A01=David P. Bresnahan
agriculture
archaeology
Author_David P. Bresnahan
caravan routes
Category=NHB
Category=NHH
Coastal East Africa trade history
communities
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
inland settlements
islamic port cities
Islamic society
ivory
Kenya
maritime economy
merchants
Mijikenda language
Omani empire
premodern Indian Ocean
speakers
swahili
Product details
- ISBN 9780520400481
- Weight: 363g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 Dec 2024
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Over the past few decades, scholars have traced how Indian Ocean merchants forged transregional networks into a world of global connections. East Africa's crucial role in this Indian Ocean world has primarily been understood through the influence of coastal trading centers like Mombasa. In Inland from Mombasa, David P. Bresnahan looks anew at this Swahili port city from the vantage point of the communities that lived on its rural edges. By reconstructing the deep history of these Mijikenda-speaking societies over the past two millennia, he shows how profoundly they influenced global trade even as they rejected many of the cosmopolitan practices that historians have claimed are critical to creating global connections, choosing smaller communities over urbanism, local ritual practices over Islam, and inland trade over maritime commerce. Inland from Mombasa makes the compelling case that the seemingly isolating alternative social pursuits engaged in by Mijikenda speakers were in fact key to their active role in global commerce and politics.
Over the past few decades, scholars have traced how Indian Ocean merchants forged transregional networks into a world of global connections. East Africa's crucial role in this Indian Ocean world has primarily been understood through the influence of coastal trading centers like Mombasa. In Inland from Mombasa, David P. Bresnahan looks anew at this Swahili port city from the vantage point of the communities that lived on its rural edges. By reconstructing the deep history of these Mijikenda-speaking societies over the past two millennia, he shows how profoundly they influenced global trade even as they rejected many of the cosmopolitan practices that historians have claimed are critical to creating global connections, choosing smaller communities over urbanism, local ritual practices over Islam, and inland trade over maritime commerce. Inland from Mombasa makes the compelling case that the seemingly isolating alternative social pursuits engaged in by Mijikenda speakers were in fact key to their active role in global commerce and politics.
David P. Bresnahan is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah.
