Runaway Slaves and the Aftermath of Slavery on the Swahili Coast

Abstract

Along the East African coast, marronage increased in the 19th century as a consequence of the intensification of the slave trade and the development of a plantation economy based on slave labor. Research on the fugitive slaves on the Swahili coast has been conducted since the 1980s and has mainly highlighted the ambivalent relationship (between rejection and belonging) of maroons with the dominant coastal culture—that of the slave owners, shaped in particular by Islam and urbanity. This article goes beyond the existing interpretations by showing that the aftermath of slavery often consisted of a range of options, less static than those described so far and less focused on opting either into or out of coastal culture. Relying on a case study in present-day Kenya and drawing from European written sources and interviews, I examine what happened to escaped slaves in the Witu region, where a Swahili city-state was founded in 1862. Their history is examined through a spatial analysis and the modalities of their economic and social participation in regional dynamics, showing that no single cultural influence was hegemonic in this region.