Looking In Through the Out Door: Measuring the Impact of Asian Economic Transformations on Urbanism in Southeastern Kenya, ca. 250 BCE ??? 1800 CE.

Recent research on the East African coast has successfully challenged the hitherto dominant attribution of urban development and complex civilization to Asian traders and settlers. East African urbanism is now seen as the result of coastal engagement with both the broader Indian Ocean world and the hinterlands. East African products were in high demand in Asia and hence Afrasian traders worked hard to ensure continual supplies of these products from the African hinterland. This paper focuses on the Mombasa- Mtwapa cluster in Southeastern Kenya to underscore the correlations between economic transformations in Asia and the fates of port-cities in East Africa. Challenging the assumption that the fortunes of these coastal citystates were tied to the fates of Asian markets from emergence, I argue that East African urbanism thrived until the 15th century CE without being wholly dependent upon the rise and fall of empires, markets, and stability in Asia. I further suggest that the intensification of global interactions post 15th century CE and the resultant Asian predatory commerce tied East African coastal polities to the fates of their Asian markets and trading partners and hence opened up the pathways to urban decline and demise along the East African littoral.