From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor & Agriculture in Zanzibar & Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925

by Frederick Cooper

Cooper's subtle and seminal work examines the critical decades of transition from a slave-based plantation system in East Africa to a colonial economy based on wage labor. While British officials hoped to create an efficient and productive class of agrarian workers, the original Arab and Swahili landlords and slaveowners tried to redefine their old mechanisms of domination in order to maintain them. Yet the ex-slaves themselves had a quite different agenda: to acquire access to land on their own terms, and to shape their own working conditions.

The processes of interaction and struggle among these three groups shaped the outlines of social and economic development along the Swahili coast through the remainder of the twentieth century. Cooper's comparative analysis is penetrating, and his book retains a central position in historical scholarship.

346 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 1997

About the author

Frederick Cooper is an American historian who specializes in colonialization, decolonialization, and African history. Cooper received his Doctor of Philosophy from Yale University in 1974 and is currently professor of history at New York University.

Cooper initially studied the labor movement in East Africa, but later moved on the a broader consideration of colonialism. One of his best known conceptual contributions is the concept of the gatekeeper state.

Reviews

[Stephanie Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interested discussion of the British colonial government's work to end slavery and impose a capitalist economic system on Zanzibar and coastal Kenya. Deals with land tenure, social identity and group formation, peasant resistance. Based on archival research and interviews. very in depth but at times hard to follow.

[Innoryne Frateh]

i want to have better knowledge about slave trade in Zanziber