ABSTRACT
Zanzibar and Bagamoya on the coast of East Africa, in what is now Tanzania, were great sites of trade in pre-colonial and colonial times; it would seem that they are on the cusp of entering a new wave of trade, as East Africa refocuses its economy onto tourism. Bagamoya long had an unenviable reputation in backpacker literature for muggings and robberies, some quite violent. The tourists who got there were often warned not to walk the dusty unmade streets without a local guide hired to 'protect' them. The 'African' dancers of the modern tourist performance are the residual cultural legatees of mainland Africans brought to Zanzibar by the earlier enterprises of slavery and missionizing. The dominant attractions in the Tanzanian tourist brochures for these sites are the 'exotic' atmosphere of Stone Town and the dive opportunities provided by the offshore islands.
