Deconstructing the Bantu Narrative: Migration, Colonization, and Contested Histories in East Africa
Tafkīk Riwāyat al-Bāntū: al-Hijrah wa-al-Istiʻmār wa-al-Tawārīkh al-Mutanāzaʻ ʻalayhā fī Sharq Ifrīqiyā
تفكيك رواية البانتو: الهجرة، الاستعمار، والتواريخ المتنازع عليها في شرق أفريقيا
Abstract
The migration of Bantu-speaking peoples to the Swahili coast constitutes one of the most contested historical questions in contemporary African studies. Whilst prevailing academic discourse presents this migration as an ancient expansion unfolding over millennia, revisionist historical narratives pose fundamental challenges to this chronological framework, suggesting that the Bantu arrival on the East African coast occurred only in the sixteenth century CE, concurrent with wider regional upheavals. This paper examines the evidence adduced on either side, the role colonial scholarship played in fixing the accepted chronology, and the implications each account carries for how the origins and identity of Swahili coastal society are understood. It argues that the question cannot be separated from the political uses to which competing histories of the coast have been put.
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Romanization follows the ALA-LC Arabic table used by the Library of Congress and the British Library. The original Arabic is carried in the parallel MARC 880 fields, linked by subfield $6 — the standard treatment for non-English resources.
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