Sonara
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- Oct 2, 2008
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Tanganyika
History :.
Tanganyika (1815 - 1886)History :.
Tanganyika as a geographical and political entity did not take shape before the period of High Imperialism; its name only came into use after German East Africa was transferred to the United Kingdom as a mandate by the League of Nations in 1920. What is referred to here therefore is the history of the region that was to become Tanganyika.
In 1698 and again in 1725 the Omanis had ousted the Portuguese from the trading ports on East Africa's coast, most notably from Kilwa and Zanzibar. During the 18th century, Zanzibar had emerged as the dominant port of the region. Trade in general had prospered, a chain of coastal trading towns, among them Tanga and Bagamoyo, had emerged. Bagamoyo means 'throw your heart away'; it was a port from where slaves were shipped.
In 1841, Sultan Sayyid Said moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar; with him came many Arabs who invigorated the economy. In 1856, the Sultanate of Zanzibar was separated from the Sultanate of Oman; to Zanzibar belonged the island of Pemba as well as the coastal lands, including Kilwa. Arab traders established caravan routes into the interior, facilitating trades; the camel provided transportation. Slaves were among the most profitable trading goods.
The port of Zanzibar was visited by Dutch, English and French ships. The British East India Company had a representative on Zanzibar, who acted as an advisor to the sultan. In 1873 a British fleet forced Sultan Barghash to declare slave trade ended. Although reduced, an illegal slave trade continued.
In 1848 the German missionary Johannes Rebmann 'discovered' Mount Kilimanjaro; in 1858 Richard Burton and John Speke 'discovered' Lake Tanganyika.
In 1877 the first of a series of Belgian expeditions arrived on Zanzibar. In the course of these expeditions, in 1879 a station was founded in Kigoma on the eastern bank of Lake Tanganyika, soon to be followed by the station of Mpala on the opposite western bank. Both stations were founded in the name of the Comite D'Etudes Du Haut Congo, a predecessor organization of the Congo Free State. The fact that this station had been established and supplied from Zanzibar and Bagamoyo lead to the inclusion of East Africa into the territory of the Conventional Basin of the Congo at the Berlin Conference of 1885.
At the conference table in Berlin, contrary to widespread perception, Africa was not partitioned; rather rules were established amongst the colonial powers and prospective colonial powers as how to proceed in the establishment of colonies and protectorates. While the Belgian interest soon concentrated on the Congo River, the British and Germans focussed on Eastern Africa and in 1886 partitioned continental East Africa amongst themselves; the Sultanate of Zanzibar, now reduced to the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, remained independent, for the moment. The Congo Free State was eventually to give up its claim on Kigoma (its oldest station in Central Africa) and on any territory to the east of Lake Tanganyika, to Germany.
The Maji Maji War
All resistance to the Germans in the interior ceased and they could now set out to organize Deutsch Ost Afrika. They continued exercising their authority with such disregard and contempt for existing local structures and traditions and with such brutality that discontent was brewing anew and in 1902 a movement against forced labour for a cotton scheme rejected by the local population started along the Rufiji.
It reached a breaking point in July 1905 when the Matumbi of Nandete chased their akida and suddenly the revolt grew wider from Dar es Salaam to the Uluguru Mountains, the Kilombero Valley, the Mahenge and Makonde Plateaux, the Ruvuma in the southernmost part and Kilwa, Songea, Masasi, and from Kilosa to Iringa down to the eastern shores of Lake Nyasa.
Known as the Maji Maji war with the main brunt borne by the Ngonis, this was a merciless rebellion and by far the bloodiest in Tanganyika.
Germans had occupied the area since 1897 and totally altered many aspects of everyday life. They were actively supported by the missionaries who destroyed all signs of indigenous beliefs, notably by razing the 'mahoka' huts where the local population worshipped their ancestors' spirits and by ridiculing their rites, dances and other ceremonies. This would not be forgotten or forgiven; the first battle which broke out at Uwereka in September 1905 under the Governorship of Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen turned instantly into an all-out war with indiscriminate murders and massacres perpetrated by all sides against farmers, settlers, missionaries, planters, villages, indigenous people and peasants.
Tanganyika, a British Mandate (1918 - 1939)
The period of British rule began with the occupation of the island of Mafia by the Royal Navy in 1914. In 1916, the colony was occupied; German troops, commanded by able Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck continued to resist until the end of the war. In 1920, the League of Nations, granted the mandate to administrate the former German colony of German East Africa, except Ruanda and Burundi, to the United Kingdom.
The colony was renamed Tanganyika Territory (1920). In 1921 the Belgians transferred the Kigoma district, which they had administrated since the occupation, to British administration. The United Kingdom and Belgium signed an agreement regarding the border between Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi in 1924.
British policy was to rule indirectly, i.e. through African leaders. In 1926, a Legislative Council was established, which was to advise the governor. In 1928 the railway line Tabora-Mwanga was opened to traffic, the line from Moshi to Arusha in 1929.
In 1919 the population was estimated at 3,500,000. In 1931 a census established the population of Tanganyika at 5,022,640 natives, in addition to 32,398 Asians and 8,228 Europeans.
Under British rule, efforts were undertaken to fight the Tsetse fly (Charles Swynnerton, since 1919), to fight Malaria and Bilharziasis; more hospitals were built.
In 1926, the Colonial administration provided subsidies to schools run by missionaries, and at the same moment established her authority to exercise supervision and to establish guidelines. Yet in 1935, the education budget for entire Tanganyika amounted to merely (US) $ 240,000, although it is unclear how much this represented at the time in terms of purchasing power parity.
The War With Germany in East Africa
At the outbreak of war the German authorities may have regarded the position of their premier Colony with considerable equanimity although it must inevitably be cut off from outside communication; for it had been organized against any attack that could be made without those extensive preparations for which, according to the German war programme, the essential factor of time would be lacking. Indeed for the first year of hostilities the Germans were strong enough to carry the war into their neighbours' territories and repeatedly attacked the railway and other points in British East Africa.
The forces at the disposal of the German Command may never be accurately known. Lieutenant-General Smuts at one time estimated them at 2,000 Germans and 16,000 Askaris, with 60 guns and 80 machine guns, but this should prove to be below the mark. The white adult male population in 1913 numbered over 3,500 (exclusive of garrison), a large proportion of these would be available for military duties. The native population of over 7,000,000, comprising practically all the warlike races of Central Africa, formed a reservoir of man-power from which a force might be drawn limited only by the supply of officers and equipment. There is no reason to doubt that the Germans made the best of this material during the long interval of nearly eighteen months which separated the outbreak of war from the invasion in force of their territory.
In his final despatch of May, 1919, General van Deventer places the German forces, at the commencement of 1916, at 2,700 whites and 12,000 blacks. Lord Cranford, in his foreword to Captain Angus Buchanan's book on the war, writes - "At his strongest von Lettow probably mustered 25,000 to 30,000 rifles, all fighting troops", with 70 machine guns and 40 guns. After eighteen months of continuous fighting General van Deventer estimated the enemy's forces at 8,000 to 9,000 men.
Another point bearing on the war and duly emphasized by General Smuts in his lecture before the Royal Geographic Society(Jan., 1918), was the extraordinary strength of the German frontier. The coast line offered few suitable points for landing and was backed by an unhealthy swamp belt. On the west the line of lakes and mountains proved so impenetrable that the Belgian forces from the Congo had, in the first instance, to be moved through Uganda. On the south the Ruvuma River was only fordable on its upper reaches. And the northern frontier was the most difficult of all. Only one practicable pass about five miles wide offered between the Pare Mountains and Kilimanjaro, and here the German forces, amid swamps and forests, had been digging themselves in for eighteen months.
The Hon. H. Burton, speaking in London, Aug., 1918, said : "Nothing struck our commanders in the East African field so much as the thorough, methodical and determined training of the German native levies previous to the war".
The force which evacuated the Colony in Dec., 1917, was estimated at the time at 320 white and 2,500 black troops; 1,618 Germans were killed or captured in the last six months of 1917, 155 whites and 1,168 Askaris surrendered at the close of hostilities.
The War Years
A skilful and remarkably successful guerrilla campaign waged by the German Commander Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck kept the war in Tanganyika going for the entire length of the First World War. A scorched earth policy and the requisition of buildings meant a complete collapse of the Government's education system, though some mission schools managed to retain a semblance of instruction. Thus by 1920, the Education Department consisted of 1 officer and 2 clerks with a budget equal to 1% of the country's revenue, in fact less than the amount appropriated for the maintenance of Government House.
British Administration
The British Administration took measures to revive African institutions by encouraging limited local rule and authorized the formation in 1922 of political clubs such as the Tanganyika Territory African Civil Service Association. In 1926 some African members were unofficially admitted into the Legislative Council and in 1929 the Association became the Tanganyika African Association which would constitute the core of the nascent nationalist movement. In 1945 the first Africans were effectively appointed to the Governor's Legislative Council.
Tanganyika first achieved autonomy and (some months later) full independence from the United Kingdom in 1961, with the Republic of Tanganyika constituted in the following year. In 1963, Zanzibar achieved independence from the United Kingdom in the form of a constitutional monarchy under the sultan, but a popular revolt in 1964 against the sultan soon led to the unification of Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania. The name Tanzania was derived as a portmanteau of Tanganyika and Zanzibar and previously had no significance.
