Basics Population: bout 35 million Area: 945,087 sq km Currency: Tanzanian shilling Capital city: Dodoma (previously Dar es Salaam) History Not much is known about Tanzania before the 1800s but early rock paintings suggest people have been in Tanzania since the early humans appeared. In the 1st century AD there were trade links between Arabia and the coast of Tanzania but the Arabs didn't venture inland. Arabs and Africans mingled along the coast of Tanzania and the Swahili language and culture was born. Zanzibar did a roaring trade in slaves, gold, ivory and wood between the 12th and 15th centuries and it seems like it was a great place to be (unless you were a slave of course). In the 15th century the Portuguese arrived in Tanzania and took over from the Arabs, but they too stuck to the coastal bits. The slave trade increased over the next few centuries and about 600,000 slaves were sold in Zanzibar between 1830 and 1873. In the 1800s the Masai moved into what is now Northern Tanzania and claimed it for themselves. This didn't last long however and Arabs and slaves soon moved in from the coast. A couple of European explorers were knocking around too, and when Stanley ran into another explorer on Lake Tanganyika it didn't take him long to guess who the other man was. He simply turned to him and said, "Dr Livingstone, I presume." The area which is now mainland Tanzania (then called Tanganyika) was colonised by the Germans in 1880. The British were in charge of Kenya next door, and initially a straight line was drawn to separate the two countries. Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany then got jealous because Kenya had two mountains and Tanganyika didn't have any, so Queen Victoria gave him Mount Kilimanjaro as a birthday present! This is why the border between Kenya and Tanzania is crooked and curves around the mountain. After the first world war the area was controlled by the British for a bit until, in 1961, Tanganyika became independent. Zanzibar followed soon afterwards and, in 1964, the two countries joined together to form Tanzania. Julius Nyerere was the first president but the people called him mwalimu (teacher).