Historians of East Africa may be surprised to find that the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw has published a significant monograph in English on the region's nineteenth-century history. This is to be welcomed, although The State and the Stateless would be a better book if it were pruned by 50–75 pages and more carefully edited. That said, there is much of interest to specialists here despite a rather outdated intellectual apparatus (especially related to globalization) and the insufficient use of some key secondary works. Marek Pawelczak's strength is his prodigious research. Few historians have combed the archives to the extent that he has, effectively utilizing mission and official sources from the UK, Kenya, Zanzibar, France, Germany, and the US. This means that he has covered topics that have rarely received attention and filled in some gaps in our knowledge. However, the reader has to be diligent to identify and absorb some of the most useful contributions.
The overarching theme of the book is the impact of commercialization through the caravan trade on East African societies, and the trend towards a self-interested but relatively enlightened management by the Zanzibar Sultanate of both the coastal region and much of the narrow hinterland stretching up to 300 kilometers beyond it. Sultans Seyyid Said, Majid, and especially Barghash developed an economic, political, and legal framework on the mainland not through direct rule, but through the management of relationships with African authorities and the mediation of their disputes. In the narrow hinterland, political order was required to service and benefit from the caravan trade, and this was centered on multi-ethnic chiefdoms along the routes; the Zanzibar Sultanate fostered these ‘forces of order’ and they in turn sought good relations with Zanzibar (pp. 223–4). This book's major achievement is to link the history of the eastern regions of Kenya and Tanganyika to Zanzibar more strongly than has been done by previous historians. Earlier studies by C. S. Nicholls and Abdul Sheriff focused upon the increasing influence of international capital and external influences on the coastal strip and upon the role of Zanzibar as a compradorial state. By contrast, more than half of the book concerns adaptations in the economies and politics of a broad range of coastal and interior societies (the Mijikenda, Kamba, and Maasai in the north; the Zigua and Luguru of the centre; the Makonde and Yao of the southern interior). Pawelczak's approach also has the benefit of covering the key decades of the mid-nineteenth century but continues right up until the beginning of the colonial period, beyond Sheriff's cutoff date. This has important consequences for the interpretation of certain longer-term trends.
Pawelczak takes issue with those who support a Braudelian perspective – that nineteenth-century developments were merely an enlargement of preexisting trading networks. His concentration on the rise of the Sultanate as the main force contributing to economic development in East Africa leads him to conclude that ‘The real, profound consequences of contact with the global economy were brought there by the 19th century, filtered by the state structures of Zanzibar instead of being experienced directly as elsewhere [in Africa]’ (p. 16). Pawelczak thus foregrounds ‘macro-political factors’ – the direct power and indirect influence that the Sultanate could bring to bear in the near hinterland, a vast region where many products other than ivory were brought to market, and the Sultan could send punitive expeditions and establish small garrisons (p. 18). Underlying the interest of the Sultanate was the rising wealth at the coast and across the hinterland derived from increased mainland food production as well as profits and brokerage fees in the caravan trade. Indeed, food production is a key subtheme in the book. For example, Pawelczak links the spread of slaveholding into new groups to the increasing demand for foodstuffs required by rapidly increasing maritime and caravan traffic (pp. 78–85). Thus, not only was there a quantitative increase in trade during the nineteenth century, there was a qualitative shift, exposing more people to commerce and changing social and political structures on a large scale.
Pawelczak offers us new evidence for a number of important questions. He provides a useful reinterpretation of the lengthy role of the Kamba in the caravan system, he explores the question of depopulation in the southern hinterland, and he highlights the rationality of Zanzibar's customs system. The figures for customs and brokerage fees paid at numerous ports in different years are the most detailed yet, and the alleged discrimination against non-Muslim upcountry traders at Bagamoyo and other Mrima ports is not always borne out. In Chapter Seven, ‘The Coastal Elites and the Sultanate’, he discusses the function and loyalties of the local governors, and the relations of the Swahili townspeople and the Sultanate with neighbouring groups such as the Mijikenda and Oromo on the Kenyan coast. In many places along the coast, the gradual insertion of or recognition by Sultan Barghash of men loyal to him, part of increasing Arabization, tended to shift power on the coast away from the Swahili titleholders, although this was resisted in the central and southern mainland. The notably different situation in Mombasa is clearly explained.
Despite the exhaustive research (and excellent maps) there are some issues that might have deserved more reflection. Little attention is given to the vital role of consumption in shaping economic and social change, and thus the importance of cloth imports is neglected. The discussion of cattle and commoditization is overly generalized. Chapter Three, ‘Caravan Infrastructure’, is not nearly as good as the later chapter on caravan traffic and political development. Some readers will be disturbed by the definition of mtepe: ‘a small-row-boat with sail’ (135)! These and the aforementioned criticisms aside, The State and the Stateless contains a wealth of information and will be a useful resource for historians of East Africa.
