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BECOMING A CHILD OF THE HOUSE: INCORPORATION, AUTHORITY AND RESISTANCE IN GIRYAMA SOCIETY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 1997

JUSTIN WILLIS  and
SUZANNE MIERS
JUSTIN WILLIS
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
SUZANNE MIERS
Affiliation:
Ohio University
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Abstract

The last twenty years have seen a series of studies dealing, at least in part, with the nineteenth-century history of slavery at the East African coast. Each has, in its own way, focused on transformations associated with changing patterns of accumulation in the nineteenth century. If there has been a general theme it is of the increasing constraints placed upon slaves and the increasing demands made on them, as owners sought to reorganize labour time and processes to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the rapid expansion of commerce from the 1830s. While Morton has attacked Cooper's ‘hegemonic’ perspective and accused him of presenting slavery as benign and static, both are agreed on a basic trend: the increasingly commercial orientation of slave-based agriculture considerably diminished slave autonomy between 1820 and 1890. Recently, Glassman has offered a study which is decidedly non-hegemonic in perspective, and has revealed the ways in which marginal members of society appropriated and sought to reinterpret the ideology through which they were subordinated. Yet he too describes the increasing circumscription of slave autonomy in response to the demands of new kinds of production – in his case, the sugar plantations of the Pangani valley.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , November 1997 , pp. 479 - 495
Copyright
© 1997 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The authors are deeply indebted to many colleagues for advice and support. Particular thanks must go to the members of the SOAS African History Seminar, and two anonymous readers for the Journal of African History.This article is based on oral historical interviews conducted by Suzanne Miers between 1972 and 1974, supplemented by interviews conducted during a joint British Institute in Eastern Africa/University of Nairobi project in the early 1990s. The Miers interviews were assisted by a grant awarded by the Joint Committee on African Studies of the Social Science Research Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and by grants from the Ohio University Baker Fund, financed by Mr and Mrs Edwin Kennedy, and the Ohio University Research Grants Committee. These are referred to as ‘Miers interview’, followed by name of informant and date. The BIEA interviews are cited as ‘Int Kil’ followed by a number and a lower case letter. The number indicates the identity of the informant, and the letter specifies to which interview with that informant reference is being made. Thus Int Kil 6b is the second interview with informant number 6. Details of both sets of interviews, and transcripts, are available at the British Institute in Eastern Africa, in Nairobi.In this paper we have preferred the spelling Giryama to the more commonly used Giriama; on phonological grounds the former seems preferable.