Entangled Histories: Translocal Textile Trades in Eastern Africa,c. 800 CE to the Early Twentieth Century

In the recent efflorescence of studies on ‘global’ textile trades, eastern Africa has been mostly conspicuous for its absence. This special volume of Textile History seeks to redress this situation by mapping many of the major historic textile trades of this vast area, and demonstrating their importance to the global story. The introduction provides the rationale for the volume, positions the textile trades of eastern Africa over the longue durée and connects them to wider geographical and conceptual frameworks, and presents its five essays, contextualising them within the unfolding history of the western Indian Ocean and its several ‘cloth zones’, while elucidating their potential contributions to the field.