Sidi Mubarak Bombay never forgot the moment he lost everything. It was the early 19th century, and he was just a child living in a remote village in the Yao territory of east Africa, which today lies on the border between Tanzania and Mozambique. He never knew his mother, who died soon after he was born, but he had a father, a family, friends, a home. All were taken from him when, as he later recalled with moving candour, a large group of men “equipped with sword and gun, came suddenly”.
These were not strangers. They had been there before, offering goods that they knew the villagers could ill afford. The Yao, Bantu-speaking peoples of east and central Africa, were far from naive: they were sophisticated agriculturalists, highly skilled ironsmiths and experienced traders. They had long worked with the Arabs, bringing ivory and enslaved people from the interior to the coast to sell to them. Bombay’s village, however, was inland and isolated, allowing its inhabitants little interaction with the outside world, and leaving them vulnerable to the traps that slave traders patiently laid.
Upon their return to Bombay’s village, the men “demanded of the inhabitants instant liquidation of their debts… or stand the consequence of refusal”. No wealthier now than they had been when they incurred the debts, and with no guns to defend themselves, the villagers had only one hope: to run. “The whole village,” Bombay remembered, “took to precipitate flight.”
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