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Processes of Domination, Co-Evolution and Resistance : the Case of the East African Coast before the Seventeenth CenturyThis article examines the destiny of Swahili east Africa as periphery of a world-system whose center was the Indian Ocean – point of entry of the Europeans into the system. It analyses the relations between the east African coast, with its continental hinterlands, and the Arabian, Persian, and Indian “cores” of a system characterised by exploitation, slavery, ideological and political domination, but also by the exchange and diffusion of knowledge, weaving, writing, Islam. The article thus re-examines the concepts of labour division, exchange value, money, capital, etc. It highlights the reactive and inventive capacity of Africa, hampered only by its remoteness from the great centers and by the lack of agricultural potential which elsewhere rendered possible a demographical leap and an autonomous upward leverage in power.