Turning the Tree Plantations of Slavery into Agroforests for Everyman: A Piece of Landscape History from Pemba Island, Zanzibar

This essay argues that agroforestry is deeply embedded in the history of tropical agriculture in the Indian Ocean basin. Drawing on the example of Pemba Island, part of the Zanzibar Archipelago just off the coast of Tanzania, the essay studies a transitionary phase in the island’s agricultural history when plantations of clove trees gave way to more diverse small-scale agricultural systems. Beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, former slaves began a landscape overhaul that combined a suite of Asian, African, and American plants with methods and knowledge of agroforestry.