Abstract
Kenya is a multi-cultural state with three races and over forty-two African ethnic groups. The races are European, Asian/Arab and African. Asians and Arabs are perceived as foreigners in Kenya who control large commercial enterprises. The Asians and Arabs regard themselves as minorities in Kenya. Yet historical evidence indicates that they migrated into Kenya much earlier than some of the predominant African ethnic groups such as the Gikuyu, Luo, and Luhyia, to name a few. Asians and Arabs interacted with Africans on the Kenya coast as early as the period prior to the birth of Christianity. The arrival and settlement of Asians and Arabs in Kenya span over the last two millennia; however, it was in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries AD that massive penetration and settlement of Asians and Arabs in Kenya was realized. In the existing historical literature on Asians, there has been adoption of different terminologies such as south Asians and Indians. In this chapter, we will adopt Asians in general to refer to immigrants from the Indian subcontinent into Kenya and Arabs to refer to immigrants from the Arabian Peninsula.
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Nabende, J.S. (2023). The Arrival of Arabs and Asians in Kenya. In: Nasong'o, W.S., Amutabi, M.N., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Kenyan History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09487-3_5
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