This chapter focuses on how diverse societies came to attach themselves to Bagamoyo and, thus, became “owners of the town” in their own unique ways. It argues that, even though various peoples settled at different times, each was just as significant to the town’s growth as the others; to think in dichotomous terms of insiders and outsiders, core and peripheral, civilized and heathen, frustrates a more informed understanding of how Bagamoyo evolved from a fishing village to a trading entrepôt. Although the Shomvi did think in these dichotomous terms to maintain their elite status and protect their privileges, their actual interactions and ties with Bagamoyo’s other communities belied a greater level of tolerance than their posturing might otherwise have indicated. The acceptance of groups of people from different cultural backgrounds could prove economically – and even politically – beneficial for the Shomvi, so long as the newcomers did not threaten their influence.

This chapter continues to assess the impact of colonial rule on the townspeople, and the ways in which it revealed their attachments to the town and their ties to one another, but it emphasizes an economic theme. I begin with an investigation of the German imperial government’s plot to undermine the Wabagamoyo. Uncertain of how to wrest trade in the port away from local hands, the Germans’ plan was to develop the less economically significant town of Dar es Salaam, located about 70 km south of Bagamoyo, and divert the central caravan routes there, where the Germans had greater control over the economy. Yet building a new city did not mean that it was guaranteed to usurp Bagamoyo as the preeminent trading entrepôt of the colony. During the British period, many of the townspeople plotted ways to get around rationing restrictions imposed upon them by the British during WWII. This chapter concludes with a detailed examination of smuggling networks, revealing yet again the ties among the various social groups which bound them together as Wabagamoyo