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Paper short abstract:

I argue that In the 18th- early 20th centuries Nyamwezi men built a ‘cosmopolitan masculinity’ based upon displaying connections with elsewhere. In contrast to Swahili cosmopolitanism, this has since been denied, in favour of a local and national identity.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I argue that from the mid-eighteenth century exceptional men from Unyamwezi (western Tanzania) crafted a new form of male adulthood - a “cosmopolitan masculinity” - based upon mobile, high-risk labour and displaying connections with societies on the coast and in the interior. In the decades before the imposition of colonial rule, this cosmopolitanism became both available to and necessary for Nyamwezi men in general, through trade, travel, and violent labour. In the early colonial period Nyamwezi men had the desire and ability to pursue labour opportunities beyond the borders of German East Africa, thereby restricting the capacity for action of the colonial state, which relied upon their labour. As I show, the concept of cosmopolitanism can be useful for understanding intra-continental mobilities, not just transcontinental connections.

Exploring Nyamwezi men’s cosmopolitanism – and the decline of Nyamwezi claims to a distinctly cosmopolitan identity in the twentieth century – also raises questions about connections and distinctions with Swahili cosmopolitanism. As I show, in the context of Nyamwezi men’s uncontested Africanness, three different groups increasingly came to define Nyamwezi men as ‘local’ as opposed to cosmopolitan. Firstly, colonial officials saw the Nyamwezi as an inherently local ‘tribe’, at risk from runaway modernization. Secondly, Swahili coastal and island inhabitants saw themselves as cosmopolitan, connected to Muslim civilization, and distinct from the ‘barbaric’ Nyamwezi whom they often lived or worked alongside. Finally, in the context of nationalism, Nyamwezi men and women increasingly cast themselves as locals and as Tanganyikans / Tanzanians.