Zanzibar Was a Country

Zanzibar Was a Country traces the history of a Swahili-speaking Arab diaspora from East Africa to Oman. In Oman today, whole communities in Muscat speak Swahili, have recent East African roots, and practice forms of sociality associated with the urban culture of the Swahili coast. These "Omani Zanzibaris" offer the most significant contemporary example in the Gulf, as well as in the wider Indian Ocean region, of an Afro-Arab community that maintains a living connection to Africa in a diasporic setting. While they come from all over East Africa, a large number are postrevolution exiles and emigrés from Zanzibar. Their stories provide a framework for the broader transregional entanglements of decolonization in Africa and the Arabian Gulf. Using both vernacular historiography and life histories of men and women from the community, Nathaniel Mathews argues that the traumatic memories of the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 are important to nation-building on both sides of the Indian Ocean.

Nathaniel Mathews is a historian of East Africa and the Indian Ocean. He received his PhD from Northwestern University and is currently Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at SUNY Binghamton.

Contents

Acknowledgments 
List of Abbreviations 

Introduction: Diaspora, Development, and National Citizenship in the Indian Ocean 

PART ONE
BELONGING IN ZANIBAR 
1 • Immigration, Exogenous Origins, and the Politics of Citizenship in Zanzibar, 1957–1963 
2 • Violence and Emigration in the Zanzibar Revolution, 1964–1965 

PART TWO 
BELONGING IN DIASPORA 
3 • “On Behalf of Zanzibaris Abroad”: The Zanzibar Organization and Postcolonial Tanzanian Politics, 1964–1985 
4 • Zanzibari Diaspora Communities in the Arabian Gulf, 1964–1977 

PART THREE 
BELONGING IN OMAN 
5 • Return Migration from East Africa and the Politics of Citizenship in Oman, 1970–2020
6 • Transregional Relations, Omani Heritage, and a Vernacular Historiography of Zanzibar, 1990–2020 
Conclusion 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index