Zambia: Early History to the Nineteenth Century

Some Bantu-speaking peoples (probably including the ancestors of the Tonga) reached the region by c.a.d. 800, but the ancestors of most of modern Zambia's ethnic groups arrived from present-day Angola and Congo (Kinshasa) between the 16th and 18th cent. By the late 18th cent. traders (including Arabs, Swahili, and other Africans) had penetrated the region from both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts; they exported copper, wax, and slaves. In 1835 the Ngoni, a warlike group from S Africa, entered E Zambia. At about the same time the Kololo penetrated W Zambia from the south, and they ruled the Lozi kingdom of Barotseland (see Western Province from 1838 to 1864.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• A New Regime
• Independence and Kaunda
• The Colonial Period
• Early History to the Nineteenth Century
• Government
• Economy
• Land and People
• Bibliography

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