John Middleton

With a new introduction by Thomas Beidelman This series of Classics in African Anthropology is primarily drawn from a distinct family of texts which dominated the academic analysis of society in mid-20th century Africa. The texts reproduced are significant yet often neglected, and have stood the test of time. John Middleton's classic study on the Lugbara was originally published in 1960. New edition published in association with the International African Institute North America: Transaction Books; Germany: Lit Verlag

The Swahili of East Africa have a long and distinctive history as a literate, Muslim, urban, and mercantile society. In this book a leading Africanist presents the first full-length anthropological account of the Swahili and offers an original analysis of their little-understood and unusual culture. Swahili towns, some urban with elegant stone buildings and others more rural with palm-leaf-matting houses, are spread along the thousand-mile East African coast. Because each local community is culturally different from its neighbors, previous historians and anthropologists have viewed the Swahili as a series of isolated and 'detribalized' groups. John Middleton argues, on the contrary, that beneath the cultural variation is a single structure, that of a well-defined and complex trading society that has shown little change through the ages. Drawing on his own field research and on earlier writings on the Swahili, Middleton describes this centuries-old mercantile culture—its local and descent groupings, marriage patterns, religion, and values. He traces the history of their colonized past as subjects to Arabs, Portuguese, British, and others and shows that, although their economic and political role has continually been a subordinate one, their sense of their unique identity enables them to persist as an ongoing civilization.

James de Vere Allen, who was curator at Lamu Museum, set out to give modern Swahili evidence of their shared history during a period of eight centuries. Kiswahili has become the lingua franca of eastern Africa and yet the history of the Swahili peoples has remained elusive. Some have described themselves as Arabs, as Persians, or even in one place as Portuguese. This book is Jamesde Vere Allen's major study of the origin of the Swahili peoples and their cultural identity. North America: Ohio U Press; Kenya: EAEP

The authors are concerned with the social conditions prevalent in Zanzibar prior to independence in January 1964. They give an excellent portrayal of the events leading up to the conflict, as well as lending pertinent insights into the increasingly hostile race relations which have plagued the country since the revolution.