For historians and scholars of East Africa and beyond, this is a welcome cultural history of the Ruvuma peoples and their understudied region, which is usually only the subject of specialised archaeological and anthropological research (Edward Alpers’ work being a major exception). The study of the deeper histories of interior regions of East Central Africa is now undergoing something of a renaissance led by Catherine Fourshey, Rhonda Gonzalez, Kathryn de Luna, Christine Saidi and others, in contrast to the extensive archaeological work that has continued over many decades along the neighbouring Swahili coast. The book is organised into an introduction, three outlines of transitional historical periods as ‘Interludes’, four substantial chapters and a conclusion. There is also a very useful lexical appendix. Three chapters cover popular fashions from the 7^th to 17^th centuries, and the final chapter summarises mid-19^th to 20^th-century change. It is unclear why the 18^th to the mid-19^th century – defined as a period of ‘turmoil’ (121) – is largely ignored. Despite the title, the book is not just a history of trade and popular culture in Central East Africa. It also contributes to the longue durée and regional history of the Ruvuma peoples, meaning neighbouring groups of Ruvuma language speakers (the Makonde, Yao and Mwera) on both sides of the Ruvuma River valley and further afield. In defining the Ruvuma as peoples speaking a subset of eastern Bantu that emerged around the mid-first millenium CE, the author also makes a contribution to the history of the Bantu expansion for this part of Africa.

Felber-Seligman argues that the comparative marginality of the matrilineal and decentralised Ruvuma peoples to wider processes of state formation and contact with aggressive invaders, including the Portuguese, gave Ruvuma people comparative freedom to make their own choices regarding links with other peoples and to trade in directions not usually centred on the Indian Ocean coast. Even when links to the coast were made during the sixteenth century, Ruvuma peoples could take advantage of trade in items such as beeswax, greatly valued at that time, under their own terms. The position of the Ruvuma on the periphery of larger-scale change also protected them from the widespread violence associated with the export trade in enslaved Africans until comparatively late. In this way, their old social systems of matrilineal kinship with local leadership remained intact well into the period when many other East African societies nearer the coast were embedded in Indian Ocean networks and/or exposed to European predations (117–118).

During this long history, popular and also elite fashions served to symbolise and thus help perpetuate the important positions of women in Ruvuma matrilineal societies. Traditions of style and taste were layered over time, with early trends sometimes being echoed or repurposed in later centuries. For elite women in the late 19^th century, fashions such as the kàsàpùùdi, a particular style of brass bracelet which symbolised wealth and high-status kin connections, provided protection during a period of rapid change and violence which favoured rising chiefly lineages and ‘big men’. For ordinary women over the centuries, displays of more popular fashions helped cement their position amongst extended kin, symbolising egalitarian rather than hierarchical social relationships and also extending their trading relations in different directions.

Felber-Seligman displays a mastery of a wide range of sources, particularly linguistic and archaeological evidence from much of eastern, central and southern Africa, including specialised works on ceramics, shell beads, iron hoes, ivory bangles, copper and brass jewellery, beeswax, lip ornaments and more. Excellent use is made of compelling linguistic evidence to link innovations such as the use of ‘sparkling clay’, the name for which existed at first only within the Ruvuma language group, to its spread to more distant neighbours (39–41). Another example, among many in which the linguistic evidence is highly suggestive, is the trade in foodstuffs, including introduced sweet potatoes. The name for sweet potatoes – *-batata – is a loanword from Portuguese, and after being adopted by Ruvuma speakers, it seems to have followed the interior networks established by the earlier trade in copper jewellery. Portuguese texts include valuable material on coastal trade, and for more recent centuries, oral traditions and folk tales also provide clues to expanded network building that helped spread popular fashions and thus cultural and kin ties. There are also excellent analyses of a selection of historic photographs featuring female adornments.

Despite the prodigious research and wide reading, there are gaps. The absence of detailed examination of the popular fashions of the 18^th to mid-19^th centuries has been noted. This gap to some extent reduces the effectiveness of the final chapter. A large number of interviews are listed (258–263), but these are rarely referred to. It is perhaps a pity that publication may have been too early to make use of Andreas Zeman’s 2023 microhistory of a Mozambican village on the eastern shores of Lake Malawi, The Winds of History.

Fashioning Inland Communities is conceptually innovative and, in the first three chapters, superbly researched. But there are surprisingly few details on the networks, infrastructure, logistics, labour and the cultures of trade, as they changed over centuries. What was the role of women? Such evidence would contribute more to our understanding of the spread, character and meaning of popular fashions. For questions and periods where evidence is lacking, Felber-Seligman frequently engages in informed speculation, sometimes drawing on histories from other regions. Given the limited evidence for social and cultural changes in early times, this is understandable. However, in places there are stretches of imagination, such as the assertion that Greek traders had visited the mysterious Rhapta in ancient times (35). The need for strict editing is evidenced by the bizarre placing of the Ganda on the Sahara fringe (79) and the Omanis on the Atlantic coast (121). Despite these limitations, this is a considerable addition to the early history of East Central Africa and its matrilineal and mostly decentralised societies, and especially to the history of the comparatively understudied Ruvuma peoples.