Here is a long-time-coming update - a paper I wrote for Colonial Africa, about the foundation of their colony in East Africa. Karl Peters is hysterically interesting, and evil.
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The colonial territory of Tanganyika, an entity which would go on to become a major part of the Schutzgebiet Deutsch-Ostafrika , was a direct possession of the German Empire from 1891 to 1919. Prior to European colonization of the region, Tanganyika was a region split not only between many minor tribal entities: the Sultan of Zanzibar nominally claimed the coastal region and further inland as his territory, and the region fell under the British sphere of influence. As a result of years of nominal trade activity as well as the unsanctioned gathering of treaties by nationalist explorer Karl Peters, the German government was supplied was some claim to present at the Berlin Conference. Within days of the Conference’s decisions being passed down, the Germans moved quickly to establish control over the lands which they had gained “control” over through the further establishment of treaties as well as the use of military expansion and subjugation. Despite the treading of the German Empire’s colonial ventures along the boundaries of both regional powers such as the Zanzibari Sultanate and international ones such as Great Britain, Germany was able to forge the foundations of an economically exploitative colony in what is modern-day mainland Tanzania. The conclusion of constantly-shifting territorial demarcation treaties, the quashing of widespread rebellions as executed through the severe methods of the military-minded “Prussian” colonial administration, and the constant evolution of the East African colonial government throughout such events allowed for Tanganyika to develop into an economically prominent, if socially and racially repressive, German colony.
Before Tanganyika: Initial Interests and the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation
Prior to the arrival of the Germans, the Swahili Coast, and by proxy Tanganyika, were linked to a much larger economic system which spread throughout the sea to its east. From the east coast of Africa, trading was conducted through the Arab-led Sultanate of Zanzibar up along the Arabian Peninsula as well as across the Indian Ocean to locales such as the Indian subcontinent. Known for its focus on the slave trade, the Sultanate of Zanzibar was an economically notable state which utilized its human resources in producing crops such as coconuts and cloves for export. This practice, though lucrative, drew the ire of the anti-slaving British Empire which had begun to gain influence in the East African coastal region due to its proximity to their trade routes to India. European powers were not completely hostile to the Sultanate for its practices: the British Empire established a consulate in Zanzibar City in 1841, as did France in 1844 and the German Hanseatic League in 1859. Missionaries and explorers used the Zanzibari Sultanate as a staging ground for inland expeditions, leading to geographical discoveries such as Mt. Kilimanjaro and linguistic developments like the translation of Kiswahili, the region’s common language, from Arabic script into Latin.
The call of the Berlin Conference heralded an enormous change in the vague interest that European had toward Tanganyika. By the 1880’s and the first inklings of the Berlin Conference, Sultan Barghash bin Said al-Busaid of Zanzibar found himself privy to the collapse of his nominal control over the Swahili Coast and his territories further inland. Trade-oriented city states declared their sovereignty from his rule at the same time as the great expansion of the Nyamwezi leader Mirambo, a military figure referred to as “the Napoleon of Africa” by Henry M. Stanley . Well before the Berlin Conference, procolonialist German statesmen had suggested East Africa as a potential venture for the newly unified state and, although Germany had the past option of economically dominating the ailing Zanzibari Sultanate, the state’s leadership refused the task in order to avoid sparking hostilities with Great Britain.
The Partitioning of Tanganyika: Peters, Zanzibar, and Dar es-Salaam
While the German state may not have readily acted out in favor of colonialism, at least one of its subjects touted an opposing view. Dr. Karl Peters, a German explorer and founder of the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation , ventured into the coastal and semi-inland regions of Tanganyika at his own expense and, in 1884, began to establish treaties with local leaders that guaranteed economic access and effective ownership of large swaths of land to Peters himself. The contracts signed between Peters and local rulers are considered vague and heavily slanted by modern scholarship – so much so that Peters’ actions prompt authors such as Helmuth Stoecker to refer to Peters, an open admirer of British imperialist tactics, as a “psychopathic…criminal.” Despite the underhandedness of Peters’ methods, his efforts paid off: the lands between Lake Tanganyika and the Zanzibari Sultanate, which went far south enough to brush against the borders of Portuguese Mozambique, were now his property according to his treaties . At the next year’s monumental Berlin Conference, Germany nominated Peters’ agreements with local chiefs as evidence enough for German interest in the region and gained the committee’s approval for their colonization of the region. Peters’ Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation became the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft (DOAG) , which operated the colony on an adminstrative and economic level as a protectorate of the German Empire.
The borders of Tanganyika fluctuated greatly over the course of its early years as the DOAG interacted with local polities. The colonial administration began to put pressure on the Sultanate of Zanzibar to give up its coastal territories in order to ensure the survivability of Tanganyika as a colony and, with British help, the Sultanate was coerced into leasing its coast at unfair costs for very long periods of time to the DOAG. New territories were added to Tanganyika as a result of treaties signed by Clemens Denhardt and Karl Juhlke, both associates of Dr. Peters, from within the territory of the Zanzibari Sultan (much to his displeasure). This allowed for the colonial company to expand its role past the few trading posts it administered and, with the use of gunboat diplomacy from both Germany and Portugal, new territories were gained and new borders emerged every several months after the establishment of the colony. To enforce the growing authority of the DOAG, mercenaries were hired and used to enforce the company’s authority; heavy taxes were levied against coastal trading villages within the German sphere of influence, leading to levels of unrest.
By 1890, the borders of Tanganyika and the rest of Deutsch-Ostafrika had stabilized through a series of treaties with the British – who acted not only in their own interest, but also in the interest of their semi-vassal the Sultan of Zanzibar – such as the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty of 1890, which led to the ceding of some German territories in exchange for more East African coast including Dar es-Salaam, the settlement which would come to act as Tanganyika’s colonial capital. As a result of these decisions, the German colony began to consolidate its power around a coastal city and acted economically while its greatest competitors – the Sultanate of Zanzibar and Great Britain – stood silent, either for inability to resist German efforts to usurp territory or unable to respond for diplomatic reasons .
The Abushiri Revolt: Unrest and Consequences
In establishing boundaries and cementing authority, the DOAG began to chafe against the coastal Arabs and inland Africans who had come under its initial colonial taxation. The colonial authority became known for its harsh treatment of local peoples in pertinence to human rights and religious practice. By 1888, these high levies and levels of mistreatment, as well as – according to Hatch – the German cooperation with the British effort to end the region’s prominent slave trade , led to unrest that became an open revolt. Helmuth Stoecker disagrees with Hatch’s assessment of the revolt and instead states that it had relatively little to do with German actions toward the slave trade, citing the participation of not only coastal Arabs but also inland tribal groups and urban aristocrats in opposing DOAG authority.
Led by the coastal Arab merchant Abushiri bin Salim, the “Abushiri Revolt” quickly spread across the southern portion of Tanganyika. DOAG agents were pushed out of their trading posts and villages and forced to flight from not only disgruntled city dwellers but also the thousands of Yao tribesmen who rallied against the German colonial presence. Characterized by German politicians as an “Arab rebellion” bent on collapsing the colony in favor of the slave trade , Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called for the spending of several million German marks and the appointment of Hermann Wissman, a veteran commander of mercenaries in Africa, to end the revolt; by 1890, the revolt had been quelled and Abushiri himself executed after being betrayed by local tribesmen.
The eventual end of the Abushiri Revolt led to major changes in Tanganyika. Wissman’s use of Sudanese mercenaries to fight Abushiri’s rebels had expanded upon his arrival to include the auxiliaries of smaller groups of local people. By the end of the conflict, several African rulers had begun to fight alongside the Germans; in the next few years, those chiefs would be afforded positions within the colonial government in a form of limited self-rule. Another major change came as a result of the DOAG’s failure to contain the Abushiri situation. This lapse in ability drew the ire of the German government, which saw the stability of Tanganyika as a matter of their own national prestige. The German government thus took state control of the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation in 1891, consolidating its former territories – including Tanganyika – into the general Deutsch-Ostafrika administration. A final major change to take place after the Abushiri Revolt was the new emphasis on social promotion of the coastal people, who were mostly Afro-Arab Swahili people, through the use of a state-supported hierarchal system which employed maakida and majumbe to enforce German authority.
The Mkwawa Revolt: A Short Response to Early Administration
After the appropriation of Tanganyika into the German state’s colonial administration, a less major revolt conducted by the joined Hehe and Bena tribal confederations occurred. The Hehe and Bena had already been involved in fighting against German authority, as they had acted militarily against German coastal interests during the Abushiri Revolt. This particular unrest, though, was spurred on due to the perceivedly slanted preference afforded to the coastal peoples as opposed to the inland Africans who were largely removed from the emerging colonial power structure. The harshness of the colonial administration in achieving its goals – namely, complete economic productivity at the cost of the colonial subject’s well-being – led to the joining of the Hehe and Bena groups into a single resistant force against German forces in Tanganyika.
United by a leader known as Mkwawa in 1891, the unified Africans fought a prolonged guerrilla-style war against encroaching German colonial forces which lasted until 1898 despite the general surrender of a larger part of the tribal alliance in 1894. Mkwawa’s end came when he was betrayed by his forces after a new series of losses and, after being cornered by the Germans, committed suicide rather than submit to to the Europeans. His forces attempted to fight on, still displeased with the racist method in which they were being ruled, but were crippled in their efforts by the arrival of the rinderpest which decimated their herds and introduced a famine that would not be reduced in severity over the next few years.
The Maji-Maji Rebellion: Deutsch-Ostafrika’s Greatest Challenge
New methods of administration and governorship continued to gain unfavorable responses from the African colonial subjects of Deutsch-Ostafrika after the close of the Mkwawa Revolt. In 1898, the colonial administration – a body organized and run by former Prussian military governors, harsh in their methods and sometimes known for their overt racism - issued the “hut tax“, a demanded payment which punished those unable to afford it with forced labor. Financial matters were made more difficult with the appropriation of African lands for use by immigrants from Germany , who the colony readily accepted and incorporated into the hierarchal colonial framework – much to the chagrin of the readily-abused Africans. Yet another tax was levied against inland Africans, this time by the Afro-Arab maakida colonial forces who resided in higher social and administrative positions than any inland Tanganyikan. This left the Africans with less economic stability and assisted in the furthering of the idea that the colony would always possess a racist bent against African self-determination or accomplishment.
Taxation and suffering increased as the officers of Deutsch-Ostafrika began to solidify their goals as little more than purely economic. Within a short time, the colonial administration clarified that the hut tax had to be paid in colonial German marks, not in livestock or crops; this led to the effective dissolving of local product in Tanganyika, as colonial subjects were forced to sell their animals and produce at severely reduced prices to meet with strict colonial deadlines for the tax. When combined with the preexisting famine as a result of the rinderpest, this new hut tax plunged many colonial Africans into abject poverty and eventually forced labor as they were unable to consistently pay the high levy. The Africans were subsequently put to work on properties owned by German settlers, exacerbating the already tense racial situation in Tanganyika.
The simmering situation boiled over in July of 1905 when unrest broke out once more. The local Kilwa people grouped together into a confederacy, actively disassembling German authority through the destruction of colonial government outposts and the slaying of German settlers perceived to be government agents. According to the work of Prothero, this revolt was quite different from the others which had formerly occurred in Tanganyika: smaller tribes and villages unified into huge unions of African rebels, easily dwarfing the sizes of those groups which had acted against Germany in the past, and the Germans were actively blamed by the Africans for their unfair governance. John hatch disagrees, however, and states that the union of other groups such as the Ngoni into the main Rebellion did not occur in time, and the end result was to be expected even at the beginning of the conflict.
The Maji-Maji Rebellion, named for the maji used by its participants, was thus a striking out of inland Africans against not only Germans but also coastal Arabs and Africans who were viewed not only as general aliens to the region but also as oppressors and as instruments of the colonial government. According to John Hatch, Arab colonial agents were literally chased out of colonial settlements settlements in the Matumbi Hills by groups of African subjects .
The German response to the initial breakout of the Maji-Maji Rebellion was summarily brutal. Initially, colonial authorities commited wholesale slaughters of populations in response to similar actions by fighters among the rebels. Upon the spread of the rebellion to Dar es-Salaam, German authorities utilized the still young technology of machineguns in turning away the resistance, dispelling the myth of the maji and causing massive casualties. A scorched earth campaign was then conducted by the German forces, killing off the grand majority of the region’s cultivatable herds and crop goods. This came, as formentioned, at a time when the inhabitants of Tanganyika had already beens subject to the rinderpest as well as the forced underselling of the majority of African herds and the appropriation of African resources and land for the use of German settlers and colonial outlets. The result was a widespread famine which impacted not only the inland Africans but also those on the coast. Numbers of the African death toll varies: older sources such as Prothero list numbers as high as 120,000 casualties while more contemporary scholars like Khapoya claim that the number was closer to 75,000. Groups which were in regions that had seen much action during the Rebellion were hit the worst: the Pangwa tribesmen of Lake Nyasa had been reduced from approximately 30,000 people to less than 2,000 by the end of the Maji-Maji Rebellion.
German Response and Reform
The response of the German public to the conduct of colonial authorities in the Maji-Maji Rebellion led to a scandal and cries for a fairer form of colonialism. An investigation into the matter by the German government led to the exposure of gross misgovernment by colonial military officers which further shocked mainland Europe.
In accordance with its colonial failures, Germany immediately established a colonial office in Berlin, under the direction of Albrecht Freiherr von Rechenberg, which would revise and change the Empire’s colonial policies in East Africa. A distinct reformist, von Rechenberg put into effect sweeping changes as early as 1907 – the year the Maji-Maji Rebellion formally ended – such as the enforcement of more egalitarian methods of dealing with African colonial subjects and a promotion of African agricultural development with incentives for growing cash crops such as cotton. Also announced was a total ban on forced labor of African subjects, but this did not apply to public works projects for the colonial state. Military forces and colonial police would be bolstered by local auxiliaries, including sons and family members of local African chieftains, in order to further stabilize the colony and assist in the potential normalization of race relations.
von Rechenberg’s reforms were met with resistance from those Germans with a strong presence in Tanganyika. The Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft , the colonial company which had once ruled Tanganyika, was still quite prevalent in its economic activities and had established virtual monopolies over not only the region’s plantation economies but also had sway within the colonial administration. The DOAG was thus apprehensive about the reforms, which would place more economic power in the hands of the Africans who were generally outside of their own power structure. In addition, his acts were subsequently protested by German settlers in Tanganyika who claimed the new preference toward Africans disallowed their own economic productiveness. These complaints eventually led to von Rechenberg’s resignation. The impact of his work persisted, however, and the colonial administration he had reformed stayed in effect for the rest of Germany’s tenure in the region.
Conclusion
Repression and productivity are the two terms which best come to describe the process by which Tanganyika shifted from a barely defined treaty in the hands of a fierce nationalist explorer to the substantial colonial polity afforded to Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. Local influences such as the Zanzibari Sultanate were pushed aside and marginalized in order to cement claims to the region, and peoples were suppressed via both machineguns and hut taxes. Famine seemed like a regular occurrence in German East Africa, in all cases brought on by the abuses of the colonial government. Ultimately, the economic productivity of the colony shone through as worth the trouble of constant rebellions – responses to the racist, repressive German method of colonial military government which killed untold thousands in the name of profit. Despite the additions of local people and new hierarchies throughout its existence, the German effort in Tanganyika would never achieve any form of the publicly-demanded egalitarian treatment. The colonial government, as short-lived in the grand scheme of Africa as it was, will always represent a panicked and violent period.
Works Cited
Hatch, John. Tanzania: a Profile. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972.
Khapoya, Vincent B. The African Experience: An Introduction. New York: Longman, 2010.
Oliver, Roland and Anthony Atmore. Africa since 1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Prothero, G.W. (editor). German African Possessions (Late). New York: Greenwood Press, 1920.
Stoecker, Helmuth. “German East Africa 1885 – 1906,” in German Imperialism in Africa: from the Beginnings until the Second World War, edited by Helmuth Stoecker, 93-113. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1986.
Stoecker, Helmuth. “German East Africa 1906 – 1914,” in German Imperialism in Africa: From the Beginnings until the Second World War, edited by Helmuth Stoecker, 148-160. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1986.
Yeager, Rodger. Tanzania: An African Experiment. Boulder: Westview Press, 1982.
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There you go!
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