On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism
Author(s)
Prestholdt, Jeremy
Abstract
Considers how seemingly marginal groups affected larger patterns of global integration in the 19th century by demonstrating how diverse and changing East African consumer demands had repercussions for locales as distant as Bombay and Salem, Massachusetts. As their connections to distant regions deepened in the second half of the 19th century, East Africans developed specific and highly differentiated consumer tastes. To profit from the East African trade, foreign manufacturers had to appeal to those changing demands. In the cases of Bombay and Salem, the manufacture of textiles for the East African market offered new economic opportunities and provided important stimuli to the industrialization of both cities. Vignettes of transregional engagement suggest that negotiated transactions and the consumer desires of people considered marginal to global systems have, at times, been just as important to patterns of global integration as have “peripheral” adjustments to the demands of international capital. Tracing the international repercussions of African consumerism demonstrates how a global narrative can be attentive to local contingencies.
