The ‘Autobiography’ of Tippu Tip

Abstract

This essay takes as its starting point an autobiography written in Kiswahili by the nineteenth-century Zanzibari slave trader Tippu Tip, and the genealogy of how it was initially read according to existing understandings of African geography and western genres. That manner of reading and interpretation has as its core the idea that Africa and Africans operate according to a historical logic fundamentally separate from that of the rest of the world. This mode of engagement often (unconsciously) persists in contemporary scholarship about the continent, and thereby reinscribes the colonial exception of Africa. Through rereading Tippu Tip's autobiography in accordance with its style and form – rather than its content alone – I offer a reading of not only the text, but also the dialectical relationship between coastal and interior African geography, which enables us to see how knowledge and ignorance were strategically deployed about the continent; and thereby offer a paradigm for postcolonial reading and scholarship that accounts for and includes both the legacy of colonialism and the cultural possibilities of cultural and social difference on the continent.

• Africa
• autobiography
• genre
• geography
• Indian Ocean
• postcolonial literature

Notes

1 Hereafter, I will refer to Tippu Tip's text according to a shortened form of its most recent title, Maisha. All citations will be keyed to the 1958–9 edition published in the supplement to the East African Swahili Committee Journal.

2 From the late 1860s through the 1880s, ‘Tippu Tip was the most powerful man in the eastern part of what later became the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He was loyal to the sultan of Zanzibar, yet – unlike most of the Arabs – he maintained excellent relations with the Nyamwezi … By the 1880s, Tippu Tip was said to have 50,000 guns at his command’ (Oliver and Atmore 2005: 85–6).

3 Brode notes in the preface to his 1905 version of the text: ‘Having been resident for a considerable time in Zanzibar, I had the opportunity of becoming closely acquainted with the hero of this work, and I succeeded in inducing him to recount the story of his life, which seemed to me of interest in view of the important part which he has played in the history of African exploration. His descriptions were set down by him in Swahili in Arabic characters, and by me transcribed into Roman script, in which form they appeared, together with a German translation, in the “Proceedings of the Institute of Oriental Languages”, Part III, fifth and sixth yearly issues' (1907: xi).

4 Brode entitled this first translation the ‘Autobiography of an Arab Sheikh Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi, called Tippu Tip.’

5 The foundational history of Zanzibar's participation in the Indian Ocean trade is Sheriff (1987).

6 Glassman (2011: 34–5) discusses the social distinctions of these monikers, including the use of other terms, such as wazalia for those born slaves versus waungwana or washenzi. Tippu Tip follows this mode of categorizing in his narrative as well. This is noted and discussed in Geider (1992: 39–40).

7 I am much indebted to Glassman (2011) in this discussion of race and racialism. See in particular his second chapter for an excellent analysis of the development of race in colonial and postcolonial Zanzibar.

8 For an accessible and well-researched discussion of slavery and the slave trade in Oman and Zanzibar, see Bird (2010).

9 Some examples of scholarship that has shown the necessity of restoring Africa's historical and cultural position within oceanic studies include Lionnet's (2012) and Lionnet and Shu-Mei Shih's (2011) work on theories of creolization and the Indian Ocean islands; Hofmeyr's (2004, 2013) work on the travel of particular texts, such as Pilgrim's Progress, and their transformation along the way; and Ho's (2006) text on the cosmopolitan lives and afterlives of Hadrami Yeminis who circulated throughout the Indian Ocean region and helped to create a common culture.

10 My work here thus begins to answer the call issued by historians and literary critics alike, such as Campbell (2010), Barendse (2000, 2003, 2009), Hofmeyr (2010) and Ojwang (2011), who have argued that Africa's contributions to Indian Ocean history and culture need to be considered as equal rather than marginal.

11 My work responds especially to Campbell's argument, mostly focused on the economic contributions Africa made to the Indian Ocean World global economy, that ‘It is important to replace conventional colonial demarcations of North, East, Central and Southern Africa with one that more accurately indicates the precolonial reality. For Africa's precolonial relations with the first global economy, it is important to identify those regions of Africa … in close relation with the IOW [Indian Ocean World].

12 Geider (1992), recognizing the varied and unusual nature of Tippu Tip's narrative, writes, ‘Tippu Tip's interests seem to be as diverse as his account, which is full of name-dropping, detailed episodes, mercantile references and recorded speeches which one must be proud contemplating in the evening of life. The fact that Tippu Tip was tried for the murder of Major Barttelot might have caused him to justify one or other of his deeds, as he had an interest in appearing honourable, e.g. in the question of the slave trade’ (1992: 62).

13 Campbell (2010) claims that the standard means of understanding African regions is also limiting (and imposed from without), which is why he proposes doing away with sub-Saharan (and its attendant East, West, Central, Southern) and North Africa, in favour of, for our purposes, the Indian Ocean Africa (2010: 173). I assume that though Campbell doesn't mention it, we could also classify Africa in term of its neighbouring bodies of water, much as has already been done with Gilroy (1993) with the Atlantic and Horden and Purcell (2006) with the Mediterranean.

14 The original translation reads ‘gum-copal’ but I have changed it to ‘copal’, since gum-copal is a different commodity that was traded from the South Pacific islands almost exclusively.

15 Rockel (2006: 50) notes that ‘during the 1830s Tippu Tip's paternal grandfather visited Uyowa in western Unyamwezi [the land of the Nyamwezi, the rulers of the interior trade routes], and in the 1840s, his father married into the ruling family of Unyanyembe.’ These connections in the interior enabled Tippu Tip to claim kinship with both the locals and with the Arabs on Zanzibar, a strategy that he called on often when needing to negotiate passage or trade on the routes.

16 Geider (1992: 40–1) notes this is a common trope among other travelogue writers, though this is different from the sort of ‘travelogue’ we are accustomed to in the western tradition.

17 I'm not sure why the word ‘memoir’ requires scare quotes in Geider's article, except to signal its qualitative difference from an autobiography.

18 On form's effect upon the narration of history, see White (1980); for analysis of the unattached explorer–traveller in the foreign land, see Pratt's (1992) classic study; on autobiography/life narratives, see Smith and Watson (2010).

19 The hinterland's reputation as faraway, silent and barbaric could be useful, too. When Tippu Tip received a message from the sultan to return immediately to Zanzibar to repay a loan, Tippu Tip at first laments that ‘I didn't know the news about the death of Seyyid Majid, or the news about the cyclone that uprooted trees in Zanzibar. I didn't have the news, even about the rule of Seyyid Barghash, I didn't have news. I wasn't given the news then, even about the war in Tabora (105§103, trans. modified). The repetition of the phrase sina khabari (I didn't know, or wasn't informed of) four times within three sentences underscores his isolation from Zanzibar and coast while in the African hinterland. Note, however, Tippu Tip's response to Barghash's party: ‘But I said not a word. The messengers who arrived I put off for a year and then decided to travel’ (121§123, trans. modified). He responded with silence, thus deploying the reputation of the silent interior in order to avoid loan repayment.

20 A good place to start: Geider's (1992: 61) recognition of the various influences in the Swahili travelogue – oral factual narration, topically limited letters, account lists, and chronicles.