This reprint of this celebrated classic text on Zanzibar makes available again the remarkably comprehensive account of the Island of Cloves, written by W. H. Ingrams and first published in 1931. Zanzibar, Its History and Its People is essentially an historical ethnography of Zanzibar. The author describes local legends, and their important social function in recording and constituting the oral history of the island. Ingrams' extensive observations and personal experiences - both on the main island of Unguja and Pemba and the smaller islands which make up Zanzibar - provide a detailed and lively account of society at the time and make engaging reading.

An examination of how the constitutional frameworks for autonomies around the world really work.

The Cold War exploded in Zanzibar in 1964 when African rebels slaughtered one of every ten Arabs. Led by a strange, messianic Ugandan, Cuban-trained factions headed the rebels, making Zanzibar (in the eyes of Washington) a potentially cancerous base for the communist subversion of mainland Africa. Exotic Zanzibar -- fabled island of spices, former slave-trading entrept, and stepping-off point for 19th century expeditions into the vast interior of the Dark Continent -- had succumbed to the terror of 20th century revolution and Cold War intrigue. In the vivid, eyewitness tradition of The Bang Bang Club and The Skull beneath the Skin , Donald Petterson weaves an engrossing tale of human drama played out against a background of violence and horror. As the only American in Zanzibar throughout the revolution, Petterson reports with the inside authority of a highly placed diplomatic observer, illuminating how the current troubles in Zanzibar are rooted in the Cold War and the revolution of 1964.

In the late 1950s, Communists decided that Zanzibar offered them a particular favorable opportunity for expanding their influence.

Off the coast of East Africa in the Indian Ocean sits an archipelago known as Zanzibar. It all started ten million years ago when the island of Pemba separated from mainland Africa and then ten thousand years ago, the island of Unguja followed suit. Thus, begins the legend of Zanzibar. For centuries, Zanzibar has been the haven and gateway for explorers including Richard Burton and David Livingstone to penetrate the unknown African Continent. Forward to present day, and it is still possible to experience the unique wildlife whether that is by scuba diving off the coast of a private island, infinite lagoons, visiting mangroves or endemic wild forests; getting lost and immersing yourself into the historical labyrinthine streets of Stonetown. This cluster of islands is at a crossroads of cultures, featuring Omani architecture, Portuguese and British heritages as well as Swahili rituals.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the fertile islands of Zanzibar and Pemba became of central importance to East Africa’s growing contact with the international economy as the ruling dynasty encouraged trade in cloves, slaves and ivory. This book, first published in 1978, provides an account of the history of Zanzibar from those early days of trade up to independence and the Revolution that removed the Arab ruling class in 1964.

The Swahili coast of Africa is often described as a paragon of transnational culture and racial fluidity. Yet, during a brief period in the 1960s, Zanzibar became deeply divided along racial lines as intellectuals and activists, engaged in bitter debates about their nation's future, ignited a deadly conflict that spread across the island. War of Words, War of Stones explores how violently enforced racial boundaries arose from Zanzibar's entangled history. Jonathon Glassman challenges explanations that assume racial thinking in the colonial world reflected only Western ideas. He shows how Africans crafted competing ways of categorizing race from local tradition and engagement with the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.

Notions of ustaarabu, a word expressing “civilization,” and questions of identities in Zanzibar have historically been shaped by the development of Islam and association with littoral societies around the Indian Ocean. The 1964 Revolution marked a break in that history and imposed new notions of African civilization and belonging in Zanzibar. The revolutionary state subsequently introduced tourism and the market economy to maintain its hegemony over Zanzibar. In light of these developments, and with locals facing growing socio-economic marginalization and political uncertainty, Tourism and Social Change in Post-Socialist Zanzibar: Struggles for Identity, Movement, and Civilization examines how Zanzibaris are struggling to move through the local landscape in the post-socialist era and articulate their ideas of belonging in Zanzibar. This book further investigates how movements of Zanzibaris within the emerging and contending social discourses are reconstituting meanings for conceptualizing ustaarabu to define their roots in Zanzibar.

Bridging African and Arab histories, this book examines the relationship between Islam, nationalism and the evolution of identity politics from late 19th Century to World War II. It provides a cross-national, cross-regional analysis of religious reform, nationalism, anti-colonialism from Zanzibar to Oman, North Africa and the Middle East. This book widens the scope of modern Arab history by integrating Omani rule in Zanzibar in the historiography of Arab nationalism and Islamic reform. It examines the intellectual and political ties and networks between Zanzibar, Oman, Algeria, Egypt, Istanbul and the Levant and the ways those links shaped the politics of identity of the Omani elite in Zanzibar. Out of these connections emerges an Omani intelligentsia strongly tied to the Arab cultural nahda and to movements of Islamic reform, pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism. The book examines Zanzibari nationalism, as formulated by the Omani intelligentsia, through the prism of these pan-Islamic connections and in the light of Omani responses to British policies in Zanzibar. The author sheds light on Ibadism - an overlooked sect of Islam - and its modern intellectual history and the role of the Omani elite in bridging Ibadism with pan-Islamism and pan-Arabism. Although much has been written about nationalism in the Arab world, this is the first book to discuss nationalism in Zanzibar in the wider context of religious reform and nationalism in the Arab world, and the first to offer a new framework of analysis to the study of pan-Islamic and pan-Arab movements and nationalism.

John Kirk was the only companion of explorer David Livingstone to emerge untainted from the disastrous, tragic expedition up the Zambezi river between 1859 and 1863. Three years later, Kirk returned to Africa, to the notorious island of Zanzibar, ancient post of the slave trade between Africa and the Middle East. Half a century after the abolition of slavery in Britain, slave traffi cking persisted on Africa's east coast, apparently tolerated and even connived with by parts of the British Empire in the Indian Ocean. Kirk, appointed as medical officer to the British Consulate in Zanzibar, could do nothing. This extraordinary and controversial book brings Kirk's years in Zanzibar to life. The horrors of the overland passage from the interior, and the Zanzibar slave market itself, are vividly described, together with Kirk's final, bitter conflict with Livingstone, who blamed Kirk for his own failings. But it was Kirk's success in closing down the slave trade on the island which made him famous across the world. Using private diaries and papers, a long forgotten Victorian hero and an extraordinary chapter in British history are revived in detail.