„Opowiem dokładnie”
“I shall relate precisely”

Truth and silence in three narratives about the Mombasa Rebellion

Author(s): Marek Pawełczak
Subject(s): Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 19th Century
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: history; East Africa; 19th century; Great Britain; European expansion; diplomacy; Zanzibar Sultanate; armed forces; Mombasa; historiography; Swahili poetry
Summary/Abstract: The author analyzes three narratives about the rebellion of Mombasa garrison in 1874–1875: a literary text, a historical text containing quotes from poetry, and a corpus of documentary sources produced by the British consulate in Zanzibar. The author identifies both the dominant and collateral narratives within these texts and the factors that shape them. The analysis is accompanied by an attempt to reconstruct the factual framework, and in particular to look for silences in the narratives. The identification of the latter is indispensable for the interpretation of texts. The analysis of the three narratives allows the author to go beyond the historiographic convention established seventy years ago by one of the examined texts, which focused on the psychological aspect of the rebellion and on rivalry within the Mombasa elite. The author, without denying the value of individual perspectives, proposes to read the history of the rebellion in a global context related to imperial policy, including the abolitionist policy of Great Britain, the development of the plantation economy and the growing indebtedness of planters.

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