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3. The Indian Ocean Region In his discussion of the Indian Ocean world, the historian Edward Alpers notes that this world encountered various traders and seafarers long before the arrival of Europeans. In fact, long before the rise of Islam, traders from the Harappa Civilisation (Alpers 2002: 2), transported goods in the northwest Indian Ocean. South Asians who were in the region around 1000 BCE followed these traders. Madagascar, the fourth largest island on the planet, saw the earliest arrival of people to the southwest region with the settlement of Austronesians on the island in 4 AD. In the fourteenth century we see the emergence of a largely Islamic world,whichwas,accordingtotheaccountoftheMoroccantraveller,IbnBattuta, ‘outward looking, interconnected and multiethnic’ (Alpers 2002:4). The Mascarene Islands (Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues) uninhabited at the time of such economic activity, only received immigrants in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries. The geographical location of the Mascarenes and rough seas of the southwest Indian Ocean meant that for a very long time, these islands remained isolated. Despite early and detailed accounts of life and trade in the Indian Ocean, it is, as Alpers tells us, difficult ‘to gain imaginative control of this vast oceanic world’ (2002: 8). Moreover, early writers found it hard to convey ‘the vastness and complexity of the Indian Ocean’ (ibid), largely because of the region’s varied peoples, history, cultures and environments. Nevertheless, various scholars attempted to identify the region’s unifying elements. Writing in the twentieth century , James de Vere Allen (1980 cited in Alpers 2002:10), says that in the Indian Ocean as a whole: race, culture and religion (essentially the early predominance of Islam), serve to unify the region. However, this approach does not capture the super-diversity of the region. It is Kenneth McPherson’s discussion of the IOR as series of overlapping cultural zones (1984 in Alpers 2002:11), influenced by maritime trade and cultural diffusion that is most interesting and pertinent to this study. In the following chapter, I identify elements contributing to cultural diffusion within and the unification of the IOR. In brief, these are: the experience of Rosabelle Boswell 25 maritime trade; slavery; colonisation; possession of African diaspora communities ; experience of the influence of southeast Asia and creolisation. I argue that these factors produced societies subject to similar forms of oppression, culminating in similar identities and politics. This is an important finding for heritage scholars and managers. We need to ascertain how regional factors and the longue durée of history influence heritage and identity. Zanzibar Zanzibar consists of two islands (Pemba in the north and Unguja islands in the south) that are situated off the coast of Tanzania. It is a semi-autonomous state that currently forms a part of one of the poorest countries in the world.2 Today the population of Tanzania stands at 30,608,769. Zanzibar has a population of 1 million. Currently, the largest ethnic groups on the mainland are the Sukuma and the Nyamwezi, each representing about a fifth of the country’s population. OthergroupsincludetheHaya,Ngonde,Chagga,Gogo,Nyakyusa,Nyika,Ngoni, Yao, and Masai. More so in Zanzibar and to a lesser extent Dar-es-Salaam, we find people of Indian, Pakistani, and Goan origin, and small Arab and European communities. In terms of religion, Islam remains dominant, while Roman Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination of Tanzania, with some six million adherents. Swahili and English are the official languages of Tanzania, but a large population still uses the language of their ethnic group.3 Recent anthropological (Askew 2002 and Fair 2001) and historical (Sheriff 1987) research, describes Zanzibar not only as an exceptionally beautiful island but also as an important site for international trade and cultural exchange. It is an island, as Pearson (1985 in Alpers 2002) would argue, characterised by dislocation and hybridisation, not stasis and homogeneity. For more than 300 years, Zanzibar islands and communities along the east African coast have cultivated trade links with cities and people of Oman and the Persian Gulf. The more than 800 Arabic manuscripts4 lodged at the Zanzibar National Archives offer proof of a well-established cultural and political connection between Asia and Africa before the arrival the Europeans in the region. The connection between the Asian settlements of Bombay (India), Shiraz (Persia), Muscat, Aden (Oman), Mombasa, Kilwa (east Africa) and Zanzibar was largely facilitated by the presence of the monsoon season that allowed traders and sailors from the east to encounter the Bantu and Cushitic people living along...

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