PUBLIC HISTORY AND PRIVATE KNOWLEDGE - ON DISPUTED HISTORY IN SOUTHERN SOMALIA

Beginning about 1830, the Jubba Valley of Somalia was settled by agric ultural and pastoral slaves of East African origin and their descendan ts. Reconstructing the nature of the relationship between fugitive sla ve communities in the valley and the surrounding Somali slave-owning p astoralist groups on the plains points to some important issues in ana lyzing oral histories of groups with a denigrated and subjugated past.