New publication: “Property Confiscation in the Zanzibar Revolution” by Julia Verne

In this article, published in African Affairs, Julia and Sandra (from the University of Richmond, VA) address the loss of property that many experienced in the aftermath of the Zanzibar revolution in 1964 due to government confiscations. Even though a number of scholars have been interested in the events and effects of the revolution, how the confiscations impacted and still inform the relation of their previous owners to Zanzibar has received rather little scholarly attention so far. This article thus introduces a dataset of georeferenced property confiscation orders, originally published in the Zanzibar Gazettes between 1964 and 1987. The data show that the temporal arc of the Revolution was decades long and that property confiscations went beyond urban houses in Stone Town and large plantations. By bringing the data into conversation with family histories and previous literature on the aftermath of the revolution, this article illustrates the relevance of Revolutionary era property losses for questions of identity, belonging, desire for restitution, and ongoing development efforts.

Link to the open-access article: https://academic.oup.com/afraf/advance-article/doi/10.1093/afraf/adaf022/8254345?searchresult=1

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