From Dar es Salaam to Bongoland

An English translation of Bernard Calas’s geographical study of Dar es Salaam, originally published in French by Karthala (Paris, 2006). The city’s name derives from the Arabic for ‘house of peace’, and for a long time its tranquil reputation persisted. Today, however, Tanzanians call it Bongoland, ‘the place of brain’, where survival depends on cunning and intelligence. Calas uses this linguistic shift as a starting point for examining how Dar es Salaam has been fragmented and remade through processes of territorialisation, producing exclusions and demarcations that reshape urban space and social relations. Tracing the city from its German colonial foundations through British rule to the post-colonial alternation of Ujamaa and Structural Adjustment, the study offers a rich geography of one of East Africa’s most complex metropolises. Professor Calas teaches at the University of Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux.