April 11, 2023 Report by Oxana Ivanchenko within the framework of the scientific seminar "Culture and Society"

On April 11, 2023, at noon, within the framework of the seminar “Culture and Society” of the Center for History and Cultural Anthropology, Oksana Ivanchenko presented a report “Remembering the leaders of Tanganyika: the Arab-Swahili slave trade and the contamination of the slave and colonial discourses in modern Tanzania”. The report was based on the results of 5 years of field research conducted in Tanzania by the faculty of the center Oxana Ivanchenko, Anastasia Banshchikova, and Valentina Bryndina. The study was devoted to the memories of modern Tanzanians about the Arab-Swahili slave trade of the 19th century, as well as their influence on modern interethnic relations in the country.

The report considered such a particular issue as the participation of local leaders in the slave trade and described specific leaders. In addition to the analysis of the array of respondents' answers containing the most common stories of the oral tradition about the leaders of Tanganyika, a brief historical background was presented on the most famous leaders, whose participation in the slave trade is reflected in written sources.

It was shown that Tanzanians do not have a negative attitude towards local leaders and leaders who participated in the slave trade, this fact is widely known, and almost no one denies it, and the history of the leaders' participation in the slave trade is reflected in school textbooks and museum expositions. The final count of the personalities mentioned by the respondents was presented, the results of which were compared with historical reality. The most interesting result is that in interviews entirely devoted to the slave trade when answering the question about the leaders involved in it, respondents very often named leaders who became famous for resisting German colonization. At the same time, the number of references to the latter was more than half of the number of references to the former.

Thus, the contamination of the slave trade discourse with the colonial discourse is very strong, which is confirmed by the conclusions drawn from other surveys and field research materials. For Tanzanians, the history of resistance to colonial rule and gaining independence is much more important and relevant than memories of the slave trade. It is from the history of the struggle for independence that the national history of Tanzania begins. Therefore, the heroes of the anti-colonial resistance remain revered leaders for the Tanzanians, and the colonial discourse is very significant.