Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania Hotels and City Guide

Dar Es Salaam - History

Arab traders first arrived on the east coast of Africa over a thousand years ago, later joined by the Shirazi from Persia. When the Bantu-speaking people from West Africa migrated across to the east, a new lingua franca, Swahili, evolved from Bantu and several languages including Arabic and English, which is spoken throughout Central and East Africa today.

In 1498 the Portuguese discoverer, Vasco da Gama, landed on East African shores and the Portuguese set up victualling stations, occupying the coast for the next two centuries until Turkish pirates and unfriendly British ships forced them to flee south to Mozambique, a Portuguese colony which they only left in 1974.

In the latter part of the 18th century the great British explorers/missionaries, including the intrepid David Livingstone, H M Stanley, Richard Burton, arrived in Darkest Africa in search of the source of Africa’s longest river, the Nile.

It is not only for its abundant game that this central east African country is known. The exotic Spice Island of Zanzibar was the seat of Sultan Said’s Omani Sultanate in 1832, becoming very wealthy in trading cloves, ivory and slaves. Journeys into the interior resulted in tens of thousands of slaves a year being transported to Zanzibar to work on the clove plantations. The abolition of slavery in 1873 did not stop the practice which continued with slaves being held in secret caves on the island. Dark reminders of the slave trade still exist on the island alongside beautiful shabby-chic buildings with ornate wooden doors in historic Stone Town.

The Scramble for Africa took place in the late 19th century with Britain taking control of Zanzibar and much of today’s Kenya and Uganda, while Germany settled for German East Africa, consisting of modern Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

During World War I German forces retreated in a strategic move leaving the British to set up a provisional administration. In 1922 the country became known as Tanganyika which was governed by the British under a League of Nations mandate. Zanzibar and the coastal strip remained possessions of the Zanzibar sultanate.

On 9 December 1961 independence was granted to Tanganyika under the helm of Julius Nyerere. Zanzibar became independent in December 1963, but only a few weeks later the last sultan was deposed. On 29 October 1964 after a bloody revolution the socialist United Republic of Tanzania was born with the incorporation of Zanzibar, but slipped into economic decline, not helped by the break-up of the East African Economic Community in 1977 or the war with Uganda in 1978. In 1995 the United Republic of Tanzania became a multi-party democracy under Benjamin Mkapa, succeeded in 2005 by President Mrisho Kikwete, with Abeid Karume being re-elected as president of Zanzibar that same year.

Hotels in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania