Female Seclusion in the Aftermath of Slavery on the Southern Swahili Coast: Transformations of Slavery in Unexpected Places

This article examines a practice that at first sight appears to have little relation to the history of slavery: the temporary seclusion of girls between menarche and marriage. It gained and then lost popularity on parts of the Swahili coast during the twentieth century after slavery had ended. The memory of slavery does not explicitly figure in the recollections of those who experienced seclusion. Nevertheless I will argue that a plausible case can be made that the experience of slavery informed the use of temporary seclusion. I thus also argue that, while historians may rightly hesitate to impute to historical actors motivations that cannot be traced in their own utterances, slavery may inform subsequent history in precisely such unadmitted and socially inadmissible ways. We would limit our understanding of the aftermath of slavery if we were not willing to consider them.