The town of Bagamoyo is the oldest town in Tanzania, founded by the end of the 18th century. It was the original capital of German East Africa and one of the most important trading ports along the East African coast. Today the town has circa 30,000 inhabitants and is the capital of the District of Bagamoyo, recently being designated as a world heritage site.
Location
Bagamoyo is located on 6°26’ Southern latitude and 38°54’ Eastern longitude. It lies 75 km north of Dar-es-Salaam on the coast of the Indian Ocean, close to the island of Zanzibar.
History
Bagamoyo's history has been influenced by Indian and Arab traders, by the German colonial government and by Christian missionaries. . About 5 km south of Bagamoyo, the Kaole Ruins with remnants of two mosques and a couple of tombs can be dated back to the 13th century and show the importance of Islam in those early Bagamoyo times. Until the middle of the 18th century, Bagamoyo was a small and insignificant trading center where most of the population were fishermen and farmers. Main trading goods were fish, salt and gum among some other things.
In the late 18th century Muslim families settled in Bagamoyo, all of which were relatives of Shamvi la Magimba in Oman. They made their living by enforcing taxes on the native population and by trading in salt, gathered from the Nunge coast north of Bagamoyo. In the first half of the 19th century, Bagamoyo became a trading port for ivory and slave trade, with traders coming from the African interior, from places as far as Morogoro, Lake Tanganyika and Usambara on their way to Zanzibar. This explains the meaning of the word Bagamoyo ("Bwaga-Moyo") which means "Lay down your Heart" in Swahili, as the slaves were shipped by dhow to Zanzibar and never saw their home country again.
Slave trade officially ended in the year 1873, but well to the end of the 19th century slaves were sold and traded in Bagamoyo.
In 1868, Bagamoyo's Muslim presented the Catholic "Fathers of the Holy Ghost " with land for a mission north of the town, the first mission in East Africa. This caused resistance by the native Zaramo people which after an intervention by the French consul if Zanzibar was put down by Sultan Majid and after 1870 by Sultan Barghash . Originally the mission was intended to house children who were resued from slavery, but it soon expanded to a church, a school, and some workshops and farming projects.
But Bagamoyo was was not only a trade center for slaves, ivory and copra, it was also a starting point for some renowned European explorers. From Bagamoyo they moved out to find the source of the River Nile and explored the African inner lakes. Some of these were David Livingstone, Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, Henry Morton Stanley and James Augustus Grant.
Bagamoyo was the German headquarters of German East Africa in 1891. In the first year of World War I, a British air attack and naval bombardment was launched on Bagamoyo, the Germans overrun and the German garrison taken.
When Seyyid Said , Sultan of Oman, decided to move his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1940, Bagamoyo's importance began to decline.
Today
Today, Bagamoyo is a centre for dhow sailboat building. The Department of Antiquities in Tanzania is working to maintain the ruins of the colonial era in and around Bagamoyo and to revitalize the town. The Bagamoyo College of Arts (“Chuo cha Sanaa”) is an internationally famous arts college in Tanzania, teaching traditional Tanzanian painting, sculpture, drama, dancing and drumming.
Weblinks
Last updated: 05-09-2005 19:00:41
