Over many centuries the Swahili coast of East Africa had intricate connections with India, with the Islamic world, and with the peoples of the interior. There was major economic, social, and religious interchange. The intrusion of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century was merely the latest of many foreign influences. This study in world history examines a particular time and place to show the diversity and complexity of cultural and economic contacts.

Historian Michael N. Pearson begins with a discussion of the uses and abuses of history in the region. He then sets the stage by establishing the geographic and historical relevance of the position of the Swahili coast in the Indian Ocean. He explores the role of port cities and their orientation, relations between the coast and the interior, the place of the coast in the world economy, and the impact of the Portuguese in the early modern period.

Based on the author's own extensive research and travel in the Swahili coast region. Port Cities and Intruders will be of interest not only to those who work on East Africa but also to historians of the early modern period and to comparative historians.