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General Information
History
Archaeologists have established that the develop-
ment of human society dates back at least 3 million
years in the northern African Rift Valley. In addition,
stone tools, of a similar vintage found in Kenya, have
also been unearthed on the banks of the Zambezi
River.
Early Stone Age sites have been discovered in many
parts of Zambia, the most significant sites are locat-
ed at the Kalambo Falls in the North and at Victoria
Falls in the South of the country. At the former there
is evidence that primitive humans began using fire
systematically some 60 000 years ago.
The potential wealth of Indian Ocean trade was one
of the elements that inspired the Portuguese 15th
Century ‘Voyages of Discovery’. By 1515 the Por-
tuguese had seized control of Indian Ocean trade
and established themselves on the coasts of Mo-
zambique and Angola. Besides the Swahili and the
Portuguese influence on the region of what today is
Zambia, the effects of the Dutch (and subsequent
Perhaps as a response to foreign intrusions in South-
ern Africa, Shaka of the Zulu, and the Nguni clan,
set about creating a centralized militaristic state in
the early 19th century. These groups were to make
a forceful impact on Zambia. One of these was the
Sotho clan; its leader was Sebitwane. Another was
Mzilikazi, one of Shaka’s generals. After being de-
feated by the Dutch settlers in the Transvaal, he
and the Ndebele invaded and conquered what is
now Western Zimbabwe. Another, Zongendaba, led
his followers out of Shaka’s domains in the 1820’s.
These Ngoni crossed the Zambezi River in 1835 and
went northwards as far as Lake Tanganyika where
they settled for a while amongst the Bemba peoples.
In 1865, under Zongendaba’s successor Mpenzeni I,
they established themselves permanently in what is
now Zambia’s Eastern Province.
Mzilikazi managed to conquer the territory of mod-
ern Zimbabwe in 1837, while Sebitwane had crossed
the Zambezi a few years prior and taken over ter-
ritory just north of the Victoria Falls. From there he
marched west to conquer the Lozi kingdom of the Up-
per Zambezi and founded the Kololo state.
In 1840, a 27-year-old Scottish doctor, David Living-
stone, sailed from Britain to the Cape, to work as a
medical evangelist with the London Missionary Soci-
ety. Meanwhile, Portugal was planning to consolidate
its African territories by uniting Angola and Mozam-
bique across the central African plateau.
Unlike the Portuguese, the British knew nothing about
the region, and Livingstone was sent to explore the
region to rectify this issue. Livingstone started going
on longer and longer journeys of exploration, receiv-
ing help from a wealthy Englishman named William
Cotton Oswell: the two of them were the first Europe-
ans to visit Lake Ngami in the middle of the Kalahari.
In 1851 Livingstone and Oswell crossed the Kala-
hari to visit Sebitwane, on the Upper Zambezi, where
Livingstone was first exposed to the slave trade. He
and Oswell, who was also a staunch abolitionist, con-
cluded that the only way to stop the trade would be
through a new type of mission where a combination
of Christianity and Commerce would lead to change.
In fact their Christian development programme, un-
der which the slave trade was replaced by ‘legitimate’
trade in commodities such as cotton, which grew
exponentially in the area, and for which there was a
large market in Britain, did instigate some change.
From 1500 to 1800 AD many people living in what is
Zambia today, were organized into various societies
ruled by chieftains or monarchs. The Chewa people
in the East, the Lozi in the West, and the Bemba
and Lunda peoples in the North, were the largest of
these societies. Each was under the influence, or
was direct extensions of the large and powerful Lun-
da Empire of the Mwata Yamvo in what is now the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). By the 18th
Century, the Empire had begun trading with a wider
world economy by way of the Swahili city-states
throughout the region from what is now modern day
Somalia to south of the Zambezi delta. The supply of
copper, ivory, rhino horns, as well as people, for the
growing international slave trade, rapidly expanded
with such trading connections.
The European Factor
The ceremonial KUSEFYAPAN’GWENA, honouring the chief
British) colonization of the Southern Cape and its
hinterland from 1652 onwards also left a significant
impression on the region.