² Romero, Patricia W., ‘Lamu and the suppression of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean’, paper presented to the Colloque International sur la Traite des Noirs, Nantes, 10 July, 1985.Google Scholar

³ Clive, John Horace, ‘A short history of Lamu’ (1933), MSS Afr. S. 1273, Rhodes House Library, Oxford.Google Scholar

⁴ Clive, , ‘Short history’, 105.Google Scholar See also Ylvisaker, Marguerite, Lamu in the Nineteenth Century: Trade and Politics (Boston, 1979).Google Scholar

⁵ Jahadhmy, Sheikh Ahmed, personal interview, Lamu, 1980.Google Scholar

⁶ Davis, Eric Reginald St A., ‘A brief history of the Lamu archipelago’, MSS Afr. S. 513, Rhodes House Library.Google Scholar

⁷ Hardinge, Arthur, P.O., Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Zanzibar and Pemba, 1898, 2x[c. 8683114] Public Record Office (PRO), London.Google Scholar

⁸ Curtin, Patricia Romero, ‘Laboratory for the oral history of slavery: the island of Lamu on the Kenya coast’, American Historical Review, LXXXVIII (1983), 862.Google Scholar See also Romero, ‘Suppression’. The population for the whole Lamu district in 1910 was listed as: Europeans 21, Goans 465, Indians 472, Arabs and Swahili 15,387. Swahili may mean slaves and ex-slaves, but it could also mean Bajun, Somali, Boni, and others who dwelled on the mainland and on the other islands. Lamu Political Record Book, ‘Annual Report of Lamu District 1910’, Kenya National Archives (KNA). In 1913 there were around 7,000 people in Lamu and 800 or 900 were reported as emigrating – but it is not clear if the latter figures refer to the town or the district. All of these figures are suspect because the British officials had no way of making an accurate count in the town, not to speak of the mainland.

⁹ Talbot-Smith, L., ‘Historical record of Tanaland’ (1921), 76 MSS Afr. S. 1274, Rhodes House.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Curtin, , ‘Laboratory’, 866.Google Scholar

¹¹ Cooper, Frederick, ‘The treatment of slaves on the Kenya Coast in the 19th century’, Kenya Historical Review, II (1973), 89–103.Google ScholarCooper, Frederick, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (New Haven, 1977).Google Scholar

¹² Greffulhe, H., ‘Voyage de Lamoo à Zanzibar’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographic et d'études Coloniales de Marseille, II (1879), 215.Google Scholar

¹³ Lamu ex-slave women, interviews October-November, 1983. Because of rigid purdah in Lamu, I am not at liberty to mention the names of my female informants.

¹⁴ A. A. Skanda to Sharif Saleh Hasan, taped interview, Lamu, March 1982, copy in possession of author. Tanaland Provincial Commissioner's Report, 1912–13, KNA. We do not know the numbers of slaves ‘freed’ through compensation so it is not possible to give a per slave figure. We do know that in 1910 one ex-slave claimed Rs. 8 (less than 20 shillings) against an owner for value of a nose ring. Another ex-slave claimed Shs 25/20 for work time – but we do not know the amount of work on which this figure was based. Cooper found that compensation for slaves in the Malindi-Mombasa area was Rs. 64 per slave. See Cooper, Frederick, From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya 1890–1925 (New Haven, 1980), 73.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Sheikh Ahmed Jahadhmy, interview.

¹⁶ Tanaland Provisional Commissioner's Report, LMU/O.1924, KNA. See also Curtin, , ‘Laboratory’, 859.Google Scholar

¹⁷ P.O. 84/5289, PRO.

¹⁸ PC Report, 1912–13 KNA.

¹⁹ Dickens, T. Ainsworth, ‘History of Lamu’, (1923) KNA.Google Scholar

²⁰ DC/LMU/1/5/KNA; Lamu Political Record Book III, DC Report 1910, KNA.

²¹ Salim, Ahmed Ikha, ‘The impact of colonialism upon Muslim life in Kenya’, Muslim Minority Affairs, I (1979), 60–66.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSalim, A. I., Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Kenya's Coast (Nairobi, 1973), 110–111.Google Scholar

²² Dickens, , ‘History’. Cooper noted that ex-slaves down the coast deserted mainland plantations for the lure of the city and wage labour (Slaves and Squatters, 179–180).Google Scholar

²³ Upper-class woman, interview, November 1983. Clive, ‘History’.

²⁴ Ex-slave woman, interview, November 1983. This woman though she was born about 1900, and said she had been set free by the British when she was a child and before she joined her runaway father in Mkunumbe.

²⁵ Salim Kheri, interview, February 1981; Abdulla A. Skanda, interview, 1980. Salim (Swahili-Speaking Peoples, 51) noted that banditry was a cause of considerable concern after emancipation.

²⁶ Salim Kheri, interview.

²⁷ Memon, P. A. and Martin, Esmond B., ‘The Kenya coast: an anomaly in the development of an ideal type colonial spatial system’, Kenya Historical Review, iv (1976), 204.Google Scholar The population figures supplied by these authors do not match those of the District Commissioner for this period. Nicholls, C. S. (The Swahili Coast, (London, 1971), Appendix) reported that as the slave trade drew to a close, the Lamu economy turned to profits from hides. These hides, however, came from the mainland before slaves stopped production; and later from Somalis who sold them to Indian middlemen. No profits accrued to the Afro-Arabs from items brought in from elsewhere and then sold to Indian and later Hadrami traders.Google Scholar

²⁸ Tanaland Provincial Commissioner's Report, 1916–1917, KNA. T. Ainsworth Dickens also reported in 1923 that most dhows were owned by Lamu Indians and most sailors were ex-slaves who were almost constantly in debt to the Indians, thus a kind of debt peonage developed which replaced slavery, and may have placed them in a more precarious economic condition than they had known earlier (Dickens, ‘History’).

²⁹ Seyidie Province Commissioner's Report, 9/6/1921 KNA.

³⁰ Lamu women; Jahadhmy, Sheikh Ahmed; Skanda, Abdulla, interviews; Clayton, Anthony, ‘The general strike in Zanzibar, 1948’ J. Afr. Hist. xvii (1976), 418.Google Scholar

³¹ Upper-class Lamu women now living in Mombasa, interviews, 1983. ‘Harriet’ interviews, 1982, 1983, see ‘Harriet Alger: life history of an ex-slave’, in Romero, Patricia W. (ed.), Life Histories of African Women (Ashfield Press, forthcoming).Google ScholarCooper, , Plantation Slavery, 83.Google Scholar

³² Sherif Adbulla Hussein, interviews, Mombasa, 1980; Abdulla Bin Abdulla, interview, Mombasa, 1983.

³³ Azziz Bin Mohamed, interview, Mombasa, 1983; ex-slave women; Abdulla Skanda.

³⁴ Talbot-Smith, , ‘History’.Google Scholar

³⁵ Cooper, , Slaves and Squatters, 180.Google Scholar

³⁶ Hussein, Sharif Abdulla, interviews. Ex-slave Lamu women, 1983.Google Scholar

³⁷ ‘Harriet’, interview, 1983; Mohamed Abdulla, interview, Mombasa, 1983. Personal observation near Mombasa where an ex-slave continually referred to the man who took me to her home as ‘master’. For crumbling social stratification in Mombasa see Strobel, Margaret, Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890–1975 (New Haven, 1979).Google Scholar

³⁸ Lamu ex-slave women, interviews, 1983.

³⁹ Ali Abdalla Jahadhmy, interview, Mombasa, 1980 and Lamu, 1981. Sharif Abdulla lived in Pate when he was a youngster and seems to have had continued relations with some Bajun in Mombasa. He and Jahadhmy both stated that the ‘Lamu’ prostitutes were from the Bajun islands. ‘Harriet’, 1983. However, Lamu is a port town and male prostitution was always considered a problem when foreign dhows came into port. It seems very likely that there were some poor women who saw this form of activity as a way to make money and engaged in it. Today, transsexual men take outsiders to female prostitutes in Langoni – although the Lamu people claim these women are Bajun. For prostitutes in the Bajun islands see Bujra, Janet, ‘Production, property, prostitution: Sexual politics in Atu’, Cahiers d'études africaines, xvii (1975), 13–39.Google Scholar See also Strobel, , Mombasa Women.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Ex-slave woman, interview, 1983. Cooper, however, found an informant who said she had boarded a government boat and had gone alone to Mombasa (Slaves and Squatters, 179–80).

⁴¹ ‘Harriet’, interviews; ex-slave women.

⁴² This woman was one of my Informants. She was quite ill, very frail, and at the mercy of her ‘unwanted guests’ in her home.

⁴³ ‘Harriet’. See Vaughan, Megan, ‘Which family: problems in the reconstruction of the history of the family as an economic and cultural unit’, J. Afr. Hist. xxiv (1983), 275–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ This woman worked for Neville Chittick, in whose house I lived while carrying out research for this project (November, 1983). Daily I brought her up to date on my findings in the ex-slave community, yet she never mentioned her former status to me – even after her former owners came to call.

⁴⁵ Sheikh Ahmed Jahadhmy. Mohamed Jahadhmy, interview, 1983.

⁴⁶ Curtin, , ‘Laboratory’, 880.Google ScholarWilson, Thomas to author, February 1982.Google Scholar See also Igbafe, Philip A., ‘Slavery and emancipation in Benin 1897–1945’, J. Afr. Hist. xvi (1975), 422.Google Scholar Igbafe found a similar situation in Benin. So, too, did Smith, M. G. among the Hausa in northern Nigeria (‘Slavery and emancipation in two societies’, Social and Economic Studies, 3 (1975), 239–290).Google ScholarSmith, Raymond T. (‘Race and class in the post-emancipation Caribbean’, in Robert, Ross (ed.) Racism and Colonialism, (Leiden, 1982), 116)Google Scholar drew on el Zein, who incorrectly stated that the upper-class ‘considered it a waste of time to try and give them [slaves] anything but the rudiments of Islam since they were the accursed descendants of Ham’. See El Zein, Abdul Hamid M., The Sacred Meadows: A Structural Analysis of Religious Symbolism in an East African Town, (Evanston, 1974)Google Scholar; and my criticisms, ‘The sacred meadows: a case study of “Historyland” vs “Anthropologyland”’ History in Africa, ix (1982), 337–346.Google Scholar Jan Knappert believed that Africans were easier to convert to Islam than to Christianity: ‘One could accept … the worship of an old man, but to worship a baby was quite silly …’ (‘Conversion in Swahili literature’, in Nehemia, Levtzion (ed.), Conversion to Islam (New York, 1979), 180).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Zein, el, Sacred Meadows, 198–218Google Scholar: Cooper, , Plantation Slavery, 239.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Sheikh Ahmed Jahadhmy; Lamu women; Ali Abdalla El Mawyi, interviews, Lamu, 1983. Sharif Abdulla Hussein, and Ali Ahmed Jahadhmy, Mombasa.

⁴⁹ PC/Coast/1/1/165, KNA. See also Cooper, Slaves and Squatters.

⁵⁰ DC/LMU/1/5, KNA.

⁵¹ ‘Harriet’; Salim Kheri. Ndwulia, Moses D. E. wrote that freed slaves on Pemba Island often chose to stay on too (Britain and Slavery in East Africa (Washington, 1974), 192). Population figures for Lamu in 1927 were 5,259 Africans and 2,062 Arabs (PC/Coast/1/238, KNA). Most of the Africans were slaves or ex-slaves.Google Scholar

⁵² DC/LMU/1/5, KNA.

⁵³ ‘Harriet’; interview.

⁵⁴ DC/LMU/1/8, KNA.

⁵⁵ District Commissioner Reports, 1927, 1928, 1929, LMU 1/6/7/8 KNA. See Claude, Meillassoux (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1981), introduction, 63–64Google Scholar, where he discusses dependency of slaves on their masters. See also Reyers, Allen R., ‘Class, ethnicity and slavery: the origins of the Moroccan Abid’, Int. J. Afr. Hist. Studies, x (1977), 436. This practice of acting out their roles as slaves differed considerably with Cooper's findings in Pemba and on the East African mainland further south (see Slaves and Squatters, passim).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Romero Curtin, Patricia, ‘Lamu weddings as an example of social and economic change’, Cahier d'études africaines, xxiv (1984), 131–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Woodman, Harold D., ‘Sequel to slavery: the new history views of the postbellum South’, Journal of Southern History, XLIII (1977), 523–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Woodman found that southerners had no significant stake in the institution of slavery, but they did want to preserve the social order. This was true of Lamu aristocracy and some of their slaves as well. See Igbafe, for attitudes in Benin (‘Emancipation’, 424).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Handing Over Report, 1934, KTI 2/1, KNA.

⁵⁸ Cornell to Leslie, KT 1.2 KNA. Wages and price data are not widely available for Lamu. Some comparisons can be made, however. In 1927 the British government paid the Kadi's clerk Shs 65 per month and added a Shs 10 per month housing allowance sometime that year. The Liwali's clerk earned Shs 40 per month; and tax collectors were paid Shs 100 per month (Coast Provincial Report, 20/151–22/177, Pt S, KNA). Bride price for ex-slaves in the 1930s was approximately Shs 100 with skilled wages for those employed by the British at Shs 2/50 per day (but not guaranteed work every day). A pair of poor quality sandals cost Shs 2/50. By these rough measurements, ex-slaves living on pensions were not well off – but their income was regular. See Curtin, ‘Lamu weddings’.

⁵⁹ ‘Harriet’; personal observations, Lamu, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983. Mohamed Abdulla, interview, Mombasa, November 1983.