[2] One of the most significant trading hubs on the coast of East Africa, Bagamoyo served as the last halt for ivory caravans making their way on foot from Lake Tanganyika to Zanzibar.

The historic hamlet served as the final stop for thousands of porters who carried, on average, 70-pound burdens held across their shoulders, mostly ivory tusks, along the caravan route.

Bagamoyo beckoned as a location of rest and enjoyment, trying to reward the men after a taxing voyage after trekking for months across hazardous terrain.

The Shomvi, whose ancestors arrived in the area in the middle of the eighteenth century from a location further north along the shoreline at Malindi, established the surviving Bagamoyo Historic Town, according to oral tradition.

The settlement began as a fishing and farming community that traded small amounts of local goods, slaves, copal, and ivory for Indian fabric industry as early as the 1810s.

In the early 1800s, the Omanis turned adjoining Zanzibar into the main commerce hub of the western Indian Ocean, and Bagamoyo's fortunes improved at the same time.

Being a commercial hub, Bagamoyo historically served as a home for traders, financiers, farmers, slaves, porters, fisherman, sailors, and artisans.

[8] Bagamoyo, a little settlement before 1850, could not have provided the Indian Ocean commerce system with large numbers of enslaved Africans; Kilwa, considerably farther south along the Tanzanian coastline, was known for doing so.

[9] Kilwa was still recognised as the "principal slave-exporting port of the East African mainland" even after 1850, when Bagamoyo started to rise to economic dominance.

Slave their routes northward through land as a result, using the numerous creeks and inlets for shipping to avoid being discovered by the British navy.

As long-distance traders, these individuals were thought to be more likely to convert to Christianity than the coastal Muslims, which the missionaries hoped would help the religion grow into the East African interior.

Long before plastics were developed, the globe used ivory in a variety of products for consumption, including cutlery handles, airtight containers, combs, piano keys, billiard balls, buttons, and clasps, to mention a few.

The ivory exports from Bagamoyo were closely monitored by Arab, Indian, European, and American businessmen, who competed with one another, the locals, and the African porters for ownership of the city's vast wealth.

The document gives a detailed description of the current caravanserai construction, which is flanked by ten long, rectangular shelters that were arranged in a clockwork pattern but are no longer there.

Finally, research conducted in and around the caravanserai in 2001–2002 under the direction of Professor Felix Chami of the University of Dar es Salaam found no evidence that the building was connected to a slave market.

Rifles would be shot as the porters approached Bagamoyo, and women would ululate and children would rush to welcome the upcountry as they arrived, according to European reports from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This building is unrelated to the earlier one because it was totally created by German architects in the middle of the nineteenth century, drawing inspiration from their native country.