Taking Ken McPherson's essay on "Port Cities as Nodal Points of Change" as a starting point, Lee Cassanelli suggested that our Institute has analyzed the port cities of the Indian Ocean littoral in a variety of ways. At one point, we conceptualized them as links in oceanic networks of trade, like "pearls on a necklace." Subsequently we considered them as gateways between the Indian Ocean and the various inland polities and communities found on the mainland; and we discovered a wide range of variation in the degree to which these ports interacted with, or were integrated with, their hinterlands. In the age of European imperialism, many of these ports served as bridgeheads for Western expansion into Africa and Asia. Finally, we can examine port cities as sites where social, economic, and cultural changes associated with colonialism, industrial capitalism, and modern consumerism first become evident.

Lee also challenged us to rethink the notion of "cosmopolitanism" as applied to Indian Ocean port cities in the past and present.. We have tended to emphasize the multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, and multi-religious character of these cities, and there is historical evidence to demonstrate that Indian Ocean merchants commonly cooperated and even partnered across ethnic and religious lines. But it is also the case that these townspeople of the Indian Ocean littoral typically maintained communal boundaries in the residential, marriage, and inheritance patterns. It may be useful, then, to revive an old concept and think about these port cities as "plural societies" (i.e., societies where distinct cultural, racial, or religious communities live side by side and cooperate in certain restricted spheres of activity while maintaining clear communal boundaries between and among themselves.)

This discussion led to the thought that historians ought to examine other sites and settings in the Indian Ocean world where multi-ethnic communities were compelled not simply to coexist but also to forge new collective identities and languages (even more so than in port cities). We can think here about dhow crews during months' at sea; "mercenary" armies recruited by rulers and adventurers from different parts of the littoral; and slave communities throughout the Indian Ocean world.

Reading List:

Bhacker, M. Reda. Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar (London, 1992)

Cassanelli, Lee. "The Role of Diaspora Communities in Homeland Development: Some Historical Examples" (forthcoming)

_____ , "History and Identity in the Somali Diaspora," in Suzanne Lilius, ed.. Variations on the Theme of Somaliness. Proceedings of the EASS/SSIA International Congress of Somali Studies, Turku, Finland, August 6-9, 1998. Turku, 2001.

_____ , "Preface to New Edition" and "Explaining the Somali Crisis," in Catherine Besteman and Lee Cassanelli, eds., The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War. 2nd edition. (London, 2000).

Landes, David. Bankers and Pashas. International Finance and Economic Imperialism in Egypt (Harvard, 1958)

Kepel, Gilles. The Prophet and Pharaoh. Muslim Extremism in Egypt (California, 1993)

Kepel, Gilles. Jihad. The Trail of Political Islam (Harvard, 2002)

Richards, John F. (Ed) Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (Carolina Academic Press, 1983)

Stiansen, Endre and Jane Guyer, (Eds). Credit, Currencies, and Culture. African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective (Uppsala, 2000)

Lee Cassanelli teaches African History and World History at the University of Pennsylvania, and is currently serving as the Director of Penn's African Studies Center. His research interests focus on the Horn of Africa, and on how historical knowledge gets produced and preserved in the encounters between Westerners and Africans. He has recently sought to document the changing fortunes of Somalia's historic coastal communities, many of whom have been displaced and have resettled in other countries around the Indian Ocean rim. Recent publications include "History and Identity in the Somali Diaspora," and "Explaining the Somali Crisis."

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Lee Cassanelli

Professor of History and Director, African Studies Center

University of Pennsylvania

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