Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa (review)

In 1993, when the government of newly independent Eritrea asked citizens to complete applications for national identity cards, people in Massawa listed their qabila ("tribe") as Masawwi'ī ("Massaawn"). The sense of a common identity shared by residents of this Red Sea town is a legacy of its commerce-oriented, urban disposition as well as their self-conception as inhabitants of a distinctly Muslim space. Red Sea Citizens is an excellent, detailed study of this port town at the historical meeting point of the Red Sea, Arabia, the Nile Valley, and the Ethiopian plateau. Massawa was occupied by Ottomans, Egyptians, Italians, British, and Ethiopians before Eritrea gained its independence in 1993, but the author deftly avoids locating the city within any imperial or nationalist narrative. He seeks, in Prasenjit Duara's words, to "rescue history from the nation" (Chicago, 1997) and also, he adds, to rescue history "from empire" (16). Red Sea Citizens joins a growing revisionist historiography of the Horn of Africa that aims to relocate regions and societies previously perceived as marginal in a literature that has remained, until recently, statecentric.

The book makes extraordinary use of archival sources in Tigre, Arabic, Italian, French, and English, ranging from registers of real estate transactions and charitable religious endowments to colonial documents, and to marriage, divorce, child-custody, manumission, and death records. The author also incorporates oral histories from more than fifty informants whom he interviewed in Eritrea in 2000 and 2001. With the perspective of time, it appears that his oral research seized on a limited window of opportunity. When Miran returned to Massawa eight years later, the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea had diminished much of the life and population of the city, with many of its residents leaving to seek a better life abroad. One member of a prominent family with well-known and established origins in Arabia asked Miran if his research had uncovered any documents "confirming" the family's Arabian heritage in order to support an application for citizenship to Saudi Arabia.

Red Sea Citizens is divided into five chapters with an introduction, several maps, more than thirty illustrations, and a helpful glossary. In early chapters, Miran examines the relative autonomy of Massawa and its surrounding region before the 1850s. Ottoman forces conquered Massawa in 1557 and subsequently appointed representatives of a local family of Balaws as nā'ibs (deputies) in a form of indirect rule; this lasted until the early 1850s, when Massawa was gradually brought under direct Ottoman and Egyptian rule, followed by Italian colonialism. The nā'ibs used marriage alliances with local chiefs and wealthy merchants to establish their ascendency, and they used their authority to spread Islam and control trade routes. Subsequent chapters examine Massawa's cosmopolitan, polyglot, and also distinctly Islamic identity, with its strong Sufi brotherhoods. Miran also examines the 'Ad Shaykh holy family (a perceived Mahdist threat to Italian colonialism in the 1880s) as well as the expression of Islam in Massawa's sacred spaces.

Among the most important contributions of this book is its discussion of Massawa's role in the global and regional economy. The author argues convincingly that, with respect to trade, the growing penetration of Europe in the Indian Ocean was not disruptive. Instead, the transformation of indigenous trade networks was characterized by "continuity, adaptation, and adjustment," as demonstrated by the success of merchant-entrepreneurs. Massawa's residents became connected to the hinterland through caravan routes and the wider world economy through its port. Local merchants and pearl fishers engaged global markets while resisting colonial meddling. (Chapter 2 includes a fascinating and original discussion of pearling in the Dahlak archipelago.) Miran also demonstrates how the commodification of the regional economy transformed social relations among Massawa's inhabitants.

Red Sea Citizens would be a welcome addition to advanced courses in urban, African, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, or world history. Miran is careful to explain...