Why was a Giraffe the Perfect Gift for the Chinese Emperor?

A fully updated Chapter 11 of Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom

The fully updated edition of Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom will be available in January 2025. Over the coming months, paid subscribers can access (and provide feedback on) some of the updated chapters as I post them here. Chapter 3, Chapter 5 and Chapter 36 are already available. Please consider a paid subscription to access them as well as my twice-weekly content, including columns, guest essays, interviews and summaries of the latest research.

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On the east coast of Tanzania, south of Dar es Salaam, lies the tiny island of Kilwa Kisiwani. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries the port city of Kilwa was the centre of trade for the entire Swahili coast, integrated in a trading network that stretched as far as Arabia, India and even China. The inhabitants of this beautiful city were ethnically mixed – including Persians, Arabs and Bantu-speaking Africans – and, over time, they developed a distinctive East African culture and language – Swahili, which literally means ‘coast dwellers’. This cultural influence stretched all along the East African coast, from Inhambane and Sofala in the south (modern-day Mozambique) to Mombasa and Malindi (Kenya) and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north.