Kanga Cloths at Vlisco: An Object-Based Study of Dutch Printing for the Colonial East African Market, 1876–1971

| african arts AUTUMN 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 3 K anga cloths have been central to the lives of east Africans for over a century, serving primarily as affordable wrappers for the majority of women. Existing scholarship on kanga design has focused on the communicative potential of texts on these affordable, printed cloths (Yahya-Othman 1997; Beck 2000, 2001, 2005; Parkin 2000, 2003; Ong’oa-Morara 2014). Discussions of design are largely anecdotal and do not chronicle change over time (Trillo 1984; Amory 1985; Spring 2005; Zawawi 2005; Bijl 2006; Ong’oa-Morara 2014). This essay utilizes over 5,000 examples of full-cloth kanga cloth, chronicling the design and production of Vlisco, the Dutch textile printer in Helmond, the Netherlands (Figs. 1a–b). Specific regional demands, changing text script, and innovations such as commemorative, advertising, and overtly political kanga can be dated. Women’s unceasing demand for new designs is often repeated anecdotally; this study offers analysis of representative designs alongside growing numbers of imports to give specificity and weight to these assertions across the colonial period. Port cities of the Swahili coast have long been cosmopolitan in nature, with global links increasing in frequency across the nineteenth century (Arabindan-Kesson 2014; Meier 2009, 2016; Longair 2018). Kanga cloth developed and flourished in this Swahili world, and the cities of Mombasa, Zanzibar, and Dar es Salaam served as coastal entrepot for inland distribution of kanga. These cities can be used to determine differing regional demands within east Africa, as each belongs to different political regions during the colonial era, ca. 1880s–1960s. Mombasa was part of British East Africa (1895–1920); then the Protectorate of East Africa, administered by the British (1920–1963); then independent Kenya (1963–). Dar es Salaam was part of German East Africa (1885–1919); then Tanganyika Territory, administered by the British (1916–1961); then independent Tanganyika (1961–1964); then union with Zanzibar to form Tanzania (1964–). Zanzibar is an island previously ruled by the Omani sultanate (1698–1897, with a resident sultan from 1832 or 1840), until it became a British protectorate in 1890. Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika in 1964 following the Zanzibar Revolution, and today remains a semiautonomous region within Tanzania. Such varied colonial rule enabled textile printers working through changing merchant-converter firms and local Indian kanga designers and sellers to flourish. In the case of Tanzania, for example, between 1890 and 1914, German merchant converters such as Hansing & Co. handled kanga imports to German East Africa, commissioning Dutch textile printers in greater numbers than British. Leading Dutch textile printers at this time included Vlisco (P.F. van Vlissingen), HKM (Haarlemsche Katoen Maatschappij or Haarlem Cotton Company), and LKM (Leidsche Katoenmaatschappij or Leiden Cotton Company). This shifts to parallel the changing political and administrative rule: between 1920–1949, the British imported more kanga than Dutch printers, through the hands of British merchant converters such as Smith Mackenzie Ltd. At midcentury, however, the Japanese dominated the kanga trade. From 1950 through 1981, Japanese printers such as Daido Senko imported vastly greater numbers than European printers. They did so through Japanese merchant converters, such as C. Itoh and H. Nishizawa Shoten, Ltd. Such Japanese success was made possible by working with local kanga designers and sellers of Indian descent, such as Kassamali Gulamhussein Peera. These locals often surveyed coastal women for their preferences; paid women in kanga for their ideas, especially for new sayings; and used a reservation system to presell new designs before delivery.1 Designers employed by textile printers may have physically drawn kanga designs, but they did so on the ideas, suggestions, and guidance of local experts. Kanga sellers of Indian descent maintained close consultations with women consumers, who were the ultimate arbiters of success (Ryan 2018a).2 Dutch printer Vlisco continued to work with British merchant converters, such as Smith Mackenzie, who in turn collaborated with local Indian merchants such as Jiwan Hirji (also spelled Jivan Hirji). The British ceased kanga production in the late 1950s, followed by the Dutch in the late 1960s, when domestic kanga production commenced in Tanzania in support of socialist rule, called ujamaa. Tanzania with investment from China founded Urafiki (or Friendship) Textile Mill in 1967, which is a vertically integrated cotton processing, spinning, weaving, and printing manufacturer in Dar es Salaam that still exists today. Protectionist policies led to Japan serving as the sole importer of kanga, though at reduced numbers, throughout the 1970s. When first president Julius Nyerere abandoned socialist policies in 1985 and voluntarily stepped down, a new era of importers filled the demand for kanga from the late 1980s and beyond. This essay uses kanga import numbers specific to Tanzania and focused analysis of the production of one printer, Vlisco. These limitations restrict large, overarching conclusions of all kanga design. For example, Japanese kanga imports dwarfed Dutch imports to Tanganyika/Tanzania in the 1950s and 1960s, with Japan responsible for over 13 million at its peak in 1955, compared with about 1 million Dutch kanga printed in the same year.3 It is possible that Kanga Cloths at Vlisco An Object-Based Study of Dutch Printing for the Colonial East African Market, 1876–1971