Trading the Unfamiliar? Zanzibari Traders Searching for New Markets in Southeast Asia

In February 2010, four traders from Zanzibar embarked on a journey to South East Asia to explore new opportunities for their trading businesses. In contrast to earlier trips generally embedded in well-established networks, by traveling to Jakarta they decide to go beyond familiar paths looking for new markets in a place to which they have never been before. The aim of this presentation is to provide a vivid impression of how and why this is done, and how these contemporary journeys are closely embedded in imaginations of a cosmopolitan past.

While Swahili trading connections to Dubai build on a long history of mobility between the Arabian Peninsula and the East African coast, it is only over the last ten years that Zanzibari traders venture further east to benefit from cheap offers in trading hubs like Bangkok and Hong Kong to fill their shops in East Africa. Although especially the connection to Bangkok has become very popular resulting in a reliable and steady flow of goods to East African harbors, some traders have again started to look for new markets. By pursuing a mobile approach and traveling with four of these Zanzibari traders to Jakarta, I was able to gain detailed ethnographic insights into how trade is organized in a strange place. Accompanying the traders on their shopping tours and following their negotiations with agents shows how new trading connections are established and how traders deal with and reflect upon the challenges of trade in an unknown place. A particular emphasis will be put on how a certain familiarity is created by relating themselves to (an imagined) Swahili trading history.