With Making Identity, Steven Fabian is the first to seriously consider the history of Bagamoyo for a generation. Bagamoyo was the largest urban space on present-day Tanzania's mainland coast during the 19th century, before being usurped in that category by Dar es Salaam during the colonial period. It came to international prominence as an ivory trading centre and as a launch point for caravans travelling to and from the interior of Africa. Fabian's aim is to examine how this international renown played out in local terms, exploring how indigenous and migrant groups, including Arabs, Indians and French Spiritan missionaries, encountered each other and forged a distinct community, starting in c. 1850 and finishing in the 1950s.

In its totality, Making Identity contests what might be referred to as Swahili ‘myopia’ in historical analyses of coastal East African towns. The Swahili, Fabian argues, were only one among many groups that comprised Bagamoyo's peoples, and they were far from dominant (9). Instead, he argues that the forces shaping Bagamoyo's history were distinctly ‘local’ – meaning that the various people who inhabited the town had stronger ties to the town itself than to broader identities stretching over larger spaces, such as along the East African coast, into the African interior, or across the Indian Ocean. In this sense, Making Identity builds on trends in African urban histories since c. 2000 that emphasise the distinctive features of individual urban cultures. It is notable, then, that Making Identity explores prominent themes in colonial urban histories, such as dance societies (149–62) and football (162–9). Fabian's contribution in this context is to stretch the themes that underpinned these cultural developments back into the 19th century, blurring the distinctions between pre-colonial and colonial history as he does so.

The highlight of Making Identity is its attention to the sources. Fabian draws on English-, French-, and German-language archival material, and supplements it with his own oral research. The fact that he quotes directly and at length from his oral sources makes Making Identity stand out from most recent histories of East Africa that have a significant pre-colonial element. However, occasionally, it is arguable that evidence for specific changes or features of the history described is a little thin. For example (one among many), one might question whether one missionary source from 1870 can really tell historians that the Spiritan music programme was ‘well-known’ (110). Additionally, Fabian writes history that is surprisingly favourable to the Spiritan missionaries during the 1888–90 uprising, especially given that the analysis is based mostly on evidence from the Spiritan archive (205–9). Even so, taken in aggregate, the core arguments of Making Identity are persuasive. The Spiritans, along with everyone else in Bagamoyo, became socially and culturally tied to the town itself, and these social and cultural ties are the driving force behind Bagamoyo's distinctive history.

If one must quibble with any aspect of Making Identity, it is with the structure. Readers are frequently asked to refer to previous or subsequent chapters for additional details about topics under discussion. This may make it hard for instructors to assign portions of the text to undergraduate students. Moreover, one crucial context in Bagamoyo's history – its decline as a commercial entrepôt during the 20th century – is not addressed until the final substantive chapter. The result is that linkages between the impact of colonial rule and 20th-century cultural phenomena, such as football and dance societies, are not fully examined. Fabian's reasons for organising the book along these lines likely revolve around his emphasis on local dynamics, rather than outside forces, shaping Bagamoyo's history over the longue durée. Nevertheless, despite its originality, his emphasis here may have been slightly to a fault.