Beginning around BCE, Southern Nilotic speaking communities whose homelands lay somewhere near the common border between Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia moved south into the western highlands and Rift Valley region of Kenya. The arrival of the Southern Nilotes in Kenya occurred shortly before the introduction of iron to East Africa.
Is this posh city eatery promoting same sex dating?
The past distribution of the Southern Nilotic speakers, as inferred from place names, loan words and oral traditions includes the known distribution of Elmenteitan sites. Later migrations through Tanzania led to settlement on the Kenyan coast where these communities established links with Arabian and Indian traders leading to the development of the Swahili culture. The Kenyan coast had hosted communities of ironworkers and communities of Bantu subsistence-farmers, hunters and fishers who supported the economy with agriculture, fishing, metal production and trade with outside areas.
By the 1st century CE, many of the city-states - such as Mombasa , Malindi , and Zanzibar - began to establish trade relations with Arabs. This led ultimately to the increased economic growth of the Swahili states, the introduction of Islam , Arabic influences on the Swahili Bantu language , and cultural diffusion. The Swahili city-states became part of a larger trade network. Swahili , a Bantu language with many Arabic loan words, developed [ when? The impact of Arabic and Persian traders and immigrants on the Swahili culture remains controversial.
During the Middle Ages ,. Wealth flowed into the cities via the Africans' roles as intermediaries and facilitators of Indian, Persian, Arab, Indonesian, Malaysian, African and Chinese merchants. All of these peoples enriched the Swahili culture to some degree. The Swahili culture developed its own written language; the language incorporated elements from different civilisations, with Arabic as its strongest quality.
Some Arab settlers were rich merchants who, because of their wealth, gained power—sometimes as rulers of coastal cities.
History of Kenya
The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reached Mombasa in The Portuguese did not intend to found settlements, but to establish naval bases that would give Portugal control of the Indian Ocean. After decades of small-scale conflict, Arabs from Oman defeated the Portuguese in Kenya.
Under Seyyid Said , the Omani sultan who moved his capital to Zanzibar in , the Arabs set up long-distance trade routes into the interior. The dry reaches of the north were lightly inhabited by seminomadic pastoralists. In the south, pastoralists and cultivators bartered goods and competed for land as long-distance caravan routes linked them to the Kenyan coast on the east and to the kingdoms of Uganda on the west. The Portuguese became the first Europeans to explore the region of current-day Kenya: Vasco da Gama visited Mombasa in April Da Gama's voyage successfully reached India May , and this permitted the Portuguese to trade with the Far East directly by sea, thus challenging older trading-networks over mixed land and sea routes, such as the Spice trade routes that utilised the Persian Gulf , Red Sea and caravans to reach the eastern Mediterranean.
The Republic of Venice had gained control over much of the trade routes between Europe and Asia. After the Ottoman Turks had closed traditional land routes to India, Portugal hoped to use the sea route pioneered by Gama to break the Venetian trading monopoly. Portuguese rule in East Africa focused mainly on a coastal strip centred in Mombasa.
The Portuguese presence in East Africa officially began after , when flagships under the command of Dom Francisco de Almeida conquered Kilwa, an island located in what is now northern Tanzania. The Portuguese presence in East Africa served the purpose of controlling trade within the Indian Ocean and securing the sea routes linking Europe to Asia. Portuguese naval vessels disrupted the commerce of Portugal's enemies within the western Indian Ocean and the Portuguese demanded high tariffs on items transported through the area, given their strategic control of ports and shipping lanes.
The construction of Fort Jesus in Mombasa in aimed to solidify Portuguese hegemony in the region, but their influence was clipped by the English , Dutch and Omani Arab incursions into the region during the 17th century. The Omani Arabs posed the most direct challenge to Portuguese influence in East Africa, besieging Portuguese fortresses and openly attacking naval vessels.
Omani forces captured Fort Jesus in , only to lose it in a revolt , but by the Omanis had expelled the remaining Portuguese from the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts. By this time the Portuguese Empire had already lost its interest on the spice-trade sea-route because of the decreasing profitability of that traffic. Portuguese-ruled territories, ports and settlements remained active to the south, in Mozambique , until Under Seyyid Said ruled , the Omani sultan who moved his capital to Zanzibar in , the Arabs set up long-distance trade routes into the interior.
Sharing is caring
Arab, Shirazi and coastal African cultures produced an Islamic Swahili people trading in a variety of up-country commodities, including slaves. Omani Arab colonisation of the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts brought the once independent city-states under closer foreign scrutiny and domination than was experienced during the Portuguese period.
Like their predecessors, the Omani Arabs were primarily able only to control the coastal areas, not the interior. However, the creation of plantations , intensification of the slave trade and movement of the Omani capital to Zanzibar in by Seyyid Said had the effect of consolidating the Omani power in the region.
Arab governance of all the major ports along the East African coast continued until British interests aimed particularly at securing their 'Indian Jewel' and creation of a system of trade among individuals began to put pressure on Omani rule. By the late 19th century, the slave trade on the open seas had been completely strangled by the British.
Välkommen till oss!
The Omani Arabs had no interest in resisting the Royal Navy 's efforts to enforce anti-slavery directives. As the Moresby Treaty demonstrated, whilst Oman sought sovereignty over its waters, Seyyid Said saw no reason to intervene in the slave trade, as the main customers for the slaves were Europeans. As Farquhar in a letter made note, only with the intervention of Said would the European Trade in slaves in the Western Indian Ocean be abolished. As the Omani presence continued in Zanzibar and Pemba until the revolution, but the official Omani Arab presence in Kenya was checked by German and British seizure of key ports and creation of crucial trade alliances with influential local leaders in the s.
Nevertheless, the Omani Arab legacy in East Africa is currently found through their numerous descendants found along the coast that can directly trace ancestry to Oman and are typically the wealthiest and most politically influential members of the Kenyan coastal community. The first Christian mission was founded on 25 August , by Dr.
He later translated the Bible into Swahili. By European explorers had begun mapping the interior. In , the tonnage of foreign shipping calling at Zanzibar had reached 19, tons. The second development spurring European interest in Africa was the growing European demand for products of Africa including ivory and cloves. Thirdly, British interest in East Africa was first stimulated by their desire to abolish the slave trade.
In the British government took over and claimed the interior as far west as Lake Naivasha; it set up the East Africa Protectorate. The border was extended to Uganda in , and in the enlarged protectorate, except for the original coastal strip, which remained a protectorate, became a crown colony.
With the beginning of colonial rule in , the Rift Valley and the surrounding Highlands became reserved for whites. In the s Indians objected to the reservation of the Highlands for Europeans, especially British war veterans. The whites engaged in large-scale coffee farming dependent on mostly Kikuyu labour. Bitterness grew between the Indians and the Europeans. This area's fertile land has always made it the site of migration and conflict.
- nepali dating site usa?
- dating phobia name?
- My wife Prof Olive Mugenda was ‘moving with small boys’: Late Prof Abel Mugenda;
There were no significant mineral resources—none of the gold or diamonds that attracted so many to South Africa. Imperial Germany set up a protectorate over the Sultan of Zanzibar 's coastal possessions in , followed by the arrival of Sir William Mackinnon 's British East Africa Company BEAC in , after the company had received a royal charter and concessionary rights to the Kenya coast from the Sultan of Zanzibar for a year period.
Incipient imperial rivalry was forestalled when Germany handed its coastal holdings to Britain in , in exchange for German control over the coast of Tanganyika. The colonial takeover met occasionally with some strong local resistance: Waiyaki was abducted two years later by the British and killed. Following severe financial difficulties of the British East Africa Company , the British government on 1 July established direct rule through the East African Protectorate , subsequently opening the fertile highlands to white settlers.
A key to the development of Kenya's interior was the construction, started in , of a railway from Mombasa to Kisumu , on Lake Victoria , completed in This was to be the first piece of the Uganda Railway. The British government had decided, primarily for strategic reasons, to build a railway linking Mombasa with the British protectorate of Uganda. A major feat of engineering, the "Uganda railway" that is the railway inside Kenya leading to Uganda was completed in and was a decisive event in modernising the area.
As governor of Kenya, Sir Percy Girouard was instrumental in initiating railway extension policy that led to construction of the Nairobi-Thika and Konza-Magadi railways. Some 32, workers were imported from British India to do the manual labour. Many stayed, as did most of the Indian traders and small businessmen who saw opportunity in the opening up of the interior of Kenya. Rapid economic development was seen as necessary to make the railway pay, and since the African population was accustomed to subsistence rather than export agriculture, the government decided to encourage European settlement in the fertile highlands, which had small African populations.
The railway opened up the interior, not only to the European farmers, missionaries and administrators, but also to systematic government programmes to attack slavery, witchcraft, disease and famine. The Africans saw witchcraft as a powerful influence on their lives and frequently took violent action against suspected witches. To control this, the British colonial administration passed laws, beginning in , which made the practice of witchcraft illegal.
- nikolaev ukraine dating agencies?
- us army dating site free?
- JOIN THE CONVERSATION;
These laws gave the local population a legal, nonviolent way to stem the activities of witches. By the time the railway was built, military resistance by the African population to the original British takeover had petered out. However new grievances were being generated by the process of European settlement. Governor Percy Girouard is associated with the debacle of the Second Maasai Agreement of , which led to their forceful removal from the fertile Laikipia plateau to semi-arid Ngong.
To make way for the Europeans largely Britons and whites from South Africa , the Maasai were restricted to the southern Loieta plains in The Kikuyu claimed some of the land reserved for Europeans and continued to feel that they had been deprived of their inheritance. In the initial stage of colonial rule, the administration relied on traditional communicators, usually chiefs. When colonial rule was established and efficiency was sought, partly because of settler pressure, newly educated younger men were associated with old chiefs in local Native Councils.