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This paper deploys historical sources and methods to refine reconstructions of rainfall variability in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century equatorial eastern Africa, especially in present-day west-central Tanzania and southern Uganda. In the absence of in-region tree ring and other natural science research that can suggest rainfall conditions on seasonal or annual scales, the paper considers archival documents, oral traditions, and other qualitative sources as integral to the reconstruction of its historical climates. This scholarly effort is important for two core reasons. First, the creation of a ‘climate archive’ represents one of the essential contexts on which environmental histories of equatorial eastern Africa can be analysed and written. Second, it provides in-region data that can be integrated into climate models that project how global warming will affect regional rainfall variability in the future. This, moreover, may help to facilitate a deeper understanding of how the Indian Ocean monsoon system, on which rainfall in equatorial eastern Africa is reliant, has evolved and will evolve over time.
Dr Philip Gooding is a project manager and former postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University. He is the author of On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World: A History of Lake Tanganyika, c.1830-1890 (Cambridge University Press, 2022). His current research focuses on the climate history/historical climatology of equatorial eastern Africa. He has published on this topic in several academic journals, including the International Journal of African Historical Studies, the International Review of Environmental History, and Climate of the Past.
