Nyamwezi participation in nineteenth-century East African long-distance trade: some evidence from missionary sources

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Periodical article

Title:	Nyamwezi participation in nineteenth-century East African long-distance trade: some evidence from missionary sources
Author:	Pallaver, Karin
Year:	2006
Periodical:	Africa: rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione
Volume:	61
Issue:	3-4
Pages:	513-531
Language:	English
Geographic term:	East Africa
Subjects:	long-distance trade Nyamwezi 1800-1899
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/40761872
Abstract:	This article proposes an analysis of the role of Nyamwezi traders in the interregional and long-distance trade networks of nineteenth-century East Africa and stresses some aspects of Nyamwezi participation that emerge from the study of missionary sources. After a brief historical introduction, the author outlines the characteristics of the Arab and Nyamwezi traders taking part in long-distance trade having its main centre in Tabora, the main commercial town in the interior of what is today Tanzania. Information from missionary sources, particularly those collected in the White Fathers Archive in Rome, suggests that, responding to the changing patterns of the long-distance trade network, Nyamwezi traders and porters developed, or strengthened, different ways to take part in it even though Nyamwezi traders had lost their prominent position as caravan organizers during the 1870s. Finally, the author investigates the connection between long-distance trade and Nyamwezi interregional trade, noting that the different types of trade were complementary. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]