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The key role of the Nyamwezi in the nineteenth-century caravan trade of East and Central Africa is well known. The convergence of rapid change in Unyamwezi, a region connecting areas of economic specialization, is more obscure. The development of agro-pastoralism in Unyamwezi was an adaptation and an opportunity forged by (unequal) partnerships between the Nyamwezi commercial elite and Tutsi immigrants. Patron-client relationships reflected prevailing economic and political forces, reversing the pattern of pastoral dominance in the Great Lakes region. Two different agro-ecological, sociological and political regions – the East African woodland savannah and the Great Lakes zone – were interlinked in a trans-regional cattle, salt, and labor economy intertwined with global capitalism. Human mobility stimulated change but so too did movements of livestock, diseases, agricultural regimes, and ecological boundaries.

African labor history is undergoing a resurgence judging by the appearance of these three important books. During the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century, historians working in East, West, and southern Africa published a remarkable number of first-rate histories of migrant laborers, rural workers, and the emerging urban working class, notably in the innovative Heinemann Social History of Africa series founded by Allen Isaacman and Jean Hay. Other historians published fine works elsewhere. Labor history of all kinds flourished. However, with new academic trends and the demise of the Social History series in the mid-2000s, African labor history seems to have entered a decline, although studies of precolonial slavery have continued to appear regularly. It is therefore gratifying to see a number of new labor histories published in the last two or three years.

The nineteenth century East African caravan system was organised around the labour of itinerant caravan porters, most of whom were free wage labourers. However, a minority of the caravan labour force and a section of the populations of new market and caravan towns on the coast and in the interior were slaves or freed slaves known as Waungwana, or ‘gentlemen’. Waungwana caravan porters and retainers of Muslim traders were mostly coast-based, although many travelled for years in the far interior of Central and East Africa. To some degree the Waungwana were assimilated into Swahili culture, with its urban Muslim characteristics. Yet the Waungwana were from diverse origins across East Africa. They were also very mobile, and they were wage earning and often entrepreneurial. Paradoxically it is this very mobility and frequently great distance from the centres of Swahili culture that gave the Waungwana social and economic opportunities, status, and a role as cultural brokers. They were men of the world, and live...

(2006). Forgotten Caravan Towns in 19th Century Tanzania: Mbwamaji and Mpwapwa. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 1-25.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, Nyamwezi long-distance trading caravans dominated the central routes through Tanzania, stretching from Mrima coast ports such as Bagamoyo and Saadani to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. Despite the inroads of Omani Arab and Swahili trading enterprises from the middle of the century, the Nyamwezi maintained a position of strength. In the second half of the nineteenth century, market relations emerged as the dominant form of economic organization along the central routes, although the market for many commodities was clearly fractured by transport difficulties, and non-market relations frequently substituted for weakly developed commercial institutions and tools. Most caravan porters in nineteenth-century Tanzania were free wage workers, and nearly all were clearly migrant or itinerant labourers. The development of a labour market for caravan porters was an early and significant stage in the transition to capitalism, which began in a period of violence and political upheaval. Clearly, this has implications for how scholars should view broader processes of economic transformation prior to the imposition of colonial rule, which cut short a series of significant indigenous innovations.The argument that porters were mostly wage labourers rests on evidence that their labour was bought and sold according to fluctuating labour market conditions. Market conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century shows a broadly rising demand for porters, a demand that could only be met if caravan operators offered adequate wages and observed the customs established within porter work culture. Thus, market conditions along the central routes contributed to the development of a free wage labour, characterized by a unique labour culture.

were extended and strengthened, a wide range of systems and institutions for mobilizing labor were in use in different regions. I speak here of those operating beyond the primary locus of household and lineage. Such means of labor production and control ranged from chattel slavery to pawnship, corv6es, various kinds of patronclient relations, bride service, cooperative labor, and also, in more and more contexts over time, wage labor.' Slavery, of course, has received the attention of many scholars, as have some of the other categories. However the study of wage labor in precolonial times is still in its infancy. For those wishing to pursue research on precolonial wage labor in Africa the lack of documentary sources has proved to be a significant barrier. The nature of proletarianized or semi-proletarianized wage labor in colonial societies or societies closely tied into the capitalist system usually demands of researchers that they look to sources of an official or institutional nature. For example, one can think of the records of companies, trade unions, benefit societies, colonial governments, courts, commissions of inquiry, and so on. But for precolonial Africa these types of documentary sources usually do not exist. This has led many scholars to say that the concept of wage labor is itself not useful when contemplating African labor systems before the onset of colonization. They point to the lack of a cash currency, continuing ties to the land, the temporary nature of much work, the absence of a bourgeoisie, apparent lack of worker consciousness, and so on. But there are other difficulties less related to such theoretical conceptions and generalizations about the supposed non-existence of wage labor which have severely taxed the most resolute historian, and help explain the dearth of written sources. There are practical reasons for the lack of documentation. The obvious one is the extremely limited spread of literacy before the twentieth century. Others are sometimes related to the type of employer and context of the work environment; for instance, farmers in cash crop-producing regions hiring migrant labor in the nineteenth century would probably not formalize the terms of employment on paper. A verbal agreement would be made. In addition, as authors such as Sara Berry have shown for the late nineteenth and

ResumeLa main-d’oeuvre migratoire feminine en Afrique de l’est precede les conditions coloniales. Sur les grandes voies commerciales de la Tanzanie precoloniale, les femmes acompagnaint les caravanes associees au commerce de l’ivoire et aux voyageurs europeens. Les femmes des caravanes voyagaient en veuves avec un parent et en refugiees fuyant des situations desesperees. Les femmes Nyamwezi qui avaient un statut relativement eleve constituaient la majorite des caravanieres. Les quelques preuves disponibles suggerent que ces femmes n’etaient pas des esclaves et avaient une autonomie relative. Le travail des caravanieres etait une forme de “capital cache” pour les organisateurs de caravanes. Les caravanieres peuvent etre decrites comme partenaires dans des entreprises dont la presence signifie que les caravanes etaient veritablement des communites mobiles, capables jusqu’a un certain point de repondre a des exigences esentielles de main-d’oeuvre.