UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

22
The East African
coast and its role
in maritime trade
A. M. H. SHERIFF
One of the outstanding characteristics of the East African coast has been
its relative accessibility, not only from the interior but also from the sea.
Accessibility from the interior has been a vital factor in population
movements into the coastal belt, and helps to explain its ethnic and
cultural complexity. The sea, on the other hand, has been a means of contact
with the outside world. One of the main features of the history of the
East African coast over the last 2000 years has therefore been not
isolation but the interpénétration of two cultural streams to produce a
new amalgam, the coastal Swahili civilization. The vehicle of that process
has been trade, which facilitated the assimilation of the East African
coast into the international economic system with its attendant consequences.
A dearth of historical sources, however, makes it difficult to reconstruct
the history of the East African coast before the seventh century of our era.
All the available sources, both documentary and numismatic, are the
products of international trade, and we have little material on the history of
the coast before the establishment of international contacts. The earliest
Graeco-Roman documentary sources make only indirect (though often
valuable) references to the east coast of Africa. Strabo (—29 to +19),
who witnessed the period of Roman expansion under Augustus, not only
gives contemporary and sometimes eye-witness accounts of the Red Sea
region and Indian Ocean trade, but also incorporates fragments of earlier
geographies now lost. 1 Pliny (+23 to +79) describes the Roman empire at
its height, and is most valuable for his descriptions of trade and navigation
in the Indian Ocean, and of the luxurious and decadent style of imperial
Rome. 2
The most important source for the Indian Ocean during this period, and
the first direct, though meagre, account of the East African coast, is the
1. Strabo, Vol. II, pp. 209-13.
2. Pliny, Vol. II, pp. 371-2.