This book, like one of its subjects, has accidental as well as intended beginnings, the tension between which constitutes its theme. It is relevant, therefore, to say how it came about.

I have spent some thirty-four months among the Giriama over the period from 1966 until 1985 (with a further three weeks in 1988). The first thirteen months were spent in Kaloleni location, well within the Giriama agricultural and coconut palm-growing area, from August 1966 until September 1967 inclusive. Some of the findings of that study were published in Parkin (1972), in which I tried to show how peoples' adherence to what they believed to be customary beliefs and practices masked their increasing dependency on a cash-crop market determined by an international supply and demand for their produce. Despite the emergence of cash-crop farmers and entrepreneurs, the colonial and, later, the new independent central government administration had consistently called the Giriama, and other coastal peoples, economically unmotivated and backward, often addressing the people as such at rallies and meetings, many of which I attended. The point of my 1972 monograph was to indicate that this construction of the Giriama by outsiders did not in the least match their own perception of themselves as being already involved in modern economic changes and as including among them successful entrepreneurs, nor did it reflect any objective measures that could be taken: for generations, in fact, the Giriama had produced traders of great skill and wealth who mediated between Swahili and Arabs on the Kenya coast and the bulk of the Giriama and related peoples.