Reflections on Historiography and Pre-Nineteenth-Century History from the Pate “Chronicles” (original) (raw)

History in Africa, 1993

Abstract

The period from 1500 to 1800 was a particularly busy phase in the history of the East African coast. It was a time which witnessed massive demographic shifts in the interior regions, as well as heavy southern Arab immigration and external meddling from Portuguese and Umani interlopers. It saw the destruction of the medieval entrepot of Kilwa Kisiwani and a decline, followed by a slow resurgence, in the fortunes of another medieval powerhouse, Mombasa. Throughout this phase, the ancient northern coastal city of Pate enjoyed a pivotal, even at times a paramount, role in the affairs of the coast. Before the middle 1500s the town seems to have been of insufficient consequence to attract much attention. Thereafter, however, the city-state capitalized on mainland alliances with powerful Orma confederations like the “Garzeda” to become a major center for regional trade, as well as a crucial strategic location in the competing religious and political ambitions of Portugal and various Arab states. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Pate clearly was the most important state in the Lamu archipelago. Arguably, too, it was the most powerful Swahili sultanate on the entire coast.Given the significance of Pate in the affairs of the East African coast from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries, scholars long have realized that a history of the sultanate is exigent to an understanding of the entire coast during this time. What would seem to be fortunate to this end is that historians have the Pate chronicles as a research aid. Taken together, these constitute the most detailed indigenous history of any coastal city-state up to the onset of the colonial era. However, as attested by the difficulties Chittick encountered in his attempts to work with them, these documents present the historian with a superabundance of (often confusing) information. Confronted with this, Chittick concluded that the only possible value of these chronicles was as a source of/for children's fables. Thus surmised, a historian of this important Swahili sultanate would seem to be left with very little indeed.

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