The first European man to have come there, Joseph Thompson, did not arrive until 1883, and he was on his way to Uganda. It did not take long, however, for European colonizing nations, primarily Britain and Germany, to realize that East Africa was potentially strategic real estate, both economically and politically. Through a deal with the sultan of Zanzibar, who was the nominal ruler over much of the eastern African coast, Germany, in 1885, became the first European nation to make inroads into East Africa. The German East Africa Company emerged on the scene that year, beginning a program of trade and exploration in the area that is now Tanzania.
The British soon followed, concluding an agreement of their own with the sultan. In 1887 he leased the lands that are now Kenya to the Imperial British East Africa Company, a commercial enterprise set up under governmental supervision primarily to establish trade in the area. Eight years later, in 1895, the British government assumed more direct control over the Kenyan lands, setting up what was called the East Africa "Protectorate," a term that designates the relationship between a powerful (generally European) state and an as-yet politically unrecognized territory inhabited mostly by native, non-European people.
