History of Tanzania
Encyclopedia
The East Africa
n nation of Tanzania
dates formally only from 1964, when it was formed out of the union of the much larger mainland territory of Tanganyika
and the coastal archipelago of Zanzibar
. The former was a colony and part of German East Africa
from the 1880s to 1919, when, under the League of Nations
, it became a British mandate
until independence in 1961. It served as a military outpost during World War II
, providing financial help, munitions, and soldiers. Zanzibar was settled as a trading hub, subsequently controlled by the Portuguese, the Sultanate of Oman, and then as a British protectorate
by the end of the nineteenth century.
Julius Nyerere
would rule the country for decades and repress opposition. Years of socialism led to corruption on a massive scale and a collapse of the economy. Following Nyerere's retirement in 1985, various political and economic reforms began.
, including fossils of early humans found in and around Olduvai Gorge
in northern Tanzania, an area often referred to as "The Cradle of Mankind". These fossils include Paranthropus
bones thought to be over 2 million years old, and the oldest known footprints of the immediate ancestors of humans, the Laetoli footprints, estimated to be about 3.6 million years old.
Reaching back about 10,000 years, Tanzania is believed to have been populated by hunter-gatherer
communities, probably Khoisan
speaking people. Between three and six thousand years ago, they were joined by Cushitic-speaking people who came from the north, into which the Khoisan peoples were slowly absorbed. Cushitic peoples introduced basic techniques of agriculture, food production, and later, cattle farming.
About 2000 years ago, Bantu-speaking people
began to arrive from western Africa in a series of migrations. These groups brought and developed ironworking skills and new ideas of social and political organization. They absorbed many of the Cushitic peoples who had preceded them, as well as most of the remaining Khoisan-speaking inhabitants. Later, Nilotic
pastoralists arrived, and continued to immigrate into the area through to the 18th century.
. Greek texts such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
and Ptolemy
's Geography list a string of market places (emporia) along the coast. Finds of Roman-era coins along the coast confirm the existence of trade, and Ptolomey's Geography refers to a town of Rhapta
as "metropolis" of a political entity called Azania
. Archaeologists have not yet succeeded in identifying the location of Rhapta, though many believe it lies deeply buried in the silt of the delta of the Rufiji River. A long documentary silence follows these ancient texts, and it is not until Arab geographical treatises were written about the coast that our information resumes.
Remains of those towns' material culture demonstrate that they arose from indigenous roots, not from foreign settlement. And the language that was spoken in them, Swahili (now Tanzania's national language), is a member of the Bantu language family that spread from the northern Kenya coast well before significant Arab presence was felt in the region. By the beginning of the second millennium CE the Swahili towns conducted a thriving trade that linked Africans in the interior with trade partners throughout the Indian Ocean. From c. 1200 to 1500 CE, the town of Kilwa
, on Tanzania's southern coast, was perhaps the wealthiest and most powerful of these towns, presiding over what some scholars consider the "golden age" of Swahili civilization. In the early 14th century, Ibn Battuta
, a Berber traveller from North Africa, visited Kilwa and proclaimed it one of the best cities in the world. Islam was practised on the Swahili coast as early as the eighth or ninth century CE.
In 1498, Portuguese
explorer Vasco da Gama
became the first known European to reach the East African coast; he stayed for 32 days. In 1505 the Portuguese captured the island of Zanzibar. Portuguese control lasted until the early 18th century, when Arabs from Oman
established a foothold in the region. Assisted by Omani Arabs, the indigenous coastal dwellers succeeded in driving the Portuguese from the area north of the Ruvuma River
by the early 18th century. Claiming the coastal strip, Omani Sultan Seyyid Said moved his capital to Zanzibar City
in 1840. He focused on the island and developed trade routes that stretched as far as Lake Tanganyika
and Central Africa
. During this time, Zanzibar became the centre for the Arab slave trade
. Due to the Arab and Persian domination at this later time, many Europeans misconstrued the nature of Swahili civilization as a product of Arab colonization. However, this misunderstanding has begun to dissipate over the past 40 years as Swahili civilization is becoming recognized as principally African in origin.
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 Tanzania. A part of the Great Lakes region, namely the western shore of Lake Victoria
consisted of many small kingdoms, most notably Karagwe
and Buzinza, which were dominated by their more powerful neighbors Rwanda
, Burundi
, and Buganda
.
European exploration of the interior began in the mid-19th century. In 1848 the German missionary Johannes Rebmann
became the first European to see Mount Kilimanjaro
. British explorers Richard Burton
and John Speke crossed the interior to Lake Tanganyika
in June 1857. In January 1866 the Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone
, who crusaded against the slave trade, went to Zanzibar, from where he set out to seek the source of the Nile, and established his last mission at Ujiji
on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. After having lost contact with the outside world for years, he was "found" there on November 10, 1871. Henry Morton Stanley
, who had been sent in a publicity stunt to find him by the New York Herald newspaper, greeted him with the now famous words "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" 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
. German colonial interests were first advanced in 1884. Karl Peters
, who formed the Society for German Colonization
, concluded a series of treaties by which tribal chiefs in the interior accepted German "protection." Prince Otto von Bismarck
's government backed Peters in the subsequent establishment of the German East Africa Company
.
At the Berlin Conference
of 1885, the fact that Kigoma had been established and supplied from Zanzibar
and Bagamoyo
led to the inclusion of East Africa
into the territory of the Conventional Basin of the Congo, to Belgium's advantage. At the table in Berlin, contrary to widespread perception, Africa was not partitioned; rather, rules were established among 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 focused on Eastern Africa and in 1886 partitioned continental East Africa between 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
.
In 1886 and 1890, Anglo-German agreements were negotiated that delineated the British and German spheres of influence in the interior of East Africa and along the coastal strip previously claimed by the Sultan of Zanzibar. In 1891, the German government took over direct administration of the territory from the German East Africa Company and appointed a governor with headquarters at Dar es Salaam
.
in the interior ceased and they could now set out to organize German East Africa
. They continued brutally to exercise their authority with disregard and contempt for existing local structures and traditions. While the German colonial administration brought cash crops, railroads, and roads to Tanganyika
, European rule provoked African resistance. Between 1891 and 1894, the Hehe
— led by Chief Mkwawa
— resisted German expansion, but were eventually defeated. After a period of guerrilla warfare
, Mkwawa was cornered and committed suicide in 1898.
Widespread discontent re-emerged, and in 1902 a movement against forced labour for a cotton scheme rejected by the local population started along the Rufiji River
. The tension reached a breaking point in July 1905 when the Matumbi
of Nandete led by Kinjikitile Ngwale revolted against the local administrators (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. The resistance culminated in the Maji Maji Resistance
of 1905–1907. The resistance, which temporarily united a number of southern tribes ended only after an estimated 120,000 Africans had died from fighting or starvation. Research has shown that traditional hostilities played a large part in the resistance.
Germans had occupied the area since 1897 and totally altered many aspects of everyday life. They were actively supported by the missionaries who tried to destroy all signs of indigenous beliefs
, notably by razing the 'mahoka' huts where the local population worshiped 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. Known as the Maji Maji war with the main brunt borne by the Ngoni people
, this was a merciless rebellion and by far the bloodiest in Tanganyika
.
During World War I
, an invasion attempt by the British
was thwarted by German General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck at the Battle of Tanga
, who then mounted a drawn out guerrilla warfare
campaign against the British.
At the outbreak of the First World War the German
authorities regarded the position of their premier Colony with considerable equanimity although it was inevitably cut off from outside communication. It had been organized against any attack that could be made without those extensive preparations. 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. However, British rule had begun with the occupation of the island of Mafia
by the Royal Navy
in 1914.
The forces at the disposal of the German Command may never be accurately known. Lieutenant-General Jan 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 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 Jacob van Deventer placed 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.
Cut-off from Germany by the Royal Navy
Von Lettow made a virtue of necessity and conducted a masterly guerilla campaign, living off the land and moving swiftly to repeatedly surprise the British. The British, who deployed large numbers of Indian Army
troops under Smuts, faced difficult logistic problems supplying their pursuing army deep in the interior, which they attempted to overcome by the formation of a large Carrier Corps
of native porters.
Another point bearing on the war and duly emphasized by General Smuts in his lecture before the Royal Geographic Society (January 1918), was the extraordinary strength of the German frontier. The coastline 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 (8 km) 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 Honorable H. Burton, speaking in London
in August 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 December 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.
A skillful 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. Unlike the Belgian, British, French and Portuguese colonial masters in central Africa, Germany had developed an educational program for her Africans that involved elementary, secondary and vocational schools. "Instructor qualifications, curricula, textbooks, teaching materials, all met standards unmatched anywhere in tropical Africa." In 1924, ten years after the beginning of the First World War and six years into British rule, the visiting American Phelps-Stokes Commission reported: In regards to schools, the Germans have accomplished marvels. Some time must elapse before education attains the standard it had reached under the Germans. But by 1920, the Education Department consisted of 1 officer and 2 clerks with a budget equal to 1% of the country's revenue — less than the amount appropriated for the maintenance of Government House.
. With the concurrence of the Supreme Council, the United Kingdom transferred the provinces of Ruanda-Urundi
, in the northwest, to Belgium. These provinces contained three-sevenths of the population and more than half the cattle of the colony. The boundaries of the East Indies Station
were enlarged in 1919 to include Zanzibar
and what was the littoral of German East Africa
. Dar-es-Salaam remained the seat of Government of the colony and the first Administrator was Sir Horace Archer Byatt CMG
. He embarked it on its course as an African country, improved its health and agriculture and made slavery illegal. He also did much for its economy. In Dar-es-Salaam you can see the house he rebuilt – now lived in by the President
.
The native troops went back quietly to their villages and the few Germans that remained were reported as settling down under the new administration.
in 1920. In 1921 the Belgians
transferred the Kigoma district, which they had administered since the occupation, to British administration. The United Kingdom and Belgium signed an agreement regarding the border between Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi
in 1924. The administration of the Territory continued to be carried out under the terms of the mandate until its transfer to the Trusteeship System under the Charter of the United Nations by the Trusteeship Agreement of December 13, 1946.
was established, which was to advise the governor. 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.
to Arusha
in 1929. In 1919 the population was estimated at 3,500,000.
at 5,022,640 natives, in addition to 32,398 Asians and 8,228 Europeans.
(a carrier of sleeping sickness), and 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 time established its authority to exercise supervision and to establish guidelines. Yet in 1935, the education budget for the entire country of Tanganyika amounted to only (US) $290,000, although it is unclear how much this represented at the time in terms of purchasing power parity
.
In 1933, Sir Horace Hector Hearne was appointed as Puisne Judge, Tanganyika Territory, and acted as Chief Justice of Tanganyika in 1935 and 1936. He held the post until 1936/1937 when he went on to be a similar job in Ceylon.
, was in charge, and David Gordon Hines
was the accountant responsible for the finances. The scheme had 50000 acres (202 km²) on the Ardai plains just outside Arusha
; 25000 acres (101 km²) on Mount Kilimanjaro
; and 25000 acres (101 km²) towards Ngorongoro to the west. All the machinery was lend/lease from the USA, including 30 tractors, 30 ploughs, and 30 harrows. There were western agricultural and engineering managers. Most of the workers were Italian prisoners of war from Somalia and Ethiopia: excellent, skilled engineers and mechanics. The Ardai plains were too arid to be successful, but there were good crops in the Kilimanjaro and Ngorongoro areas.
from 1947 to 1959 achieved the vast expansion of the co-operatives: by the early 1950s, there were over 400 co-operatives nationally. Co-operative offices throughout the country showed the members how to elect committees, keep their books, and market produce. Co-operatives formed "unions" for their areas and developed cotton gin
eries, coffee factories, and tobacco dryers. A major success for Tanzania was the Moshi
coffee auctions that attracted international buyers after the annual Nairobi auctions.
, Tanganyika became a UN territory under British control. Subsequent years witnessed Tanganyika moving gradually toward self-government and independence. In 1954, Julius Nyerere
, the future leader of Tanzania, who was then a school teacher and one of only two Tanganyikans educated abroad at the university level, organized a political party—the Tanganyika African National Union
(TANU).
today refers to the island of that name, also known as Unguja, and the neighboring island of Pemba. Both islands fell under Portuguese domination in the 16th and early 17th centuries but were retaken by Omani Arabs in the early 18th century. The height of Arab rule came during the reign of Sultan Seyyid Said, who moved his capital from Muscat
to Zanzibar, established a ruling Arab elite, and encouraged the development of clove
plantations, using the island's slave labor. Zanzibar and Pemba were world-famous for their trade in spices and became known as the Spice Islands
; in the early 20th century, they produced approximately 90% of the world's supply of cloves. Zanzibar was also a major transit point in the East African and Indian Ocean slave trade. (See Arab slave trade
.) Zanzibar attracted ships from as far away as the United States
, which established a consulate in 1833. The United Kingdom's early interest in Zanzibar was motivated by both commerce and the determination to end the slave trade. In 1822, the British signed the first of a series of treaties with Sultan Said to curb this trade, but not until 1876 was the sale of slaves finally prohibited. The Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty
of 1890 made Zanzibar and Pemba a British protectorate
, and the Caprivi Strip
in Namibia
became a German protectorate. British rule through a Sultan remained largely unchanged from the late 19th century until 1957, when elections were held for a largely advisory Legislative Council.
, a school teacher who was then one of only two Tanganyikans educated to university level, organized a political party—the Tanganyika African National Union
(TANU). On December 9, 1961, Tanganika became an autonomous Commonwealth realm
, and Nyerere became Prime Minister, under a new constitution. On December 9, 1962, a republican constitution was implemented with Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere as Tanganyika's first president.
Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom on December 19, 1963, as a constitutional monarchy
under the Sultan. On January 12, 1964, the African majority revolted against the sultan
and a new government was formed with the ASP leader, Abeid Karume, as President of Zanzibar and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council.
In the first few days, between 5,000 and 15,000 Arabs and Asians were murdered, women were raped and their homes burned. Within a few weeks, a fifth of the population had died or fled.
It was at this time that the Tanganyika army revolted and Britain was asked by Julius Nyerere
to send in troops. Royal Marines Commandos were sent by air from England via Nairobi and 40 Commando came ashore from the aircraft carrier HMS Bulwark. Several months were spent with Commandos touring the country disarming military outposts. When the successful operation ended, the Royal Marines left to be replaced by Canadian troops.
On April 26, 1964, Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. The country was renamed the United Republic of Tanzania on October 29 of that year. The name Tanzania is a portmanteau of Tanganyika and Zanzibar and previously had no significance. Under the terms of this union, the Zanzibar Government retains considerable local autonomy.
with the Zanzibar ruling party, the Afro-Shirazi Party
(ASP) of Zanzibar to form the CCM
(Chama cha Mapinduzi-CCM Revolutionary Party), on February 5, 1977. The merger was reinforced by principles enunciated in the 1982 union constitution and reaffirmed in the constitution of 1984.
Nyerere believed multiple political parties, in a nation with hundreds of ethnic groups, were a threat to national unity and therefore sought ways to ensure a one party system. To further his aim for national unity Nyerere established Kiswahili as the national language.
Nyerere used the Preventive Detention Act first to suppress trade unions and then to lock up any opponents when he wanted. People disappeared and total numbers were never published, but victims are estimated at thousands. International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International campaigned against repression in Tanzania.
Nyerere introduced repressive African socialism
, or Ujamaa
. The government burned villages and forced people to relocate onto collective farms, which greatly disrupted agricultural efficiency and output. Tanzania turned from a nation of sustenance farmers into a nation of starving
collective farmers.
Scope of the state expanded rapidly into virtually every sector. In 1967, nationalizations transformed the government into the largest employer in the country. It was involved from everything from retailing to import-export trade and even baking. This created an environment ripe for corruption.
Cumbersome bureaucratic procedures multiplied and excessive tax rates set by officials further damaged the economy. Enormous amounts of public funds were misappropriated and put to unproductive use. Purchasing power declined at an unprecedented rate and even essential commodities became unavailable. A system of permits (vibali) allowed officials to collect huge bribes in exchange for the vibali.
A foundation for systemic corruption
had been laid. Officials became widely known as Wabenzi
("people of the Benz").
Nyerere's Tanzania had a close relationship with the People's Republic of China
. In 1979 Tanzania declared war on Uganda
after the Soviet-backed Uganda invaded and tried to annex the northern Tanzanian province of Kagera
. Tanzania not only expelled Ugandan forces, but, enlisting the country's population of Ugandan exiles, also invaded Uganda itself. On April 11, 1979, Idi Amin
was forced to quit the capital, Kampala, ending the Uganda-Tanzania War. The Tanzanian army took the city with the help of the Ugandan and Rwandan guerrillas. Amin fled into exile. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/597725.stm
By the mid-1979 corruption reached epidemic proportions as the economy collapsed.
Socialism left the country as one of the poorest and the least developed. Dependency on foreign aid had become one the world's highest.
In October 1985 Nyerere handed over power to Ali Hassan Mwinyi
, but retained control of the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi
(CCM), as Chairman until 1990, when he handed that responsibility to Mwinyi.
In 1990 a coalition of ethnic and cultural groups of Zanzibar demanded a referendum on independence. They declared that the merger with the mainland Tanzania, based on the now dead ideology of socialism, had transformed Zanzibar from a bustling economic power to a poor, neglected appendage. Their demands were neglected.
However, the ruling party comfortably won the elections amid widespread irregularities and its candidate Benjamin William Mkapa was subsequently sworn in as the new president of Tanzania in the country's ever multi-party election on 23 November 1995. Contested elections in late 2000 led to a massacre in Zanzibar in January 2001, with the government shooting into crowds of protesters, killing 35 and injuring 600. In December 2005, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete was elected the 4th president for a five-year term.
One of the deadly 1998 U.S. embassy bombings occurred in Dar Es Salaam
; the other was in Nairobi
, Kenya
. In 2004, the undersea earthquake
on the other side of the Indian Ocean
caused tsunami
s along Tanzania's coastline in which 11 people were killed. An oil tanker
also temporarily ran aground in the Dar Es Salaam
harbour, damaging an oil pipeline.
In 2008, a power surge cut off power to Zanzibar, resulting in the 2008 Zanzibar Power blackout
.
East Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
n nation of Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
dates formally only from 1964, when it was formed out of the union of the much larger mainland territory of Tanganyika
Tanganyika
Tanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...
and the coastal archipelago of Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
. The former was a colony and part of German East Africa
German East Africa
German East Africa was a German colony in East Africa, which included what are now :Burundi, :Rwanda and Tanganyika . Its area was , nearly three times the size of Germany today....
from the 1880s to 1919, when, under the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
, it became a British mandate
League of Nations mandate
A League of Nations mandate was a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the internationally agreed-upon terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League...
until independence in 1961. It served as a military outpost during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, providing financial help, munitions, and soldiers. Zanzibar was settled as a trading hub, subsequently controlled by the Portuguese, the Sultanate of Oman, and then as a British protectorate
Protectorate
In history, the term protectorate has two different meanings. In its earliest inception, which has been adopted by modern international law, it is an autonomous territory that is protected diplomatically or militarily against third parties by a stronger state or entity...
by the end of the nineteenth century.
Julius Nyerere
Julius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985....
would rule the country for decades and repress opposition. Years of socialism led to corruption on a massive scale and a collapse of the economy. Following Nyerere's retirement in 1985, various political and economic reforms began.
Prehistory
Tanzania is home to some of the oldest human settlements unearthed by archaeologistsArchaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, including fossils of early humans found in and around Olduvai Gorge
Olduvai Gorge
The Olduvai Gorge is a steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches through eastern Africa. It is in the eastern Serengeti Plains in northern Tanzania and is about long. It is located 45 km from the Laetoli archaeological site...
in northern Tanzania, an area often referred to as "The Cradle of Mankind". These fossils include Paranthropus
Paranthropus
The robust australopithecines, members of the extinct hominin genus Paranthropus , were bipedal hominids that probably descended from the gracile australopithecine hominids...
bones thought to be over 2 million years old, and the oldest known footprints of the immediate ancestors of humans, the Laetoli footprints, estimated to be about 3.6 million years old.
Reaching back about 10,000 years, Tanzania is believed to have been populated by hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
communities, probably Khoisan
Khoisan
Khoisan is a unifying name for two ethnic groups of Southern Africa, who share physical and putative linguistic characteristics distinct from the Bantu majority of the region. Culturally, the Khoisan are divided into the foraging San and the pastoral Khoi...
speaking people. Between three and six thousand years ago, they were joined by Cushitic-speaking people who came from the north, into which the Khoisan peoples were slowly absorbed. Cushitic peoples introduced basic techniques of agriculture, food production, and later, cattle farming.
About 2000 years ago, Bantu-speaking people
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
began to arrive from western Africa in a series of migrations. These groups brought and developed ironworking skills and new ideas of social and political organization. They absorbed many of the Cushitic peoples who had preceded them, as well as most of the remaining Khoisan-speaking inhabitants. Later, Nilotic
Nilotic
Nilotic people or Nilotes, in its contemporary usage, refers to some ethnic groups mainly in South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and northern Tanzania, who speak Nilotic languages, a large sub-group of the Nilo-Saharan languages...
pastoralists arrived, and continued to immigrate into the area through to the 18th century.
Early Coastal History
Travellers and merchants from the Persian Gulf and Western India have visited the East African coast since early in the first millennium CECommon Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
. Greek texts such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea or Periplus of the Red Sea is a Greco-Roman periplus, written in Greek, describing navigation and trading opportunities from Roman Egyptian ports like Berenice along the coast of the Red Sea, and others along Northeast Africa and India...
and Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
's Geography list a string of market places (emporia) along the coast. Finds of Roman-era coins along the coast confirm the existence of trade, and Ptolomey's Geography refers to a town of Rhapta
Rhapta
Rhapta was a marketplace on the coast of eastern Africa, which first rose to prominence in the 1st century CE. Its location has not yet been firmly identified, although there are a number of plausible candidate sites....
as "metropolis" of a political entity called Azania
Azania
Azania is the name that has been applied to various parts of sub-Saharan Africa. In Roman times—and perhaps earlier—the name referred to a portion of the Southeast African coast south of the Horn of Africa, extending south perhaps as far as modern Tanzania....
. Archaeologists have not yet succeeded in identifying the location of Rhapta, though many believe it lies deeply buried in the silt of the delta of the Rufiji River. A long documentary silence follows these ancient texts, and it is not until Arab geographical treatises were written about the coast that our information resumes.
Remains of those towns' material culture demonstrate that they arose from indigenous roots, not from foreign settlement. And the language that was spoken in them, Swahili (now Tanzania's national language), is a member of the Bantu language family that spread from the northern Kenya coast well before significant Arab presence was felt in the region. By the beginning of the second millennium CE the Swahili towns conducted a thriving trade that linked Africans in the interior with trade partners throughout the Indian Ocean. From c. 1200 to 1500 CE, the town of Kilwa
Kilwa Kisiwani
Kilwa Kisiwani is a community on an island off the coast of East Africa, in present day Tanzania.- History :A document written around AD 1200 called al-Maqama al Kilwiyya discovered in Oman, gives details of a mission to reconvert Kilwa to Ibadism, as it had recently been effected by the Ghurabiyya...
, on Tanzania's southern coast, was perhaps the wealthiest and most powerful of these towns, presiding over what some scholars consider the "golden age" of Swahili civilization. In the early 14th century, Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta
Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta , or simply Ibn Battuta, also known as Shams ad–Din , was a Muslim Moroccan Berber explorer, known for his extensive travels published in the Rihla...
, a Berber traveller from North Africa, visited Kilwa and proclaimed it one of the best cities in the world. Islam was practised on the Swahili coast as early as the eighth or ninth century CE.
In 1498, Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
explorer Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...
became the first known European to reach the East African coast; he stayed for 32 days. In 1505 the Portuguese captured the island of Zanzibar. Portuguese control lasted until the early 18th century, when Arabs from Oman
Oman
Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...
established a foothold in the region. Assisted by Omani Arabs, the indigenous coastal dwellers succeeded in driving the Portuguese from the area north of the Ruvuma River
Ruvuma River
Ruvuma River, formerly also known as the Rovuma River, is a river in East Africa, forming during the greater part of its course the border between Tanzania and Mozambique . It is long, with a drainage basin in size...
by the early 18th century. Claiming the coastal strip, Omani Sultan Seyyid Said moved his capital to Zanzibar City
Zanzibar City
Zanzibar City is the capital and largest city of Zanzibar, in Tanzania. It is located on the west coast of Unguja, the main island of the Zanzibar Archipelago, roughly opposite to Dar es Salaam across the Zanzibar Channel...
in 1840. He focused on the island and developed trade routes that stretched as far as Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake. It is estimated to be the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, and the second deepest, after Lake Baikal in Siberia; it is also the world's longest freshwater lake...
and Central Africa
Central Africa
Central Africa is a core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda....
. During this time, Zanzibar became the centre for the Arab slave trade
Arab slave trade
The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa...
. Due to the Arab and Persian domination at this later time, many Europeans misconstrued the nature of Swahili civilization as a product of Arab colonization. However, this misunderstanding has begun to dissipate over the past 40 years as Swahili civilization is becoming recognized as principally African in origin.
Tanganyika (1815–1890)
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 AfricaGerman East Africa
German East Africa was a German colony in East Africa, which included what are now :Burundi, :Rwanda and Tanganyika . Its area was , nearly three times the size of Germany today....
was transferred to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
as a mandate by the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
in 1920. What is referred to here, therefore, is the history of the region that was to become Tanzania. A part of the Great Lakes region, namely the western shore of Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. The lake was named for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, by John Hanning Speke, the first European to discover this lake....
consisted of many small kingdoms, most notably Karagwe
Karagwe
Karagwe is one of the 6 districts of the Kagera Region of Tanzania. It is bordered to the North by Uganda, to the East by the Bukoba Rural District, to the Southeast by the Muleba District, to the South by the Ngara District and to the West by Rwanda, which is divided by the River Kagera.According...
and Buzinza, which were dominated by their more powerful neighbors Rwanda
Rwanda
Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
, Burundi
Burundi
Burundi , officially the Republic of Burundi , is a landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Its capital is Bujumbura...
, and Buganda
Buganda
Buganda is a subnational kingdom within Uganda. The kingdom of the Ganda people, Buganda is the largest of the traditional kingdoms in present-day Uganda, comprising all of Uganda's Central Region, including the Ugandan capital Kampala, with the exception of the disputed eastern Kayunga District...
.
European exploration of the interior began in the mid-19th century. In 1848 the German missionary Johannes Rebmann
Johannes Rebmann
Johannes Rebmann was a German missionary and explorer credited with feats including being the first European, along with his colleague Johann Ludwig Krapf, to enter Africa from the Indian Ocean coast. In addition, he was the first European to find Kilimanjaro...
became the first European to see Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro
Kilimanjaro, with its three volcanic cones, Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira, is a dormant volcano in Kilimanjaro National Park, Tanzania and the highest mountain in Africa at above sea level .-Geology:...
. British explorers Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...
and John Speke crossed the interior to Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake. It is estimated to be the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, and the second deepest, after Lake Baikal in Siberia; it is also the world's longest freshwater lake...
in June 1857. In January 1866 the Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr...
, who crusaded against the slave trade, went to Zanzibar, from where he set out to seek the source of the Nile, and established his last mission at Ujiji
Ujiji
Ujiji is the oldest town in western Tanzania, located about 6 miles south of Kigoma. In 1900, the population was estimated at 10,000 and in 1967 about 4,100. Part of the Kigoma/Ujiji urban area, the regional population was about 50,000 in 1978....
on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. After having lost contact with the outside world for years, he was "found" there on November 10, 1871. Henry Morton Stanley
Henry Morton Stanley
Sir Henry Morton Stanley, GCB, born John Rowlands , was a Welsh journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. Upon finding Livingstone, Stanley allegedly uttered the now-famous greeting, "Dr...
, who had been sent in a publicity stunt to find him by the New York Herald newspaper, greeted him with the now famous words "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" 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
Kigoma
Kigoma is a town and lake port in western Tanzania, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika and close to the border with Burundi. It serves as the capital for the surrounding Kigoma Region and has a population of 135,234 and an elevation of 775 m.The historic trading town of Ujiji is 6 km...
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
Congo Free State
The Congo Free State was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Its origins lay in Leopold's attracting scientific, and humanitarian backing for a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine...
. German colonial interests were first advanced in 1884. Karl Peters
Karl Peters
Karl Peters , was a German colonial ruler, explorer, politician and author, the prime mover behind the foundation of the German colony of East Africa...
, who formed the Society for German Colonization
Society for German Colonization
The Society for German Colonization was founded on March 28, 1884, by Dr. Karl Peters. The goal of the Gesellschaft für Deutsche Kolonisation was to acquire German colonial territories in overseas countries.In the autumn of 1884 Dr. Peters proceeded, together with Count Joachim von Pfeil und Klein...
, concluded a series of treaties by which tribal chiefs in the interior accepted German "protection." Prince Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
's government backed Peters in the subsequent establishment of the German East Africa Company
German East Africa Company
The German East Africa Company was an organization established at the start of the German colonization of East Africa. This company, in short, was responsible for the activities in the new colony such as setting up leadership, future explorations, and the development of the region.In 1888, the...
.
At the Berlin Conference
Berlin Conference
The Berlin Conference of 1884–85 regulated European colonization and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period, and coincided with Germany's sudden emergence as an imperial power...
of 1885, the fact that Kigoma had been established and supplied from Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
and Bagamoyo
Bagamoyo
The town of Bagamoyo, Tanzania, was founded at the end of the 18th century. It was the original capital of German East Africa and was one of the most important trading ports along the East African coast...
led to the inclusion of East Africa
East Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
into the territory of the Conventional Basin of the Congo, to Belgium's advantage. At the table in Berlin, contrary to widespread perception, Africa was not partitioned; rather, rules were established among 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
Congo River
The Congo River is a river in Africa, and is the deepest river in the world, with measured depths in excess of . It is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, though it has only one-fifth the volume of the world's largest river, the Amazon...
, the British and Germans focused on Eastern Africa and in 1886 partitioned continental East Africa between themselves; the Sultanate of Zanzibar, now reduced to the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, remained independent, for the moment. The Congo Free State
Congo Free State
The Congo Free State was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Its origins lay in Leopold's attracting scientific, and humanitarian backing for a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine...
was eventually to give up its claim on Kigoma
Kigoma
Kigoma is a town and lake port in western Tanzania, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika and close to the border with Burundi. It serves as the capital for the surrounding Kigoma Region and has a population of 135,234 and an elevation of 775 m.The historic trading town of Ujiji is 6 km...
(its oldest station in Central Africa) and on any territory to the east of Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake. It is estimated to be the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, and the second deepest, after Lake Baikal in Siberia; it is also the world's longest freshwater lake...
, to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
In 1886 and 1890, Anglo-German agreements were negotiated that delineated the British and German spheres of influence in the interior of East Africa and along the coastal strip previously claimed by the Sultan of Zanzibar. In 1891, the German government took over direct administration of the territory from the German East Africa Company and appointed a governor with headquarters at Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam , formerly Mzizima, is the largest city in Tanzania. It is also the country's richest city and a regionally important economic centre. Dar es Salaam is actually an administrative province within Tanzania, and consists of three local government areas or administrative districts: ...
.
German East Africa and the Maji Maji Resistance
All resistance to the GermansGermans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
in the interior ceased and they could now set out to organize German East Africa
German East Africa
German East Africa was a German colony in East Africa, which included what are now :Burundi, :Rwanda and Tanganyika . Its area was , nearly three times the size of Germany today....
. They continued brutally to exercise their authority with disregard and contempt for existing local structures and traditions. While the German colonial administration brought cash crops, railroads, and roads to Tanganyika
Tanganyika
Tanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...
, European rule provoked African resistance. Between 1891 and 1894, the Hehe
Hehe
The Hehe are an ethnic and linguistic group based in Iringa Region in south-central Tanzania, speaking the Bantu Hehe language. In 1994, the Hehe population was estimated to number 750,000.-History:...
— led by Chief Mkwawa
Chief Mkwawa
Paramount Chief Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga , more commonly known as Chief Mkwawa, was a Hehe tribal leader in German East Africa who opposed the German colonisation. The name "Mkwawa" is derived from Mukwava, itself a shortened form of Mukwavinyika, meaning "conqueror of many lands"...
— resisted German expansion, but were eventually defeated. After a period of guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
, Mkwawa was cornered and committed suicide in 1898.
Widespread discontent re-emerged, and in 1902 a movement against forced labour for a cotton scheme rejected by the local population started along the Rufiji River
Rufiji River
The Rufiji River lies entirely within the African nation of Tanzania. The river is formed by the convergence of the Kilombero and Luwegu rivers. It is approximately 600 km long, with its source in southwestern Tanzania and its mouth on the Indian Ocean at a point between Mafia Island called Mafia...
. The tension reached a breaking point in July 1905 when the Matumbi
Matumbi
The Matumbi are an ethnic and linguistic group based in Lindi Region in southern Tanzania, on the banks of the Ruvuma River. In 1978 the Matumbi population was estimated to number 72,000 ....
of Nandete led by Kinjikitile Ngwale revolted against the local administrators (akida
Akida
The Akida were administrators of groups of villages in Tanganyika under German East African rule. They were part of a repressive system against which the local population later rebelled.-References:*...
) and suddenly the revolt grew wider from Dar Es Salaam
Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam , formerly Mzizima, is the largest city in Tanzania. It is also the country's richest city and a regionally important economic centre. Dar es Salaam is actually an administrative province within Tanzania, and consists of three local government areas or administrative districts: ...
to the Uluguru Mountains, the Kilombero
Kilombero
Kilombero is the name of a river and a district in Morogoro Region, south-western Tanzania.The district is situated in a vast floodplain, between the Kilombero river in the south-east and the Udzungwa-Mountains in the north-west...
Valley, the Mahenge
Mahenge
Mahenge is a limestone plateau area in the Ulanga District, Morogoro Region, Tanzania, Africa. There is a town there of the same name. It is about south east of Singida, in the miombo woodland bio-region....
and Makonde
Makonde
The Makonde are an ethnic group in southeast Tanzania and northern Mozambique. The Makonde developed their culture on the Mueda Plateau in Mozambique. At present they live throughout Tanzania and Mozambique and have a small presence in Kenya...
Plateaux, the Ruvuma in the southernmost part and Kilwa, Songea
Songea
Songea is the capital of the Ruvuma Region in southeastern Tanzania. It is located along the A19 road. The city has a population of approximately 130,000, and is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Songea. Between 1905 and 1907 the city was a centre of African resistance during the Maji...
, Masasi
Masasi
Masasi is one of the 5 districts of the Mtwara Region of Tanzania. It is bordered to the North by the Lindi Region, to the East by the Newala District, to the South by Mozambique and to the West by the Ruvuma Region....
, and from Kilosa
Kilosa
Kilosa is one of the 6 districts of the Morogoro Region of Tanzania. It is bordered to the North by the Tanga Region, to the East by the Mvomero District, to the South by the Kilombero District and to the West and Southwest by the Iringa Region....
to Iringa
Iringa
Iringa is a city in Tanzania with a population of 112,900 . It is situated at a latitude of 7.77°S and longitude of 35.69°E. The name is derived from the Hehe word lilinga, meaning fort....
down to the eastern shores of Lake Nyasa. The resistance culminated in the Maji Maji Resistance
Maji Maji Rebellion
The Maji Maji Rebellion, sometimes called the Maji Maji War, was a violent African resistance to colonial rule in the German colony of Tanganyika, an uprising by several African indigenous communities in German East Africa against the German rule in response to a German policy designed to force...
of 1905–1907. The resistance, which temporarily united a number of southern tribes ended only after an estimated 120,000 Africans had died from fighting or starvation. Research has shown that traditional hostilities played a large part in the resistance.
Germans had occupied the area since 1897 and totally altered many aspects of everyday life. They were actively supported by the missionaries who tried to destroy all signs of indigenous beliefs
African Traditional Religion
The traditional religions indigenous to Africa have, for most of their existence, been orally rather than scripturally transmitted. They are generally associated with animism. Most have ethno-based creations stories...
, notably by razing the 'mahoka' huts where the local population worshiped 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
Gustav Adolf von Götzen
Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen was a German explorer and Governor of German East Africa. He was the second European to set foot in Rwanda, after Dr Oscar Baumann, and later presided over the bloody quashing of the Maji Maji Rebellion in what is now Tanzania.- Early life :Götzen studied law at the...
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. Known as the Maji Maji war with the main brunt borne by the Ngoni people
Ngoni people
The Ngoni people are an ethnic group living in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, in east-central Africa. The Ngoni trace their origins to the Zulu people of kwaZulu-Natal in South Africa...
, this was a merciless rebellion and by far the bloodiest in Tanganyika
Tanganyika
Tanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...
.
War with Germany in East Africa
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, an invasion attempt by the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
was thwarted by German General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck at the Battle of Tanga
Battle of Tanga
The Battle of Tanga, sometimes also known as the Battle of the Bees, was the unsuccessful attack by the British Indian Expeditionary Force “B” under Major General A.E. Aitken to capture German East Africa during World War I in concert with the invasion Force “C” near Longido on the slopes of...
, who then mounted a drawn out guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
campaign against the British.
At the outbreak of the First World War the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
authorities regarded the position of their premier Colony with considerable equanimity although it was inevitably cut off from outside communication. It had been organized against any attack that could be made without those extensive preparations. 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. However, British rule had begun with the occupation of the island of Mafia
Mafia Island
Mafia Island is part of the Tanzanian Spice Islands, together with Unguja and Pemba. As one of the six districts of the Pwani Region, Mafia Island is governed from the mainland, not from the semi-autonomous region of Zanzibar, of which it has never been considered to be a part.According to the...
by the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
in 1914.
The forces at the disposal of the German Command may never be accurately known. Lieutenant-General Jan Smuts
Jan Smuts
Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM, CH, ED, KC, FRS, PC was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various cabinet posts, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948...
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 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 Jacob van Deventer placed 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
Angus Buchanan
Angus Buchanan, VC, MC was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.-Early life:...
's book on the war, writes, "At his strongest von Lettow
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was a general in the Imperial German Army and the commander of the German East Africa campaign. For four years, with a force that never exceeded about 14,000 , he held in check a much larger force of 300,000 British, Belgian, and Portuguese troops...
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.
Cut-off from Germany by the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
Von Lettow made a virtue of necessity and conducted a masterly guerilla campaign, living off the land and moving swiftly to repeatedly surprise the British. The British, who deployed large numbers of Indian Army
Indian Army
The Indian Army is the land based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. With about 1,100,000 soldiers in active service and about 1,150,000 reserve troops, the Indian Army is the world's largest standing volunteer army...
troops under Smuts, faced difficult logistic problems supplying their pursuing army deep in the interior, which they attempted to overcome by the formation of a large Carrier Corps
Carrier Corps
The Carrier Corps was a military organisation created in Kenya in World War I to provide military labour to support the British campaign against the German Military forces in East Africa, commanded by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck....
of native porters.
Another point bearing on the war and duly emphasized by General Smuts in his lecture before the Royal Geographic Society (January 1918), was the extraordinary strength of the German frontier. The coastline 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
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo was the formal title of present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo between King Leopold II's formal relinquishment of his personal control over the state to Belgium on 15 November 1908, and Congolese independence on 30 June 1960.-Congo Free State, 1884–1908:Until the latter...
had, in the first instance, to be moved through Uganda. On the south the Ruvuma River
Ruvuma River
Ruvuma River, formerly also known as the Rovuma River, is a river in East Africa, forming during the greater part of its course the border between Tanzania and Mozambique . It is long, with a drainage basin in size...
was only fordable on its upper reaches. And the northern frontier was the most difficult of all. Only one practicable pass about five miles (8 km) wide offered between the Pare Mountains
Pare Mountains
The Pare Mountains are a mountain range in north eastern Tanzania, north west of the Usambara Mountains. There are two mountain ranges - North and South Pare ranges, which rise to 2,463 m at Shengena Peak. They form part of the Eastern Arc of mountains. The Pare people live in the area.The Pare...
and Kilimanjaro, and here the German forces, amid swamps and forests, had been digging themselves in for eighteen months.
The Honorable H. Burton, speaking in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in August 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 December 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.
A skillful and remarkably successful guerrilla campaign waged by the German commander Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was a general in the Imperial German Army and the commander of the German East Africa campaign. For four years, with a force that never exceeded about 14,000 , he held in check a much larger force of 300,000 British, Belgian, and Portuguese troops...
kept the war in Tanganyika going for the entire length of the First World War. A scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
policy and the requisition of buildings meant a complete collapse of the Government's education system, though some mission
Mission (Christian)
Christian missionary activities often involve sending individuals and groups , to foreign countries and to places in their own homeland. This has frequently involved not only evangelization , but also humanitarian work, especially among the poor and disadvantaged...
schools managed to retain a semblance of instruction. Unlike the Belgian, British, French and Portuguese colonial masters in central Africa, Germany had developed an educational program for her Africans that involved elementary, secondary and vocational schools. "Instructor qualifications, curricula, textbooks, teaching materials, all met standards unmatched anywhere in tropical Africa." In 1924, ten years after the beginning of the First World War and six years into British rule, the visiting American Phelps-Stokes Commission reported: In regards to schools, the Germans have accomplished marvels. Some time must elapse before education attains the standard it had reached under the Germans. But by 1920, the Education Department consisted of 1 officer and 2 clerks with a budget equal to 1% of the country's revenue — less than the amount appropriated for the maintenance of Government House.
British East Africa
The mandate to administer the former German colony was conferred on the United Kingdom under the terms of the Supreme Council of the League of NationsLeague of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
. With the concurrence of the Supreme Council, the United Kingdom transferred the provinces of Ruanda-Urundi
Ruanda-Urundi
Ruanda-Urundi was a Belgian suzerainty from 1916 to 1924, a League of Nations Class B Mandate from 1924 to 1945 and then a United Nations trust territory until 1962, when it became the independent states of Rwanda and Burundi.- Overview :...
, in the northwest, to Belgium. These provinces contained three-sevenths of the population and more than half the cattle of the colony. The boundaries of the East Indies Station
East Indies Station
The East Indies Station was a formation of the British Royal Navy from 1865 to 1941.From 1831 to 1865 the East Indies and the China Station were a single command known as the East Indies and China Station...
were enlarged in 1919 to include Zanzibar
Zanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
and what was the littoral of German East Africa
German East Africa
German East Africa was a German colony in East Africa, which included what are now :Burundi, :Rwanda and Tanganyika . Its area was , nearly three times the size of Germany today....
. Dar-es-Salaam remained the seat of Government of the colony and the first Administrator was Sir Horace Archer Byatt CMG
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
. He embarked it on its course as an African country, improved its health and agriculture and made slavery illegal. He also did much for its economy. In Dar-es-Salaam you can see the house he rebuilt – now lived in by the President
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...
.
The native troops went back quietly to their villages and the few Germans that remained were reported as settling down under the new administration.
1920s: border resolution
In 1920, by the Tanganyika Order in Council, 1920, the Office of Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Territory was constituted. The colony was renamed Tanganyika TerritoryTanganyika
Tanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...
in 1920. In 1921 the Belgians
Belgians
Belgians are people originating from the Kingdom of Belgium, a federal state in Western Europe.-Etymology:Belgians are a relatively "new" people...
transferred the Kigoma district, which they had administered since the occupation, to British administration. The United Kingdom and Belgium signed an agreement regarding the border between Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi
Ruanda-Urundi
Ruanda-Urundi was a Belgian suzerainty from 1916 to 1924, a League of Nations Class B Mandate from 1924 to 1945 and then a United Nations trust territory until 1962, when it became the independent states of Rwanda and Burundi.- Overview :...
in 1924. The administration of the Territory continued to be carried out under the terms of the mandate until its transfer to the Trusteeship System under the Charter of the United Nations by the Trusteeship Agreement of December 13, 1946.
1926: Africanisation policy
British policy was to rule indirectly through African leaders. In 1926, a Legislative CouncilLegislative Council
A Legislative Council is the name given to the legislatures, or one of the chambers of the legislature of many nations and colonies.A Member of the Legislative Council is commonly referred to as an MLC.- Unicameral legislatures :...
was established, which was to advise the governor. 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
Tanganyika African Association
The Tanganyika African Association was a Tanganyikan political association, formed in 1929. It was founded by civil servants including Ali Saidi, members of an earlier association called the Tanganyika Territory African Civil Service association. It was transformed into the Tanganyika African...
which would constitute the core of the nascent nationalist movement. In 1945 the first Africans were effectively appointed to the Governor's Legislative Council.
Late 1920s: railway development
In 1928 the railway line Tabora-Mwanga was opened to traffic, the line from MoshiMoshi
Moshi is a Tanzanian town with a population of 144,739 in Kilimanjaro Region. The town is situated on the lower slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, a volcanic mountain that is the highest mountain in Africa....
to Arusha
Arusha
Arusha is a city in northern Tanzania. It is the capital of the Arusha Region, which claims a population of 1,288,088, including 281,608 for the Arusha District . Arusha is surrounded by some of Africa's most famous landscapes and national parks...
in 1929. In 1919 the population was estimated at 3,500,000.
1931 census
In 1931 a census established the population of TanganyikaTanganyika
Tanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...
at 5,022,640 natives, in addition to 32,398 Asians and 8,228 Europeans.
Health and education initiatives
Under British rule, efforts were undertaken to fight the Tsetse flyTsetse fly
Tsetse , sometimes spelled tzetze and also known as tik-tik flies, are large biting flies that inhabit much of mid-continental Africa between the Sahara and the Kalahari deserts. They live by feeding on the blood of vertebrate animals and are the primary biological vectors of trypanosomes, which...
(a carrier of sleeping sickness), and to fight malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
and bilharziasis; more hospitals were built. In 1926, the Colonial administration provided subsidies to schools run by missionaries, and at the same time established its authority to exercise supervision and to establish guidelines. Yet in 1935, the education budget for the entire country of Tanganyika amounted to only (US) $290,000, although it is unclear how much this represented at the time in terms of purchasing power parity
Purchasing power parity
In economics, purchasing power parity is a condition between countries where an amount of money has the same purchasing power in different countries. The prices of the goods between the countries would only reflect the exchange rates...
.
In 1933, Sir Horace Hector Hearne was appointed as Puisne Judge, Tanganyika Territory, and acted as Chief Justice of Tanganyika in 1935 and 1936. He held the post until 1936/1937 when he went on to be a similar job in Ceylon.
1943: 100000 acres (405 km²) Tanganyika wheat scheme
The British Government decided to develop wheat growing to help feed a war-ravaged and severely rationed Britain and eventually Europe at the hoped-for Allied victory at the end of the Second World War. An American farmer in Tanganyika, Freddie SmithFreddie Smith
Freddie Smith is an American television actor. He is known for his portrayal as Marco Salazar in the new franchise of 90210 aired on The CW...
, was in charge, and David Gordon Hines
David Gordon Hines
David Gordon Hines had national responsibility for the development of co-operatives in Tanganyika and later in Uganda, improving the living standards of farmers in their transition from subsistence farming to cash crops...
was the accountant responsible for the finances. The scheme had 50000 acres (202 km²) on the Ardai plains just outside Arusha
Arusha
Arusha is a city in northern Tanzania. It is the capital of the Arusha Region, which claims a population of 1,288,088, including 281,608 for the Arusha District . Arusha is surrounded by some of Africa's most famous landscapes and national parks...
; 25000 acres (101 km²) on Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro
Kilimanjaro, with its three volcanic cones, Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira, is a dormant volcano in Kilimanjaro National Park, Tanzania and the highest mountain in Africa at above sea level .-Geology:...
; and 25000 acres (101 km²) towards Ngorongoro to the west. All the machinery was lend/lease from the USA, including 30 tractors, 30 ploughs, and 30 harrows. There were western agricultural and engineering managers. Most of the workers were Italian prisoners of war from Somalia and Ethiopia: excellent, skilled engineers and mechanics. The Ardai plains were too arid to be successful, but there were good crops in the Kilimanjaro and Ngorongoro areas.
1940s and 1950s: farming co-operatives
After the 2nd World War, British colonial policy in the 1940s and 1950s encouraged the development of farming co-operatives to partially convert subsistence farmers to cash husbandry. Before co-operatives, the farmers sold their produce to Indian traders at poor prices. The responsible colonial officer David Gordon HinesDavid Gordon Hines
David Gordon Hines had national responsibility for the development of co-operatives in Tanganyika and later in Uganda, improving the living standards of farmers in their transition from subsistence farming to cash crops...
from 1947 to 1959 achieved the vast expansion of the co-operatives: by the early 1950s, there were over 400 co-operatives nationally. Co-operative offices throughout the country showed the members how to elect committees, keep their books, and market produce. Co-operatives formed "unions" for their areas and developed cotton gin
Cotton gin
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, a job formerly performed painstakingly by hand...
eries, coffee factories, and tobacco dryers. A major success for Tanzania was the Moshi
Moshi
Moshi is a Tanzanian town with a population of 144,739 in Kilimanjaro Region. The town is situated on the lower slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, a volcanic mountain that is the highest mountain in Africa....
coffee auctions that attracted international buyers after the annual Nairobi auctions.
No Mau Mau violence
In the early 1950s the Mau Mau movement of violent resistance to British rule was active in neighbouring Kenya. The Tanganyika government expected the violence to spread to Tanganyika, especially in the north where the Wa-Chagga live — but violence did not spread there from Kenya.1940s - 1950s transition to self government
After World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Tanganyika became a UN territory under British control. Subsequent years witnessed Tanganyika moving gradually toward self-government and independence. In 1954, Julius Nyerere
Julius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985....
, the future leader of Tanzania, who was then a school teacher and one of only two Tanganyikans educated abroad at the university level, organized a political party—the Tanganyika African National Union
Tanganyika African National Union
The Tanganyika African National Union was the principal political party in the struggle for sovereignty in the East African state of Tanganyika . The party was formed from the Tanganyika African Association by Julius Nyerere in July 1954 when he was teaching at St. Francis' College...
(TANU).
Zanzibar
ZanzibarZanzibar
Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...
today refers to the island of that name, also known as Unguja, and the neighboring island of Pemba. Both islands fell under Portuguese domination in the 16th and early 17th centuries but were retaken by Omani Arabs in the early 18th century. The height of Arab rule came during the reign of Sultan Seyyid Said, who moved his capital from Muscat
Muscat, Oman
Muscat is the capital of Oman. It is also the seat of government and largest city in the Governorate of Muscat. As of 2008, the population of the Muscat metropolitan area was 1,090,797. The metropolitan area spans approximately and includes six provinces called wilayats...
to Zanzibar, established a ruling Arab elite, and encouraged the development of clove
Clove
Cloves are the aromatic dried flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae. Cloves are native to the Maluku islands in Indonesia and used as a spice in cuisines all over the world...
plantations, using the island's slave labor. Zanzibar and Pemba were world-famous for their trade in spices and became known as the Spice Islands
Zanzibar Archipelago
The Zanzibar Archipelago consists of several islands lying off the coast of East Africa in the Indian Ocean. There are two main islands, plus a host of smaller islets that surround them.-Main islands:...
; in the early 20th century, they produced approximately 90% of the world's supply of cloves. Zanzibar was also a major transit point in the East African and Indian Ocean slave trade. (See Arab slave trade
Arab slave trade
The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa...
.) Zanzibar attracted ships from as far away as the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, which established a consulate in 1833. The United Kingdom's early interest in Zanzibar was motivated by both commerce and the determination to end the slave trade. In 1822, the British signed the first of a series of treaties with Sultan Said to curb this trade, but not until 1876 was the sale of slaves finally prohibited. The Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty
Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty
The Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty of 1 July 1890 was an agreement between the United Kingdom and the German Empire concerning mainly territorial interests in Africa.-Terms:...
of 1890 made Zanzibar and Pemba a British protectorate
Protectorate
In history, the term protectorate has two different meanings. In its earliest inception, which has been adopted by modern international law, it is an autonomous territory that is protected diplomatically or militarily against third parties by a stronger state or entity...
, and the Caprivi Strip
Caprivi Strip
Caprivi, sometimes called the Caprivi Strip , Caprivi Panhandle or the Okavango Strip and formally known as Itenge, is a narrow protrusion of Namibia eastwards about , between Botswana to the south, Angola and Zambia to the north, and Okavango Region to the west. Caprivi is bordered by the...
in Namibia
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...
became a German protectorate. British rule through a Sultan remained largely unchanged from the late 19th century until 1957, when elections were held for a largely advisory Legislative Council.
Independence and Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar
In 1954, Julius NyerereJulius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985....
, a school teacher who was then one of only two Tanganyikans educated to university level, organized a political party—the Tanganyika African National Union
Tanganyika African National Union
The Tanganyika African National Union was the principal political party in the struggle for sovereignty in the East African state of Tanganyika . The party was formed from the Tanganyika African Association by Julius Nyerere in July 1954 when he was teaching at St. Francis' College...
(TANU). On December 9, 1961, Tanganika became an autonomous Commonwealth realm
Commonwealth Realm
A Commonwealth realm is a sovereign state within the Commonwealth of Nations that has Elizabeth II as its monarch and head of state. The sixteen current realms have a combined land area of 18.8 million km² , and a population of 134 million, of which all, except about two million, live in the six...
, and Nyerere became Prime Minister, under a new constitution. On December 9, 1962, a republican constitution was implemented with Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere as Tanganyika's first president.
Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom on December 19, 1963, as a constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a constitution, whether it be a written, uncodified or blended constitution...
under the Sultan. On January 12, 1964, the African majority revolted against the sultan
Sultan
Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...
and a new government was formed with the ASP leader, Abeid Karume, as President of Zanzibar and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council.
In the first few days, between 5,000 and 15,000 Arabs and Asians were murdered, women were raped and their homes burned. Within a few weeks, a fifth of the population had died or fled.
It was at this time that the Tanganyika army revolted and Britain was asked by Julius Nyerere
Julius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985....
to send in troops. Royal Marines Commandos were sent by air from England via Nairobi and 40 Commando came ashore from the aircraft carrier HMS Bulwark. Several months were spent with Commandos touring the country disarming military outposts. When the successful operation ended, the Royal Marines left to be replaced by Canadian troops.
On April 26, 1964, Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. The country was renamed the United Republic of Tanzania on October 29 of that year. The name Tanzania is a portmanteau of Tanganyika and Zanzibar and previously had no significance. Under the terms of this union, the Zanzibar Government retains considerable local autonomy.
Recent history
To form a sole ruling party in both parts of the union, Nyerere merged TANUTanu
Tanu may refer to:*Tanu, a Samoan prince who was allied with American and British forces during the Second Samoan Civil War*Tanu , an important historical village of the Haida people on the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, Canada...
with the Zanzibar ruling party, the Afro-Shirazi Party
Afro-Shirazi Party
The Afro-Shirazi Party was the union between the mostly Shiraz Party and the mostly African Afro Party in the island of Zanzibar. The formation of ASP led to the ouster of the Arabs from power with the Zanzibar Revolution in 1964. The party joined with the Tanganyika African National Union to...
(ASP) of Zanzibar to form the CCM
Chama Cha Mapinduzi
The Chama cha Mapinduzi is the ruling political party of Tanzania.- History :The party was created February 5, 1977, under the leadership of Julius Nyerere as the merger of the Tanganyika African National Union , the then ruling party in Tanganyika, and the Afro-Shirazi Party , the then ruling...
(Chama cha Mapinduzi-CCM Revolutionary Party), on February 5, 1977. The merger was reinforced by principles enunciated in the 1982 union constitution and reaffirmed in the constitution of 1984.
Nyerere believed multiple political parties, in a nation with hundreds of ethnic groups, were a threat to national unity and therefore sought ways to ensure a one party system. To further his aim for national unity Nyerere established Kiswahili as the national language.
Nyerere used the Preventive Detention Act first to suppress trade unions and then to lock up any opponents when he wanted. People disappeared and total numbers were never published, but victims are estimated at thousands. International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International campaigned against repression in Tanzania.
Nyerere introduced repressive African socialism
African socialism
African socialism is a belief in sharing economic resources in a "traditional" African way, as distinct from classical socialism. Many African politicians of the 1950s and 1960s professed their support for African socialism, although definitions and interpretations of this term varied...
, or Ujamaa
Ujamaa
Ujamaa was the concept that formed the basis of Julius Nyerere's social and economic development policies in Tanzania just after it gained independence from Britain in 1961...
. The government burned villages and forced people to relocate onto collective farms, which greatly disrupted agricultural efficiency and output. Tanzania turned from a nation of sustenance farmers into a nation of starving
Starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...
collective farmers.
Scope of the state expanded rapidly into virtually every sector. In 1967, nationalizations transformed the government into the largest employer in the country. It was involved from everything from retailing to import-export trade and even baking. This created an environment ripe for corruption.
Cumbersome bureaucratic procedures multiplied and excessive tax rates set by officials further damaged the economy. Enormous amounts of public funds were misappropriated and put to unproductive use. Purchasing power declined at an unprecedented rate and even essential commodities became unavailable. A system of permits (vibali) allowed officials to collect huge bribes in exchange for the vibali.
A foundation for systemic corruption
Systemic corruption
Systemic corruption is corruption which is primarily due to a weaknesses of an organisation or process.It can be contrasted with individual officials or agents who act corruptly within the system....
had been laid. Officials became widely known as Wabenzi
Wabenzi
Wabenzi is an Anglicization of the pejorative Bantu colloquialism WaBenzi, originally used in Kenya to refer to members of the new ruling class that superseded the colonial regime, that has come to refer to the new ruling class in any post-colonial African country...
("people of the Benz").
Nyerere's Tanzania had a close relationship with the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. In 1979 Tanzania declared war on Uganda
Uganda-Tanzania War
The Uganda–Tanzania War was fought between Uganda and Tanzania in 1978–1979, and led to the overthrow of Idi Amin's regime...
after the Soviet-backed Uganda invaded and tried to annex the northern Tanzanian province of Kagera
Kagera Region
Kagera Region is located in the northwestern corner of Tanzania. Bukoba, Kagera Region's capital, is a fast growing town situated on the shore of Lake Victoria. Bukoba lies only 1 degree south of the Equator and is Tanzania's second largest port on the lake. The region neighbors Uganda, Rwanda and...
. Tanzania not only expelled Ugandan forces, but, enlisting the country's population of Ugandan exiles, also invaded Uganda itself. On April 11, 1979, Idi Amin
Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada was a military leader and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military...
was forced to quit the capital, Kampala, ending the Uganda-Tanzania War. The Tanzanian army took the city with the help of the Ugandan and Rwandan guerrillas. Amin fled into exile. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/597725.stm
By the mid-1979 corruption reached epidemic proportions as the economy collapsed.
Socialism left the country as one of the poorest and the least developed. Dependency on foreign aid had become one the world's highest.
In October 1985 Nyerere handed over power to Ali Hassan Mwinyi
Ali Hassan Mwinyi
Ali Hassan Mwinyi is a Tanzanian politician. He was the second President of the United Republic of Tanzania from 1985 to 1995. Previous posts include Interior Minister and Vice President...
, but retained control of the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi
Chama Cha Mapinduzi
The Chama cha Mapinduzi is the ruling political party of Tanzania.- History :The party was created February 5, 1977, under the leadership of Julius Nyerere as the merger of the Tanganyika African National Union , the then ruling party in Tanganyika, and the Afro-Shirazi Party , the then ruling...
(CCM), as Chairman until 1990, when he handed that responsibility to Mwinyi.
In 1990 a coalition of ethnic and cultural groups of Zanzibar demanded a referendum on independence. They declared that the merger with the mainland Tanzania, based on the now dead ideology of socialism, had transformed Zanzibar from a bustling economic power to a poor, neglected appendage. Their demands were neglected.
However, the ruling party comfortably won the elections amid widespread irregularities and its candidate Benjamin William Mkapa was subsequently sworn in as the new president of Tanzania in the country's ever multi-party election on 23 November 1995. Contested elections in late 2000 led to a massacre in Zanzibar in January 2001, with the government shooting into crowds of protesters, killing 35 and injuring 600. In December 2005, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete was elected the 4th president for a five-year term.
One of the deadly 1998 U.S. embassy bombings occurred in Dar Es Salaam
Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam , formerly Mzizima, is the largest city in Tanzania. It is also the country's richest city and a regionally important economic centre. Dar es Salaam is actually an administrative province within Tanzania, and consists of three local government areas or administrative districts: ...
; the other was in Nairobi
Nairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
. In 2004, the undersea earthquake
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on Sunday, December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake...
on the other side of the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
caused tsunami
Tsunami
A tsunami is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, typically an ocean or a large lake...
s along Tanzania's coastline in which 11 people were killed. An oil tanker
Oil tanker
An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a merchant ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: the crude tanker and the product tanker. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries...
also temporarily ran aground in the Dar Es Salaam
Dar es Salaam
Dar es Salaam , formerly Mzizima, is the largest city in Tanzania. It is also the country's richest city and a regionally important economic centre. Dar es Salaam is actually an administrative province within Tanzania, and consists of three local government areas or administrative districts: ...
harbour, damaging an oil pipeline.
In 2008, a power surge cut off power to Zanzibar, resulting in the 2008 Zanzibar Power blackout
2008 Zanzibar Power blackout
The 2008 Zanzibar Power blackout was an extensive power outage on Zanzibar, Tanzania.During May and June 2008, Zanzibar suffered a period of almost one month without mains electricity due to a grid failure which left the entire island dependent on alternative methods of electricity generation...
.
See also
- History of AfricaHistory of AfricaThe history of Africa begins with the prehistory of Africa and the emergence of Homo sapiens in East Africa, continuing into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states. Agriculture began about 10,000 BCE and metallurgy in about 4000 BCE. The history of early...
- History of ZanzibarHistory of ZanzibarPeople have lived in Zanzibar for 20,000 years; history proper starts when the islands became a base for traders voyaging between Arabia, India, and Africa...
- List of colonial heads of Tanganyika
- List of Governors-General of Tanganyika
- List of Presidents of Tanganyika
- List of Presidents of Tanzania
- List of Presidents of Zanzibar
- List of Prime Ministers of Tanganyika
- List of Prime Ministers of Tanzania
- List of Prime Ministers of Zanzibar
- List of Sultans of Zanzibar
- Politics of TanzaniaPolitics of TanzaniaPolitics of Tanzania takes place in a framework of a unitary presidential democratic republic, whereby the President of Tanzania is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the...
- TanganyikaTanganyikaTanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...
- Timeline of Tanzanian historyTimeline of Tanzanian historyThis timeline of Tanzanian history is a chronological list of major events concerning the citizens of Tanzania, including Zanzibar, the former territory of Tanganyika, and the surrounding areas prior to European colonisation. Human habitation in the region began at least 100,000 years ago...
Further reading
- Miller, Charles. Battle for the Bundu, The First World War in East Africa. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1974. ISBN 0025849