Robert G. Gregory challenges the apparent assumption that non-Western peoples lack a significant indigenous philanthropic culture. Focusing on the large South Asian community in East Africa, he relates how, over a century, they built a philanthropic culture of great magnitude, and how it finally collapsed under the ascendency of increasing state regulation and policies directed against non-African communities.

Compelled by poverty to seek better oppurtunities overseas, most Asians arrived in East Africa as peasant farmers. Denied access to productive land and sensing economic...