INTRODUCTION

A myriad of ethnic communities of differing sizes and complexities existed in East Africa during the nineteenth century. For Church history purposes we can distinguish four areas in the region: the Muslim-dominated island of Zanzibar and its coastal hinterland; the inland peoples, many of whom lived in small-scale societies in bush, savanna and hilly country; the nomadic pastoralists, including the Masai; and the hierarchical kingdoms further into the interior of the continent, close to the Victoria and Tanganyika Lakes – ‘the Church along the Kings’ Way'. This multipartite division facilitates our understanding of the general history of the region during the nineteenth century, and also for its developing religious and Church history map.

Within twenty-five years (1863–88) seven mission societies were established in East Africa. They were all inspired, in different degrees, by the visits and work in the region of two earlier missionaries: Johann Ludvig Krapf and David Livingstone. Krapf travelled extensively in East Africa between the years 1844–53. His vision of a chain of mission stations across Africa, another ‘Apostles Street’, from Rabai on the Indian Ocean coast to Gabon on the Atlantic, stimulated many Protestant mission boards to think in terms of transcontinental strategies. David Livingstone's entreaties for an African Church were on an entirely different scale. A supreme publicist, he caught the imagination of Europe and this popular interest for mission triggered off a missionary ‘scramble’ in Eastern and Central Africa.