East Africa and Its Invaders

From the Earliest Times to the Death of Seyyid Said in 1856

East Africa and Its Invaders, originally published in 1938, covers the history of mid-East Africa—the area between Mozambique and Cape Guardafui—from its beginnings down to the death of the greatest Arab ruler in East Africa, Seyyid Said, in 1856.

The author—prominent British Empire historian Sir Reginald Coupland (1884-1952) and a longtime Oxford professor, best known for his scholarship on African history—describes in detail, and mainly from hitherto unpublished sources, the character of Arab rule in East Africa and the impact on its people of European and American ‘invaders’: merchants, missionaries, explorers, and political agents. Special attention is given to the British efforts to suppress the Arab Slave Trade.