History, Materialization, and Presentation of Slavery in Tanzania

ABSTRACT East Africa has been part of an Indian Ocean trading network connecting it with the Arab world since at least the eighth century CE. This trade included the trafficking of humans. A number of sites associated with slave trading in East Africa are open to public display while some are also incorporated into local folklore. This article explores the historical interpretation of slavery presented at several sites in Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania. Analysis of these sites demonstrates that the public narratives accepted and presented about them are influenced by the region's colonial past and nineteenth-century European dominated cultural constructs.