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Trade, State, and Society Among the Yao in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Edward A. Alpers
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Extract

Through their deep involvement in the long-distance trade of eastern central Africa, the Yao were increasingly exposed to the impact of Swahili traders and their culture. During the nineteenth century the increased volume of trade, and the ever growing importance of slaves in that trade, combined to produce a marked growth in the scale of Yao political units. This paper begins by outlining the growth of Yao trade before the nineteenth century. It then considers the nature of Yao political organization and the way in which the slave trade, in particular, facilitated the rise of large territorial chiefdoms. The last section deals with related social and cultural changes, including the growth of towns and the introduction of Islam.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1969 , pp. 405 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 The present paper was first delivered to the annual convention of the African Studies Association, held at Los Angeles, California, from 16 to 19 October 1968. It is a revised version of a paper originally presented to the University of East Africa Social Science Conference held at the University College, Dar es Salaam, in January 1968. For two particularly relevant comparative studies, see J. Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, 1966), ch. 7, and Roberts, A. D., ‘The Nyamwezi’, in Roberts (ed.), Tanzania before 1900: Seven Area Studies (Nairobi, 1968)Google Scholar.

2 See Alpers, E. A., ‘Malawi and Yao responses to external economic forces, 1505–1798’, forthcoming in Chittick, H.N. and Rotberg, R. I. (eds.), East Africa and the Orient: Problems of Cultural Synthesis in Pre-Colonial Times (Cambridge, Mass.)Google Scholar.

3 See Abdallah, Y. B., The Yaos (Zomba, 1919), 7–10Google Scholar, 23–4, 26–7; also H. S. Stannus, ‘The Wayao of Nyasaland,’ Varia Africans III, Harvard African Studies, vol. iii, ed. E. A. Hooton and N. I. Bates (Cambridge, Mass., 1922), 343–4, 355–6.

4 For a translation of the record of this journey, see Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P., The East African Coast—Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1962), 165–8.Google Scholar

5 Abdallah, The Yaos, 28.

6 Lamburn, R. G. P., ‘Some notes on the Yao’, Tanganyika Notes and Records, xxix (1950). 74Google Scholar; Tunduru District Book,‘Manners and customs’, 185 of the copy in the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; cf. J. C. Mitchell, Tke Yao Village—A Study in the Social Structure of a Nyasaland Tribe (Manchester, 1956), 73. It should be pointed out, however, that Basil Davidson's recent assertion that until the 1850s the Yao had no chiefs at all is completely without foundation. See Davidson, East and Central Africa to the Late Nineteenth Century (Nairobi, 1967), 245. Clan heads are considerably more powerful among the neighbouring Makua, Lomwe and Makonde than among the Yao.

7 This paragraph is based on Mitchell, Yao Village, ch. 6, and idem, ‘Marriage, matriliny and social structure among the Yao of Southern Nyasaland’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 111, no. 1 (1962), 34–5.

8 Cf. Lamburn, ‘The Yaos of Tunduru: an essay in missionary anthropology’, unpublished typescript in the library of Makerere University College, Kampala, Uganda (n.d.), 8, and ‘Some notes on the Yao ’, 74, where he inexplicably sees the father of these sisters as achieving prestige from their numbers.

9 Mitchell, Yao Village, 40; idem, ‘Marriage, matriliny and social structure among the Yao’, 32.

10 Ibid., 34.

11 Cf. Lamburn, ‘Yaos of Tunduru ’, 9.

12 See Abdallah, The Yaos, 26–7.

13 Mitchell, Yao Village, 37.

14 MacDonald, D., Africana: or, The Heart of Heathen Africa, i (London, 1882), 76Google Scholar.

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16 Abdallah, The Yaos, 30.

17 MacDonald, Africana, i, 82. W. P. Johnson, Nyasa the Great Water (London, 1922), 28, is not clear on this point.

18 See Abdallah, The Yaos, 33–4.

19 Mitchell, Yao Village, 37.

20 MacDonald, Africana, 1, 147.

21 Stannus, ‘The Wayao ’, 280.

22 Abdallah, The Yaos, 31.

23 An example of this attitude towards male captives is the story of Richard Kanyema, a young Nyasa who lived in a Yao village for nearly two years, learning to speak Yao and forgetting his mother tongue, and who was still sold to the coast when an opportunity arose: Madan, A. C., Kiungani, Story and History from Central Africa (London, 1887), 24Google Scholar.

24 Stannus, ‘The Wayao ’, 280.

25 In a patrilineal society, on the other hand, as all of a man's children belong to his lineage, the key factor becomes not how many sisters, but how many wives, or concubines, one has. Provided he has the necessary wealth and potency, a man can produce children for his lineage at a much faster rate over a longer period of time.

26 Mitchell, Yao Village, 195–6, 72. This last point is necessarily extrapolated frorr Mitchell's modern description of Yao society.

27 Sanderson, G. M., ‘The use of tail-switches in magic’, The Nyasaland Journal, viii no. 1 (1955), 40, 57.Google Scholar

28 Abdallah, The Yaos, 54.

29 MacDonald, Africana, 1, 154.

30 Ibid. i, 154; Mitchell, Yao Village, 110.

31 Abdallah, The Yaos, 40, 50; Lamburn, ‘The history of the Yao sultans ’, undated typescript in the writer's possession.

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36 Lamburn, ‘Yao sultans,’ p. 214. For a general statement of this sort of problem, see Mair, L. P., New Nations (London, 1963), 15–16.Google Scholar

37 Abdallah, The Yaos, 40; Central African Mission: First Quarterly Statement of Bishop Steere (Zanzibar, 26 and 29 August 1875), 2.

38 Lamburn, ‘Yaos of Tunduru,’ 12.

39 See ibid. 98.

40 Mitchell, Yao Village, 33–4.

41 MacDonald, , Africana, 1, 153–6.Google Scholar

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43 Ibid. 55.

44 Lamburn, ‘Yao sultans ’, 5.

45 Mitchell, Yao Village, 53, 70.

46 Stannus, ‘The Wayao ’, 309.

47 Johnson, Nyasa, 27.

48 MacDonald, Africana, i, 80–5; Johnson, Nyasa, 27–8.

49 Mair, New Nations, 14.

50 Livingstone, Last Journals, i, 79, 83, 86, 88–9.

51 USPG Archives, London, UMCA A/I/iv, ‘Up the Lujenda ’, undated and anonymous, but probably written by W. P. Johnson in 1880; J. Stevenson-Hamilton,‘Notes on a journey through Portuguese East Africa, from Ibo to Lake Nyasa’, The Geographical Journal, xxxiv (1909), 526.

52 Livingstone, Last Journals, i, 72; USPG, UMCA A/I/iv, [Johnson] to E. S. L. Randolph, Mbweni, 26 November [1886].

53 Elton, J. F., Travels and Researches among the Lakes and Mountains of Eastern and Central Africa, ed. Cotterill, H. B. (London, 1879), 288Google Scholar; C. A. Smithies, A Journey to Lake Nyasa, and Visit to the Magwangwara and the Source of the Rovuma, in the Year 1886.. (Kiungani, Zanzibar, n.d.), 32.

54 Livingstone, Last Journals, I, 68; Smithies, Journey, 44.

55 MacDonald, Africana, 1, 145.

56 Heanley, R. M., A Memoir of Edward Steere, D.D., LL.D., Third Missionary Bishop in Central Africa (London, 1888), 145–6Google Scholar. Cf. Stannus, ‘The Wayao,’ 244.

57 Livingstone, Last Journals, 1, 73.

58 For brief notices of the residence of Arab and Swahili traders in Yao towns, see ibid. i, 78, and A. Lobato, ‘Augusto Cardoso e o Lago Niassa,’ Stvdia, ix (1966), 69.

59 Livingstone, Last Journals, i, 68, 73; Abdallah, The Yaos, ii. Cf. Stannus, ‘The Wayao ’, 340, 345, 349, while noting that his description of circular Yao huts seems to reflect considerable Nyanja influence.

60 J. de Azevedo Coutinho, Memórias de um Velho Marinheiro e Soldado de África (Lisboa [1941]), 181.

61 Abdallah, The Yaos, 51.

62 Ibid. 43–4.

63 Elton, Travels and Researches, 288–9.

64 Quoted in A. J. Hanna, The Beginnings of Nyasaland and North-Eastern Rhodesia, 1859–95 (Oxford, 1956), 71.

65 Oliver, Roland, Sir Harry Johnston and the Scramble for Africa (London, 1958), 209Google Scholar. The fate of these documents has not, to my knowledge, been established.

66 Rangeley, W. H. J., ‘The Ayao’, Nyasaland Journal, xvi, no. 1 (1963), 25.Google Scholar

67 Abdallah, The Yaos, 56.

68 Rangeley, , ‘The AmaCinga Ayao’, Nyasaland Journal, xv, no. 2 (1962), 46.Google Scholar

69 Trimingham, J. S., Islam in East Africa (Oxford, 1964), 47Google Scholar.