2 - Owners of the Town

Summary

This chapter builds upon the previous one by examining how the town’s residents reacted to the arrival of newcomers who behaved more aggressively and could resort to their own means of military support: first the representatives of the Zanzibari sultanate, who arrived in the 1840s to oversee the caravan trade, and then the French Catholics, who established their first mainland mission in Bagamoyo in 1868. Both case studies reveal struggles which demarcated the social boundary between insiders and outsiders, wenyeji and watu wa kuja. While people could develop their own sense of attachment to a place regardless of how earlier settlers might view them, it did not mean that the newcomers could behave in ways antagonistic to established convention. Power in Bagamoyo rested in local hands; to succeed in the town, one had to respect the interests and institutions of the community. Thus, newcomers to Bagamoyo had to become localized, meaning they had to adapt to local customs and become accepted by the local inhabitants. As we saw in Chapter 1, the Indians and upcountry Africans respected established customs, even as they introduced ones of their own. For those who flouted local interests, the repercussions were often violent