1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910897701103321

Autore

Bresnahan David P

Titolo

Inland from Mombasa : East Africa and the Making of the Indian Ocean World

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley : , : University of California Press, , 2024

©2025

ISBN

9780520400498

0520400496

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (246 pages)

Disciplina

967.62/360049639

Soggetti

Mijikenda (African people) - History

HISTORY / World

Indian Ocean Region Economic aspects

Mombasa (Kenya) History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Language -- Introduction -- 1 Unmoored from the Ocean -- 2 Looking Inland, to the World -- 3 The Inland Underpinnings of Indian Ocean Commerce -- 4 Inland Villages and Oceanic Empires -- 5 From Mijikenda City to Busaidi Backwater -- Conclusion -- Appendix 1 Placing East African Languages in Time and Space -- Appendix 2 Mijikenda Dialects -- Appendix 3 Lexical Reconstructions and Distributions -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.    Over the past few decades, scholars have traced how Indian Ocean merchants forged transregional networks into a world of global connections. East Africa's crucial role in this Indian Ocean world has primarily been understood through the influence of coastal trading centers like Mombasa. In Inland from Mombasa, David P. Bresnahan looks anew at this Swahili port city from the vantage point of the communities that lived on its rural edges. By reconstructing the deep history of these Mijikenda-speaking societies



over the past two millennia, he shows how profoundly they influenced global trade even as they rejected many of the cosmopolitan practices that historians have claimed are critical to creating global connections, choosing smaller communities over urbanism, local ritual practices over Islam, and inland trade over maritime commerce. Inland from Mombasa makes the compelling case that the seemingly isolating alternative social pursuits engaged in by Mijikenda speakers were in fact key to their active role in global commerce and politics.