Why no earlier settlement of Kenya?

[Faeelin]

Hmm. This has been bothering me for a while; while I can see that africa was a malarial hellhole before the invention of drug, parts of it are fairly nice. So why was there no settlement of places like Kenya?

[Susano]

Who could have settle dit? Egyptians... Numidians... maybe (hellenist) greeks... maybe carthaginians, if we becoem adventerous... Arabs... Portuguese... Dutch... English - well they did, to an extent. Okay, I must agree. That does seem odd indeed.

I guess it is because Afrcia was largely ignroed anyways. seeminglky neither the arabs nor the portuguese had any ressources to go form teh coats into the hinterland, while sudan/numidia was a major block for all possible egyptien or hellenist attempts...

[NapoleonXIV]

Is "settled" the right word? Wasn't Africa already largely settled by its indigenous peoples to a greater population than North America?

It is possible the reason was that the Slave trade and its consequent upheavals allowed European colonisation where it was not possible before, rather than just the disease factor. And that Kenya was not as affected by the Slave trade. That is pure speculation on my part, however. Is anyone here more versed in African history?

[Susano]

Werent the highlands pretty empty when the British came?

[NapoleonXIV]

"From the tenth century the coastal zone of the area now known as Kenya was an increasingly important trading partner of southern Arabia. Maritime traders as well as caravans of Arab and Swahili speaking traders in search of ivory and other commodities moved along the coast and into the interior. The Swahili dominated coastal culture co-existed relatively peacefully alongside the pastoral and nomadic interior tribes dominated by the Kikuyu, Luhya and Luo. All were subjected to the aggression of the more predatory Maasai. From the latter’s arrival around the mid 1700s from the North their war parties ranged throughout the area occasionally reaching the coastal shores. The more numerous agriculturist Kikuyu were constantly under attack from the Maasai both in the north and south. Famine and disease weakened both peoples at the end of the nineteenth century. This, combined with their lack of internal co-hesion, increased their vulnerability to the European traders and settlers who arrived at this time."

From one of the many Kenyan history sites.

Forget what I said about the Slave Trade. Mombasa was a center of the trade for the whole E Coast of the continent.

[Anthony Appleyard]

The tsetse fly spreads the nagana pest trypanosome disease which kills the horses and camels, so (before the motor age) everything has to be done by men on foot or by ship.