Encircling Value: Inland Trade in the Precolonial East African-Indian Ocean World, ca. 1st-17th Centuries.

摘要

Encircling Value investigates the trade goods and networks valued by small-scale, inland Rufiji Ruvuma societies of the East Africa from the 1st to 17th centuries. I argue that Rufiji Ruvuma priorities played a strong role in determining how external economic pressures, emanating from the Indian Ocean world, exerted themselves on these societies and, in doing so, influenced the shape of long-distance trade. Its details speak to growing interests on the roles of allegedly marginal actors in bringing together diverse trading systems and change our picture of trade in the region.;Chapter One describes how historical linguistics provided a crucial technique for uncovering the history of this sparsely documented region. Chapter Two explores early Rufiji Ruvuma communities of the first millennium. Their generalist approach, which combined agriculture with a variety of other endeavors, gave their descendants an important legacy of resource flexibility. Chapter Three follows the south and eastward migrations of Ruvuma speakers. During the mid-late first millennium, they developed exchange networks with their Macua neighbors and the coast. In contrast, to their north, Rufiji societies of Chapter Four prioritized interior exchange and developed an inland network of exchange with their neighbors. Despite these differences, knowledge of resource specialties (such as hunting, fishing, barkcloth making, and ironworking) remained important in both Rufiji and Ruvuma societies as trade intensified during the second millennium. In Chapter Five, we see that coastal commercial intensification did not uniformly reorient inland trade. East Rufiji societies developed trade ties to both coast and interior, while other Rufiji groups maintained and expanded inland exchange. Chapter Six narrates Ruvuma experiences during 1500-1600s to show that they navigated trade with coastal Swahili and newly arrived Portuguese merchants, yet maintained their own commodity interests. Last, an Epilogue explores the post-17th century history of one commodity legacy - that of brass bracelets - to argue that some Ruvuma residents here maintained regionally specific commodity interests as a strategy to combat the turbulence of later eras' trades in ivory and slaves. This example, along with this work's other chapters, underscores the importance of specific accounts of inland commercial geographies and desires.