1830s–1860s: (Arab Merchant Penetration of the East African Interior — Permanent Entrepôts at Tabora, Ujiji, and the Buganda Capital, Tippu Tip’s Vast Tradin…

1830s–1860s: (Arab Merchant Penetration of the East African Interior — Permanent Entrepôts at Tabora, Ujiji, and the Buganda Capital, Tippu Tip’s Vast Trading-and-Raiding Sphere in Tanzania and Congo from the 1860s, and the Spread of Coastal Culture, Islam, and Swahili Civilization into the Interior): Up until the early nineteenth century, Zanzibari and Omani merchants had operated mainly on the coast, dependent on African middlemen — among the most successful of whom were the Nyamwezi. But adventurous coastmen began to follow the trade routes inland, with wealthy coastal entrepreneurs financing caravans of several hundred people employing Africans as porters and guides, their security based largely on possession of firearms. Between the 1830s and the 1850s, Arab merchants established permanent entrepôts at Tabora in the chiefdom of Unyanyembe, Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, and at the capital of Buganda at the north end of Lake Victoria. Among the most successful and notorious of these traders was Tippu Tip, so named apparently after the retort of his firearms, who covered a vast area of modern Tanzania and Congo from the 1860s, raiding and trading and establishing a considerable if short-lived sphere of influence. In the second half of the century, Arab traders attempted to assert political influence over African rulers to secure commercial interests — they had some success in decentralized communities, but powerful political establishments kept resident Arab traders under close supervision. Zanzibar itself exercised only the loosest control over these coastal adventurers, but they all spread coastal culture as well as Islam into the interior: dress, architecture, and language were influenced as representatives of heterogeneous Swahili civilization advanced across the broad zone bounded by Lakes Malawi, Tanganyika, and Victoria.