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Tanzania
Tanzania is one of the most enchanting countries in eastern
Africa. Its majestic national parks are a paradise for wild-life
lovers and if that's not your thing then you have a wealth of
other choices to choose from - from scaling the slopes of the
incredible Mt Kilimanjaro to exploring the seductive island of
Zanzibar. Tanzania is truly a country not to be missed.
Most of the known history of Tanganyika before 1964 concerns the
coastal area, although the interior has a number of important
prehistoric sites, including the Olduvai Gorge. Trading contacts
between Arabia and the East African coast existed by the 1st
century AD, and there are indications of connections with India.
The coastal trading centres were mainly Arab settlements, and
relations between the Arabs and their African neighbours appear
to have been fairly friendly. After the arrival of the
Portuguese in the late 15th century, the position of the Arabs
was gradually undermined, but the Portuguese made little attempt
to penetrate into the interior. They lost their foothold north
of the Ruvuma River early in the 18th century as a result of an
alliance between the coastal Arabs and the ruler of Muscat on
the Arabian Peninsula.
This link remained extremely tenuous, however, until French
interest in the slave trade from the ancient town of Kilwa, on
the Tanganyikan coast, revived the trade in 1776. Attention by
the French also aroused the sultan of Muscat's interest in the
economic possibilities of the East African coast, and a new
Omani governor was appointed at Kilwa. For some time most of the
slaves came from the Kilwa hinterland, and until the 19th
century such contacts as existed between the coast and the
interior were due mainly to African caravans from the interior.
In their constant search for slaves, Arab traders began to
penetrate farther into the interior, more particularly in the
southeast toward Lake Nyasa. Farther north two merchants from
India followed the tribal trade routes to reach the country of
the Nyamwezi about 1825. Along this route ivory appears to have
been as great an attraction as slaves, and Sa'id bin Sultan
himself, after the transfer of his capital from Muscat to
Zanzibar, gave every encouragement to the Arabs to pursue these
trading possibilities. From the Nyamwezi country the Arabs
pressed on to Lake Tanganyika in the early 1840s. Tabora (or
Kazé, as it was then called) and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika,
became important trading centres, and a number of Arabs made
their homes there. They did not annex these territories but
occasionally ejected hostile chieftains. Mirambo, an African
chief who built for himself a temporary empire to the west of
Tabora in the 1860s and '70s, effectively blocked the Arab trade
routes when they refused to pay him tribute. His empire was
purely a personal one, however, and collapsed on his death in
1884.
The first Europeans to show an interest in Tanganyika in the
19th century were missionaries of the Church Missionary Society,
Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann, who in the late 1840s
reached Kilimanjaro. It was a fellow missionary, Jakob Erhardt,
whose famous "slug" map (showing, on Arab information, a vast,
shapeless, inland lake) helped stimulate the interest of the
British explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. They
traveled from Bagamoyo to Lake Tanganyika in 1857-58, and Speke
also saw Lake Victoria. This expedition was followed by Speke's
second journey, in 1860, in the company of J.A. Grant, to
justify the former's claim that the Nile rose in Lake Victoria.
These primarily geographic explorations were followed by the
activities of David Livingstone, who in 1866 set out on his last
journey for Lake Nyasa.
Livingstone's object was to expose the horrors of the slave
trade and, by opening up legitimate trade with the interior, to
destroy the slave trade at its roots. Livingstone's journey led
to the later expeditions of H.M. Stanley and V.L. Cameron.
Spurred on by Livingstone's work and example, a number of
missionary societies began to take an interest in East Africa
after 1860.
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