Eastern Africa, for the purposes of this chapter, includes not only the modern states of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, but also northern Mozambique, Malawi, Burundi, and Rwanda. All these lands were to fall under some kind of European rule before the end of the century, but, from 1800 until 1884, the predominant outside influences were not European, but Swahili Arab or Turco–Egyptian. Before 1884, only a handful of Europeans attempted trading ventures of their own in the interior. In general, European and American enterprise was limited – like that of the Indians from the British empire in India – to supplying Arab and Egyptian merchants with manufactured goods, especially cloth and firearms, in exchange for ivory and a few less important products such as hides, beeswax, and gum arabic. It was the Muslim merchants who traded directly with the African peoples. The work of Christian missionaries was the main European activity in East Africa before the partition took place. The missionaries, however, arrived in this region much later than the Muslim traders, and their work was still in the pioneer stage when the colonial period began. They were not responsible for the establishment of European political control, which came, when it did, mainly as the result of happenings outside East Africa.

The Penetration of the Interior by the Swahili Arabs

The evolution of the Swahili Arab population in the coastal belt of East Africa and on Zanzibar and the other offshore islands is described in Chapter 2, as are the origins of trade between the interior and the coast.