This chapter constructs a theory about the origins of inequality. Our model involves a continuum of sites that have differing productivities with respect to food. All sites are initially open, and free mobility of agents across sites tends to equalize the food incomes of the agents. However, an organized group that is large enough relative to the land area of a site can establish property rights over that site and keep other agents from entering. As climate or technology improves, population densities grow, and over time the best sites become closed. This generates insider–outsider inequality, where different groups have different standards of living depending on the productivities of their sites. Eventually insiders at the best sites find it profitable to hire outsiders to work on their land, either by paying them a wage or requiring them to pay land rent. This gives elite–commoner inequality, or stratification. Class positions become hereditary. Technical progress makes commoners worse off in the long run because as regional population rises, more sites are closed. The sites that remain open are the least desirable. These predictions are consistent with archaeological evidence from southwest Asia, Europe, Polynesia, and the Channel Islands of California.

Bagamoyo holds a central place in the history of the 1888 Coastal Rebellion as the site of the most violent and prolonged struggle of the entire episode. Examining events there, I consider two approaches which support spatial identity as an influential force: the organization of the uprising, in which the spatial attachments of the hinterland (Zaramo, Doe, and Kwere) and upcountry (Nyamwezi) peoples to the town play a role in influencing their solidarity with the townspeople; and how a framework that emphasizes the spatial origins of each group of rebels involved in the Bagamoyo uprising distinguishes between the different communities obfuscated by the broader category of Swahili society. Despite the far reaching presence of Swahili culture along the coastline, the Swahili were not simply interchangeable from one town to the next. I also investigate the level of violence used by the Germans along the coast to show how this was contingent on the local particularities of each place. Together these points highlight the need for considering the importance of place for explaining local behavior in the context of a widespread rebellion.