CONTENTS

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Introduction x

Chapter 1: Central Africa 1Early Society and Economy 1

Early Toolmakers 3The Agricultural Revolution 4The Iron Age 6

Bantu Languages 7Growth of Trade 9

Central Africa and the Outer World 11Development of the Slave Trade 11Exploitation of Ivory 16

Colonialism 17Establishment of European Colonies  18

Congo Free State 20Economic Organization 21The End of the Colonial Period 23

Chapter 2: Burundi 24Precolonial Burundi 24Burundi Under Colonial Rule 25The First and Second Republics 26The Third Republic 27Civil War 28The Path Toward Peace 28

Chapter 3: Central African Republic 31Early History 31The Colonial Era 32Independence 34

The Struggle for Leadership 34 Jean-Bédel Bokassa 35

Authoritarian Rule Under Kolingba 35Patassé and the Quest for Democracy 36The 21st Century 38

Chapter 4: Democratic Republic of the Congo 39

Precolonial Perspectives 39The Congo Free State 40Belgian Paternalism and the Politics of

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Decolonization 41 Joseph Kasavubu 44The Congo Crisis 45Mobutu’s Regime 47The Democratic Republic of the Congo 51

Chapter 5: Republic of the Congo 53Early History 53The Colonial Era 55 Denis Sassou-Nguesso 56Congo Since Independence 57

Chapter 6: Gabon 59Early Colonization 59 The Fang 60French Control 60Gabon Since Independence 62

Chapter 7: Rwanda 65Pre-Colonial Rwanda 65Rwanda Under German and Belgian Control 66 The Hutu and the Tutsi 67Independence and the 1960s 67The Habyarimana Era 68Genocide and Aftermath 68Regional Conflict 70Moving Forward 71

Chapter 8: Sao Tome and Principe 72Portuguese Colonial Rule 72After Independence 74

Chapter 9: Eastern Africa 76East Africa 76

The Coast Until 1856 76The Interior Before the Colonial Era 85

Buganda 90The Colonial Era 95

German East Africa 98Horn of Africa 98

Aksum 98

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British East Africa 99The Somali 100The Solomonids 100Rise of the Oromo 102Abyssinia 102Revival of the Ethiopian Empire 102

The Oromo 103

Chapter 10: Djibouti 105Early History 105Independence and the Gouled Presidency 105

Balancing Ethnic Tensions 105Urban Development and Challenges 106Multiparty Politics and Civil War 107

Djibouti Under Guelleh 107

Chapter 11: Eritrea 110Precolonial Eritrea 110

Rule from the Highlands 110Contesting for the Coastlands and Beyond 111

Colonial Eritrea 112Rule by Italy 112

Ah· mad Grāñ 113From Italian to Ethiopian Rule 114

Federation With Ethiopia 114The War of Independence 115Independent Eritrea 118

Chapter 12: Ethiopia 119From Prehistory to the Aksumite Kingdom 119The Zagwe and Solomonic Dynasties 122Challenge, Revival, and Decline 125Emergence of Modern Ethiopia 126

Tewodros II 126Yohannes IV 127Menilek II 127

Treaty of Wichale 128Iyasu 128

Ras Tafari 129The Rise and Reign of Haile Selassie I 129

Regent and Heir Apparent 129

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Emperor 131Conflict with Italy 131Return to Power 131Internal Conflicts and the Fall of the Monarchy 132

Socialist Ethiopia 133Land Reform and Famine 134Challenges to the Regime 135

Transition 136Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 137

Chapter 13: Kenya 140Early and Precolonial History 140

Maasai and Kikuyu 140Control of the Interior 141

The British East Africa Company and East Africa Protectorate 142

Resistance to European Rule and Early Administration 142The Uganda Railway and European Settlement 143World War I and Its Aftermath 144

Kenya Colony 145Political Movements 145World War II to Independence 146

Mau Mau 147The Republic of Kenya 148

Kenyatta’s Rule 148Moi’s Rule 150Kenya in the 21st Century 152

Chapter 14: Somalia 154Early Activity on the Coasts 154Penetration of the Interior 155Before Partition 155

Peoples of the Coasts and Hinterland 155 The Somali 156

The Great Somali Migrations 156Somali Clans and Foreign Traders 157

The Imperial Partition 158Competition Between the European Powers and Ethiopia 158

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Revolt in British Somaliland 159Italian Somaliland 160

The Somali Republic 161Pan-Somalism 161The Era of “Scientific Socialism” 162Civil War 164Attempts at Peace 165

Chapter 15: Tanzania 167Tanganyika 167

Early Exploration 167German East Africa  169Tanganyika Territory 171

Julius Nyerere 172Independence 173

Zanzibar 174Portuguese and Omani Domination 174British Protectorate 175Independence 176

The United Republic 177Tanzania Under Nyerere 177Political and Economic Change 179Challenges into the 21st Century 180

Chapter 16: Uganda 181Early History 181Bunyoro and Buganda 181The Uganda Protectorate 182

Growth of a Peasant Economy 183Political and Administrative Development 184World War II and Its Aftermath 185

The Republic of Uganda 186Obote’s First Presidency 186Tyranny Under Amin 187

Idi Amin 188Obote’s Second Presidency 190Museveni in Office 190

Conclusion 193Glossary 194Bibliography 196Index 198

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Introduction | xi

The story of Central Africa begins with the Congo River. This mighty

waterway originates in the highlands of northeastern Zambia between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa and snakes through dense equatorial rainforest sur-rounded by other forests and patches of savanna. Mangrove thickets line the banks of the estuaries, lagoons, and del-tas in the region.

To the east of the Congo basin is East Africa’s Olduvai Gorge in modern Tanzania, also known as the “Cradle of Mankind” for the fossil remains of more than 60 hominins (members of human lineage) discovered there. The longest uninterrupted known record of human evolution, it spans more than 2 million years. The Olduvai Gorge area has also yielded the longest known archaeological record of the development of stone-tool industries.

The oldest population of Central Africa is known primarily through tools, such as hand axes, which gradu-ally became more sophisticated. Early humans of Central Africa were probably never organized into more than small, scattered bands of nomadic hunters and gatherers. But about 10,000 years ago, as hunters began to settle beside the rivers and hone their fishing skills and gather-ers discovered they could sow wild grains in the fertile lakeside soils, the northern border of Central Africa emerged as one of the first food-producing regions of the

world. This agricultural revolution cre-ated a more settled lifestyle, which in turn led to trade and intermarriage among dif-ferent peoples. New languages, known as Bantu, spread throughout the region.

Around 3,000 years ago, about when Europe began using iron tools and weap-ons, so, too, did the Iron Age begin in Central Africa. The new iron implements were so superior to the previously used wood and stone objects that iron masters were bestowed a nearly religious rever-ence. Although iron was highly valued, copper was treasured. The shiny metal could be turned into jewelry, the inlays of knife handles, and other beautiful objects. The three main zones of copper working in Central Africa were the Nile watershed, the eastern savanna, and the southwestern forest. These sites were thousands of miles from one another, and demand for the metal stimulated trade in the region. The regional demand for cop-per remained especially strong through the 1st millennium ce and beyond. By the end of the 16th century, trade had extended into Europe. In addition to copper, Central African trade was also stimulated by production and exchange of huge amounts of salt, textiles, and dried fish.

Another type of trade—that of human beings—deeply scarred the region. In the 15th century, Central Africa was exposed to Islamic traders via the Mediterranean Sea and Christian traders via the Atlantic

Ruins of Husuni Kubwa, a palace built c. 13th century on the island of Kilwa, off the coast of what is now southern Tanzania. Ariadne Van Zandbergen/Lonely Planet Images/Getty Images

xii | The History of Central and Eastern Africa

Ocean, the latter having the most impact on the region. Portuguese traders from the Atlantic were experimenting with colonial plantations that needed slaves, and the island of São Tomé became the first centre for the great Atlantic slave trade. Slaves originally from Central Africa went to three main destinations: some worked locally, others went to the gold mines of Africa’s Gold Coast, and still others were shipped to Europe—and later to the Americas. Portuguese slavers were later joined by the Dutch and then the French. This hemorrhaging of people was so extreme that the population of Central Africa did not recover until the about the mid-20th century.

The arrival of the Dutch had created new trading opportunities for elephant ivory. The scramble for ivory intensi-fied by the mid-19th century thanks to the growing prosperity in both North America and Europe. People wanted ivory for everything from piano keys to billiard balls. As with the slave trade, the ivory trade disrupted life for people in Central Africa. Traders like the Swahili merchant-prince Tippu Tib used brutal methods such as kidnapping and murder to obtain ivory, and European overlords soon mimicked these cruel practices.

It was rubber that financed the complete takeover of Central Africa by European powers, however, launch-ing the era of colonialism. The pioneer colonizer was Belgian King Leopold II, who established the Congo Free State in the heart of Central Africa during the 1880s. His reign was vicious. Adults

and children alike experienced beatings, lashings, and even amputations when they did not meet their rubber-gathering quotas. Leopold was soon joined by the French in the northern and western parts of the region, and by the Germans in the east. Like the Belgians, these European powers were after African’s known natu-ral resources, which also included timber, copper, gold, and diamonds. Although other colonial powers were critical of Leopold’s brutal rule, they allowed simi-lar methods of forced labour to make their colonies profitable.

Naturally, European powers left their religious mark as well. Missionary churches provided services previously ignored by colonizing governments, such as health care. Albert Schweitzer, a physician and theologian, established a hospital in a French colony. British Baptists brought Protestantism to the region as they set up a bare-bones system of human services, including education, communications, and health care, and Roman Catholics established a univer-sity. These services and institutions would remain the region’s primary wel-fare options, particularly in remote areas, until well after the colonial era ended abruptly in 1960.

Rising black nationalism in west-ern Africa during the 1950s convinced France and Belgium to give up their Central African colonies in the early 1960s, but Portugal did not grant inde-pendence to São Tomé and Principe until 1975. Although independence was wel-comed, it did not necessarily bring peace

Introduction | xiii

or prosperity to the countries whose borders and societies were shaped by colonial rule.

Eastern Africa, comprising the areas of East Africa and the Horn of Africa, is a region in sub-Saharan Africa along the Indian Ocean and stretches from modern Eritrea in the north to Tanzania in the south (and includes landlocked Uganda and Ethiopia). More than 160 different ethnic groups inhabit this mostly tropical region. Rainfall and temperatures vary, however, particularly by elevation: the higher areas of Uganda, Tanzania, and western Kenya receive plentiful rainfall, while the lower areas of Somalia, eastern Ethiopia, and northeastern Kenya receive far less. The Oromo are largest of the ethnic groups, occupying much of south-ern Ethiopia and part of Kenya. Further south, the ethnic picture is much more elusive with ethnic groups that are much smaller, intermingled, and split among different territories.

As previously mentioned, the region, home to the “Cradle of Mankind,” has a long history. More recent history begins around 700 ce, when Muslim Arabs began trading along the East African coast, part of which they called Azania, and its offshore islands. Africans exported rhinoceros horns, tortoise-shell, ivory, and coconut oil to the Arabs in exchange for such items as metal weapons and iron tools. Later, they also imported Islamic pottery and Chinese porcelain. Ruins along the Tanzanian coast suggest some extensive pre-Muslim settlements in the area.

Mogadishu, on the Horn of Africa in modern Somalia, was the most impor-tant coastal city during much of the 13th century. New migrants arrived there, including those known as the Shirazi, who had set up an empire that eventually took over Mogadishu and its profitable gold trade. They also created settlements up and down the East African coast. During the 15th century, the Shirazi ruled at cities like Malindi and Mombasa, and islands like Kilwa, Zanzibar, and Pemba. Most city-states were intensely independent.

In 1498 vast changes occurred with the arrival of Portuguese ships led by Vasco da Gama. Portuguese military power quickly overwhelmed the divided and poorly defended coastal city-states. Within eight years, the Portuguese dominated the East African coast and its lucrative trade routes to India, cement-ing its power in 1589 with the sack of Mombasa. Far more interested in trade than building empires, the Portuguese used their control of Mombasa to export African ivory, gold, ambergris, and coral for ironware, weapons, beads, jewelry, cotton, and silks. Individual Portuguese traders fostered strong bonds with Swahili-speaking people on the coast.

Portuguese rule in East Africa even-tually came to an end. Although they were not threatened by local rebellions, they were by foreign invaders. Persian and then Omani forces had launched attacks on Portuguese holdings else-where, and in the 1650s, the Omanis turned their attention to East Africa. By the early 1700s, the Portuguese

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were driven from the region, and their attempts to regain power were either unsuccessful or short-lived.

The slave trade began to flourish in East Africa from about 1776 on, spurred by demand from the French. The demand for slaves became more widespread with the discovery that cloves could be grown on expanding plantations on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. British pressure closed down some of the slave trade, but it made little difference. By 1856 Zanzibar was firmly established as the East African coast’s main trading centre.

Meanwhile, the interior of East Africa developed much differently than the coastal areas. Without written records before 200 years ago, most of the region’s history has been deduced from linguis-tic, cultural, and anthropological clues as well as oral histories and archaeologi-cal findings. As in Central Africa, early East Africans were hunter-gatherers who settled into fishing and farming commu-nities during the agricultural revolution. Much is unclear, however, such as when iron smelting spread to East Africa.

Sometime before 1500 ce, the Chwezi dynasty established a short-lived rule over part of the area, which is associ-ated with several great earthwork sites in modern western Uganda, including a reli-gious centre in Mubende. Although the 1500s saw the Chwezi dynasty supplanted by other rulers and kingdoms—some of which persisted into the 20th century—their religious movements lived on. Meanwhile, slaving activity in the East African interior began, fueled by the

trade along the coastal areas. By the 1860s at least 7,000 slaves were being sold each year at Zanzibar’s slave market. Although a treaty with the British in 1873 ceased this commerce, there was a final period of slave trading on the mainland, where the demand for porters and the ivory trade sustained the sale of slaves.

By this time interest in East Africa grew among Europeans thanks in part to the efforts of explorers like David Livingstone, Richard Burton, and John Hanning Speke to find the source of the Nile. As in other parts of Africa, ambi-tious Christian missionaries also arrived, and by 1885 there were almost 300 in the region. Eager evangelists were soon joined by businessmen and imperial rul-ers as well. Also in 1885 Germany granted the German East Africa Company a char-ter to do business in Africa, part of the “scramble for Africa,” in which European colonial powers sought to stake their claims across the vast continent. Soon, most of East Africa was divided between the British and Germans. The Germans would lose control of their colonies after their defeat in World War I, but the British maintained control of the region until the early 1960s, when the countries of Tanganyika and Zanzibar (both now part of modern Tanzania), Kenya, and Uganda gained independence.

Much of the recorded history of the Horn of Africa is essentially that of Ethiopia, one of the world’s oldest coun-tries. Inhabited from earliest antiquity and once under ancient Egyptian rule, the area was home to the powerful state

and Eritrea, the first two gaining indepen-dence in 1960, while Eritrea eventually found itself joined with Ethiopia and only gained independence from that country in 1993, after nearly three decades of vio-lent struggle. With the exception of the short-lived Italian occupation in the 20th century (1936–41), Ethiopia avoided being colonized by a European power. Ethiopia and Eritrea have not been the only cen-tre of conflict on the Horn: Somalia, the amalgamation of an Italian colony and a British protectorate, has been in the grips of civil war since 1991.

Despite progress made in many sec-tors, postcolonial Central and eastern Africa both continue to experience some amount of upheaval and conflict rooted in such factors as religious and ethnic differences, economics, and politics. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the history that will help readers put current events in perspective.

Introduction | xv

of Aksum that flourished in the 1st mil-lennium ce. Aksum was succeeded by the Zagwe and Solomonic ruling dynas-ties and the development of smaller states, and it was the consolidation of these formerly separate states in the late 19th century that established the modern Ethiopian country.

Given its geographical location, the Horn of Africa has long been an impor-tant centre for trade. Early states such as Aksum were active in the Mediterranean trading arena. The coastal areas saw much trading activity with Arabs, Persians, people from the hinterland of the Horn, and, beginning in the late 15th century, with Europeans, which eventually led to the era of European colonization.

The French, British, and Italians were all active in the coastal areas of the Horn of Africa, and by the late 19th century, their colonial holdings corresponded to the modern countries of Djibouti, Somalia,