June 7, 2022 Report by junior research fellow Bryndina V.N. within the scientific seminar "Culture and Society"

On June 7, at noon, within the seminar of the Center for History and Cultural Anthropology "Culture and Society", a report was made by Bryndina V.N. "The image of Tippu-Tip in the memoirs and travel notes of British travelers in the second half of the 19th century."

The report examined the image of Hamed bin Mohammed al-Murjebi, a major Arab-Swahili merchant, better known by the nickname Tippu-Tip. In the 1860s-70s. Tippu-Tip collaborated with such well-known East African researchers as D. Livingston, V.L. Cameron, and G.M. Stanley. Later, he took part in the expedition to rescue Emin Pasha (1886-1889) and was captured in the memoirs and travel notes of several of its participants - E. Barttelot, J. Jameson, J. Troup, and H. Ward.

It has been shown that the image of Tippu-Tip both among travelers and members of the expedition to rescue Emin Pasha has several common features, they all described him as a large and influential merchant, an Arab gentleman with impeccable manners, as an intelligent and shrewd person, capable arouse admiration and win over the interlocutor. However, in the descriptions of the 1880s. Tippu-Tip begins to be called a slave trader, and he is also accused of slave raids arranged by people who are in his service. Such a shift in the image could be because members of the expedition to rescue Emin Pasha met Tippu Tip during the period of active colonial division of East Africa. At a time when the Arabs, the old "masters" of the region, no longer had a place there, they began to be portrayed as a force that, through the conduct of the slave trade, destroys and depletes the region, which must be fought.