War of Words, War of Stones Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar [Paperback]

The Swahili coast of Africa is often described as a paragon of transnational culture and racial fluidity. Yet, during a brief period in the 1960s, Zanzibar became deeply divided along racial lines as intellectuals and activists, engaged in bitter debates about their nations future, ignited a deadly conflict that spread across the island. War of Words, War of Stones explores how violently enforced racial boundaries arose from Zanzibars entangled history. Jonathon Glassman challenges explanations that assume racial thinking in the colonial world reflected only Western ideas. He shows how Africans crafted competing ways of categorizing race from local tradition and engagement with the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.

[This] book is first and foremost a political and cultural history of the last decade before independence, whose detailed and finely-depicted intricacies, grounded in numerous archival sources and interviews, are explored . . . War of Words, War of Stones is of interest not only to historians but also to sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists interested in unravelling the threads of wide-scale violence.LIII (4) 212 2013Winner, 2011 Martin A. Klein Award, American Historical AssociationFinalist, 2012 Herskovits AwardThis book is a towering achievement. Glassman has gone a long way toward setting the record straight about the sources of racial animosity in late colonial Zanzibar. . . . [T]his immeasurbaly brilliant book . . . will provide a new benchmark for understanding Zanzibari political history.A boldly conceived and meticulously conducted study that throws down a challenge to the writing of African politics in the twentieth century. . . . sure to unsettle, provoke, and guide for years to come.[Achieves] a valuable contribution to the study of political discourse, violence, and the organization of space and social relationships in Zanzibar. More generally . . . provide[s] interesting discussions of colonialism, power, identity l#%