Pages: 349-359

The nineteenth century Arab slave trade in East Africa and Indian Ocean left scars and cultural trauma for affected communities, which have lasted up to nowadays. The paper highlights the results of field research conducted by the authors and their colleagues in Tanzania in 2018—2019. Both historical memory about slave trade and nowadays relations between Tanzanians and Arabs were under consideration. The main aim of the second field season was to determine what the Tanzanians think about the end of slave trade and circumstances which had led to it. It turned out that a number of attitudes, expressed by our respondents, are closely related to their religious affiliation. Christians believe that the main reason of abolition was humanitarian and emphasized the role of missionaries in the process. Muslims don’t have a consolidated concept. They point out various reasons: loss of profitability of the trade, Industrial revolution in Europe (sic), competition between Britain and France over sugar cane, etc. (Christians indicate these reasons too, but on the second and third place after humanitarian purposes). The paper deals with the reasons of diverse opinions of Tanzania’s main religious denominations against the backdrop of ongoing political debates, in which rival parties use history slavery and abolition as an argument and the fact that Christians and Muslims have quite opposite levels of tolerance towards modern Arabs living in the country.

Keywords: East Africa, Tanzania, slave trade, Muslim-Christian relations, cultural trauma

Information about authors:

Anastasia Banshchikova (Moscow, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Spiridonovka St., 30/1, Moscow, 123001, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
Oxana Ivanchenko (Moscow, Russian Federation). Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Spiridonovka St., 30/1, Moscow, 123001, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]