The World of the Swahili: An African Mercantile Civilization [Paperback]

John Middleton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 1994

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 266 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300060807
• ISBN-13: 978-0300060805
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,895,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If you're really interested, go for it!, January 11, 2000

By 

www.anotherland.com - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World of the Swahili: An African Mercantile Civilization (Hardcover)

Not for the faint-hearted, find the anthropologist within and spend some devoted time getting into this book about the People of the Coast. If you have any interest in the historic or mercantile aspects of the Swahili civilization and culture, we'd recommend it. Not for light readers, though.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Detailed documentation of Swahili culture, September 7, 2001

By 

Ed Gibbon www.congocookbook.com - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World of the Swahili: An African Mercantile Civilization (Paperback)

"The World of the Swahili" by anthropology professor John Middleton is a very detailed description of Swahili culture. The book covers the basic anthropology subjects: courtship and marriage, family, politics, land tenure, home ownership, and so on. The Swahili culture is complex and somewhat difficult to define; there has never really been a Swahili nation-state, and many of the people who live in Swahili cities are not recognized as Swahili. Middleton writes from his own long experience of East Africa (he is the author of several books) as well as bibliographic research. This text is aimed at the reader with some experience in anthropology or East Africa.