EIHS Lecture: Divergent Connections: Participating in the Indian Ocean World from East Africa’s Interior, ca. 1000-1800

This talk explores the history of the East African port city of Mombasa from the vantage point of communities that lived along its rural edges. The Mijikenda speaking communities that lived adjacent to Mombasa rejected many of the cosmopolitan practices scholars understand as central to Indian Ocean communities. They emphasized smaller villages over urbanism, local ritual practices over Islam, and inland trade over maritime commerce. This talk examines the interrelationship between inland ritual networks and oceanic trade to show how seemingly alienating social pursuits were in fact key to Mijikenda speakers’ participation and influence in the premodern Indian Ocean.

David Bresnahan is an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah. He is the author of Inland from Mombasa: East Africa and the Making of the Indian Ocean World (University of California Press, 2025). His other research has appeared in Journal of World History, the Journal of Eastern African Studies, and the International Journal of African Historical Studies.

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.