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Asia in East Africa : The Debate over the Early Asian Influence in East Africa

Gwyn Campbell, McGill University
gwyn.campbell@mcgill.ca

Considerable debate surrounds the issue of the early Asian influence on East Africa . Following Ferrand, Murdoch and Jones, some historians speculated on an early Indonesian settlement of East Africa . More significantly, they hypothesised that Indonesian cultural imports facilitated, even made possible, the Bantu-speaking migration from West to East Africa and the economic, especially agricultural transformation that followed. In similar vein, some scholars argued that the Swahili civilisation that flourished between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, was based essentially on West Asian, notably Persian and Arab, influences.

Others, notably scholars of the French School that formed from the late nineteenth century around Grandidier, argued only for a direct Indonesian impact on Madagascar. They have received recent support from Afrocentrists who deny any significant early Indonesian influence in continental East Africa , asserting rather a central entrepreneurial role to Bantu-speakers. Afrocentrists further minimise West Asian influence in the making of the Swahili civilisation which they claim was a further example of the initiative of Bantu-speaking peoples.

This paper re-examines the issues and findings to date.