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"Nathaniel Mathews is able to tell a different kind of history--one that centers the narratives by these communities, and by their own political thinking. Rather than reading the history of this diaspora from the outside in (which would be tempting to do, given the kind of material we normally use), he is able to tell it from the inside out: as an emic history of diasporic political consciousness in the postcolonial moment."--Fahad Ahmad Bishara, author of A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950

"Zanzibar Was a Country draws on extensive archival and oral historical research to trace the ethnic sorting and diasporic politics of Arab exiles from Zanzibar. It is a major contribution to scholarship on the messy processes of decolonization, citizenship, and nation-building in Africa and the Middle East."--Mandana Limbert, author of In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory, and Social Life in an Omani Town