint that there are always incidents of political egoism behind making wars. The modern day case in point for both the actual conduct of the warfare and the prospect of its termination is the familiar situation in Somali. The Somali state of affairs provides an example of live players (decision-making elite) with their alleged causes for the war, and it is absolutely possible to reconstruct the entire decision-making process there. You might also like to draw parallel with George Bush confrontation with Iraq. Regarding long-vanished city-states, you fittingly pointed out the hitch is often lack of detailed sources to support the thesis.
Thank you again for sharing the opinion.
Best regards.
Prof. A. JUMA
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JAY SPAULDING -- Ph.D. -- Professor at Kean University
Honored Sir,
European visitors of the Renaissance period immediately recognized the East African city-states as "republics" comparable to those of Italy....
All the best,
JLS
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JOHN THORNTON -- Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles – Professor at Boston University
Jon,
Another locus of classic city states in Africa are the Swahili speaking states along the East Coast, which have a set of chronicles (in Arabic, but also translated) and strong factional ties that also cross from state to state. I think the details are not worked out, but there is a good secondary literature on it.
Best,
John
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MICHAEL NAYLOR PEARSON -- Ph.D. University of Michigan – Professor at University of Technology, Sydney
Many thanks for an interesting msg, and I think I see where you are coming from. The last para seems to me, as one who follows current politics reasonably closely, to be essentially true. But surely some outbreaks have been copiously studied and could serve to confirm or otherwise your ideas: eg. Vietnam war, World War I??
As to the Swahili city states, point 1, yes indeed several scholars have pointed to factions and divisions: John Middleton especially, Justin Willis, Randy Pouwels. BUT so far as I know we don't have any evidence for point 2 - that is detailed knowledge of how a war was begun.
Good luck with your project,,
Michael Pearson
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RANDALL POUWELS – Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles – Professor at University of Central Arkansas
Jonathan,
This certainly happened in the C19th with some of the Arab and Baluchi garrison commanders in Zanzibar and Mombasa, but for earlier centuries, I suggest you have a look at the so-called Pate Chronicle (best edition is that of Marina Tolmacheva). Better still, contact Dr. Tom Vernet at the University of Paris. Tom is without doubt the best souirce of information on the Portuguese sources, and h wrote a wonderful dissertation on Pate in the late 17th and 18th centuries. His diseertation would be valuable to you, but short of that, you might want to get in touch with him yourself. His email address is thomas.vernet@univ-paris1.fr. Also, Prof. Ned Alpers has a copy of Vernet's thesis, and if he knows you he might be willing to lend it to you. Do you know him?
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Randall
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EDWARD A. ALPERS --Ph.D. University of London – Professor University of California, Los Angeles
Jonathan,
There is a lot written on the way in which town and internal town rivalries (Swahili towns are typically divided into competitive moities) aligned themselves in battles against the Portuguese and the Omani Arabs who came to rule Zanzibar and then the coast in the 19th century. But for internal affairs only as they relate to war, there is a very good discussion on the 17th century "wars of Faza" (a town at the northern extreme of the Lamu archipelago in Kenya) in the dissertation of Thomas Vernet, “Les Cités-États Swahili de l’Archipel de Lamu, 1585-1810. Dynamiques Endogènes, Dynamiques Exogènes,” Université Paris I, 2005, pp. 271-290, although I doubt you'll be able to find a copy in this country outside mine or his other external examiner, Randy Pouwels. If you read French, however, I can copy these pages for you and post them to you. In addition, you may want to look at Randall Pouwels, "The battle of Shela: the climax of an era and a point of departure in the modern history of the Kenya coast," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, XXXI (3), 123 (1991): 363-389, which is availble on line through the CEA web site. If you want some general background to moiety competition in Swahili city-states/society, see Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili (Oxfords: Blackwell, 2000) and sources cited therein. This competition internal to Swahili society certainly validates your thesis and shows up in spades in the history of political competition and warfare on the coast, e.g., in the logic behind Malindi's support for the Portuguese in the 16th century against Mombasa, its more powerful rival, as it does in later examples.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Ned
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