Recent excavations of pre-historic human skeletons may indicate a history dating back to millions of years, but recorded history of Tanzania begins only with the migration of the nomadic Masai warrior tribes from Kenya to the grassland plains of Northern Tanzania around 1800 AD.

The coastal belt was dominated by Arab traders and slave merchants, who brought slaves from the interior areas around Lake Tanganyika and sold them in the slave markets of Zanzibar. European explorers began arriving around mid 19th century, the most famous being Livingstone and Stanley. It was in Ujiji, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, that the two great explorers met.

Colonization started first with the German East Africa Company and was later continued by the British who had already wrenched control of the island of Zanzibar from the Arabs. Many nationalist organisations tried to rebel but it was not until Julius Nyerere founded the Tanganyika African National Union in 1954 that the movement really took off in a effective manner. Independence was finally achieved in 1961 by Tanganyika and in 1963 by Zanzibar. The new political leadership opted for radical socialism, and introduced widespread measures to bring in economic nationalisation. In the early sixties, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda formed an economic alliance of sorts that saw them sharing airline, telecommunication, transportation and customs facilities. However, this did not last long and in 1995, the partnership was again revived in a different form under the name of East African Cooperation.