Tanganyika Under German Rule 1905–1912

TANGANYIKA UNDER GERMAN RULE

TANGANYIKA UNDER GERMAN RULE 1905-1912 JOHN ILIFFE Lecturer in History The University College, Dar es Salaam

tit

CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1969

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521053716 © Cambridge University Press 1969 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1969 This digitally printed version 2008 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 69-10196 ISBN 978-0-521-05371-6 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-10052-6 paperback

CONTENTS Preface

page vii

Terminology

ix

Abbreviations

xi

Glossary

xiii

Map of Tanganyika in igi2

xiv

i The argument

i

2 The Maji Maji rebellion

9

3 The political context

30

4 Rechenberg and reconstruction

49

5 The European challenge

82

6 White man's country

n8

7 The collapse of the local compromise

142

8 The age of improvement

166

9 The new dilemma

201

Bibliography

211

Index

225

PREFACE This study is based on my doctoral dissertation submitted to Cambridge University in January 1965. The subject of the dissertation was suggested by Dr Kenneth Ingham, then of Makerere College. I am indebted to Dr Ingham and his successor at Makerere, Dr R. W. Beachey, for their encouragement and assistance. The text of the dissertation was prepared under the supervision of Dr Ronald Robinson, of St John's College, Cambridge, for whose guidance I am most grateful. I would also like to thank my examiners, Dr Eric Stokes and Professor Roland Oliver, who suggested a number of changes which are incorporated in the present text. The differences between the book and the dissertation are quite substantial, especially in the later chapters, and here I owe much to my colleagues at the University College, Dar es Salaam, whose research and writing on related topics provided a comparative framework within which to place my work. In particular, Professor Terence Ranger and Dr John Lonsdale stimulated and informed my interest in African reactions to colonial rule. Responsibility for the conclusions, however, is naturally my own. My original research in East Africa was financed by a scholarship from the Trustees of Leverhulme Research Awards, and was kindly assisted by the authorities of Makerere College and of the University College, Dar es Salaam. Research in the German Democratic Republic was supported by the Governing Body of Peterhouse, Cambridge. The dissertation was written with the help of a research studentship from the British Ministry of Education. To all these bodies I am most deeply indebted. Many institutions and individuals made materials available to me and guided my use of them. I would thank the Librarians of the University College, Dar es Salaam, of Makerere College, the University of Cambridge, the Seeley Historical Library, Cambridge, Rhodes House and Nuffield College, Oxford, the British Museum, the School of Oriental vii

Preface and African Studies in the University of London, and the Selly Oak Colleges' Library, Birmingham; the Curator of the Tanzania National Museum; the Directors of the Tanzania National Archives and the Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Potsdam; the Archivist and Librarian of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, London; the Principal Secretaries to the Treasury and the Ministry of Culture, Dar es Salaam; Dr W. Weidmann and Mrs G. E. Organ, formerly of the Land Office, Dar es Salaam; Dr KarlErnst Ringer; Mrs Lili Cory; Professor P. H. Gulliver; and the officers of the regional administration who assisted my work in many parts of Tanzania. Dr Ralph Austen, Professor Margaret Bates, Dr Helmut Bley, Mr Gilbert Gwassa, Dr Isaria Kimambo, Dr John McCracken, Herr Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, Dr Alison Redmayne, Mr John Saul, Mr Robert Thompson, and Dr Marcia Wright gave me much valuable material and the encouragement which can come only from friends who are working in related fields. I am grateful to the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press for undertaking the publication of this book. Of the many others who offered me encouragement, hospitality, and assistance, I would especially thank Miss Margaret Branney, Dr Bruce Coleman, Mr Maurice Cowling, Mr Hugh Dinwiddy, Mr George Hornsby, Dr David Kimble, Chief Patrick Kunambi, Mr Patrick McAuslan, Mr Edward Mhina, the Rev. Denis Payne, the Rt Rev. John Poole Hughes, Professor Cranford Pratt, Dr Audrey Richards, Professor George Shepperson, and Miss Alison Smith. Finally, I have two special debts. One is to the students of the University College, Dar es Salaam, who as friends and pupils taught me much about Tanzania which I could not have learned in any other way. The second is to my parents, who at frequent intervals suffered the distraction which attends historical research. In gratitude and affection, I dedicate this book to them. J Q H N I L I F F E Dar es Salaam July 1967

viii

TERMINOLOGY Tanganyika no longer exists as a political unit, nor did it so exist during the period with which this book is concerned. The name is used here in a geographical sense to describe that mainland section of modern Tanzania which was once part of German East Africa. The German colony also included Rwanda, Burundi, and an area south of the Ruvuma estuary which is known as the Kionga Triangle and is now part of Mozambique. When statistics are quoted, care has been taken to state whether they refer to the whole of German East Africa or to Tanganyika alone. However, those statistics which refer to Tanganyika include the Kionga Triangle, which was administratively part of Lindi district, but exclude the Bugufi chiefdom, which was administratively part of Burundi and is now in Tanganyika. Since both were remote areas, these slight inaccuracies are of little consequence. German East Africa's currency was the rupee. Fifteen rupees were equal in value to twenty German marks or to one English pound. German weights and measures are used throughout, save that measurements in hectares are converted to acres in a ratio of two hectares to five acres. Bantu prefixes to proper names are generally omitted, so that a member of a tribe, the tribe itself, and its language are all described by the Bantu stem alone (e.g. Hehe, Haya.) The locational prefix is used when describing the area in which a tribe lived (e.g. Uhehe, Buhaya).

IX

ABBREVIATIONS AAKA

Auswartiges Amt, Kolonial-Abteilung

Amt.Anz.

Amtlicher Anzeiger fixr Deutsch-Ostafrika

Aus.Amt Auswartiges Amt BA Bezirksamt BNS Bezirksnebenstelle DKG Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft [records in Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Potsdam] DOAG Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft EAISR East African Institute of Social Research GFM German Foreign Ministry [records in Public Record Office, London] JAH

Journal of African History

KWK LKV MPG PRO Rk

SMP TNA

Kolonial-Wirtschaftliche Komitee Landkommissionsverhandlung Minute Paper, German Public Record Office Reichskanzlei [records in Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Potsdam] Reichskolonialamt [records in Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Potsdam] Reichstag [records in Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Potsdam] Secretariat Minute Paper Tanzania National Archives

TJVR

Tanganyika [Tanzania] Notes and Records

RKA Rt

UMCA

Universities Mission to Central Africa [records in the archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, London] VDOAP Verband Deutsch-Ostafrikanischer Pflanzungen WLVDOA Wirtschaftlicher Landesverband von DeutschOstafrika xi

GLOSSARY An African or Arab administrator of a section of a district. An African soldier in the German army. askari The policy of encouraging the settlement of Kleinsiedlung European small farmers. An Arab or African governor of a town, liwali usually a district headquarters. A small party of moderate conservatives in Reichspartei the Reichstag. Selbstverwaltung A system of self-administration in local affairs. C A people's crop'. A cash crop produced by Volkskultur African farmers as opposed to plantation farming. The Roman Catholic 'Centre' party in the Zentrum Reichstag. A term used by German administrators to zikri describe a radical Islamic movement. akida

xni

\3o°

BRITISH

EAST

A F R. 1 C A

M O Z A M B I O U E

Tanganyika in 1912

CHAPTER I

THE ARGUMENT This book is designed as a contribution to the reappraisal of European colonial rule in Africa which has accompanied African independence. The reappraisal is part of an attempt to establish the reality and meaningfulness of change in the African past, an attempt which is itself one aspect of a new interest in the history of hitherto inarticulate and defeated peoples. Since this trend in historical studies is directed away from a too exclusive concern with the political and administrative history of the west, it may appear paradoxical to claim a place within it for a book which is primarily a study of European administrative techniques in Africa. Few subjects, it might seem, are more exclusively concerned with the actions of a dominant group within a dominant society. The main purpose of the book, however, is to show that even the structure and operation of a colonial administration can be understood only if they are related to the insights which recent study of modern African history has made available. This is not a new purpose. Many recent accounts of European rule in Africa are acutely aware of the context within which it must be seen. This study adds little that is original to the understanding of colonial rule which is available from such recent work. Its justification lies rather in the fact that an established interpretation of the events described here already exists, an interpretation which is coherent and well-documented, but which does not accord with recent findings in related fields. The clarity of the established interpretation highlights the points on which reappraisal must concentrate. In a sense, the history of Tanganyika under German rule between 1905 and 1912 is a test case in which

Tanganyika under German rule the contrast between established accounts and current revisions may be seen clearly. In existing studies of German colonial history, the year 1906 is commonly taken as a major turning-point. In that year, rebellions in South-West Africa and East Africa— Germany's two largest colonies—coincided with a political crisis which centred on criticism of the colonial administration. At the height of the crisis, Bernhard Dernburg was appointed Director of the Colonial Department. A year later the government won a crushing electoral victory after a campaign in which the criticisms of its colonial record were a major issue. Following this victory, it is said, Dernburg began what he later described as his 'reorganisation of German colonial policy'.1 Sweeping away the brutal inefficiency of the past, he initiated a period of 'scientific colonization'.2 To use Professor Brunschwig's terms, Dernburg replaced la gabegie coloniale by la colonisation rationnelle.3

The new policy, it is argued, brought advantage both to Germany and to her colonial subjects, thus fulfilling the dual mandate which was the responsibility of an imperial power. In East Africa, similarly, the years which followed the crisis of 1906 are seen as a period of rationalisation, reform, and progress. 'The year 1906', according to a recent account, ' was a turning-point in the history of German East Africa. In the early years of German rule progress was slow owing to the hostility of native tribes, lack of funds, and faults in administration. But the period 1907-14 was a peaceful era of reform and economic expansion.'4 Thus summarised, the established interpretation of this period in German colonial history centres on four points, some of which are arguments and others merely assumptions. 1 2

3

4

Dernburg to Bethmann Hollweg, 12 May 1910, Rk 1663/138. Mary Evelyn Townsend, The rise andfall of Germanys colonial Empire i884~igi8 (New York, 1930), ch. 9. Henri Brunschwig, Vexpansion allemande outre-mer {du XVe siecle d, nos jours) (Paris, 1957), part 3. W.O.Henderson, * German East Africa 1884-1918', in Vincent Harlow and E. M. Chilver, with Alison Smith (ed.), History of East Africa, 11 (Oxford, 1965), H7-

The argument First, it is argued that the crisis of 1905-7 was fundamentally a moral crisis. African rebellion was a response to administrative evils which were rooted in immorality. As Dr Townsend explains: During the first twenty years of Germany's colonial history... the native had been most cruelly treated and unjustly exploited... Robbed of his lands, his home, his freedom and often wantonly and cruelly of his life by the colonial adventurer, official or trading company, his continuous and fierce revolts were but the tragic witnesses to his wretchedness and helplessness.1

If the rebellions were due to administrative immorality, the political crisis which accompanied them was rooted in moral outrage, incensed at inhumanity and inefficiency. From this follows the second point. The stimulus to administrative change was change of heart. Here there is some conflict among the historians. To Professor Henderson, the change of heart was forced on the administration by public opinion. The authorities c could not ignore the fact that. . . there was a widespread demand for a reform in the colonial administration. The paradoxical result of this election was that (to a great extent) the colonial policy advocated by the opposition was the one subsequently followed by the Government.'2 Professor Brunschwig, by contrast, sees the election as a moral victory for a reformed government, giving it a mandate to adopt more vigorous measures. 'At last', he writes, 'there emerged a colonial policy distinct from foreign or internal policy.'3 Whichever view is taken, the third point follows naturally. In the subsequent reforms, the initiative lay firmly in German hands, and specifically in the hands of Dernburg. For Dernburg had a programme, a programme of enlightened economic imperialism, which he elaborated during the election and which he and his successors subsequently implemented. Employing the latest technology, sweeping away the abuses of earlier years, attracting capital investment, and holding an equal balance between the races, the new ad1 2 3

Townsend, Rise and fall of Germany's colonial empire, p. 273. Henderson in Harlow and Ghilver, op. cit. p. 146. Brunschwig, op. cit. p. 166.

Tanganyika under German rule ministration inaugurated an era of progress and prosperity. Three points in this account require emphasis. First, Dernburg's programme is commonly described in the most general terms. He urged the colonies forward by better organisation, by investment and reform, but it is apparently unnecessary either to discover in what direction they were supposed to move or to show that the programme was internally consistent. Second, Dernburg's programme is taken from election speeches made early in 1907. He remained in office until May 1910. The established interpretation assumes that he never changed his mind, and states that his successors agreed with him. Third, it is taken for granted that a programme conceived by a colonial secretary in Berlin was necessarily the most important force for change acting in the colonies at this date. This leads on to the fourth general point in the established argument. The success of the 'age of reform' is demonstrated by statistics showing economic development and by the absence of rebellion. In a passage which summarises this view, Dr Townsend writes: Nothing, indeed, is more significant of the change for the better in the attitude of Germany's colonial administration toward the native than the fact that there occurred no actual native uprisings during the years 1908-1914. Peace prevailed throughout the oversea empire. And freed from the burden of prosecuting an almost constant and devastating warfare in the colonies, the Colonial Office could direct its energies and its resources toward a constructive rather than a destructive rule.1

It is not the purpose of this book to deny that real changes occurred in German colonial administration and in German East Africa during this period. Indeed, it may be that the scale of change has hitherto been underestimated. Rather, the object is to show that the process and direction of change was quite different from that suggested by established accounts. These accounts are incompatible with the findings of recent work on other aspects of European rule in Africa. At the heart of this new approach lies the question of the initiative for change in modern Africa. It does not deny that the colonial situation was created by the impact of western 1

Townsend, Rise and fall ofGermany*s colonial empire, p. 273.

4

The argument capitalism and technology on Africa. Nor, save in moments of aberration, does the new approach doubt that in many situations European initiative primarily determined the course of events. Its chief concern is rather to demonstrate an interplay between European and African initiatives by showing that Africans were not the passive objects of colonial rule, unable to influence their fate or to respond rationally to new situations. The first stage in such an argument has been to show that nineteenth-century Africa was not necessarily set on a path to destruction through tribal war and slave-raiding —a path from which only European intervention could save it—but that the nineteenth century was a period of rapid, and at times successful, adaptation to the growing pressures of the outside world. This argument is now well developed in West Africa,1 although less convincingly stated for the east.2 It necessitates a reappraisal of the late-nineteenth-century partition of the continent by European powers, which has become the focus of important historical controversy. Although the sequence and relative significance of the various pressures is debatable, it is clear that an explanation of the transition from informal European influence to formal European rule must give considerable weight to the reactions of African societies to their growing economic contact with Europe before the partition, reactions which often threatened the economic and strategic interests of the great powers.3 When it is realised that change was taking place in Africa as well as Europe, the motives of European statesmen can no longer be explained purely in terms of greed or compassion, but must also be seen to include fear. If the partition was in part a European reaction to changes in Africa, it is logical— as the evidence suggests—that save in areas of great economic 1

J. F. A. Ajayi, * West African states at the beginning of the nineteenth century', in J. F. A. Ajayi and Ian Espie (ed.), A thousand years of West African history

2 3

(Ibadan, 1965), pp. 248-61. See the chapters by D. A. Low and Alison Smith in Roland Oliver and Gervase Mathew (ed.), History of East Africa, 1 (Oxford, 1963). Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, 'The partition of Africa', in F. H. Hinsley (ed.), The New Cambridge Modern History, xi (Cambridge, 1962), 593-640.

Tanganyika under German rule attraction the European commitment to Africa in the early years of colonial rule was commonly restricted to the minimum necessary to preserve existing interests. Since colonial administrations were not provided with overwhelming power, a new significance attaches to African response to European invasion. By their different responses, African peoples, although seldom able to preserve their independence, could shape the character of European administration most profoundly. A division of African reactions into negative resistance and prudent collaboration is no longer adequate, and many responses can instead be explained as rational calculations of interest and probable consequence.1 By thus asserting the rationality of initial African reaction to European invasion, historians have provided a startingpoint from which to explain subsequent changes in African response to colonial rule. One fruitful approach has been to isolate the sequence of organisational techniques by which various societies sought to resist, utilise, restrict, or remove European control. Such an analysis is concerned especially with the transition from one technique to another, often as a consequence of new aspirations and organisational possibilities resulting from economic and social change within the relevant society.2 Three implications follow from such an analysis. First, African response to change can no longer be described in the negative terms of resistance. Attempts to initiate, accelerate, and control change become at least equally important. Second, and following from this, colonial rule cannot be seen as a process of European initiative and African response. Instead, a very complex pattern emerges, a pattern of local initiatives and local bargains, an interplay between European and African aims in which colonial policy, as an isolate formulated by governor or colonial office, 1

2

J. D. Hargreaves, 'West African states and the European conquest', and T. O. Ranger, 'African reaction to the imposition of colonial rule in East and Central Africa', both in L. H. Gann and P. Duignan (ed.), The history and politics of colonialism in Africa, vol. i (Cambridge, forthcoming). J. F. A. Ajayi, 'The continuity of African institutions under colonialism', and J. M. Lonsdale, 'The emergence of African nations', unpublished papers, International Congress of African History, Dar es Salaam, Sept. 1965.

6

The argument is only one among a number of variables. Colonial administration is thus seen to be essentially similar to other forms of government, concerned to resolve conflict—sometimes by means of active development planning—rather than to impose a preconceived design on virgin territory. Finally, by asserting the rationality and significance of African initiative, modern study draws attention to conflict within African societies under colonial rule, conflict which is again susceptible of rational explanation, and which in turn helped to shape the character of European administration. This book is an attempt to revise the established view of the 'era of reform5 in German East Africa in the light of these insights into the nature of colonial rule. Its argument centres on five points. First, it is suggested that the very real changes in German behaviour in East Africa after 1906 were not primarily stimulated by new policies devised in Berlin, nor even by regret at earlier immorality, but by the fears engendered by the Maji Maji rebellion of 1905-7 in the south and east of the colony. Although originally provoked by maladministration, this rebellion was a rational attempt to achieve more effective organisation against European domination. It was the African initiative to which the 'Dernburg reforms' were the European response. Second, the reforms themselves were not primarily the work of an authoritarian and dynamic colonial secretary who imposed a new pattern on German policy. Rather, they grew out of conflict and negotiation between three parties: a governor who feared further rebellion, a legislature determined to assert its constitutional rights against the executive, and a colonial secretary with a responsibility to preserve political tranquillity. Third, when an attempt was made to carry out this programme of reform, it was first opposed and ultimately reversed by a body of European settlers who feared for their security and their economic interests. The reform programme did not merely propose rationalisation; it also proposed that German East Africa should be a country whose economy was based on African agriculture. The reversal of this programme implied

Tanganyika under German rule that the colony should instead be dominated by European settlers. Thus reform did not in practice necessarily imply liberalisation, in the sense of developments more acceptable to the African peoples.1 Nevertheless, it is true—and this is the fourth point—that the colony did not witness extensive rebellion after 1907 and that many African societies experienced economic and social advance. The reason, it is suggested, lies less in European initiatives than in changes taking place within African societies at this date. Partly through internal rivalries, partly owing to the failure of rebellion, and partly because of changing European pressures, many Africans rejected the first relationships established between the Germans and their societies, and instead sought advantage through new modes of behaviour within the colonial context. Attempts to restrict or resist European intrusion were superseded by a widespread desire to utilise western techniques in order to transform African societies. The 'age of improvement' which now began was the chief reason for the economic and social advance which took place in German East Africa at this time. Improvement was not, however, a universal aspiration, and other responses to colonial rule produced conflict within African societies. Finally, the fifth stage in the argument describes the new dilemma arising from the changes which took place during these years. On the one side was a powerful European community which had gained a considerable measure of control over the machinery of territorial administration. On the other side, a new African generation was better equipped than its predecessors to contest European domination. The outcome of the c era of reform' was thus a situation of incipient conflict comparable to that existing in other areas of East and Central Africa—notably in Kenya and Malawi—at this date. The argument begins with an account of the situation from which conflict arose. 1

For a relevant comparison, see Helmut Bley, Der Kampf um die koloniale Sozialstruktur in Deutsch-Siidwestafrika 1884—1914 (Hamburg, forthcoming).

CHAPTER 2

THE MAJI MAJI REBELLION When the Maji Maji rebellion began in July 1905, some four million people lived in Tanganyika.1 Perhaps two-thirds formed dispersed communities in woodland savannah country between 500 and 4,500 feet above sea level, of which most of the colony consisted. Another one-quarter inhabited scattered areas of high or especially well-watered land. The remaining one-twelfth lived in a narrow strip below 500 feet on the eastern coast and extending inland along the three major river systems, the Pangani in the north, the Rufiji in the centre, and the Ruvuma in the south.2 The great majority were cultivators, to whom cattle-keeping was a respected but secondary pursuit. With rare exceptions, they spoke Bantu languages, whose origins are believed to lie in West Africa, with a subsequent dispersal centre in the region of Katanga and Zambia. Bantu-speaking cultivators probably colonised Tanganyika from the south and west during the Christian era.3 They infiltrated, mixed with, and finally absorbed peoples of different linguistic groups already resident in the area. Of these earlier peoples, two groups remained. One, the Kindiga and Sandawe, spoke languages related to the Khoisan languages of southern Africa. The second group comprised the Iraqw, Gorowa, and Burungi, whose Cushitic languages were akin to those of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. All these lived in the highland area south-east of Lake Victoria and 1

2

3

Estimates based on hut-tax returns for 1911-12, in Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Sudsee ignji2 (Berlin, 1913), part 2, p. 34. These very approximate proportions are calculated from tribal population figures in Militdrisches Orientierungsheft fur Deutsch-Ostafrika (Dar es Salaam, For a general discussion of Bantu origins, see Roland Oliver, ' The problem of the Bantu expansion', in JAH, vn (1966), 361-76.

Tanganyika under German rule west of the Rift Valley. Bordering them in the plains to north and east were Masai pastoralists, immigrants from the north who spoke Eastern Nilotic languages.1 Little is known of the history of Tanganyika before the nineteenth century. Only the coast had a literary culture with surviving records. Further inland, there was no powerful state to preserve elaborate oral traditions which might serve as the nucleus of a territorial history. Instead a slow, complex, and now largely irrecoverable process of migration, settlement, and coalescence took place in this area of marginal fertility on the northern frontier of Bantu Africa. A central theme in this process appears to have been a succession of attempts to enlarge the scale of social and political organisation, attempts in which the consolidating forces of religion and political action were balanced against the fissiparous tendencies of colonising societies. Before 1800, consolidation was achieved only in areas of unusual fertility, population density, and economic specialisation. When the forces of the world economy made their first impact on the inland peoples during the nineteenth century, new opportunities for consolidation became available, and several societies began to adapt to this new environment. Change was rapid, however, and reorganisation often led only to instability. In consequence, when the Germans invaded the area at the end of the century, the scale of political organisations was still very limited, and coordinated resistance was difficult. The Germans were fortunate to escape united resistance, for their commitment to East Africa was minimal. German interest in the area had long been confined to businessmen who traded with Zanzibar. German missionaries participated in the extension of evangelism during the nineteenth century. Geographical societies and scientific organisations proliferated after the creation of the German empire in 1871.2 Noth1 2

Following the classification by Joseph H. Greenberg, The languages of Africa (The Hague, 1963). For the origins of German interest in Africa, see Percy Ernst Schramm, Deutschland und Uebersee (Hamburg, 1950). 10

The Maji Maji rebellion ing, however, suggested that the state would, by 1890, have acquired a colony in East Africa. When it came, German intervention was not at first a defence of existing interests. Rather, the impulse came from the frenzied imagination of Carl Peters, who travelled to East Africa late in 1884 and obtained a number of 'treaties' with headmen inland of Sadani. The government was aware of his intentions. When Peters returned to Berlin, the Imperial Chancellor, Bismarck, guaranteed the sovereignty of the newly formed German East African Company over its treaty area.1 The protectorate was enlarged by Anglo-German agreements in 1886 and 1890, while its western border followed that laid down by the Congo Free State's Declaration of Neutrality of 1885.2 Germany also acquired colonies in Togo, Cameroon, and South-West Africa during this period. The German East African Company was theoretically responsible for administration from 1885 to 1890. Apart from inland expeditions to obtain further 'treaties', its interest centred on the coast, where it tried to establish a regular administration in 1888. This attempt was resisted by the coastal peoples. The fighting which ensued forced the imperial government to send an expeditionary force under Hermann von Wissmann, and to assume, on 1 January 1891, the administrative responsibilities previously exercised by the company. Wissmann began to extend his authority inland. For this he needed allies, since German forces rarely exceeded two or three hundred African troops in any engagement, and were too weak to risk simultaneous hostilities with many different groups. Because the inland peoples were disunited, the Germans were able to ally with one society against its 1

2

The most detailed account of the activities of Peters and the company is Fritz Ferdinand Miiller, Deutschland—Zanzibar—Ostafrika: Geschichte einer deutschen Kolonialeroberung 1884-18go (Berlin, 1959). For Bismarck's motives, see William O. Aydelotte, 'Wollte Bismarck Kolonien?' in Werner Conze (ed.), Deutschland und Europa: Festschrift fur Hans Rothfels (Diisseldorf, 1951), and Manfred Nussbaum, Vom ' Kolonialenthusiasmus* zur Kolonialpolitik der Monopole (Berlin, 1962). See the map by J. E. Flint in Oliver and Mathew, History of East Africa, h 375II

Tanganyika under German rule neighbours, or to support one group within a society to the disadvantage of its competitors. The outcome was a number of local arrangements between the European invaders and the groups within each region. It is impossible to describe all these arrangements. Instead, five regions may be distinguished. These are the coast, the valley of the River Pangani between the northern coast and Masailand, the complex of chiefdoms to the west of Lake Victoria and its extension southwards among the central core of Sukuma, Nyamwezi, and related peoples, the Southern Highlands, and the fragmented south-eastern section of the colony. By 1905 the coast was firmly under German control and formed the base for inland activities. It held seven of the colony's twenty district headquarters, including the capital, Dar es Salaam. Many Germans regretted the primacy of the coast. They felt that it was untypical of the colony and that its influence had distorted the aims and methods of German rule. They had reason, for the East African coast had a distinctive history. From the beginning of the Christian era it formed the western border of an Indian Ocean trading area successively dominated by Asians, Muslims, and Europeans. Its free trading ports evolved an Afro-Asiatic sub-culture, Islamic and speaking a language—Swahili—which was basically Bantu with much Arabic vocabulary. Coastal prosperity reached its height between about 1200 and 1500, when the control which Kilwa, the greatest coastal town, exercised over the gold trade between central Africa and the Islamic world made it 'the last outpost of the civilization of medieval Islam5.1 At this time, Kilwa and the other ports looked outwards to the Indian Ocean. No evidence survives to show any substantial contact with the inland peoples. But when the Portuguese destroyed the gold trade during the sixteenth century, the coastal towns were forced to look inland to check their commercial decline. Kilwa became the focus of 1

G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, The medieval history of the coast of Tanganyika (London, 1962), p. 205. For a discussion of the literature on coastal history, see J . E. G. Sutton, The East African coast: an historical and archaeological review (Nairobi, 1966). 12

The Maji Maji rebellion long-distance trade in ivory from Mozambique. In the late eighteenth century, it appears, the Nyamwezi peoples of central Tanganyika made their first contact with the coast, adding a new route to the commercial network they were then constructing.1 During the nineteenth century, Omani Arabs gained control of the coast. Their ruler, Sayyid Said bin Sultan, moved his capital to Zanzibar in 1840. With Omani governors and Indian financiers established in the main ports, and with a growing international demand for ivory and slaves, the coastal peoples for the first time took trading caravans inland, established permanent settlements, and made commercial agreements with African rulers. The coastal peoples offered sporadic resistance to Omani control. They resisted again when the Germans forced the Sayyid to cede administration of the coast in 1888. The Germans called this resistance c the Arab revolt', implying that it was the work of alien slave-traders. In fact, it was a popular rising directed as much against Omani collaboration as against German intrusion. Led by Bushiri bin Salim, an hereditary enemy of the Sayyid, and Bwana Heri, a Zigua notable who had successfully resisted Omani attempts to control Sadani, the resistance was defeated by Wissmann's forces during 1889. As it collapsed, the Germans negotiated with a peace party of Omani aristocrats, who then became the agents of a bureaucratic system of government, providing each major coastal town with a liwali (governor) and the hinterland with subordinate administrators called akidas. When the Maji Maji rebellion began, the German position on the coast rested on this local compromise with the Omani aristocracy.2 If the coast was the stronghold of bureaucracy, the northeastern region, the basin of the River Pangani, was the centre 1

2

E. A. Alpers, 'The role of the Yao in the development of trade in East-Central Africa i6o,8-£. 1850' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1965); Smith in Oliver and Mathew, op. cit, 1, 263-6. The German view of the coastal resistance is expressed by Rochus Schmidt, Geschichte des Araberaufstandes in Ost-Afrika (Frankfurt a.O., 1892). For important revisions, see Miiller, Deutschland—Zanzibar—Ostafrika.

13

Tanganyika under German rule of European enterprise. The first railway in the colony was built inland from Tanga after 1891. It reached Mombo, below the foothills of Usambara, in 1905. European agriculture accompanied it inland, reaching East Usambara in the early 1890s, West Usambara in 1898, and the great mountains—Kilimanjaro and Meru—shortly before the rebellion. There were two main reasons for the concentration of European activity in this area. One was its geography, for Usambara was the only sizeable highland area easily accessible from the coast, and European agriculture, it was held, could prosper only in the highlands. The second reason was the local situation found by the invading German forces. The fertile highlands overlooking the Pangani supported relatively dense populations among whom political consolidation began at least by the early nineteenth century. By the 1850s, the Kilindi ruler of Usambara, Kimweri za Nyumbai, dominated the lower valley, conducting a profitable trade with Pangani and employing literate coastal agents.1 The upper valley was controlled by the pastoral Masai, who early in the century settled a number of their semi-agricultural kin on Mount Meru, where they came to form a distinct Arusha tribe.2 Meanwhile, political consolidation among the Chagga people of Kilimanjaro produced rivalry between chiefs who employed trading profits and Masai military tactics to extend their authority. In the second half of the nineteenth century, these four groups struggled for control of the valley. Military power on Kilimanjaro was concentrated in the hands of Sina, the chief of Kibosho, against whom his rival, Rindi of Moshi, engineered complicated alliances with the Arusha, coastal 1

For a contemporary description of KimweriJs kingdom, see J. Ludwig Krapf, Travels, researches, and missionary labours during an eighteen years' residence in

2

Eastern Africa (London, i860), pp. 272-82, 367-408. On the Masai, see Low in Oliver and Mathew, op. cit. 1, 300-8; Alan H. Jacobs, 'The traditional political organization of the pastoral Masai' (D.Phil, dissertation, Oxford University, 1965), ch. 2. On the Arusha, see Steinhauser, ' Waaruscha J , in Beantwortung des Fragebogens u'ber die Rechte der Eingeborenen in

den deutschen Kolonien (answers to a questionnaire on customary law, printed c. 1914, copies in the Tanzania National Museum, Dar es Salaam); P. H. Gulliver, 'A history of relations between the Arusha and the Masai', E. A.T.S.R. conference paper, June 1957. 14

The Maji Maji rebellion traders, and other Chagga chiefs.1 Further east, Kimweri's death in 1869 initiated a long war of succession between Semboja, Kimweri's son, in the west, and Kibanga, Kimweri's grandson, in the east.2 Civil war and disease weakened the Masai. A German who travelled in the valley in the late 1880s found that everywhere the people had withdrawn to fortified villages, and concluded that land was freely available for European settlement.3 When German forces entered the area, rivalry ensured that they found allies. The Masai were too gravely weakened to offer serious opposition. The Arusha, now dominant in the upper valley, resisted and were defeated. On Kilimanjaro, the Germans were welcomed by Rindi, who incited them to destroy Sina's predominance. After much intrigue, Marealle, chief of the previously inconsiderable Marangu, emerged as the leading German ally on the mountain. In Usambara the weaker contestant, Kibanga, allied himself firmly with the Germans, sold them all the land they wanted, and secured the recognition of Kinyasi, his candidate for the Kilindi throne. Allies like Kinyasi and Marealle provided services for the settlers and planters who entered the area. Unlike the coast and the Pangani Valley, central and western Tanganyika were scarcely moving out of the phase of diplomacy. After their occupation of the coast, German expeditions pushed inland along the caravan routes. Tabora, Mwanza, and Bukoba were reached in 1890. A military station was established at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in 1896.4 More isolated areas, such as Buha in the extreme north-west, were still outside effective German control in 1905, but in general a pattern of military garrisons and diplomatic 1

2

3 4

Kathleen M. Stahl, History of the Chagga People of Kilimanjaro (The Hague, 1964), chs. 9 and n . Abdallah bin Hemedi 'lAjjemy, Habari za Wakilindi (Nairobi, 1962); Oscar Baumann, Usambara und seine Nachbargebiete (Berlin, 1891), pp. 186 et seq.; Richard G. Thurnwald, Black and white in East Africa (London, 1935), pp. 37-40Baumann, Usambara, passim, esp. p. 292. For the extension of military control, see Ernst Nigmann, Geschichte der Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe fiir Deutsch'Ostafrika

15

(Berlin, 1911).

Tanganyika under German rule arrangements was by then complete. It was a very frail authority. In a district like Tabora, two German officers and a hundred troops might face a million Africans. The German position rested on alliance with established African rulers, and here western and central Tanganyika was better favoured, from the German viewpoint, than areas closer to the coast. The migrations of pastoral peoples which created the kingdoms of Uganda also established a number of relatively powerful ritual chieftainships in this area.1 The pressures of long-distance trade and Ganda invasion stimulated rivalry among them during the nineteenth century,2 so that the Germans again found allies anxious to use European support for their own ends. Centres of German power emerged around accommodating leaders: Kahigi of Kianja in Buhaya, Masanja of Nera and Makwaia of Usiha, both in Usukuma, Karunde in the central Nyamwezi chiefdom of Unyanyembe.3 Many German administrators, including the then governor, saw these favoured rulers as future agents for European cultural and economic initiatives. In 1905, however, the German impact remained slight, and central Tanganyika was still seen chiefly as an inexhaustible reservoir of labour for the north-eastern plantations. Further south, in the Southern Highlands, the military still ruled. Here the Germans had been bravely resisted by the Hehe, under their great warrior chief Mkwawa. The Hehe state was formed in response to the military revolution brought to this area in the 1840s by Ngoni peoples moving northwards from South Africa, bringing with them the regimental system and the stabbing spear which had made the Zulu the most feared people of southern Africa. In Tanganyika, the Ngoni first clashed with the Sangu people on the 1

2

3

Roland Oliver, * Discernible developments in the interior c. 1500-1840', in Oliver and Mathew, op. cit. 1, 185-99. Raphael Garvin Abrahams, 'The political organisation of Nyamweziland' (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1962), ch. 2; Ralph Albert Austen, 'Native policy and African politics: indirect rule in northwest Tanzania 1889-1939' (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1965), ch. 2. Austen, ch. 4; Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber und Wahehe: Erinnerungen aus meiner ostafrikanischen Leutnantszeit 1890-1895 (Berlin, 1914), pp. 199-215.

16

The Maji Maji rebellion western edge of the Iringa Plateau. Reorganising themselves, the Sangu in turn moved eastwards against the small-scale societies of the plateau. But here also arose great leaders, Munyigumba and his son Mkwawa, to unify the clans into a Hehe people. The Sangu and other rivals were driven from the plateau in the 1870s, while five years of war with the Ngoni (1878-82) ended with a peace of exhaustion which confined the latter to an area east of Lake Malawi. Hehe dominance was secured.1 But when news of German invasion reached the Southern Highlands, Mkwawa's rivals hastened to secure this new support. A military expedition sent in 1891 to make terms was seen by Mkwawa, probably correctly, as an attack. His forces killed 290 of its members in fifteen minutes. Revenge now became every German officer's ambition. It was achieved when the Hehe capital was taken in 1894. Mkwawa, who escaped, was hunted for four years until he committed suicide to avoid capture.2 The Hehe military organisation was broken up and replaced by the authority of the garrison commander in Iringa, backed by a picked force of Sudanese troops. Mkwawa's rivals took their rewards. In 1897 the Germans established a garrison at Songea without meeting resistance from the Ngoni. An uneasy peace rested on the military strength concentrated in Iringa and Songea. Meanwhile the fifth region, the south-east, was neglected. Open savannah country oflow fertility, it was colonised during the nineteenth century by Ngindo, Mwera, and Makonde groups, probably moving north from Mozambique. Raided sporadically by the Ngoni, and crossed by the slave caravans from Kilwa to Lake Malawi, the area was politically fragmented. The Germans met much uncoordinated resistance from groups in the immediate hinterland of the coast. On the Makonde Plateau a Yao warlord, Machemba, defied 1

2

Alison H. Redmayne, 'The Wahehe people of Tanganyika' (D.Phil, dissertation, Oxford University, 1964), chs. 4 and 5; Elzear Ebner, History of the Wangoni (mimeographed, Peramiho, 1959), pp. 44-94; 'A history of Usangu, related by the Wazee of Utengule', typescript, 1930, in Mbeya District Book. Prince, pp. 79-88, 140-91, 228-316. 2

17

ITU

Tanganyika under German Rule several expeditions until forced back into Mozambique in 1899.1 Taxation was always difficult to collect in this area. Whenever possible, the Germans left it alone, for it had little apparent attraction. Between the district offices on the coast and the garrison in Songea, three hundred miles away, there were only a handful of askari and a non-commissioned officer in a grass-roofed stockade at Liwale. German rule was still spread thinly and unevenly over the Tanganyika of 1905. Fighting continued on the borders as the administrative frontier was slowly pushed forward. The intensity of German pressure on the coast and in the north-east contrasted sharply with the relative neglect of the southern and western regions. Even the European agricultural experiments in the Pangani Valley remained generally unprofitable. Nobody was more conscious of these limitations than the able governor, Graf von Gotzen, a staff officer with a distinguished career as traveller and diplomat. He was preoccupied with attempts to wring more funds from the authorities in Berlin, to regularise the position of chiefs in district administration, to expand European settlement in the north, and to extend the participation of the European community in public affairs. Always the soldier, he was worried by Berlin's determination to reduce the colony's defence force.2 Nevertheless, despite these anxieties, he shared the general mild complacency. His four years of office had been years of relative peace. During July 1905 he heard rumours of impending African revolt. The Nyamwezi were discontented, the Hehe would rise—Gotzen took rebellion seriously, but these rumours seemed no more substantial than a hundred earlier ones. He told the Colonial Department on 31 July that there was no special danger of unrest.3 By then the Maji Maji rebellion had begun. It began in that south-eastern region of the colony which the Germans had neglected. In late July the people of the 1 2

3

Nigmann, Geschichte der Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe, pp. 20-61. Graf G. A. von Gotzen, Deutsch-Ostafrika im Aujstand 1905-6 (Berlin, 1909)5 pp. 31-41. Gotzen to AAKA, 31 July 1905, RKA 700/133.

18

The Maji Maji rebellion Matumbi Hills, north-west of Kilwa, assembled to attack the headquarters of their akida, an Omani Arab named Sefu bin Amri. Sefu fled, and the Matumbi turned to clear their hills of all Arab, Indian, and European aliens.1 The first European victim was a young German named Hopfer, one of five cotton planters who had established themselves in the area. Escaping from his farm, he hid in the bush near Mtumbei Ghini. Surrounded during the night, he shot four of his attackers before they killed him with a panga.2 Next day the Matumbi swept down from their hills to destroy the Indian trading settlement at Samanga on the coast. Simultaneously, the Ngindo of Madaba, eighty miles to the west, attacked the Arab traders who frequented the area.3 News of war spread through the countryside. Within a fortnight, nearly all the peoples surrounding the Rufiji valley, from Kilosa to Liwale, were in revolt. Missionaries, Arabs, Indians, akidas, askari, and all who had contact with the government were threatened. By the end of August the Ngindo had taken the movement into two further regions, southwards into the Lukuledi Valley, where the mission stations were destroyed, and westwards into the Kilombero Valley and the surrounding highlands. On 30 August 8,000 Mbunga and Pogoro launched a desperate assault on the strongly fortified military station at Mahenge, attempting to seize the machine-guns bodily from their operators. They were repulsed with terrible casualties.4 Meanwhile, a fourth area had joined the rebellion, for the Ngoni had mobilised their powerful military system and threatened the German forces in Songea. When their neighbours, the Bena, attacked Yakobi mission on 19 September, the rebellion reached its furthest extent.5 Most of the peoples south of a line from Dar es Salaam to Kilosa and thence to 1

2 3 5

Haber to Gotzen, 9 Sept. 1905, RKA 726/81-90; Moritz Merker, 'Ueber die Aufstandsbewegung in Deutsch-Ostafrika wahrend der Monate August bis November 1905', in Militdr-Wochenblatt, xci (1906), col. 1026; R. M. Bell, 'The Maji-Maji rebellion in the Liwale district', in TNR, xxvni(Jan. 1950), 39'Protokoll', Kilwa, 5 Aug. 1905, RKA 722/118-19. 4 Bell, pp. 41-3. Gotzen, Deutsch-Ostafrika, pp. 108-10. Ibid. pp. 117-19. 19

2-2

Tanganyika under German rule the northern tip of Lake Malawi were in revolt. Emissaries tried to bring in further groups, but failed. The German commander in Tabora threatened to raze the town if the Nyamwezi joined.1 And already the counter-attack had begun. German patrols moved through the coastal districts harassing rebel bands and destroying property. Auxiliaries were summoned from loyal peoples. Since the Hehe had not joined the revolt, the key garrison in Iringa was free to move. Its commander relieved both Mahenge and Songea by November 1905.2 On his heels came two major expeditions. In the west a hard core of Ngoni and Bena leaders took to the hills. Surrounded in Upangwa in April 1906, they escaped through the encircling forces. Regrouping to the west, in Mgende, they were again encircled during May. This time few escaped.3 In the east there was no decisive action but a long guerrilla war, which collapsed only when famine devastated the rebel area during 1907. The Germans estimated that 75,000 died in two years of violence, hunger, and disease.4 The state of war finally ended everywhere in August 1907.5 Astonished by the scale, violence, and unpredictability of the movement, the Germans cast around for explanations. Two main answers emerged. One centred on the fact that rebel unity and commitment had been based on a watermedicine—the maji of the rebellion's name—which appears to have been administered to every rebel. One account records how a messenger went to investigate the ceremony taking place in another village: The visitor wanted first to know what was the meaning of drinking the maji. They told him, 'We drink this maji medicine so that European and local wars will not harm us. If by bad luck war comes, bullets and spears will not harm us. Bullets and spears will not penetrate our skins.'.. .The 1

2 4

White Fathers' mission diary, Tabora, 23 Oct. 1905. I owe this reference to Fr A. E. M. Shorter. 3 Gotzen, Deutsch-Ostafrika, pp. 104-26. Ibid. pp. 200-35. T h e official figure: Stenographische Berichte fiber die Verhandlungen des Reichstages:

Anlagenbdnde [hereinafter Reichstag Papers], 1907-9 session, no. 622, p. 5

Amt. Anz- 3 Aug. 1907. 20

The Maji Maji rebellion man liked their news and wished to get the medicine. They told him, ' If you want the medicine you must pay two cents.'.. .After he had drunk the medicine they tied small pieces of reed around his head and made him wear one cent and told him he could return home. ' That is the sign of comradeship.. .Those who will not dress like this.. .will be killed.'1

The Germans knew that the first rebels had obtained the maji from Bokero, a religious leader who lived near Ngarambi on the Rufiji. Large numbers of people had visited Bokero openly before the rising. He was believed to be a minister of the cult of Kolelo, a spirit whose headquarters lay in the Uluguru Mountains. From this many Germans deduced a conspiracy by 'reactionary, ultra-conservative' elements, 'witch-doctors' and headmen concerned to restore their declining power, who had imposed a pattern of irrational behaviour on the credulous people. 'The true incitement', wrote one officer,' was to follow at the last moment before the outbreak of hostilities. These were to be started simultaneously by each of the committed chiefs at an agreed moment... Fortunately.. . this did not happen, but they began in Kibata at the end of July, apparently owing to a private quarrel between two Matumbi headmen.' 2 This' conspiracy' theory saw the rising as a savage response to progress introduced by European rule, and implicitly denied that rational explanation was possible. It became the semi-official explanation and something of a dogma to colonial enthusiasts.3 Those who were less committed to the German regime found their explanation of the rebellion in administrative abuses. They pointed to taxation and the brutal methods by which it was often collected, to forced labour required for road construction or by European settlers, to the misgovernment of the Arab akidas, and to other specific forms of misrule. Left-wing politicians, especially, saw the rising as a natural response to maladministration.4 1 2 3 4

Blasius Undole, 'Habari za Wandamba', typescript, 1965, ch. 19. Merker, cols. 1,025-6. See, for example, Arning in Budget Commission, 2 April 1908, p. 4, Rt 1060. Stenographische Berichte iiber die Verhandlungen des Reichstages [hereinafter Reichstag Debates] 1905-6 session, 16 Jan. 1906, pp. 588 et seq. (Erzberger), and 13 March 1906, pp. 1,981 et seq. (Bebel). 21

Tanganyika under German rule Viewed from a wider perspective, neither explanation seems satisfactory.1 No evidence of a conspiracy was ever produced, and accounts from the areas which joined the rebellion in late August or September strongly suggest that they had no prior knowledge that it would take place. Analyses of comparable African rebellions against early colonial rule elsewhere have suggested that religious leaders were unlikely to be able to provoke a rising c with one cabalistic word'. 2 If this was improbable among peoples like the Shona and Ndebele, where historical ties of religion and politics were strong, it was even less likely among the fragmented peoples of southern Tanganyika. But if this view evades an explanation of the rebellion, so also does the ' abuses' theory, for it does not explain why the rising took place in that area at that moment. The abuses which it describes were felt much more profoundly in other areas of German East Africa, especially in the north-east, yet the rebellion was confined to the south. Further, since the abuses had existed for several years—taxation had begun in 1898— there is no evident reason why resistance to them should have taken place in July 1905. In answer to this last point, it is sometimes argued that the rebellion was the delayed resistance of fragmented peoples who had failed either to offer effective resistance to German invasion or to understand its implications. Yet it has been seen that many rebel peoples had already offered quite severe resistance. The only group of Makonde to rebel, for example, were those who had already fought with Machemba. Analysis suggests that the rebellion passed through four phases, although the transition from each phase to the next is difficult to explain. The outbreak in the Rufiji Valley in July 1905 seems to have been due, not to general misgovern1

2

For a more extensive discussion of the evidence on which the following argument is based, see my article, 'The organisation of the Maji Maji rebellion', in JAH, VIII (1967), 495~5][2. T. O. Ranger, 'The role of Ndebele and Shona religious authorities in the rebellions of 1896 and 1897', m Eric Stokes and Richard Brown (ed.), The Zambesian Past (Manchester, 1966), p. 91. 22

The Maji Maji rebellion ment, but to a specific grievance which had been created in this particular area shortly before the rising, and against which the first rebel actions were directed. When Gotzen became governor in 1901, European agriculture was depressed and government revenue static. He decided, as an experiment, to introduce a scheme, devised for the German West African colony of Togo, by which African cultivators would be induced to grow cotton as a Volkskultur, a people's crop. Since cotton had failed in the north, he decided to concentrate on the southern coast. Despite much official opposition he believed that individual cultivators could not grow cotton successfully. He therefore ordered that a plot be established at the headquarters of each headman in the experimental area, on which each of the headman's adult male subjects would work for some twenty-eight days a year. Introduced into Dar es Salaam district in 1902, and subsequently into all the southern coastal districts, the scheme was a disastrous failure. The sums paid to the workers were so small that some refused them. The work required soon far exceeded the amount planned and seriously interfered with subsistence farming. Much corruption and brutality was involved.1 Cotton became a grievance which united precisely those people who rebelled when the 1905 picking season began. Several rebel leaders were headmen who had suffered from the scheme,2 and one of the first rebel actions in any area was commonly to burn the cotton fields.3 The scheme threatened African economies far more seriously than did any demands by European settlers in the north. It seems a sufficient explanation for the outbreak of violence. 1

2

3

* Gouvernementsrat beim Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika. Dritte Sitzung', Dar es Salaam, 15/16 May 1905, RKA 812/41-58; Haber to Gotzen, 9 Sept. 1905, RKA 726/81-90; Ewerbeck to Government, 15 Sept. 1905, RKA 723/59-62; Haber and Vincenti,' Betr. Ursachen des Aufstandes im Bezirk Daressalam5, 17 Jan. 1906, RKA 726/109-25; Stuhlmann toDernburg, and enclosure, 3 Oct. 1907, RKA 775/73-74. For the Togo experiment, see G. W. Newbury, The western slave coast and its rulers (Oxford, 1961), pp. 151-5. For example, the southern Zaramo leader, Digalu Kibasila, had been imprisoned for a month for failing to oblige his followers to grow cotton. Paul Fuchs, Wirtschaftliche Eisenbahn-Erkundungen im mittleren und nordlichen Deutsch-Ostafrikas (Berlin, 1907), p. 9

23

Tanganyika under German rule If the cotton scheme provoked violence, it does not explain the form which the violence took. Pressures of equal intensity elsewhere in Africa at this date often provoked sporadic protest rather than widespread rebellion.1 The distinction lies not in the nature of the causes but in the possibilities for mass organisation which existed in the areas concerned. Maji Maji became a mass movement because it acquired an ideological content which persuaded people to join and to fight. The ideology was religious. As Professor Ranger has shown, the essence of mass rebellion in this period was an attempt to organise in a new way in order to fight more effectively than the purely tribal resistances to European invasion. The integration of diverse peoples for this purpose was commonly the work of prophetic religious leaders preaching a new faith to supersede old rivalries.2 In Maji Maji two such beliefs were mobilised. For the peoples of the Rufiji area the belief centred on the spirit Kolelo, whose shrines were scattered through the valley. Kolelo's ministers provided the people with maji in the same way as they regularly provided fertility medicines to those who sought them. At first the maji was probably seen as a panacea, but as the people resolved on violence the medicine acquired power to protect them against European weapons, and Kolelo's ministers came to assume a major role in coordinating and extending the movement in its second phase.3 Their appeal was to all Africans. 'Be not afraid', the people were told, 'Kolelo spares his black children'. 4 Yet Kolelo's name does not seem to have accompanied the movement as it expanded, during its third phase, beyond the Rufiji Valley. Here the central figure was the hongo, the emissary who 1 2

3

4

In the Congo Free State, for example. T. O. Ranger in Gann and Duignan, History and politics of colonialism in Africa, vol. i; idem, 'Connections between "primary resistance" movements and modern mass nationalism in East and Central Africa', University of East Africa Social Science Conference paper, Nairobi, Dec. 1966. Martin Klamroth, 'Beitrage zum Verstandnis der religiosen Vorstellungen der Saramo im Bezirk Daressalam (Deutsch-Ostafrika)', in ^eitschrift fur Kolonialsprachen, 1 (1910-11), 37-70, 118-53, 189-223. Klamroth, p. 140.

24

The Maji Maji rebellion arrived at a village, summoned the surrounding people, persuaded them to fight, and administered maji. Many hongo, it appears, were Ngindo, in whose hands the movement acquired millennial characteristics, claiming power to rid African societies of the two incalculable evils, European control and sorcery. Here, it would seem, the rebellion had merged with an established pattern of popular religion, the recurrent millenarian movements to eradicate sorcery which have been widespread in East and Central Africa.1 Such movements have implied a revolutionary challenge to established authority, for a chief who refused to join might be swept aside by popular fervour. Thus when the Vidunda chief opposed Maji Maji, the hongo 'appointed himself chief of the district'.2 The loyalist Kiwanga, the most powerful ruler in the Kilombero Valley, clearly saw the movement as a challenge. He first executed all available hongo, then took the field against the rebels, and was ultimately killed by them. Merere of Usangu prevaricated until German troops compelled his loyalty. Only the most powerful leaders could resist the force of mass millennial belief. As the movement expanded, however, its character changed. The failure of the maji to provide immunity compelled the rebels to return to established patterns of tribal guerrilla warfare. In the extreme south-west, where political organisation was more powerful than in the fragmented east, the movement was seen from the beginning in tribal terms. In Ungoni, the effect of the maji was to reconsolidate the Ngoni people as their leaders took the opportunity to rid themselves of European control.3 Thus military necessity forced the movement away from its attempt to widen political loyalties and back into the divisions of the past. Ideology alone was insufficient to overcome the realities of African 1 2

3

See, for example, Mary Douglas, The Lele of the Kasai (London, 1963), ch. 13. Theobald Schaegelen, 'The ethnology of the Vidunda tribe', manuscript, 1945, in Kilosa District Book. This is the best account of the activities of a hongo. G. P. Mpangara, 'Songea Mbano', research seminar paper, University College, Dar es Salaam, Sept. 1966.

25

Tanganyika under German rule society. But given those realities, and especially the rebels' technological inferiority, their attempt and their methods were rational. For the history of Tanganyika, the significance of the movement lay primarily in its attempt to enlarge political scale. Maji Maji was quite different from the early resistance which the Germans had faced when occupying Tanganyika, for that had been local and professional—soldiers against soldiers—whereas Maji Maji affected almost everyone in the colony. Not only did it involve those within the rebel area who would normally have been non-combatants, but its impact was felt on the farthest borders of the country.1 It was a great crisis of commitment, and in subsequent years men had to bear the consequences of the stands which they had taken. In the long term, the movement may have provided an experience of united mass action to which later political leaders could appeal.2 In the short term, it undoubtedly increased local disunity, for not all the peoples in the rebel area had joined, and even those who had were seldom unanimous. Besides the physical devastation which the rising caused in the south, it also destroyed the local political arrangements on which the German position in that area depended. A further consequence is possible, although there is no direct evidence to support it. As this study will show, after 1906 many people in German East Africa abandoned their earlier methods of dealing with their German rulers. Instead of seeking to restrict the European impact on their societies, or to use the Germans as a means to improve their personal or group positions within an existing framework of inter-African relations, many sought to obtain an improved position within the European-dominated system by acquiring the necessary 1

2

For repercussions in Buhaya, see Gotzen to AAKA, 21 Nov. 1905, in Deutschcs Kolonialblatt, 1 Dec. 1905. For Bonde, see Habari za Mwezi (Magila), Oct. I9O5For evidence of such appeals, see Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and unity (Dar es Salaam, 1967), pp. 2,40-1; Uganda Argus (Kampala), 10 April 1962; The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 2 Aug. 1965; G. C. K. Gwassa, 'A report on a research project in Kilwa District', typescript, Dar es Salaam, Aug. 1966.

26

The Maji Maji rebellion European skills and using them to reorganise their societies. Techniques of resistance or diplomacy were widely superseded by techniques of improvement. Between these two responses to the colonial situation stood the rebellion. The transition would doubtless have taken place without the rising—it happened in areas of Africa where there was no extensive rebellion—but it is possible that the rebellion accelerated the process, both by showing the ineffectiveness of armed resistance and the technological inferiority of African societies, and by demonstrating more clearly the nature of the European power with which all the peoples of Tanganyika must reckon. Something of this new understanding appears from a passage of extreme, but perhaps sincere, loyalism written on the occasion of the Kaiser's birthday in 1910 by Martin Ganisya, a freed slave who had become senior African teacher with the Lutheran mission in Dar es Salaam: For what reason do the people celebrate this festival ?... The Lord God gives the Kaiser strength and power to accomplish all that happens in the land, and to govern and order all things so that they continue in peace... As an example I take this land of German East Africa, our land, the land of the black people. Formerly its condition was one of injustice. The man with power treated unjustly the man who had none... But now there is peace everywhere. There is none who terrorises, for all are under the Kaiser's rule... If anyone will not keep the peace and live peacefully in his land—if he seeks to disturb the country—that man will be severely punished, for the Kaiser lacks nothing, he has many soldiers. His strength and power are great. You have seen how those rebels, the Maji-Maji or Hongo-Hongo people, were defeated in the years 1905 and 190611

The effects of the rebellion on the German rulers of East Africa were equally intense. Their complacency was shattered. No longer could they look on their African subjects as an element of decreasing importance in the life of the colony. Unlike the British in Kenya, where no such rebellion occurred, the Germans could never believe after Maji Maji 1

Martin Ganisya in Pwani na Bara (Dar es Salaam), Jan. 1910 (copy in TNA green 789). For the attribution, see K. Axenfeld, 'Geistige Kampfe in der Eingeborenenbevolkerung an der Kiiste Ostafrikas', in Koloniale Rundschau (1913), pp. 670-2, where the article is translated in full. 27

Tanganyika under German rule that 'white mates black in a very few moves', that the African peoples must 'go under' before the forces of western expansion.1 Maji Maji was above all an assertion that the African element remained the fundamental factor in the affairs of the German colony. More immediately, for Europeans also the rebellion had been a crisis of commitment. It compelled a total rethinking of the future of the colony. Just as the coastal resistance of 1888 had obliged the German government to abandon company rule and assume direct responsibility—to commit itself more deeply than it had previously contemplated—so Maji Maji compelled a greatly increased German involvement in terms of political energy. The minimal aims of early colonial rule gave way to a purposive colonial policy. The fear of rebellion subsequently coloured every aspect of German rule, and became the decisive argument in any political debate. 'Those who had experienced the Maji Maji rising', wrote a Chief Secretary, 'rightly insisted on the principle: si vis pacem, para bellum'.2 But if the rebellion compelled a purposive approach to colonial administration, it did not define the lines of future policy. Because no agreement was ever reached as to the causes of the rising, the need to prevent a recurrence only embittered subsequent controversy. On the one hand, many believed that risings would be epidemic, and that only total European dominance could suppress them. At one extreme, this view was expressed in the instructions issued to every German officer after 1911: The negro does not love us, but only fears our power. Any sign of weakness which he thinks he sees in us will be a temptation to him. to take up arms and to drive us from his country. Cruel by nature, the negro does not understand devotion, gratitude, or loyalty in our sense. He will, therefore, support those whom he fears or who offer him the greatest material advantage. 1 2

Sir Charles Eliot, 9 April 1904, quoted in G. H. Mungeam, British rule in Kenya i8g^-igi2 (Oxford, 1966), p. 113. Wilhelm Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren: 16 Jahre Dienst in deutschen Tropen (Breslau, 1938), p. 279.

28

The Maji Maji rebellion This material instinct is influenced by superstition and... racial hatred... There are no tribes whatever on whose loyalty we can with certainty depend.1

On the other side were those who held that German policy must seek to prevent a recurrence of Maji Maji by redressing the grievances which they believed had caused it. Here also there was room for disagreement on whether the grievances had been political or economic, whether they were better redressed by stabilisation or by rapid change. The only certainty was that the aims and methods of German colonial rule must be thought out afresh. The Maji Maji rebellion was the African initiative to which the following years were to see the European response. 1

Anleitung zum Felddienst in Deutsch-Ostafrika

29

(Dar es Salaam, 1911), p p . 2, 15.

CHAPTER 3

THE POLITICAL CONTEXT The Maji Maji rebellion compelled an increased German commitment in East Africa, but left open the question of the form which that commitment should take. The answer to this question was decided largely by Europeans, after intense controversy in Germany and East Africa. To understand the answer which they found, it is necessary to understand the political and administrative system which generated it, and especially the anomalous position of the colonies in Germany's constitutional structure. Bismarck's constitution of 1871 attempted to combine the three major strands in constitutional theory and practice. One was the tradition of the Obrigkeitsstaat, the authoritarian state administered by a hierarchy of civil servants responsible to the monarchy. The second was the particularist tradition preserved in the many petty principalities and self-governing cities. Concepts of German unity and national identity formed a third, more recent element. In the new empire, sovereignty resided in the totality of the 25 constituent states and was expressed through the federal Bundesrat on which they were represented. This was the particularist element. Imperial executive leadership (Reichsleitung) was exercised by the king of Prussia and emperor of Germany, advised by an imperial Chancellor appointed by and responsible to him. This was the authoritarian element, and also the concession to Prussia's dominant role in the creation of the state. The third element, that of national unity, was represented by the Reichstag, elected by adult male suffrage. Bismarck excluded the Reichstag from the formulation of policy, but gave it sufficient power to serve as a convincing organ for the expression of public opinion. The Reichstag could not initiate legislation,

The political context but could veto it. It could not cause a Chancellor to resign, but it could in practice oblige him to appeal to the electorate. It controlled all imperial expenditure from direct taxation, but could vote expenditure only at the government's request.1 The empire was dominated by Prussia, which held an effective veto on legislation in the Bundesrat, and whose king controlled the bulk of the army. However, Prussian authority over the federated states was slight, because the Prussian authorities had been determined that no non-Prussian body should be able to intervene in Prussia's internal affairs. For this reason, most branches of internal administration were removed from the sphere of imperial action to that of the states, each of which had its own administration and its representative body.2 This untidy compromise satisfied none of the constituent units of the new state, but it soon became clear that any attempt to amend the constitution seriously might jeopardise the very existence of the empire. Many shared the fear of one informed observer 'that in the right psychological circumstances the centrifugal forces will prove the stronger even in today's Germany'. 3 Statesmen were therefore obliged to operate within the restrictions imposed by an almost immutable constitution. In intention, Germany was to be a federal union. Administration was to be conducted by the states. The empire was to control foreign policy, but to have only a supervisory role in home affairs. The Reichstag was to have financial control only over supervisory ministries. In practice, however, Germany became what Professor Schieder has called an 'imperfect national state'. 4 It had no national 1

2

3

4

Fritz Hartung, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (7th edn, Stuttgart, 1959), section 15. The importance of this arrangement is stressed by Herbert Jacob, German administration since Bismarck (New Haven, 1963), ch. 3. Holstein to Harden, 6 Jan. 1907, quoted in Jonathan Steinberg, Yesterdays deterrent: Tirpitz and the birth of the German battle fleet (London, 1965), p. 34. My account of the constitutional position of German colonies owes much to analogies provided by this book. Theodor Schieder, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich von i8yi als Nationalstaat (Koln, 1961). P- 39-

31

Tanganyika under German rule anthem, no national flag, no national holidays, no national army—not even a national government, but only' the Associated Governments'. However, after 1871 the empire—as opposed to the states—necessarily gained control of a number of administrative functions which were not fully anticipated in the constitution. The most important of these was the navy, which in 1871 was merely a nationalist's dream. The constitution declared that any future navy should be an imperial institution, but did not define what this meant.1 The empire also gained control over certain new branches of civil administration, notably the telegraph system, the social insurance programme, and the administration of newly acquired Alsace-Lorraine.2 But of all constitutional anomalies, the most perplexing were the colonies. Acquired after 1871, they lacked even the brief mention in the constitution which the navy possessed. Since it was impossible to amend the constitution fundamentally to admit some preconceived pattern of colonial government, an administrative system had to be devised which would not distort the constitution too flagrantly. This was peculiarly difficult, because there existed no imperial machinery designed for day-to-day administration. The arrangement which ultimately emerged contained in miniature all the tensions and imperfections of the empire itself. East Africa was acquired by the action of the executive, which issued the letter of protection to the German East African Company in February 1885, and which assumed sovereignty in East Africa in January 1891. Executive administration was the responsibility of the Chancellor. To assist him, he created a number of imperial offices, each headed by a state secretary, most of whom had only supervisory functions. The Foreign Office was exceptional in that it was subject to the Chancellor's direct control, although it also had a state secretary. From 1884 to 1890, colonial affairs were controlled by a member of the political department of 1 2

Steinberg, Yesterday's deterrent, pp. 32-3. In all these fields imperial control was severely qualified. See Jacob, German administration, pp. 36-7.

32

The political context the Foreign Office. In 1890, a Foreign Office official was made Controller (Dirigent) of a Colonial Department within the Foreign Office. His status was raised to Director in April 1894, and he was given authority, directly under the Chancellor, over all administrative affairs; in political and diplomatic matters, and also in disciplinary control of his staff, he was subject to the State Secretary to the Foreign Office. This put the Colonial Director in an anomalous, and indeed illegal, position. Since he had no disciplinary powers, there could be no colonial service as such. Yet the department's staff grew rapidly, until by 1905 it exceeded that of the independent Ministry of Justice. Further, although by convention the Director represented the Chancellor in the Reichstag, this was illegal, for under the Representation Law of 1878 only a state secretary could represent the Chancellor. These problems were resolved in May 1907 by the creation of an independent Colonial Office, but at the period with which this study begins responsibility in colonial affairs was much confused.1 German administration was hierarchical rather than collegial. State secretaries were responsible only to the Chancellor and through him to the Kaiser. In practice, this meant that unless the Chancellor intervened, the state secretary alone was responsible for the formulation of policy; he was not supervised by a cabinet. It will be seen that colonial secretaries were able to formulate very personal policies without the intervention of their colleagues, save that they were subject to the Ministry of Estimates in all financial matters.2 The Colonial Department, and later the Colonial Office, was also organised hierarchically, the various officials being responsible only for administrative decisions which they personally ratified by signing the appropriate 1

Otto Kobner, Einfuhrung in die Kolonialpolitik (Jena, 1908), pp. 121 et seq.; Karl Helfferich, Zur Reform der kolonialen Verwaltungs- Organisation (Berlin, 1905), ch. 1; 'Allerhochster Erlass vom 12. Dezember 1894', in Die LandesGesetzgebung des Deutsch-Ostafrikanischen Schutzgebiets (2 vols., Dar es Salaam,

2

Decisions bearing on German private law required the approval of the Ministry of Justice.

1911), 1, 101 n.

3

33

ITU

Tanganyika under German rule documents. In East Africa, similarly, the governor was supreme, for he had no executive council and was under no obligation to take advice from any official. The central government in East Africa was again divided into a number of specialist departments {Refer"ate), each headed by a Referent. The Chief Secretary (Erster Referent) coordinated these departments, but all important decisions, even on local or technical matters, were taken by the governor, whose signature was required for the majority of documents. Thus the colonial administration was a pure bureaucracy, hierarchically organised, avoiding committees, and maximising the responsibility of the individual civil servant. This is the accepted picture of German colonial government—an authoritarian bureaucracy, excluding the layman, excluding public opinion, disciplined and severe. Yet this is only part of the picture, and for the purpose of this study the less important part. German administration operated on two principles unfamiliar to those accustomed to British practice. First, it depended on the intervention of administrators in politics, rather than the participation of politicians in administration. This gave government its bureaucratic appearance, and enabled a determined administrator in a key post to achieve remarkable personal influence. It also meant, however, that the administrator was not protected by his office, and was therefore exposed to political pressure. Second, German government worked by tension and conflict. At provincial level, the tension was between the field officer of the bureaucracy and organs of local self-government.1 At national level, it was tension between the bureaucracy and a wide range of pressure groups both inside and outside the Reichstag. Until 1905, while debate on colonial affairs centred on the desirability of having colonies at all, successive colonial directors looked for support chiefly outside the Reichstag, to what 1

The statement that German government was bureaucratic and centralising should not obscure the fact that the bureaucracy was normally the agent of a state rather than of the empire.

34

The political context might be called the 'colonial interest', a nucleus of businessmen, financiers, journalists, soldiers, intellectuals, and professional patriots. These were institutionalised in the Colonial Society {Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft), a pressure group and propaganda agency formed in 1887, which by 1907 had some 37,000 members.1 This body was able to exert considerable pressure on the bureaucracy. Its members predominated in the Colonial Council (Kolonialrat), an influential body created in 1891 to debate budgets and proposed ordinances.2 Both these institutions declined after 1905. The Council was abolished in 1908 because of its unpopularity in the Reichstag. Although the Colonial Society remained an important propaganda agency, it lost its intimate association with the administration. The functions of the two bodies were taken over by members of the Reichstag, the popular element in the constitutional compromise of 1871. For, contrary to accepted views of German government, the Reichstag was the key institution in the structure of colonial administration. The colonies were acquired by executive action, and the role of the Reichstag in their administration developed through its attempts to limit executive power. Bismarck intended that the colonies, administered if possible by chartered companies, should remain purely the concern of the executive ; the Reichstag would be consulted ' only so far as money or legislation is required at home [im Inlande]'.3 In other words, the Reichstag's position was to be that which it occupied in most administrative fields, restricted to the establishment and financing of a supervisory office in Berlin. The Reichstag, however, resisted this arrangement, because Bismarck intended to delegate executive power to chartered companies, and the Reichstag was determined to safeguard 1

2 3

Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 5 Dec. 1907. For this body, see Richard V. Pierard, 'The German colonial society 1882-1914' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1964). For the Kolonialrat, see Herr H. J. Pogge von Strandmann's forthcoming dissertation for Oxford University. Minute by Bismarck on a document dated 24 Nov. 1885, printed in Eugen Kade, Die Anfdnge der deutschen Kolonial-Zentralverwaltung (Wiirzburg-Anmuhle,

1939), P- 161. 35

3-2

Tanganyika under German rule German citizens against arbitrary rule by such companies.1 After much debate, a Protectorate Law was passed in 1886.2 Its first paragraph stated: ' In the German Protectorates the Kaiser exercises protective power in the name of the empire.' By thus embodying executive power in law, this paragraph enabled that power to be regulated by legislation, and ensured that since the Kaiser administered ' in the name of the empire' his actions were c answerable' through the Chancellor to the Reichstag.3 The Protectorate Law also ruled that the private law applicable to non-natives was to be imperial law as enforced in consular courts.4 Law as applied to natives could be defined by the Kaiser.5 By this legislation, the Reichstag ensured that executive authority over Europeans in the colonies would be subject to the law as in Germany, and also obtained a formal right—not beyond constitutional debate—to question the Chancellor in general terms on colonial affairs. The Reichstag did not, however, acquire any control of executive authority over those legally natives. Its participation in colonial affairs would therefore have been small, but for a simultaneous controversy over the financing of colonial administration. Constitutionally, the Reichstag controlled all imperial (not state) expenditure from direct revenue, a right which its members defended vigilantly. Within this limited sphere, its power was absolute. It could reject an imperial budget, or exclude sections in such a way as to subvert the policy of the 1

2 3

Karl Freiherr von Stengel, Die Rechtsverhaltnisse der deutschen Schutzgebiete

(Tubingen, 1901), pp. 24 et seq. This was amended in 1887 an7645 Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren, part 2. For reactions to his personality, see Adolf Zimmermann, Mit Dernburg nach Ostafrika (Berlin, 1908), p. 147; Heinrich Pfeiffer, Bwana Gazetti: als Journalist in Ostafrika (Berlin, 1933), p. 50; Schnee, Als letzter Gouverneur, p. n o . 51

4-2

Tanganyika under German rule and his analysis of the available options. These will be considered in turn. As a German colonial governor in the age of Weltpolitik, Rechenberg was distinctly unexpected. True, he was an aristocrat, born of a family long distinguished in the diplomatic service. The family, however, was Roman Catholic, and Rechenberg, born in Madrid in 1861 and spending much of his youth in Russia, was educated at a Jesuit academy. True, he followed the normal administrative training of his time, acquiring a doctorate in law and a reserve commission, serving as Provincial Magistrate in Tanga from 1893 and in the Zanzibar consulate from 1896. His real experience and interest, however, lay in Ostpolitik; he was one of Germany's leading authorities on Eastern Europe. From 1900 to 1906 he held consular posts in Moscow—then a provincial city— and Warsaw, the capital of Russian Poland. He travelled widely in southern Russia in the period of ferment when Stalin was building his career there, and served in Warsaw during the 1905 revolution. When he left East Africa in 1911, he immediately abandoned colonial affairs and concentrated again on Eastern Europe. Elected to the Reichstag in 1914 as Zentrum deputy for Germany's eastern outpost, Konigsberg, he became expert adviser to those of Germany's leaders who saw eastern expansion as the main aim of the First World War. An advocate of the Peace of Brest Litovsk, which gave Germany enormous territorial gains at Russian expense, he was proposed by the Zentrum as Minister for Occupied Areas in the government formed in 1918 to make peace in the west. This post in fact went to his political ally, Erzberger, and Rechenberg almost immediately left public life.1 Briefly, in 1922, he became ambassador in Warsaw 1

Rathenau to Mutius, 10 Oct. 1914, printed in Walther Rathenau: Politische Briefe (Dresden, 1929), p. 2 1 ; Clemens von Delbriick, Die wirtschaftliche Mobilmachung in Deutschland 1914 (Miinchen, 1924), pp. 124—7; Henry Cord Meyer,' Mitteleuropa* in German thought and action 1815-1945 (The Hague, 1955), pp. 140, 278 n.69; Reichstag Debates, 1914-18 session, 22 Feb. 1918, pp. 4,07172; Erich Matthias and Rudolf Morsey (ed.), Die Regierung des Prinzen Max von Baden (Diisseldorf, 1962), pp. 18 n.5, 26, 173.

52

Rechenberg and reconstruction during Rathenau's eastern-oriented term as Foreign Secretary. For a time he was a member of the German delegation at the League of Nations. But these were isolated incidents in a long retirement. Rechenberg was killed in a traffic accident in Berlin in February 1935 at the age of 73. Thus for 35 years, if not indeed from birth, his primary interest was Eastern Europe. His five years as governor of German East Africa formed merely an interlude in this career. Everything in his background separated Rechenberg from the dominant trends in German colonial affairs. While Dernburg represented the new managerial class, Rechenberg's aristocratic birth was reinforced by his training in the precise, paternalistic tradition of the Prussian bureaucracy. Arrogant and sardonic, a lonely bachelor lacking any talent for popularity, his expertise and industry contrasted sharply with Dernburg's public gifts. Again, while most Germans in East Africa looked southwards for inspiration, Rechenberg's African experience was limited to the multi-racial society of the eastern coast. In the aftermath of revolt, his taste for the company of Muslim sheikhs and Asian merchants, facilitated by exceptional linguistic gifts, was unlikely to win the confidence of his fellow Europeans. He tended to assume, quite falsely, that the coast was typical of East Africa as a whole. Unlike his predecessor, he had little enthusiasm for the inland peoples whom he ruled, but nevertheless possessed great confidence in his ability to govern them. For Rechenberg, African cultivators differed little from Russian or Polish peasants, and the administration of subject, agricultural peoples was an art in which he believed himself accomplished. All these characteristics distinguished Rechenberg from the generality of colonial administrators and enthusiasts, but one still greater gulf lay between them, a gulf which bitterly divided the rulers of Germany at this date. This was the conflict between easterners and westerners, between the conservatives of the old Prussia, increasingly winning an intellectual following, and the new men of Weltpolitik, who saw Germany's future in terms of sea-power and rivalry or 53

Tanganyika under German rule accommodation with the Anglo-Saxon powers. For westerners, colonies were important as a demonstration of the imperial future; for easterners, they were an irrelevant diversion from the true national interest. Rechenberg was an easterner. He believed that Germany's future lay in the east, not on the sea. He had no faith in colonial enterprise. In consequence, his administration was minimal and reactive, a holding action geared to peace and economy, just as in 1918 he wanted peace in the west to preserve the gains of Brest Litovsk in the east. As a strange consequence, his administration of East Africa appears liberal to modern eyes. Yet Rechenberg was no liberal, either by his own or modern standards. He was a conservative, professional Prussian bureaucrat administering an occupied area with a minimum of expense and a minimum of force. For the extravagances of Weltpolitik he held nothing but contempt. While other colonial officials cultivated good relations with the German Colonial Society, Rechenberg appears never to have attended a single meeting. This was the paradox of his position. German colonial governors are normally pictured as energetic expansionists urging right-wing policies against left-wing opposition. Rechenberg advocated policies with left-wing support against right-wing opposition. His position was inherently unstable. By 1912 it was impossible. Yet the reconstruction scheme which he devised for German East Africa during 1907 remains a remarkable example of intelligent insight into the nature of colonial rule. Coloured by his own experience, this reconstruction policy also drew deeply on Rechenberg's analysis of the Maji Maji rebellion. Concerned above all for quietude and economy, the fear of another rebellion haunted his governorship. Rebellion was expensive. It was politically dangerous, as the 1905-7 crisis had proved. It might also ruin his career. It could be prevented, he believed, only by an economic policy which tangibly benefited the subject peoples. This, he wrote in 1907, was borne out by all his experience of rural unrest in Eastern Europe: 54

Rechenberg and reconstruction From what I have seen so far, I have not the slightest doubt that the recent rising was due to economic causes, and this accords with experience gained in other lands. I have repeatedly had opportunity to observe popular movements more or less closely, and wherever heterogeneous elements united in a general rising, as was the case with the various tribes here, economic questions have been the root cause, to which other factors have been joined only subsequently.1

Specifically, he blamed his predecessor's cotton scheme as an offence against the first principle of peasant administration— the fact that the peasant was an economic man, responding to the market according to an intelligent understanding of his own self-interest. Rebellion, he explained later in his governorship, was not irrational savagery. It was the only effective means of protest available to a subject people who were badly ruled: Apart from a rising, the natives have no means available against an ordered government which takes no account of their economic conditions and existence... In an uncivilised land which, for example, is exposed to raiding, the condition of the native is indeed afflicted, but not hopeless. He can always hope to beat off the raiders, to bar their way, to win the protection of another powerful tribe, to avoid these intermittent raids, and so on. But under an established administration which is based on false economic principles, the native lacks any means of escaping oppression. It deprives him even of the hope of improvement, and leaves him no choice save either to perish or to eliminate it through a rising. He naturally chooses the latter.2

Further, Rechenberg believed, like contemporary Marxist theorists, that it was characteristic of imperialism to destroy indigenous economies. He pointed, for example, to the decay of the smaller coastal ports as their centuries-old commerce with Zanzibar and the Middle East was superseded by a trading network under European control.3 He held, therefore, that an administration which sought to prevent unrest could not content itself with avoiding economic impositions on its subjects. It must initiate active development which brought tangible economic benefits. Thus Rechenberg 1 2 3

Rechenberg to RKA, 15 July 1907, RKA 1056/48-56. Rechenberg to RKA, 21 Dec. 1910, RKA 237/74-83. Rechenberg to RKA, 15 July 1907, RKA 1056/48-56.

55

Tanganyika under German rule sought an active policy for defensive reasons. Like so many other colonial rulers, he sought to solve the political problem of alien rule by economic means, to tranquillise discontent by prosperity. To stimulate economic development within the African sector of the economy was dangerous, as Gotzen's cotton scheme had shown. There existed in East Africa the two alternatives of white settlement or European-owned plantations employing African labour. In the aftermath of revolt, it might have been natural, as in South-West Africa, to concentrate on this economic sector, and there were many available to argue that to do so would also guarantee African prosperity. By the end of 1907, Rechenberg had decided against these alternatives. He does not appear to have made up his mind before he reached East Africa, although he certainly brought with him a scepticism of the profitability of capital investment in Africa. His conclusion was based on his analysis of the European sector of the economy as he found it in 1906 and 1907. This condition must now be described. The settlement of German emigrants in German territory was the first priority in right-wing colonial programmes. The colonisation of new land was a traditionally Germanic enterprise; between 1886 and 1913, over a thousand million marks was voted from public funds to settle colonists in Posen and West Prussia, in an attempt to strengthen the Teutonic element among dissident Poles.1 For colonial enthusiasts, the military and political motives which explained this massive state expenditure applied with equal force to East Africa. European settlement, it could be asserted persuasively, was an effective defence against unrest, for in the settled northern areas of the colony there had been no rebellion.' One settler', proclaimed an enthusiast, 'holds a hundred blacks in check'.2 As amateur strategists, too, the enthusiasts could point to the 1 2

Richard Wonser Tims, Germanizing Prussian Poland (New York, 1941). August Leue, * Deutsch-russische Siedlungen in Ostafrika', in Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 10 Feb. 1906.

56

Rechenberg and reconstruction

value of a large European population in East Africa in any future struggle with Britain. They had not been told that the government had already written off the colonies in the event of war.1 Further, right-wing spokesmen saw European settlement in the colonies as an escape from social unrest in Germany. 'Fewer proletarians, more colonists!' urged the Colonial Society's election address in 1907.2 But right-wing opinion was divided on the desirable type of settlement. Small-scale peasant settlement on the Polish model was specifically an aim of Conservatives, partly because they were farmers, partly because they were Conservatives. In case of war, said their spokesman, such smallholdings could form 'the defensive network of the whole territory'. 3 National Liberals and most colonial experts held this 'radish policy' to be impracticable in the tropics. They urged that settlers be recruited from people with capital—younger sons of merchants and industrialists, retired officers and, especially, the Prussian lower nobility.4 Divided opinion on the right faced scepticism on the left. Convinced that the settlers would fail, Social Democrats saw the plan as a fraud on the working class. Influential liberals and a large body of Zentrum opinion feared that settlement would harm African interests.5 Given this division of public opinion, the government refused to spend public funds on European settlement, which it consistently described as purely experimental. Already, however, a European community was establishing itself in East Africa. There were 2,570 Europeans in Tanganyika in 1906, 315 of them male settlers and planters. Six years later, there were 4,744 Europeans, including 758 settlers and planters.6 The numbers were small, but larger than those in Kenya at the same date. In the absence of 1 2 3 4 5

6

Biilow to Generalstab, 19 Feb. 1906, RKA 6878/56. Copy in DKG 509/440-1. Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 17 March 1908, p. 4,034 (Richthofen). Paul Samassa, Die Besiedlung Deutsch-Ostafrikas (newedn, Berlin, 1909), p. 116. Reichstag Debates, 1909-11 session, 31 Jan. 1910, p. 955 (Noske); Spahn in Budget Commission, 25 Feb. 1908, Rt 1059. Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 622, pp. 3,726-7; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1911/12, part 2, pp. 10-11.

57

Tanganyika under German rule coherent official support, the settlers had established themselves piecemeal, reaching some areas before the arrival of effective European government. This, and the fact that Europeans chose highland areas already relatively densely populated by Africans, determined settlement procedures and land policy. It has been seen that the first European immigrants aimed at Usambara, the highland area most accessible from the coast, and bought land from Kibanga, leader of the weaker party in the Kilindi succession dispute. When the government conducted an enquiry into land rights in East Usambara in 1896, gigantic claims were advanced. The district officer in Tanga, acting on behalf of his father, claimed, inter alia, the whole of what later became Korogwe township. Ludwig Illich, sometime quartermaster in the defence force, demanded 87,500 acres; he received 12,500. The earlier and more substantial claims were admitted and granted in freehold or on long lease.1 East Usambara was then surveyed and the vast plantation areas demarcated. Thus the area which was to become the centre of the sisal industry was ' wholly apportioned' among large estate owners before the government gained effective control of the situation.2 Shortly afterwards, the main interest of intending settlers turned to the more mountainous area of West Usambara, towards which the railway from the coast was advancing. By 1906, 44 male settlers in this area had carved themselves medium-sized farms interspersed with Shambala hilltop villages, and settlement was continuing when Rechenberg began to study the situation. Already, however, the government feared land shortage in the mountains and urged the creation of larger native reserves in the Pangani Valley.3 Alarmed that Africans were increasingly being forced to leave their land, Rechenberg insisted that restraint be exercised. 'Ultimately', he wrote, 'it serves the public interest to pro1 2 3

'Protokoll', Tanga, 18/21 Jan. 1896, TNA MPG 3498. Samassa, op. cit., p. 22. Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 41, p. 100; Government to Wilhelmstal, 5 May 1906, TNA BA Wilhelmstal XXVII/A/I; Haber to Tanga, 31 Aug. 1906, TNA MPG 2382.

58

Rechenberg and reconstruction mote the natives' settledness and their attachment to the soil, not to diminish it'. 1 Thus in the area which the Germans called Tanganital 2 a European community was established before Rechenberg arrived. Pressure on the land suggested, however, that their numbers must remain limited. Those who dreamed of extensive white settlement were already turning their attention to the wider spaces around Kilimanjaro and Meru. The first settlers to reach the area of Moshi and Arusha, in 1902, were Boer c die-hards' escaping postwar depression in South Africa. They soon moved off again, but they had persuaded Gotzen that they were the ideal agents to open up the country around the great mountains. When another group arrived in March 1905, he offered them land around Arusha and encouraged them to summon further Afrikaner settlers.3 The conflicts which had taken place in this area in the later nineteenth century had left wide stretches of noman's-land between the tribes. The foothills of Mount Meru were such a cordon sanitaire, virtually uninhabited since the Arusha people of the mountain had driven off the Masai plainsmen.4 Here, Gotzen decided, the Boers should settle. Since they were expected to become cattle farmers, they were thought likely to come into conflict with the Masai, whose possessive attitude towards cattle was notorious. When the Boers arrived, therefore, the district commander concentrated those Masai in Moshi district into a reserve south of the Arusha-Moshi road, west of the Pangani, and east of what later became the Great North Road. This cut them off from the Kenyan section of the tribe and deprived them of valuable pasture in Monduli, Longido, Ngorongoro, and Loliondo. Leaderless since the flight of their religious head, Sendeyo, to Kenya, the Masai made no concerted resistance, but lived 1 2 3

4

Rechenberg, 'Runderlass', 22 Feb. 1907, TNA Grants Tanga 240. From the three districts: Tanga, Pangani, Wilhelmstal (Lushoto). Meyer to Government, 31 Aug. 1902, Stuhlmann to Mpwapwa, 5 Feb. 1903, and Gotzen to German Consul, Pretoria, 11 Nov. 1903, TNA BA Mpwapwa XV/A/2/I. Steinhauser, 'Waaruscha', in Beantwortung des Fragebogens.

59

Tanganyika under German rule until 1914 in 'a state of latent war' with their European neighbours.1 Some 200 Afrikaners, mostly very poor, had reached Arusha by September 1905. The government offered them surveyed farms averaging 2,500 acres per family. Watching them arrive, the district commander judged the experiment 'wholly successful5, while the delighted governor promised to sell them their land once it was stocked, and directed their attention southwards to the Mbulu Plateau as a fertile area for further expansion.2 But as the Boers resumed their accustomed way of life, the Germans began to have second thoughts about their 'dour country cousins'. In June 1906 the Iraqw people of the Mbulu Plateau rose against their chief and the area was closed to settlement.3 Towards the end of the year Rechenberg posted to Moshi a notably hardheaded district officer, Wilhelm Methner. Methner soon came to despise the Boers as farmers, and to fear that they might form a closed settlement of hostile aliens, a 'fanatical Afrikanerdom'. He refused to sell them land unless it was cultivated—an impossible condition on grazing land—or to let them move away from Arusha, save to emigrate altogether. He ordered that if a Boer renounced a valuable farm it should be realienated only to a German. Many of the first arrivals moved on to Kenya; the rest settled in Oldonyo Sambu and Engare Nanyuki. They cultivated some maize and vegetables; few attempted serious stock-farming. Most lived by hunting and as carriers on the wagon-routes to Voi and Mombo.4 Although valuable pioneers, few Afrikaners were produc1

2

4

Abel to Government, i Nov. 1905 and 12 Dec. 1905, RKA 767/85-6; H. A. Fosbrooke, 'An administrative survey of the Masai social system', in TJVR, xxvi (Dec. 1948), 10; Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren, p. 153; Samassa, op. cit. p. 53. Gotzen to AAKA, 2 Sept. 1905, Abel to Government, 4 Aug. 1905, and Rechenberg to RKA, 16 May 1911, RKA 26/11-13, 18-19, 66-7; 'BurenAnsiedlung in Deutsch-Ostafrika', 12 July 1905, TNA BA Wilhelmstal XXV/A/I. 3 See below, p. 162. Methner to Government, 12 Feb. 1909, TNA IX/B/16/I; Methner to Arusha, 4 July 1907, TNA MPG 2363; Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren, pp. 33, 179; Samassa, pp. 48-63.

60

Rechenberg and reconstruction tive farmers, and no extensive reconstruction programme could be based on their activities. Moreover, they were not Germans. Even as the Boers arrived, the settlement enthusiasts were turning to a scheme which seemed to offer both intensive farming, an inexhaustible supply of settlers, and extensive scope for right-wing initiative. When Hohenlohe became Colonial Director in November 1905, he found on his desk a proposal from a Protestant pastor named Rosenberg, writing from southern Russia. Rosenberg ministered to large settlements of German peasants in the Volga Basin and the Caucasus, whose position under Tsarist rule, he explained, was intolerable. He claimed that so long as they were guaranteed free land, exemption from military service, and German citizenship within three months, he could provide 10,000 settlers for the colonies within ten years. The government was inured to such proposals, which were normally treated with appropriate scorn. Rosenberg, however, was persistent and plausible. Hohenlohe interviewed him, was convinced, and decided that an experiment should be made with these people who had nothing to lose. For the first time in East Africa, it was to be Kleinsiedlung, the radish policy, peasant settlement on the Polish model. At the outset, fifty families would each receive 125 acres west of Kilimanjaro. The settlers would build their own village and use no African labour. Gotzen accepted the project as an 'instructive and not hopeless experiment' so long as he was not held responsible for the outcome.1 Hohenlohe soon discovered, however, that the German Russians—as they came to be called—had a serious drawback. They were Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans, rather than Reichsdeutsche, Germans by citizenship, and were unwilling to make the transition by fighting for their country. This was sufficient to awaken the resentment of the extreme right wing, while others saw in destitute proletarians a potential 'danger to the prestige of the white race'. Alarmed by this reaction, Hohenlohe ob1

Rosenberg to AAKA, 28 Oct. 1905, Hohenlohe to Government, 7 Jan. 1906, and Gotzen to AAKA, 7 Feb. 1906, RKA 29/3-6, 24-33, 64.

61

Tanganyika under German rule tained 100,000 marks from a discretionary fund and hastily transferred the project to the Colonial Society.1 Earlier in the year, this body had set up a German East African Settlement Committee under the leadership of three vehement enthusiasts, a retired admiral named Strauch, Wilhelm Arning, soon to be a National Liberal deputy in the Reichstag, and August Leue, formerly one of the more ruthless officers of the East African defence force. The committee accepted Hohenlohe's proposal, believing that if the experiment failed the blame could be put on the Russianness of the settlers. While the district commander in Moshi chose suitable land, the committee despatched the first four families in May 1906.2 Illiterate, their children barefoot, they were the unprepossessing vanguard of an attempt to prove that German East Africa was white man's country. Within three months of their arrival, the German Russians were complaining that they had been betrayed. Rosenberg, they claimed, had told them that Arusha had four harvests a year. It proved impossible to dispense with African labour, but after the first harvest of wheat Methner thought the experiment 'full of promise', while Rechenberg, after a visit, remained fairly optimistic.3 Trouble began when Leue arrived to inspect and inspire the committee's settlement, popularly known as Leudorf. He found it a vast success, but left it in turmoil. In October 1907 two families of settlers arrived at Tanga from Moshi, ostensibly penniless and demanding to be sent home.4 The committee continued to claim success, but the settlers' failure was rapidly becoming apparent, and after 1908, when all their wheat rusted, it was certain. Although Arning ascribed it to the fact that 'their moral quality has 1

2 3

4

Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, 23 Jan. 1906, Deutsche £eitung, 2 4 J an « 1906,

Meyer to DKG, 13 April 1906, RKA 29/44, 54> 89-91. Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 24 June 1905; Strauch to AAKA, n.d., RKA 29/120; Strauch to Dernburg, 19 Nov. 1907, RKA 14/135-9. 'Protokoir, Leganga, 28 Sept. 1906, Richter to DOABK, 29 Aug. 1906, Methner to Government, 29 Jan. 1907, and Rechenberg to AAKA, 13 March 1907, RKA 30/52, 40-2, 74-6, 80. Methner to DOABK, 15 June 1907 and 2 July 1907, and Notzel to Government, 24 Oct. 1907, TNA VIII/H/17/II.

62

Rechenberg and reconstruction

suffered somewhat from Slavising5, the German Russians' failure destroyed all hopes of Kleinsiedlung.1 For Rechenberg, it demonstrated that European peasants could not, any more than Afrikaner stock farmers, be the basis of a reconstruction programme. While experiments with planned settlement proved disastrous, piecemeal settlement continued. Despite the shortage of land, more farms were marked out in West Usambara, and during 1907 another settlement area definitely took shape. Kilimanjaro had long been the spectacular goal of rightwing ambitions. The Chagga inhabitants of the mountain had their vihamba, banana groves and home farms, in a belt around the middle slopes, often with sizeable areas of unoccupied (but not unclaimed) land dividing rival chiefdoms. Below this belt were the shamba or maize fields. Shamba land was controlled by the chiefs, while the vihamba were clan land. The Germans, however, ignored this distinction and held the chiefs competent to alienate vihamba land. The first European immigrants were missionaries, who acquired land in the vihamba belt and successfully grew coffee. At the turn of the century a few Greeks and retired soldiers settled on the edges of the cultivated area. By 1906, when Methner became district officer, there were eight settlers on the mountain. It had been decided that future settlement must be directed to unused shamba land, for fear of Chagga unrest. Always suspicious of land alienation, Methner concluded that 'a very extensive settlement on densely populated Kilimanjaro cannot be carried through by peaceful means. At a rough estimate, 10-15,000 acres of best land can still be made available for settlement'. He began to formulate a plan, but it was subverted during 1907 by a sudden influx of settlers, until by the end of the year some fifty European farms ringed the lower slopes. Private enterprise had again outrun official control.2 1 2

Paul Rohrbach, * Ostafrikanische Studien', in Preussische Jahrbucher, cxxxv (1909), 290; Arning in Budget Commission, 31 March 1908, Rt 1060. P. H. Johnston, * Some notes on land tenure on Kilimanjaro and the vihamba of the Wachagga', in TNR, xxi (June 1946), 1-20; Methner, p. 181; Haber

63

Tanganyika under German rule As Rechenberg watched the gradual influx of private settlers and the failure of the two sponsored experiments during 1906-7, his doubts were confirmed. Officially, he preserved an open mind. ' The settlement of Europeans in East Africa', he wrote during March 1907, 'represents an experiment which must be made and supported, but whose results the present generation will not live to see.'1 Privately, he had come to loathe settlers and to consider them troublesome, crude, and dangerous. His doubts of the possibility of basing the reconstruction of East Africa on European enterprise were reinforced by other circumstances. In two areas—the availability of labour and the state of the international market for East African exports—the future of both plantation enterprise and white settlement appeared bleak. When Gotzen left German East Africa early in 1906, the colony faced a 'labour calamity'. Officials in Tanganital believed that plantation development would have to be discouraged unless a solution were found. The African population of this area scarcely exceeded 200,000. Moreover, the plantations were increasingly substituting sisal and rubber for coffee and thereby requiring a more permanent labour force.2 The crisis provoked numerous suggestions, none of which gained general support. One popular answer to labour problems was to demand straightforward compulsion. Those —and there were many—who agreed with Carl Peters that 'the negro is created by God for manual labour' went on with him to argue that' the sole task of the administration in a colony is to discipline natives for white enterprises'. But experience of direct compulsion had been unhappy: it was widely held that forced labour had been one of the main causes of rebellion in the Matumbi Hills. The Colonial

1 2

to Government, 5 March 1905, RKA 700/93-124; Hontsch (for Methner) to Government, 12 Dec. 1906, RKA 701/12; Methner to Government, 16 Dec. 1907, TNA IV/O/i/I. Rechenberg to AAKA, 13 March 1907, RKA 14/67-8. Gotzen to Tanga, 4 Oct. 1905, TNA BA Tanga Ld 28; Meyer to Government, 2 April 1906, RKA 119/57 e t se(l-J Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1909/10, part 2, p. 20.

64

Rechenberg and reconstruction Department therefore rejected this solution.1 As an alternative, it was decided that the defeated rebels should be employed to alleviate the labour shortage. Only some 1,500 were in fact supplied, most of whom were shipped to Usambara where, with the greatest hardship, they helped to build a remarkable mountain road. This scarcely satisfied the planters.2 Denied systematic compulsion, they favoured indirect pressure through differential taxation. The government rejected this after much debate, on the grounds that it would lead to widespread movement of population which would probably not benefit Tanganital. 3 An experiment of a different type was already in operation. Some thousands of men from the interior, chiefly Nyamwezi and Sukuma, had been settled on the coast, where they received free land and in return were bound to work for ninety days a year on the plantations. An enquiry instituted in April 1906 revealed that a large proportion—perhaps 5,000—had fled to Kenya.4 The last desperate hope, in Gotzen's view, was the importation of Chinese labourers, an expedient with which many colonial governments toyed during this period. The Germans had tried it in the 1890s, with disastrous results. Most Europeans were terrified of the scheme, and the government refused its support.5 All these plans assumed that Africans would not work voluntarily for European employers, an assumption which most observers considered sufficiently demonstrated by the existing crisis. Given abundant land, they argued, purely 1

2 3

4 5

Carl Peters, Gesammelte Schriften (3 vols., Miinchen, 1943), 1, 415, 436; Gotzen to AAKA, 21 Jan. 1906, RKA 1055/138-9; Hohenlohe to Government, 17 Feb. 1906, RKA 726/68-76. Hellwig to Government, 25 Dec. 1905, TNA III/F/20/I; Haber to AAKA, 16 July 1906, RKA 724/120-2. Haber to AAKA, 7 April 1906, and Spalding to Rechenberg, 24 May 1906, RKA 1055/166-7, 194-6; Haber to Feilke, 9 Aug. 1906, in Usambara-Post, 1 Sept. 1906. Spalding, memorandum for Dernburg, Oct. 1906, and Meyer to Government, 2 April 1906, RKA n9/130-3, 57 et seq. Gotzen to AAKA, 3 Aug. 1905, RKA 1055/107-9; memorandum by northern planters, [early 1906], RKA 119/17-18; 'Sitzung des Gouvernementsrats beim Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika', Dar es Salaam, 18/19 May 1906, RKA 812/96-162.

Tanganyika under German rule economic considerations were irrelevant. As one authoritative voice expressed it, ' it is not the negro who needs work for his well-being, but we who need the negro's labour in our own interest'.1 Rechenberg challenged this belief as soon as he assumed responsibility for East Africa. 'Apart from a few pastoral tribes', he wrote, 'the negro works everywhere and without compulsion, provided that he can see sufficient reward for his labour. When the work yields no return he does not work, nor would a European in similar circumstances.'2 Rechenberg therefore sought to rely on the operation of a free labour market—' a colonial policy on Manchester principles', as a critic described it.3 He accepted the Colonial Department's view that Tanganital could not hope to draw its labour from local sources. The government must concentrate on organising the supply of migrant labour.4 The main source of this was Unyamwezi, whose people had long travelled to the coast as porters, especially in times of scarcity. A number were already accustomed to a period of plantation labour; by 1908 some were even working on the Rand. 5 The number of migrants, however, was not keeping pace with plantation development. An enquiry conducted in the source areas early in 1906 revealed that the Nyamwezi preferred porterage and railway construction to plantation labour. One reason for this was that planters had lowered wages during a famine in 1903, and had not subsequently raised them. Rechenberg believed that wage rates were lower than they had been ten years before. Further, plantations paid their workers by the day, which lengthened the contract period unduly when the workers had to buy and cook food. Again, the Nyamwezi resented a number of abuses which they experienced on the plantations, especially the disciplinary corporal punishment which employers 1

Walter von St Paul-Illaire, Caveant Consules: Kolonialpolitische Ze^"

Streitfragen (Berlin, 1906), p. 14. 2 Rechenberg to RKA, 15 July 1907, RKA 1056/48-56. 3 Usambara-Post, 17 April 1909. 4 Rechenberg, minute, 31 May 1906, RKA 1055/197-200. s Siegel, 'Reisebericht', [c. 1908], RKA 278/97-9.

66

un(

L

Rechenberg and reconstruction

claimed the right to inflict. Such was the dislike of plantation labour that recruiting had become a mixture of bribery and force. The report urged two essential reforms: pay and conditions must be improved, and recruiting must be properly organised.1 Preferring to leave wages to the operation of the market, Rechenberg concentrated on the problem of recruiting during 1906 and 1907. For a model he turned to Eastern Europe. In the years before 1914, the extensive estates of Mecklenburg and Prussia imported unskilled seasonal labour from Eastern Europe, especially from Russian Poland, where Rechenberg had recently held office. By 1908, German agriculture employed some 300,000 immigrant labourers. Largely illiterate, these workers were the object of much illtreatment and abuse. Under government pressure, the employers had established a central recruiting organisation, a non-profit-making agency in which employers held shares in proportion to the recruits required, and from which the recruits received a standard contract. In 1907-8 the Prussian government devised a pass system to prevent desertion, but Prussian employers envied the arrangement existing in Mecklenburg, where desertion was a criminal offence. Employers disciplined their workers by fines and by retaining a percentage of wages as caution-money. They also exercised customary but illegal corporal punishment, successfully resisting attempts by welfare organisations to secure the appointment of inspectors with powers of arbitration similar to factory inspectors.2 Although Rechenberg never referred explicitly to this model, he tried to introduce an improved version of it in East Africa. The first point was a central recruiting agency. In December 1905 the League of German East African Plantations, representing the larger, nonresident plantation owners, had agreed to form a syndicate to recruit in the interior. The scheme failed because the agency 1

2

Meyer to Government, 2 April 1906, RKA 119/57 e t seo fj Rechenberg, minute, 31 May 1906, RKA 1055/197-200. Johannes Nichtweiss, Die ausldndischen Saisonarbeiter in der Landwirtschaft der ostlichen und mittleren Gebiete des Deutschen Reiches (Berlin, 1959), passim.

67

5-2

Tanganyika under German rule lacked capital, the recruiter proved incompetent, and plantation managers in East Africa were hostile.1 Nevertheless, it provided a basis for negotiations between Rechenberg and the plantation owners before the governor left Germany. The owners agreed to establish a new syndicate with a capital of 100,000 marks. It would issue a standard contract, and the governor would second an experienced official as its recruiter. The syndicate was left open for smaller employers to join. When Rechenberg reached East Africa he was unable to implement the scheme. The smaller employers complained that the quoted wages were too high, while the chosen recruiter demanded changes in the contract which the plantation owners refused. By the end of 1907 no progress had been made either in establishing the agency or in improving conditions on the plantations.2 So long as the crisis remained unsolved, a reliance on plantation agriculture as the means of economic reconstruction was impossible. Rechenberg gradually convinced himself of this during 1907, and his conviction was strengthened by the difficulties faced by the existing plantations. When these were first established in Usambara in the 1890s, the favoured crop was coffee, in which some eighteen million marks had been invested by 1907. Around the turn of the century, investors began to realise that they had made a grave error. Under the cultivation methods then employed, the soil of Usambara was too acidic to produce more than half a pound of coffee per bush, whereas the average yield later obtained by settlers on Kilimanjaro was to reach 2\ lbs.3 Although the quality of Usambara coffee was quite good, the world price 1 2

3

Contract with Thomaschek, [Dec. 1905], and VDOAP to AAKA, 14 July 1906, RKA 119/4, 37. 'Protokoll', VDOAP, 28 June 1906, RKA 119/115-16; Latz and Haber, 'Denkschrift iiber die Versorgung der europaischen Pflanzungen in den Nordbezirken von Deutsch-Ostafrika mit eingeborenen Arbeitern', March 1907, RKA 119/191-6. Heinrich Brode, British and German East Africa (Eng. trans., London, 1911), pp. 97-9; F. Wohltmann, * Neujahrsgedanken 1909', in Der Tropenpjlanzer, Jan. 1909; William No well, 'The agricultural research station at Amani', in Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, LXXXI (1933), 1,097-1,109.

68

Rechenberg and reconstruction in 1906-7 was very low, only half of what it was to be during 1912.l In consequence, not a single coffee plantation was economically viable in 1907. Much of the 1906 crop had been left to rot on the bushes. The planters were already abandoning coffee. Of the 6,500,000 bushes in Usambara in 1899, only 4,700,000 remained in 1907.2 The alternative crop adopted on most plantations, especially in East Usambara, was sisal, first planted in the colony in 1892. Ten years later, when the failure of coffee became apparent and the first substantial sisal exports left East Africa, the world price of sisal was very high and large acreages were planted. The market situation then worsened. The price fell 25 per cent in three years, and was to fall another 35 per cent by 1911. Those who had first planted the crop managed to make a fair profit, but latecomers found that they had invested in a crop whose output was inelastic and whose future, it was widely believed, was threatened by overproduction.3 For six months after his arrival in East Africa, Rechenberg studied the situation. While guerrilla warfare continued in the south, he reshuffled his officials, negotiated with the European community, visited strategic points, and collected advice from all available sources. As he focused more clearly on the issues, the options narrowed. He had left Berlin during the parliamentary recess before the final crisis which precipitated the election. The emphasis in colonial affairs had then been on peace, economy, and reform. These, of course, 1

2

Throughout this study, the half-yearly commodity prices quoted are Hamburg prices published monthly in Der Tropenpflanzer. Thefiguresare crude averages for the first and second six months of each year, and are not weighted for the quantities on offer. They indicate only broad trends. Rathenau, ' Erwagungen iiber die Erschliessung des Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Schutzgebietes', Oct. 1907, Rk 924/94, printed in Walther Rathenau, Nachgelassene Schriften (2 vols., Berlin, 1928), 11, 9-73; Hermann Paasche, Deutsch-Ostafnka: Wirtschaftliche Studien (Berlin, 1906), p. 203; Franz Stuhl-

mann, 'Die Pflanzungsunternehmungen der Europaer in den deutschen 3

Schutzgebieten', in Jahrbuch iiber die deutschen Kolonien, m (1910), 125. Franz Stuhlmann, 'Notizen iiber Sisal-Agaven und deren Fasern', in Der Pflanzer, 12 Sept. 1907. For a general study of the industry, see Richard Hindorf, Der Sisalbau in Deutsch-Ostafrika (Berlin, 1925).

69

Tanganyika under German rule required the prevention of rebellion. Rechenberg believed that the recent rebellion had been due to economic distress, and this, he held, was inherent in colonial rule unless the government could devise an economic policy which demonstrably brought prosperity. He examined the claim that European enterprise was the means to prosperity, and the facts belied it. Settlement schemes had collapsed, the labour crisis continued, plantations were failing, market prospects were gloomy. He had probably never been sanguine of this option, and now he dismissed it, at least in the short term. There remained the possibility of a 'West Coast' policy, the diversion of resources to the African sector of the economy. Yet here, he knew, lay danger. In his Chief Secretary, Winterfeld, he had a walking reminder of the perils of interfering with African agriculture, for Winterfeld had been the chief architect of Gotzen's cotton scheme. Consequently, direct compulsion to grow more, or new, crops was forbidden from the outset. 'The European official', one later recalled, 'could only "recommend, persuade, and encourage voluntary efforts".'1 Other instant solutions met equal scepticism. Many experts urged that the salvation of African farming lay in the introduction of ploughs to replace the iron hoes then in common use. Rechenberg thought this Utopian. Hoecultivation, he explained, was still the basis of intensive peasant agriculture in Europe. Ploughs needed animals to pull them, and the cultivator could not afford to buy and keep these, even where disease allowed it. When told that the solution lay in increasing the number of veterinary officers, he asked, cAre the vets to pull the ploughs?' Rechenberg despised agricultural experts. They knew far less about peasant farming, he believed, than the men they were supposed to instruct.2 1 2

* Memoirs of a German district officer [Theodor Gunzert] in Mwanza 19071916', in TNR, LXVI (Dec. 1966), 176. Rechenberg to RKA, 15 July 1907, RKA 1056/48-56; Theodor Gunzert, 'Service in German East Africa and German Foreign Office 1902-33: Extracts', microfilm, Rhodes House Library, Oxford; Rechenberg to RKA, 5 Dec. 1908, RKA 768/120-2.

70

Rechenberg and reconstruction If the rapid transformation of African cultivation was ruled out, only one option remained: the gradual expansion and reform of indigenous agriculture. This solution received great encouragement at this moment from the success of the Uganda Railway, which reached Lake Victoria in 1901. Contemporary observers were astonished by its effects on the region of German East Africa south and west of the Lake. As soon as transport linked them to a market, the peoples of this area began to expand their output of indigenous products and to sell their surplus crops to the Indian merchants of Mwanza and Bukoba, who exported them to the coast and thence to the Indian Ocean trading area. Between 1903 and 1904, the value of Mwanza's exports rose from 71,185 marks to 423,246; by 1907 it had reached 2,408,965 marks. The railway also facilitated systematic African taxation. Bukoba's hut-tax revenue rose from Rs. 8,700 in 1903 to Rs. 106,735 in 1906.1 Rechenberg seized on this development and made it the centre of the reconstruction programme which he elaborated between March and July 1907. An enemy later christened it c a Nyamwezi and peanut policy', an unflattering description which aptly described the essentials of the programme.2 The idea was that the Nyamwezi, for example, would continue to cultivate his groundnuts with a hoe, but would be induced by the attraction of the market to increase his output. His surplus would be bought by Indian or coastal traders and transported by rail to other parts of the colony or to the coastal ports. With the cash he gained, the Nyamwezi would pay tax and also customs duty on imported consumer goods. There would be no compulsion, European intervention would be minimised, and rebellion would be unlikely. The scheme corresponded to Rechenberg's estimate of the peasant producer and to his overall aims of economy and quietude. But it had one obvious implication: it required a railway. By March 1907, Rechenberg had decided that this railway must 1

R.Hermann, 'Die Ugandabahn und ihr Einfluss auf Deutsch-Ostafrika', in J^eitschrift fur Kolonialpolitik,

2

Kolonialrecht und Kolonialwirtschaft^ v n i (1906),

580-93; Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 262, pp. 1,652-4. Samassa, op. cit. p. 137.

71

Tanganyika under German rule be built immediately. It must go to Tabora, to the Nyamwezi and the peanuts.1 The first stretch of this central railway, running from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, was already nearing completion. Planned as a Stichbahn to capture and channel the trade of the central caravan route, it was not intended to extend beyond Morogoro.2 As the next phase of railway construction, majority opinion before the rebellion favoured another Stichbahn to Liwale to open up the south. The rebellion destroyed this project and demanded a rethinking of railway plans. Rechenberg insisted on the extension of the central route to Unyamwezi. He persuaded Dernburg late in 1907 and provided him with arguments to convince the Budget Commission in April 1908. Construction started in June 1908. Much controversy has surrounded the reasons for building this railway, and the full truth may never be known because many of the relevant documents are lost. It is best to review the arguments. First, the railway, ultimately extended to Lake Tanganyika, has often been seen as the first stage in a plan for a great German Mittelafrika, an empire stretching from Cameroon to Mozambique. Among German statesmen, Kiderlen-Wachter and Solf championed this idea, probably in order to divert German ambitions from Europe.3 Dernburg also spoke in these terms, and one authority has concluded that 'after 1908 Dernburg undoubtedly thought of his railway from the angle of what must have been its principal justification: the Congolese outlet'. 4 Although Dernburg may have been more serious than the other advocates of the 1 2 3

4

Rechenberg to AAKA, 5 March 1907, RKA 768/26-7. Reichstag Debates, 1909-11 session, 27 Nov. 1911, p. 8,050 (Erzberger). Ernst Jackh (ed.), Kiderlen-Wachter, der Staatsmann und Mensch (2 vols., Berlin, 1925), 11, 128-30; Solf to Kriegsminister, 4 Feb. 1915, Rk 933/8-8(7; Eberhard von Vietsch, Wilhelm Solf, Botschafter Zwischen den geiten (Tubingen, 1961), pp. 123-8. Rechenberg also advocated this plan at one moment during the war. See Emil Zimmermann, The German empire of Central Africa as the basis of a new German world policy (trans. E. Bevan, London, 1918), pp. xxvii-xxx. Jacques Willequet, Le Congo Beige et la ' Weltpolitik' (i8g4-igi4) (Bruxelles, 1962), p. 208

72

Rechenberg and reconstruction scheme it is significant, first, that his view was expressed only after the decision to build the railway had been taken and, second, that his view was not shared by the Foreign Office, which refused to threaten the Congo at the expense of Belgian friendship.1 Linked to the problem of official motives is the question of the role of business interests in the decision to build the line. The monopoly capitalist involved was the Deutsche Bank, the most aggressive financial institution in Germany at this date, which underwrote the necessary loan and owned the underemployed subsidiary which built the line. In 1912 the bank obtained prospecting concessions in Katanga, and it already had interests in Congo navigation.2 Certainly it encouraged the scheme and made a substantial profit, but it is unlikely that the railway was built because the bank saw it as a crucial element in its Central African plans. Its later decision to build a competing line through Angola recognised the intrinsic inconvenience of exporting Katangan copper via Lake Tanganyika and the Suez Canal.3 But to conduct the enquiry on this level is fruitless, for it confuses the desirable with the possible. Almost any railway in Central Africa was desirable to those interested in Central Africa, and if a profit were guaranteed somebody could always be found to build it. A dozen expansive plans for similar lines were framed during this period. The problem is why it was possible to build this one. The answer lies, not in grand strategy, but in the hard facts of security and finance. For the Colonial Office, especially, the project had priority over competing proposals because of its strategic importance in the event of an even more widespread rebellion. On these grounds, Dernburg explained, ' the question of building this central line is removed from the sphere of investments of purely economic value, for which the moment can be chosen, 1 2 3

Ibid. pp. 346, 416, 423. Ibid. pp. 382-3. This explanation is proposed by George W. F. Hallgarten, Imperialismus vor igi4 (2nd edn, 2 vols., Miinchen, 1963), 11, 227-9. Bethmann Hollweg to Reichsschatzamt, 28 July 1913, and Zimmermann, 'Aufzeichnung', Oct. 1913, Rk 913/102-3, * 29-31; Friedrich Rosen, Aus einem diplomatischen Wanderleben (4 vols.), 11 (Berlin, 1931), passim.

73

Tanganyika under German rule into the sphere of political necessities which allow no delay, in the interest not of the development but of the preservation of Germany's possession'.1 The main reason for the decision to build the line, however, was financial. Colonial finance, including railway finance, was controlled by the Reichstag. Hitherto the Reichstag had made only small annual grants for railway building, so that it took fourteen years to build the northern railway to Mombo. Rechenberg's programme demanded rapid construction. Given Germany's chaotic finances, and given the assumption that colonies should be self-supporting, it was hopeless to ask the Reichstag to approve a massive sum for railway building either as a charge against one or two annual budgets or as a loan to be serviced by the imperial government. However, the Reichstag might permit a loan to be raised if this were serviced by the government of the colony. To make this possible, such a railway must raise the East African revenue sufficiently to cover increased interest charges. The example which immediately came to mind was the effect of the Uganda Railway in increasing tax revenue and customs income around Lake Victoria. This had happened because the area, although rather densely populated and with considerable economic potential, was previously almost untaxed. In German East Africa in 1907 there were two similar areas. One was the region along the central line; the other was Rwanda and Burundi. The first explains why it was believed that a railway could be built to Tabora; the second explains how it could subsequently be extended to Ujiji. In both cases, the anticipated increase of revenue from the African population would enable the East African government to service a loan in such a way as to minimise the burden on imperial finances, thus holding out the possibility of Reichstag approval.2 1 2

Dernburg in Budget Commission, 3 March 1908, Rt 1059. This argument, and my general account of Rechenberg's programme, is based on the following sources: Rathenau, *Erwagungen', Oct. 1907, and Dernburg, 'Bericht iiber eine vom 13. Juli bis 30. Oktober 1907 nach Ostafrika ausgefiihrte DienstreiseJ, Nov. 1907, Rk 924/94, 99; Rechenberg to RKA, 7 April 1909, RKA 33/86-90; Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, nos.

74

Rechenberg and reconstruction

Thus the central railway is seen in its true perspective as the corollary of Rechenberg's Nyamwezi and peanut policy. The Nyamwezi could grow their peanuts only if they had a railway along which to export them. Conversely, the railway could be built only if the Nyamwezi could export their peanuts. The plan was self-justifying. To appreciate this, it is necessary only to consider the fate of another projected line, the extension of the northern railway from Mombo to Lake Victoria. Right-wing politicians favoured this because it would benefit European agriculture. From the viewpoint of Weltpolitik, a German route to the headwaters of the Nile had obvious attractions. Dernburg urged the scheme on the Reichstag in April 1907. Rechenberg vetoed it, not because he did not want the railway, but because he could not pay for it: I should be delighted if this railway were built. Nevertheless, the difficulty for me is that according to established administrative principles the Protectorate must defray the charges which result from such installations. In my opinion, the Protectorate administration is justified in undertaking the guarantee for the interest and redemption on the loan necessary for the railway construction only if the probable return on the new installations suffices for interest and redemption, or if the sundry revenue of the Protectorate permits the grant of a subsidy to cover a deficit.1

No funds were available to cover a deficit. The area through which the railway would run was already taxed, so that insufficient increase in revenue would result. European agriculture could not bear the necessary burden. The northern line was therefore impracticable, whatever its geopolitical attractions. That much of it was eventually built signifies the extent to which Rechenberg's policy was reversed in the later years of his governorship. 769 and 771; Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 17 March 1908, pp. 4,028-31 (Dernburg); ibid. 1909-11 session, 4 Dec. 1911, p. 8,291 (Erzberger); Emil Zimmermann, 'Die ostafrikanische Zentralbahn und die Finanzlage Ostafrikas' (interview with Rechenberg), in Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 7 Oct. 1911; idem. Die ostafrikanische &ntralbahn, der Tanganyikaverkehr und die ostafrikanischen 1

Finanzen (Berlin, 1911). Rechenberg to RKA, 7 April 1909, RKA 33/86-90. For the plan, see Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 262.

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Tanganyika under German rule The central railway was a corollary to Rechenberg's decision to base his reconstruction programme on African production of indigenous crops by established methods. The financing of the railway came to dominate administrative planning. By 1914, no less than 32 per cent of local revenue was used to service loans for railway construction.1 All Rechenberg's controversial policies followed from this basic decision. He encouraged Indian retail trading, against widespread criticism, because the traders were the essential intermediaries between producers and their markets. He sought to destroy existing organs of settler self-government, despite bitter hostility, because they diverted taxation which was needed for the railway programme. Similarly, his scheme implied that district officers must maximise tax revenue, so that local administration became a vast tax-collecting bureaucracy, with profound effects on African political and economic activity. These were the immediate implications. The long-term implications were still more striking. The programme was a most unusual response to African rebellion, contrasting sharply with the emphasis on European enterprise in South-West Africa after 1907 or Rhodesia after 1897. An expression of fear rather than magnanimity, it was nevertheless an act of courage and imagination, virtues which distinguished Rechenberg's governorship from the complacent narrow-mindedness of his contemporaries in Kenya. But the scheme was also, in origin, notably conservative. At a time when many colonial governments aimed to maximise the impact of European capitalism on their territories by stimulating the export of new cash crops to the European market, Rechenberg set himself to minimise this impact by re-animating the links between East Africa and the Indian Ocean trading area. At a time when many Africans were anxious to adopt new crops and agricultural techniques in order to improve their standard of living, the governor planned to concentrate resources on the old patterns of agriculture. 1

Charlotte Leubuscher, Tanganyika Territory: a study of economic policy under mandate (London, 1944), p. 154.

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Rechenberg and reconstruction For Rechenberg, in July 1907, the immediate problem was to persuade Berlin to implement his programme. The first target was Dernburg, who was to visit East Africa in August to study the situation on the ground. Dernburg would not be easy to persuade. Since Rechenberg had left Germany at the height of the crisis in 1906, events had turned against him. While he was formulating a reconstruction programme, Dernburg was fighting an election. Appointed as a reformer to placate the Progressives, he had become the champion of the parties of order at the hustings. He too needed a programme, and as a businessman he found it in economic imperialism. In his election speeches—which are the main source of his historical reputation—Dernburg pictured the German colonies chiefly as sources of raw materials. They could also act as markets and offer opportunities for capital exports and for the German cultural mission, but their chief function was to supply expanding industry with tropical products over which the Anglo-Saxon powers had hitherto exercised a virtual monopoly.1 As an example for his audiences, Dernburg habitually quoted the cotton industry. Heavy over-investment in this industry had produced surplus capacity and short-time working. For Germany, the problem was exacerbated by dependence on the United States, whence, in 1907, came slightly less than three-quarters of German cotton imports. It was not so much that cotton was in short supply—although the danger existed—as that American quasi-monopolists manipulated prices without reference to supply. Between 1897 anc ^ l9°6, the average price of American raw cotton in Hamburg was 70 Pf. per kg. In February 1904 it was 170 Pf.; in December 1904, 70 Pf.; in September 1907, after an especially heavy crop, 120 Pf.2 Angry textile manufacturers sought an alternative source of supply sufficient to stabilise the Hamburg commodity market. One group, led by the director of a textile business near Nurem1

2

Bernhard Dernburg, Qelpwikte des deutschen Kolonialwesens (Berlin, 1907), passim. 'Unsere Kolonialwirtschaft in ihren Bedeutung fur Industrie und Arbeitschaft', Beiheft Mr. 2 zum Tropenpjlanzer, March 1909, pp. 50-3.

77

Tanganyika under German rule berg, had turned to the colonies in 1896 and formed a Colonial Economic Committee (Kolonial-Wirtschaftliche Komitee) designed to encourage the production of export crops, especially cotton. Among other activities, it financed Gotzen's disastrous scheme of 1902. The results of African production were disappointing, but at least the committee proved that cotton would grow in East Africa.1 Now Dernburg urged investment in large-scale, capitalised plantations. He persuaded two of the largest textile interests, the Leipzig Cotton Spinners and a Stuttgart millionaire named Otto, to start their own plantations in East Africa. By the end of 1907 twelve companies and private planters had taken up nearly 125,000 acres in the Sadani area. ' I went into it', wrote Otto in retrospect, ' . . . to contribute my mite to the fresh current flowing into the colony.' Meanwhile, the world price of cotton rose 60 per cent between the beginning of 1905 and the end of 1907, emphasising the urgent need for new sources of supply.2 Although willing to consider European settlement and African agriculture impartially, the Dernburg of early 1907 was fired by a sense of urgency which pointed to capital investment, modern machinery, and European control. His plantation policy contrasted sharply with Rechenberg's emphasis on African agriculture. Certainly, Germany also needed the vegetable oils which could be obtained from the Nyamwezi's peanuts, but that was not the reason why Rechenberg advocated his scheme, nor did he make any serious attempt to gain support for it on these grounds. As their ideas crystallised, Dernburg and Rechenberg moved further apart. All seemed prepared for a clash of views when Dernburg sailed for East Africa on 13 July 1907. Ever since his appointment, Dernburg had been promising to visit the colonies and make his decisions on the spot. 1 2

'Die Arbeit des Kolonial-Wirtschaftlichen Komitees 1896-1906 , in Der Tropenpflanzer, Dec. 1906. 'Verzeichnis der europaischen Baumwollplantagen bei Sadani', [1907], RKA 8181/8-9; Otto to Government, 14 March 1908, TNA LKV Morogoro 46; see above, p. 69, n.i.

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Rechenberg and reconstruction Energy and informality were part of his public image. Stout, fortyish, heavily bearded, and smoking innumerable cigars, Dernburg on a donkey in the middle of darkest Africa cut a fine Edwardian figure. His cavalcade numbered 27 Europeans, including ten businessmen and seven journalists, although several dropped out along the route—one notoriously alcoholic journalist was left behind in Dar es Salaam.1 The itinerary was neatly planned by Rechenberg to reinforce his arguments. After a visit to Dar es Salaam, the party would return to Mombasa and travel up the Uganda Railway to Bukoba and Mwanza, whence it would walk to Tabora and then follow the caravan trail to railhead at Morogoro, and so back to the capital. Inconvenient spectacles such as settlers or plantations in Moshi or Usambara would be scrupulously avoided. After Rechenberg had infuriated the Colonial Secretary by doubting his capacity for sustained exertion, the governor's plan broke down at Tabora, where everyone was ill and it was discovered that no water was available along the road to Morogoro. Glumly the column retraced its way to Mwanza. There was now no excuse for avoiding Usambara, and in the long run this was to Rechenberg's advantage, for Dernburg quarrelled violently with the settlers there. On 13 October he set sail again for Germany. Although his electioneering manner sometimes scandalized his hosts—he was given to the widespread distribution of cigars—Dernburg proved an admirable pupil, quick to appropriate other people's expertise. In his party was the brilliant industrialist Walther Rathenau, derisively termed the OverSecretary of State. With Dernburg and the governor, Rathenau debated East Africa's future in the broad, geopolitical terms which he and Rechenberg were later to bring to Mitteleuropa. Rechenberg, who alone had expert knowledge, had already formulated his reconstruction programme. Rathenau, a leader in the modernisation of industry around 1

For descriptions of the expedition, see Zimmermann, Mit Dernburg nach Ostafrika;

Oskar Bongard, Die Studienreise des Staatssekretars Dernburg nach

Deutsch-Ostafrika (Berlin, 1908); Gunzert, 'Service in German East Africa'; Schnee, Ah letzter Gouverneur, pp. 94-5.

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Tanganyika under German rule electric power, believed that German capital needed no investment opportunities outside Europe. Faced with their concerted opposition, Dernburg abandoned his earlier belief in plantations and instead espoused African agriculture and the central railway with the enthusiasm of a convert. As a good politician, he was later to present this programme as his personal discovery. The first to experience his new convictions were the settlers whom he met in Tanga on 2 October. They already knew Rechenberg as their enemy, the man who wanted to sacrifice their interests to the African economy. The Colonial Secretary, however, was still the hero of electoral victory over the dreaded Social Democrats. To Dernburg they confidently presented their demands. They asked that government take responsibility for recruiting labour; Dernburg promised labour commissioners to assist and supervise recruitment. They asked for differential taxation to stimulate the labour supply; Dernburg refused. They urged alterations in customs tariffs to oblige Africans to accept paid labour, and Dernburg refused. They demanded restriction of African cash-crop production, and Dernburg refused. All he would promise them was a review of settler participation in local government, of freight charges, and of credit facilities. The divorce was sealed at a festive dinner of embarrassing frigidity.1 Dernburg returned to Germany to carry out Rechenberg's programme. He had learned t h a t ' from the economic standpoint, the main task... is that it should not come to warlike conflict between black and white'. He had learned that this entailed ' a shifting of emphasis in the direction of native cultivation'.2 He had learned that through such a policy a central railway could be built. He had realised that the Reichstag must be persuaded to allow the central railway to be financed by a loan. He had gathered that the pattern of local government must be changed so that the administration 1

2

Usambara-Post, 12 Oct. 1907 (Sonderbeilage); Bongard, p. 63; Zimmermann,

p. 113. Rathenau, 'Erwagungen', Oct. 1907, Rk 924/94. The other points in this paragraph are taken from Dernburg, 'Bericht', Nov. 1907, Rk 924/99.

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Rechenberg and reconstruction could benefit fully from increased taxation. He had appreciated that Indian trading was essential to African economic progress. He had understood that labour relations must be regulated, recruiting controlled, and inspectors appointed. Although less certain than Rathenau that plantations had no future, his confidence in them was shaken. He had come to understand something of the sheer size and complexity of East Africa's problems: 'It is a tough country, and it is difficult to treat it properly. A good land, so long as one lets it follow its natural direction; a poor country for European experiments. A good land for merchants; a poor land for farmers. The small-scale settler will fare especially badly there.' 1 All this Dernburg had learned. Two points he was in danger of overlooking. European settlers wanted a livelihood. European settlers had friends. 1

Dernburg, in an interview on the journey home, quoted by Zimmermann, p. 125.

8l

CHAPTER 5

THE EUROPEAN CHALLENGE Soon after Dernburg left East Africa in October 1907, Rechenberg followed him to Germany. Together they hoped to persuade the Reichstag to accept the new vision of German East Africa's future. But they left behind a frightened and offended European community, which was first to oppose and ultimately to reverse the Nyamwezi and peanut policy. The community was small. Of the 2,772 Europeans in Tanganyika at the end of 1907, 319 were officials, 168 soldiers and 303 missionaries. Although these groups cannot be completely discounted, the effective political element was thus reduced to 1,982, Of these, 479 were male settlers and planters; some 70 per cent were Germans.1 Their primary political motivation was fear, both for their interests and for their physical security. The fear was reasonable. Europeans who had suffered in the recent rebellion were paid only 30 per cent compensation, and that after four years' delay. Their leaders asked pertinent questions about the lack of military preparedness which the rising had revealed, and demanded with little success that a white volunteer force be formed and trained to use machine-guns. Of all Rechenberg's actions, that which most alarmed the settlers was his decision, on grounds of economy, to reduce the number of European personnel in the defence force.2 European politics in German East Africa are comprehensible only against this 1 2

Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 1,106, pp. 6,557, 6,563. Rechenberg to RKA, 23 June 1909, RKA 729/7; 'Sitzung des Gouvernementsrats beim Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika', Dar es Salaam, 1921 June 1909, RKA 813/56-7; Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zetiuni> 8 and 29 Jan. 1910, 2 and 5 Feb. 1910.

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The European challenge background of insecurity. Rechenberg, the settlers believed, threatened not only their livelihoods but their lives; his policy 'contains within it the awful danger of a sudden rising'. 1 While fear united the settlers, other factors divided them. The most serious was their geographical dispersion, which hampered regular contact among them and led to a division of interests which, it will be seen, threatened to destroy their carefully constructed territorial organisation. They were also divided by the attempt of the German settlers to monopolise political influence at the expense of Boers, Greeks, and other nationalities. Again, plantation owners quarrelled with their managers and planters with settlers; this conflict had prevented the creation of a central recruiting agency during 1907. There was also conflict between the old European leadership, which looked back to an earlier period of irresponsibility, and new immigrants who challenged their authority shortly before the First World War. Nevertheless, despite these areas of tension, it would be a mistake to underestimate the homogeneity of European opinion. The argument, often advanced in Kenya, that the 'political settlers' did not represent the ' real working settlers' had little validity in German East Africa. The two groups existed, but the distinction between them was that between the articulate and the inarticulate. On broad lines of action, they were closely united. Although their numbers were small and organisation was difficult, the European community had an unusually strong political position. Its power was not its own power, but the strength of its support at home. The settlers represented a ' national' cause, with all the implications of the term in late Wilhelmine Germany. So long as they operated within the wide bounds permitted to a 'national' movement, they could expect strong support from the parties of order in the Reichstag and from those influential sections of public opinion—the men who controlled the multifarious politicomilitary organisations of the time—which were always ready 1

Usambara-Post, 30 Jan. 1909. 83

6-2

Tanganyika under German rule to equate political extremism with patriotism. The settlers formed a natural and most effective pressure group in a political system which operated through pressure groups. Even after their tactics had lost them much sympathy, a distinguished vice-president of the Colonial Society could claim that ' their mode of expression is perhaps occasionally somewhat stronger than is customary with us towards the government, but their sentiments are summed up in the words of their committee: "Black, white, red—true till death" 5 . 1 For all its fantasy, this was the language of power in the public politics of the right. The settlers whom Dernburg met in Tanga during October 1907 were representatives of the Business League of the Northern Districts (Wirtschaftlicher Verband der Nordbezirke). Founded in 1907, this Northern League was the latest of several European organisations in Tanganital. The first, the Tanga Planters' Union {Pflanzer Verein Tanga), was formed in 1898 on governmental initiative.2 As a rival to it, independent settlers in Usambara created a West Usambara Planters' Union (Pflanzer Verein Westusambara) in 1903.3 When, in 1905, plantation owners in Germany formed their League of German East African Plantations (Verband DeutschOstqfrikanischer Pflanzungen), their managers in the Tanga Planters' Union joined with the West Usambara Union in a single body which in 1907 became the Northern League, the main organ of settler radicalism until 1909.4 Its architect and president was Carl Feilke, who was to remain the settlers' leader throughout the history of German East Africa. A retired officer, Feilke was manager of Prince Albrecht of Prussia's plantation at Kwa Mkoro, and later became a hero of the First World War campaign in East Africa.5 Feilke had 1 2 3 4 5

'Vorschlage von Exzellenz von Gayl auf Grund seiner Erkundungsreise in die afrikanischen Kolonien', [late 1912], DKG 214/215-28. Liebert to Tanga, 12 Nov. 1897, and Wyneken to Government, 15 April 1898, TNA VIII/J/19/I. Herrnsdorf to Government, 25 May 1903, TNA VIII/J/19/I. Usambara-Post, 3 Nov. 1906 and 2 Dec. 1906. Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren, pp. 42, 353; Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, My Reminiscences of East Africa (Eng. trans. 2nd edn, London, n.d.), pp. 31-2.

84

The European challenge the authority, vigour, and single-mindedness to be a most popular and able politician. Other settler organisations existed in Morogoro (1905), Moshi (1907), and possibly in Dar es Salaam and Lindi.1 The initiative lay with the Northern League, although it had not intervened on the German political scene before Dernburg's tour. Like Europeans everywhere in Africa, these settler bodies sought to gain control of their own affairs. In German terms, they wanted Selbstverwaltung, best translated as local selfgovernment. Through centuries of particularism and constitutional conflict, this had come to mean to Germans almost what liberty meant to Englishmen, a concept susceptible of many interpretations, but accepted as good by Germans of all political views. However, the concept was ambiguous. Selbstverwaltung meant 'self-administration' rather than 'selfgovernment' (Selbstregierung), and was often seen by Germans as a substitute for representative government. In practice, the term had two conflicting meanings. On the one hand, it implied a demand for lay participation in the central management of affairs. On the other, it implied an insistence on corporate independence from central control.2 Both interpretations found institutional expression in East Africa, but here they were still further confused by the anomalous constitutional position of German colonies. The alternative to Selbstverwaltung was usually the centralised authoritarianism of the old Prussia, and local self-government was most strongly resisted by the bureaucracy. Hence Rechenberg, who opposed the implementation ofSelbstverwaltung in East Africa, appeared to German eyes as a reactionary. In a colonial situation, however, the demand for local self-government was made less against the bureaucracy than against the Reichstag, for the key to Selbstverwaltung of either type was control of finance, 1

2

The last two existed in 1908, but the date of their formation is uncertain. Priisse to Morogoro, 15 June 1905, TNA VIII/J/40/I; Methner to government, 8 Aug. 1907, TNA VIII/J/46/I; Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 29 Aug. 1908; Usambara-Post, 19 Dec. 1908. The classic study is Heinrich Heffter, Die deutsche Selbstverwaltung im ig. Jahrhundert: Geschichte der Ideen und Institutionen (Stuttgart, 1950).

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Tanganyika under German rule which was the Reichstag's sole effective sanction over colonial policy. Hence the controversy of these years over unofficial European participation in the administration of East Africa always involved three parties—settlers, bureaucracy, and Reichstag. The settlers' successful achievement of participation was chiefly due to their ability to take advantage of disagreement between the other two parties. The anomalous constitutional position was well illustrated by the institution known as the Governor's Council (Gouvernementsrat), which expressed the concept of local self-government as lay participation in central government. When initially proposed by the Colonial Director in 1900, the idea of involving some European unofficial in public affairs found little support either from the unofficial themselves or the governor. Shortly afterwards, however, the suggestion was taken up by the enthusiasts in the Colonial Society and also by Gotzen, who saw it as a means of freeing himself from Reichstag financial control.1 An ordinance permitting the creation of a council in each colony, with unofficial representation, was issued in December 1903.2 It had been substantially amended by the Colonial Council in Berlin, one of whose members had pointed out that the Selbstverwaltung tradition required that no such body should have an official majority, for it would then be 'a mere bit of decoration'.3 Consequently, the ordinance stated that 'the number of official members shall not exceed that of unofficial members'. White unofficials were to be nominated by the governor after he had sounded opinion. The council was to meet at least once a year to discuss the budget, proposed ordinances, and any other matters of general interest raised by members. The ordinance revealed, however, another problem of some complexity. The governor's council could be only an ad1

2

3

Buchka, 'Runderlass', 2 March 1900, RKA 6875/2-4; Liebert to AAKA, 25 May 1900, RKA 811/2-3; correspondence in DKG 886; Gotzen, DeutschOstafrika im Aufstand, p. 97. ' Verfugung des Reichskanzlers, betreffend die Bildung von Gouvernementsraten. Vom 24. Dezember 1903', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 103-5. 'AAKA. Kolonialrat. VI Sitzungsperiode 1901/1904 Nr. 8. Verhandelt Berlin den 30. November 1903', RKA 811/179-84.

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The European challenge visory body, since any important decision which it took would almost certainly involve finance and would thereby violate the Reichstag's budgetary rights, which no German official would openly challenge. From the first, therefore, the council, although allegedly 'copied from the legislative council in English Crown Colonies5,1 had neither an official majority nor powers of decision. After unhappy experience, Rechenberg came to believe that the German creation ' was the most unsuitable way that could have been chosen. Neither were the large pretensions of the European inhabitants satisfied, nor was the external position of the government [vis-a-vis the Reichstag] legally consolidated, but the seeds of continuous discord were sown5.2 The authorities hoped that when the colony became financially self-sufficient the Reichstag might be persuaded to forgo its budgetary rights. But unless and until this happened, the council could develop only from conflict to greater conflict. It could gain an unofficial majority, perhaps elected, but nothing could disguise the fact that its main activity was to press irresponsible advice in conflict with official policy. Since it could not be a legislature, it could only be a pressure group. The council held its first meeting on 27 and 28 April 1904, in Dar es Salaam, and met on five further occasions before Rechenberg became governor.3 Ignoring the intention of the ordinance, Gotzen appointed five officials and five unofficial, so that his own vote gave an official majority. Feilke was an early member, as also was Wilhelm Schultz, originally a plantation assistant and subsequently a flourishing brewer and Dar es Salaam's leading municipal politician. The council's proposals regarding labour supply and Indian commerce were rejected by the Colonial Office. Rechenberg was quick to declare his hostility, deprecating any attempt to strengthen so unrepresentative a body.4 At the council's 1

Statement by Methner: 'Protokoll iiber die Sitzung des Gouvernementsrats am 20. Juni 1912', RKA 813/130-210. 2 Rechenberg to RKA, 21 June 1911, RKA 237/93-8. 3 Minutes in RKA 812. * Rechenberg to RKA, 1 April 1907, RKA 768/32-9.

87

Tanganyika under German rule seventh meeting, in May 1907, Feilke forced through a resolution regretting the Colonial Office's rejection of the council's proposals and urging that it ' concede the men called to the governor's council their due influence on the development of the colony'. This was carried by the vote of the defence force commander, a sign of the close sympathy between settlers and military. When the Northern League met Dernburg in October 1907, it demanded that unofficial members of the council should be elected. As one of his few concessions, Dernburg promised to consider this.1 While Dernburg was willing to concede the council a higher status, he was simultaneously preparing to demolish the bodies which represented the second interpretation of Selbstverwaltung—that which stressed corporate independence from central control. These bodies were the Kommunalverbdnde (Communal Leagues). The 'communes' were first created in nine districts of German East Africa in March 1901.2 Each was co-extensive with an administrative district. It was a legal corporation whose affairs were managed by the district officer, advised by a council of at least three nominated unofficial. It was the effective organ of local development, responsible for most works and services. For this purpose it received half the hut tax and 30 per cent of the business tax collected in the district. By October 1907 the nine original communes had been increased to fourteen, but the system had revealed a number of problems. The first advisory councils included a number of non-Europeans, but the Europeans complained, the non-Europeans did not participate fully, and in 1904 Gotzen made literacy in German a condition of membership, so that three years later all members were Europeans.3 Unofficial attitudes affected the balance of expenditure, as the sums devoted to public works 1

2 3

'Sitzung des Gouvernementsrates beim Gouvernement von DeutschOstafrika', Dar es Salaam, 17/18 May 1907, RKA 812/171-93; UsambaraPost, 12 Oct. 1907 (Sonderbeilage). 'Kaiserliche Verordnung. Vom 3. Juli 1899', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 423; Amt.AnZ' 9 May 1901. Gotzen, * Verordnung', 26 March 1904, Amt.Anz* 26 March 1904.

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The European challenge increased and those spent on education diminished. Rechenberg and other administrators criticised this.1 The original intention was that the communes would make it unnecessary to budget in detail for local expenditure. Communal accounts were not subject to prior approval by the financial authorities, but their funds were entered in the budget as a block grant 'for communal administration'. Reichstag members attacked this evasion of their rights.2 The key issue, however, was isolated by Haber, head of the East African section of the Colonial Office, who pointed out that East Africa could never dispense with an imperial subsidy so long as half the hut tax went to the communes.3 As Rechenberg's reconstruction scheme was formulated, it became evident that he could not rely on increased taxation to service the central railway loan so long as the government received only half of this increase. Dernburg accepted these arguments when he visited East Africa, and resolved to abolish the communes. Their control of local expenditure would pass to the district officers. As organs of self-government they would be superseded by two municipal councils in Tanga and Dar es Salaam, financed from local taxation and with some non-European representation.4 For this, as for all their other plans, Dernburg and Rechenberg needed the approval of the Ministry of Estimates and—much more difficult—of the Reichstag. Dernburg and Rechenberg met the authorities of the Ministry of Estimates on 10 December 1907, and won their first victory. The ministry accepted the financial reorganisation necessitated by the Nyamwezi and peanut scheme. The northern railway would be extended only as far as the River Pangani. The central railway would be built to Tabora and would be financed by a loan serviced by the East African government. To permit this, the new budget would be 1 2 3 4

Rechenberg to AAKA, i April 1907, RKA 768/32-9; Methner on Gotzen to Langenburg, 22 March 1906, TNA IV/G/2/I. Gotzen to Dernburg, 23 Feb. 1908, RKA 6938/19-22; Reichstag Debates, 1905-6 session, 30 Nov. 1906, p. 4,032 (Erzberger). Haber, minute, 24 May 1907, RKA 799/59. Dernburg, 'Bericht', Nov. 1907, Rk 924/99; Dernburg to Gotzen, 24 Feb. 1908, RKA 799/78-9-

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Tanganyika under German rule divided into recurrent and extraordinary sections and the imperial subsidy restricted to military expenses. To this extent the colony would become financially self-sufficient and self-accounting. The communes would be abolished and district officers would instead control a petty cash fund subject only to sample audit. The government would still not control its local budget, nor did the meeting discuss the political or economic implications of these new arrangements. Dernburg and Rechenberg withdrew to draft legislation to present to the budget session of the Reichstag, due to begin in February 1908.1 In East Africa, meanwhile, the Northern League was preparing to enter German politics for the first time. Its petition to the Reichstag, signed by Feilke and nearly all the more influential unofficials, stated first the general fear: We all have the feeling, which has been strengthened by the statements of Exzellenz Dernburg, that a native policy is to be pursued in German East Africa which considers only ' coloured' interests, and neglects German business as against them: a policy which will make German East Africa merely a negro and Indian trading colony, with European plantations a secondary consideration.

Rather than making its case, however, the Northern League then turned to personalities. It claimed that Dernburg had been totally misled by the governor, who knew nothing about plantations, labour problems, or native administration.c Most senior officials' supported the League, but were victimised by Rechenberg if they opposed him. The petitioners urged state support for labour recruiting and an end to the new policy.2 The tone of their petition was badly chosen. Its implied attack on administrative discipline could only remind right-wing deputies of Erzberger's campaign during 1905-6. Moreover, Dernburg was at the height of his prestige during the budget debates. Under the clever slogan 'the native is Africa's most valuable asset', he offered a programme both 1

2

Siller, 'Aufzeichnung iiber das Ergebnis der heutigen Beratung betr. die Umgestaltung des Etatswesens des Ostafrikanischen Schutzgebietes', Berlin, 10 Dec. 1907, RKA 799/73-7. Petition in RKA 120/119-24.

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The European challenge businesslike and humane. ' The most important thing for the coming years', he argued, 'is to put the colony into a position in which it does not burden the imperial purse.'1 To do so, rebellion must be avoided, for ' in colonial risings there exists the apparent paradox that the destruction of the enemy— the aim of all warfare—leads to one's own permanent injury, while the losses to one's troops are of less consequence. From the economic standpoint, therefore, it is crucial that it should not come to warlike conflict between black and white.' 2 The prevention of rebellion depended on a healthy African economy, for without this ' a premature end to German rule' was inevitable.3 Moreover, the African sector of the economy was the most likely source of profit. 'We have not gone to East Africa to found plantations for 3-400 people, but to make a vast country bloom, to find raw materials and create markets for German trade and German industry.'4 Indian traders were essential to economic progress, while both security and profit required the building of the central railway.5 Within this broader context, European settlers must take their chance. £ Whoever goes out is welcome. He will be treated like anyone else, but he cannot be an object for special advantages.'6 The Colonial Secretary strongly criticised abuse of corporal punishment, poor working conditions, and brutal recruiting. Labour commissioners and legislation were needed. Dernburg carried the Reichstag with him, winning the support of the Zentrum, still theoretically in opposition. Criticism was voiced, but it was isolated and ineffective, hampered by the virulence of the Northern League's petition. To base the economy on African agriculture, said Liebert, was cUtopian'. 'One must not fall into the error of making the colony a negro land', warned the Conservative spokesman.7 But after six weeks of debate the East African 1 2 3 5 6 7

Dernburg in Budget Commission, 25 Feb. 1908, Rt 1059. Dernburg, 'Bericht5, Nov. 1907, Rk 924/99. 4 Dernburg in Budget Commission, 25 Feb. 1908, Rt. 1059. Ibid. Dernburg in Budget Commission, 3 March 1908, Rt 1059. Idem. 25 Feb. 1908, Rt 1059. Liebert and Richthofen in Budget Commission, 25 Feb. 1908, Rt 1059. 91

Tanganyika under German rule budget passed without significant amendment. The financial law permitting loans was approved and issued during May.1 The Northern League's petition was not even forwarded to the Bundesrat 'for information5, but was merely considered 'dealt with' (erledigt), which in parliamentary language virtually meant rejected.2 Rechenberg's programme was triumphant, with the seal of Reichstag approval. When criticism in East Africa again mounted at the end of 1908, Dernburg could with justice claim that ' the struggle which is now being waged is not a struggle against the government in East Africa, but in my submission is a struggle against the policy of the German Reichstag'.3 There was, of course, a price to pay for agreement. The question of the communes and municipal councils was deferred for a year.4 More important, Dernburg's advocacy of the new programme subtly altered its emphasis. Rechenberg had devised the scheme for reasons of security and economy. Dernburg appreciated this in December 1907. He wrote then: I have gained the impression that East Africa's economy cannot be based on the activities of plantations and settlers... that this land must be developed through its indigenous products, through the natural experience of its native inhabitants, and that despite all solicitude for European capital, the development of the native economy is the surest way to free the German Empire from its subsidies and thus to open the way to a broadly designed colonial policy.5

'This land must be developed through its indigenous products . . . to free the German Empire from its subsidies'—that was the crux of Rechenberg's programme. But in the stress of debate and criticism, Dernburg's political flexibility came into play. While continuing to defend the new policy on grounds of economy and security, he increasingly claimed that it would also guarantee profit, that it would 'make a vast country bloom' and 'find raw materials and create 1 2 3 4 5

Landesgesetzgebung, i, 399. Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 20 March 1908. Ibid. 11 Dec. 1908, p. 6,135 Dernburg in Budget Commission, 27 Feb. 1908, Rt 1059. Dernburg to Voith, 31 Dec. 1907, RKA 120/10-17.

92

The European challenge markets for German trade and German industry'. Yet if Germany urgently needed raw materials, it was not the central railway that needed building. Dernburg's concept of development had changed. In December 1907 it was development for the sake of economy; by February 1908 it was development for the sake of profit. Rechenberg's concept of minimal European involvement could stand the test of economy, but it could not stand the test of profit. Two irreconcilable views of the nature and purpose of colonial rule were in conflict. While the governor returned to East Africa to implement a programme which he believed to have won general approval, the Colonial Secretary was already moving away from the principles on which that programme was based. Dernburg held office until May 1910, during a period of acute tension between the imperial government and the right-wing parties, tension which eventually destroyed the 'national' coalition of 1907. Wider political issues made it essential to minimise conflict with the parties of order. In consequence, Dernburg steadily made concessions to rightwing pressure. Behind the parties of order lay the settlers in East Africa, pressing their hostility to Rechenberg's policy. After mid-1908, Dernburg defended Rechenberg in public but demanded concessions from him in private, concessions which gradually destroyed the governor's hope that German East Africa should be 'a land of free negro peasants'. 1 Obscured by public statements, the process is clearly apparent in detailed administrative action. It may be illustrated from four areas of policy: Indian commerce, railway construction, labour regulation, and settler self-government. These will be taken in turn. The Indians were central to Rechenberg's programme. They were the local traders who were to buy the peanuts and sell the cheap consumer goods, mediating trade between the railway and the villages. The Indian community was well 1

The phrase was used by a Social Democrat spokesman, Noske: Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 1 March 1909, p. 7,239.

93

Tanganyika under German rule adapted to this role. It numbered some 6,723 in 1910, rather more than a quarter of them in Dar es Salaam, with a large majority of Muslims.1 Most were traders or artisans from Gujarati-speaking areas of the western coast north of Bombay. Trade between East Africa and India was long established, and Indians followed the German administration inland until they had reached the furthest borders of the colony by 1905. Their position in German East Africa was peculiar. As British subjects they were aliens, while since their customs did not permit them to be subject to German private law, they were legally natives.2 This native status was their principal grievance throughout German rule. The Bagamoyo community complained of it to Rechenberg in 1906, a deputation demanded concessions from Dernburg in 1907, and in 1914 residents of Tanga prepared a long memorandum on this score, which did not receive any substantial redress.3 Probably linked to this last protest was the formation of the first non-sectarian Indian organisation in Tanganyika of which there is record, the Tanga Indian Association, founded for allegedly apolitical ends by sixteen members early in 1914.4 The European community had three reasons for hostility to Indians. First, it held that they were dangerous. Indians were British subjects. There were allegations that some had assisted the rebels during Maji Maji, while others were believed to have provoked unrest by unscrupulous commercial methods.5 Second, settlers saw Indians as racial antagonists. One right-wing leader described them as 'to a certain extent a national danger'. 6 Third, of course, they 1

Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1909/10, part 2, p. 20; O'Swald et al. to Dernburg, 12 March 1908, RKA 28/98-103. 'Rechtsverhaltnisse der Inder in Deutsch-Ostafrika', [c. 1901], TNA Handakten Reft. VIII P. 3 Memorandum, 6 Dec. 1906, TNA IX/B/i/VI; 'Wiinsche der Gesellschaft der Tanga Inder betreffend die Aenderung der fur sie geltenden Bestimmungen' [c. May 1914], RKA 5584/59-60. • Methner to RKA, 25 Feb. 1914, PRO GFM 21/359 (Aus. Amt Abt. A, Afrika Generalia 14), xiv. 5 Reichstag Papers, 1905-6 session, no. 194. 6 Lindequist to government, 28 Oct. 1911, RKA 641/171-2. 2

94

The European challenge were doubly vulnerable as commercial competitors with a near-monopoly over the retail sale of imported consumer goods. 'The Indian agitation3, wrote Rathenau, himself selfconsciously a Jew, 'is the African version of anti-Semitism.'1 For these reasons, settler organisations opened an attack on the Indian community during 1906. They chose to concentrate on a particularly vulnerable point, the language in which Indian businessmen kept their accounts. Accounting in Gujarati had caused difficulties in levying business tax and was held to facilitate fraudulent bankruptcy. In May 1906 the government drafted legislation requiring that all accounts should be kept in Swahili or a European language.2 This proposal was accepted enthusiastically by the governor's council and reached Berlin while Rechenberg was preparing to take up his post in East Africa. He immediately advised its rejection, and Dernburg refused the legislation as 'in practice an exceptional law against Indian businessmen', contrary to the Congo Act and other international agreements. Dernburg proposed instead that official translations be required.3 Early in the budget debates of 1908, he bluntly discounted settler views on this issue. 'It is truly wonderful', Dernburg commented, 'that the small planters should really say that the Indians extort from the blacks. What then does the small planter want? He wants to replace the Indians.' 4 Although Dernburg at first accepted the implication of Rechenberg's policy that the Indians must be defended against their enemies, he faced pressure from the right, from the Colonial Society and the settlers' supporters in the parties of order. When the anti-Islamic Zentrum added its voice, Dernburg began to retreat.5 He promised to restrict Indian immigration into areas of European settlement, and told 1 Rathenau, 'Erwagungen', Oct. 1907, Rk 924/94. 2 Draft in TNA I/G/i/II. 3 * Sitzung des Gouvernementsrats beim Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika', Dar es Salaam, 18-19 May 1906, RKA 812/96-162; Spalding, minute, 20 July 1906, and Dernburg to Government, 10 Oct. 1906, RKA 641/19,37-41. 4 Dernburg in Budget Commission, 18 Feb. 1908, in Deutsches Kolonialblatt, 1 March 1908. 5 Budget Commission, 25 Feb. 1908, Rt 1059.

95

Tanganyika under German rule Rechenberg in November 1908 to make literacy in Swahili or a European language a qualification for immigration into East Africa.1 The governor still held that Indian traders were ' at present. . . indispensable as commercial intermediaries between European firms and the natives'. Discriminatory legislation, he argued, would not only contravene the Congo Act but would bring British reprisals against German trade in India. Moreover, it was impossible to control immigration. There was no register of existing Indian residents. The necessary machinery would be prohibitively expensive. The legislation could not apply to immigrant Africans from neighbouring territories, and would therefore be patently discriminatory. Dernburg had to accept this. He repeated the arguments to the Reichstag in 1909 and the Zentrum, Rechenberg's supporters, accepted them.2 The settlers were naturally unconvinced. Two years later their representative body demanded not only control of immigration and accounting, but also the exclusion of the Indians, ' for ever, from any political influence, not only with respect to the administration of the Protectorate as such, but also with regard to the district and local authorities'. Rechenberg rejected these demands with undisguised contempt. 'The larger Indian merchants', he wrote, 'keep their books most carefully, at any rate far more carefully than the great majority of European enterprises, especially the great majority of plantations.' Despite the discussion of these issues at every subsequent meeting of the governor's council, no action was ever taken on Indian accounting, although immigration was regulated by Rechenberg's successor.3 Rechenberg's defence of the Indians against Dernburg, 1 2

3

Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 17 March 1908, p. 4,056; Dernburg to government, 5 Nov. 1908, RKA 28/128-30. Rechenberg to WLVDOA, 20 Oct. 1911, RKA 1072/46-51; Rechenberg to RKA, 14 Sept. 1908, RKA 28/121-6; Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 26 Feb. 1909, pp. 7,175-6 (Dernburg) and 7,180 (Schwarze). ' Protokoll iiber die offentlichen Delegierten-Versammlung des WLVDOA am 27. und 28. Mai im Hotel Deutscher Kaiser, Tanga', TNA VIII/J/58/I; Rechenberg to RKA, 16 Aug. 1911, RKA 641 /i 67-8.

96

The European challenge the settlers, majority opinion in the Reichstag, and even his own staff, was doubtless coloured by his own good relations with them—he spoke Gujarati as well as Swahili and Arabic —and by his distaste for settler politicians. The main reason, however, was economic: he expected them to stimulate trade along the railways, and all the evidence was that they did. Mwanza's commerce was dominated at this date by the firm of Alidina Visram, based on Mombasa. The Indian community in Tabora district increased between 1910 and 1913 from 51 to 496. The value of German East Africa's textile imports—the best indicator of grass-roots economic activity at this date—rose between 1905 and 1912 from 6,876,296 to 16,508,349 marks. The colony's total export and import trade trebled during the same period, from 27,605,000 to 81,727,546 marks.1 German merchants were naturally delighted. Hostile critics, indeed, believed that Rechenberg was in the merchants' pockets. Certainly, he co-operated closely with the big trading firms, who were also the strongest supporters of the Indians who were their agents. In particular, the German East African Company, the old chartered company which had come to dominate the economy, prospered in this period. Besides the widest trading network, the only land concessions, and the largest plantations, it also controlled the only two banks and conducted most mortgage business. From 1906 to 1908 it paid dividends of 5 per cent; in 1909, 6 per cent; in 1910 and 1911, 8 per cent; and in 1912, 9 per cent. Its shares, offered on the Berlin Bourse in 1909, reached a 50 per cent premium within nine months.2 Its local general manager had almost a prescriptive seat on Rechenberg's council. The governor favoured European trading interests. The settlers were right to fear that he wished to create 'a negro and Indian trading colony'. But there is 1

2

Schwarze to government, 22 April 1906, TNA I / G / i / I I ; Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 622, pp. 3,758 et seq.; ibid. no. 1,106, p. 6,476; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1909/10, part 2, p. 20; ibid. 1912/13, part 2, pp. 38-9, 121, 130 et seq. Wilhelm Arning, Deutsch-Ostafrika, gestern undheute (Berlin, 1936), pp. 14-15; 'Uebersicht der Kurse der Anteile der DOAG', [late 1910], RKA 366/134.

7

97

ITU

Tanganyika under German rule no evidence that he was manipulated by these interests, and all the indications suggest that he saw European merchants as instruments which he could use in stimulating the African sector of the economy. In 1910 he deliberately broke the control over the African cotton crop which the German East African Company had been carefully building up for several years. Because they formed a key element in the reconstruction programme of 1907, Rechenberg defended the Indians throughout his governorship. The more flexible Dernburg, when pressed by the settlers and their supporters, urged concessions which, although not effected before Rechenberg's resignation, opened the way for the more discriminatory policies of his successor. A similar pattern of conflict and change took place between 1908 and 1910 in official attitudes to European settlement, and especially in railway policy. 'A good land for merchants; a poor land for farmers', Dernburg said as he travelled home from East Africa. On this judgment the reconstruction programme was based. The railway must go to Tabora, not to Moshi. But gradually the economic facts subverted this policy. While planned settlement schemes failed, piecemeal settlement continued, and the number of Europeans in East Africa grew. Early in 1908 there were 479 male settlers and planters in Tanganyika; three years later there were 683. In 1908 over a hundred land applications were pending in Lushoto district alone, chiefly in West Usambara, where suitable land was increasingly scarce.1 East Usambara was already divided up into large plantations. At Meru, the Boers continued in unprofitable occupation. The German-Russian scheme had obviously failed, but this land was being parcelled out among other applicants. The population of Arusha district included a number of Germans who had previously settled in Palestine. Knowing something of sub-tropical agriculture, they were 1

Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 1,106, p. 6,563; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1910/11, part 2, pp. 8-9; Samassa, Die Besiedlung Deutsch-Ostafrikas, P- 253-

98

The European challenge most successful.1 Settlement on the lower slopes of Kilimanjaro also continued, while a new area was established along the first stretch of the central railway. Early in 1906 there were only four male settlers and planters in Morogoro district; five years later there were 82.2 Within the European sector of the economy, the large cotton and sisal plantations still faced serious difficulties. When Dernburg visited East Africa, the future of the colony as a producer of cotton for the German textile industry seemed to lie with the great plantations established in the mood of optimism which followed the election. Cotton prices fell during 1908 and 1909, but rose to unprecedented heights in 1910 and were to remain high until the war. Yet the plantations failed utterly. On that owned by the millionaire Otto, near Kilosa, the very latest techniques were employed, with massive steam-ploughs and projected irrigation works. By the end of 1910, 1,500 acres were under cultivation, but they had cost some 1,600,000 marks. Otto had over-capitalised in machinery and buildings, had chosen poor land and employed too many Europeans—the plantation was known locally as 'the convict settlement'. Steam-ploughs cut too deeply and exposed the subsoil. Otto sank further sums into his hopeless enterprise, which struggled on until the war, producing little cotton but endless irrigation schemes.3 Even more disastrous was the fate of the Leipzig Cotton Spinners' plantation near Sadani. In 1907 this powerful public company had induced its shareholders to agree to heavy investment in East Africa by promising that it would eventually obtain all its raw cotton there. It leased 75,000 acres on the River Wami in an area which Rechenberg considered proved for cotton. Using three steam-ploughs, some 6,250 acres were ploughed by 1910 and 1,500,000 marks invested. But in that year the whole crop was destroyed by curly leaf disease 1 2

3

See the correspondence in RKA 33 and TNA Grants Arusha 407-8. Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 41, p. 100; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1910/11, part 2, pp. 8-9. Vageler, 'Bericht iiber die Ottopflanzung bei Kilosa5, 27 Aug. 1909, RKA 8190/145; report by Assmuth, 6 April 1912, TNA MPG 687.

99

7-2

Tanganyika under German rule (Krduselkrankheit). When this happened again in 1911 the company abandoned Sadani after failing to sell its plantation to the Colonial Office.1 Not all cotton plantations fared so badly. Ten were established along the Rufiji between 1907 and 1910, with fair success.2 But the much-publicised disasters in Sadani and Kilosa destroyed the exaggerated hopes of plantation cotton in East Africa. The other major crop for large plantations, sisal, was still depressed. Prices had fallen steadily since 1902 and continued to fall until 1911. Rathenau believed that over-production was bound to destroy the East African crop. One of the leading companies, the Deutsche-Agaven-Gesellschaft, paid a steady 7 per cent dividend from 1905 to 1907, but declared no dividend in 1908. New plantations were not established, and prospects remained gloomy.3 Although large-scale plantation agriculture stagnated, smaller companies and private settlers stumbled on a goldmine. The new crop was rubber. German East Africa was the first country to grow manihot rubber (Ceara glaziovii) in plantations. It was a quick-growing tree, needing less moisture than the higher-quality South American and Asian Hevea brasiliensis, and also requiring little capital, so that it became a first cash crop for less wealthy planters. The first plantation rubber was exported in 1907, when there were some five million trees in the colony. Although the price was then moderate, and fell during 1908, the crop remained economic. Then in 1909 and 1910 world prices rose in a spectacular boom which is illustrated by the figures in table 1. The value of East African manihot was well below these levels, but at 8-52/8-93 marks per kilogram during the first half of 1910 it was still extremely profitable. At this time, rubber became the magnet for the world's speculative capital, 1

2 3

See the correspondence in RKA 8190/131-283; Kranzlin, 'Bericht iiber die Dienstreise nach Bagamoyo und den Pflanzungen der LBWS bei Sadani', 2 Jan. 1912, RKA 8191/47-53. Rechenberg to RKA, 10 May 1911, RKA 126/118-23. Rathenau, 'Erwagungen', Oct. 1907, Rk 924/94; Franz Stuhlmann, 'Die Pflanzungsunternehmungen der Europaer in den deutschen Schutzgebieten', in Jahrbuch iiber die deutschen Kolonien, m (1910), 124. IOO

The European challenge temporarily supplanting gold and oil. Fantastic profits were made: one British company with plantations in Malaya paid a dividend of 325 per cent in 1910. According to German figures, the British invested £13,736,014 in rubber plantations during 1909, and £36 million in the first half of 1910. Part of this investment went into German East Africa, where British companies with a total capital of £1,105,000 had bought some 40,000 acres of rubber plantations by November 1910. German planters sold enthusiastically. One who had arrived almost penniless a few years before sold his plantation at Muheza for £45,000. Its purchaser, the Muhesa Rubber Plantation Co. Ltd, paid 10 per cent in 1910-11; the SigiPflanzungs-Gesellschaft paid 12 per cent in that year. For the first time, real money was being made by European planters and settlers in German East Africa.1 T A B L E 1. Para fine hard cure rubber: Hamburg prices in marks per kilogram, igoy-igio 1907

11.34-11.41

1908

9.66- 9.85 7.42- 7.82 9-45- 9-57

!9O9

11.76-11.86 16.75-17-90

17.48-17.63

1910

Source: see above, p. 69, n.i.

The success of rubber as a first cash crop for a growing number of settlers was something for which Rechenberg's reconstruction programme made no provision. The European population along the Pangani Valley began to prosper pre1

For the rubber boom, see Gustav Eismann, * Kautschuk-Kultur in DeutschOstafrika', in Der Pflanzer, 10 Feb. 1906; Eduard Marckwald and Fritz Frank, 'Der Kautschuk-Plantagenbau in seiner Bedeutung und seinen Gefahren fur die deutsche Kolonialwirtschaft', in Der Pflanzer, March 1911; Franz Stuhlmann, 'Die englischen Kautschuk-Pflanzungs-Gesellschaften in Deutsch-Ostafrika', in Uebersee (1910), no. 18; E. Helfferich, 'Dieweitere Entwicklung der Kautschukkultur in Siidostasien', in Der Tropenpflanzer, Jan. and Feb. 1912. IOI

Tanganyika under German rule cisely at the moment when the government had decided against the planters' most cherished hope, the extension of their railway from Mombo to Moshi, to Arusha, or even as far as Lake Victoria. Although he had hitherto shared this hope, Dernburg brushed it aside when he met the settlers during October 1907. Railways, he had learned from Rechenberg, could be built only where increased African taxation or customs duty would provide revenue to service the necessary loan, and this principle was enshrined in the agreement with the financial authorities of December 1907. On Rechenberg's principles, the northern railway could be extended only to the River Pangani, whence a road to Moshi would be built. Dernburg proposed this plan to the Budget Commission in March 1908. He immediately faced opposition from the government's two main supporting parties, Conservatives and National Liberals, who demanded immediate construction to Moshi. As usual, Dernburg compromised with them, promising to review the question again. The line to the River Pangani was then approved.1 Conflict continued throughout 1908 and 1909, and it was symptomatic of the new political situation created by the election that it was now the Reichstag which urged greater expenditure. To placate his critics, Dernburg sent his ultra-conservative Under-Secretary, Lindequist, 'to examine the climatic and economic conditions for white settlement in German East Africa', with a mandate to report on the feasibility of the Moshi line. Exhorted to bear in mind the dubious economic viability of the project and the burden of debt already weighing on the East African treasury, Lindequist produced a carefully noncommittal report, but his verdict that millions of acres of land suitable for settlement lay within reach of a line to Moshi made continued resistance impossible.2 While Rechenberg insisted that his treasury could not bear this extra expense, Dernburg prepared for a volte-face. Abandoning the 1 2

Budget Commission, 31 March 1908, Rt 1060. Lindequist's report was published as Deutsch-Ostafrika als Siedelungsgebiet fur Europder (Miinchen, 1912). For correspondence about the expedition, see RKA 303. IO2

The European challenge Nyamwezi and peanut programme, he met the Reichstag with a proposal for a railway to Moshi, which, he said, must be regarded as the terminus. It was accepted by the Budget Commission in January 1910 and completed in 1911.1 A campaign for further extension to Arusha began immediately. The northern railway was a flat contradiction of the principles on which Rechenberg's programme of economy, security, and African agriculture was based. Where finance was involved, Rechenberg was not master in his own house. But there were areas of policy where finance was of relatively little importance, and where the governor had greater freedom to apply his principles. One such area was labour policy. In February 1909, Rechenberg issued ordinances regulating the legal status and recruitment of African labourers.2 The ordinance governing legal status applied only to unskilled labour for periods longer than one month. Following Prussian practice, it established a standard contract which must be given to every recruit and registered with an official labour commissioner, a new official created by the ordinance. The maximum contract period was seven months or 180 working days within nine months. The employer was bound to provide his labourers with a food allowance, to be paid even if the labourer was absent from work for a period of up to eight days in any month. The employer must also provide housing, medical care, and return transport. The labour commissioner was responsible for prosecuting employers who broke their contracts, while workers who did so were subject to disciplinary jurisdiction exercised by the commissioner—this last provision being a concession to settler pressure.3 The recruit1

2

3

Rechenberg to RKA, 7 April 1909, RKA 33/86-90; Budget Commission, 12-13 Jan. 1910, Rt 1061; M. F. Hill, Permanent Way: Volume II: the Story of the Tanganyika Railways (Nairobi, 1957), p. 74. * Verordnung, betreffend die Anwerbung von Eingeborenen in DeutschOstafrika. Vom 27. Februar 1909', and 'Verordnung, betreffend die Rechtsverhaltnisse eingeborener Arbeiter. Vom 27. Februar 1909', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 311-16, 319-24. * Verordnung, betreffend die Bestrafung von Eingeborenen wegen Kontraktbruchs. Vom 7. Dezember 1909', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 327.

IO3

Tanganyika under German rule ing ordinance declared that in order to prevent recruitment by force, fraud, or bribery, every recruiter must be licensed and all his contracts registered by an official in the presence of the workers concerned. These ordinances contained two main points of contention. One was the position of the labour commissioner. The settlers had long demanded that officials be made responsible for providing labour. Rechenberg wanted something akin to factory inspectors. In October 1907 Dernburg decided to model labour legislation on the Kenya ' Masters and Servants Ordinance5 of April 1906, which was based on Transvaal law and made breach of contract by the labourer an offence subject to disciplinary jurisdiction.1 He also promised to appoint commissioners ' to assist the plantations to the labour supply necessary to them'. The settlers welcomed these statements, 'provided that their [the commissioners'] functions really develop in the direction which Exzellenz Dernburg indicated'. 2 Dernburg had misled the European community, however, for the central principle of the Kenyan legislation was that in disputes under the contract both parties, European or otherwise, were subject to the jurisdiction of administrative officers. When Dernburg proposed this to the Budget Commission in February 1908, the parties of order immediately protested. Under the Protectorate Law, no European could be tried by an administrative officer. The Ministry ofjustice upheld this view, and Dernburg gave way.3 The commissioner was therefore empowered to punish employees, but could only prosecute European employers before the courts, and since he alone could do this, the employee had no redress unless the commissioner entertained his complaint. Nevertheless, the commissioners did have powers of inspection, so that the planters believed they had been de1

2 3

East Africa Protectorate: Ordinances and Regulations: Volume VIII: igo6 (London, 1908), pp. 11-19. Usambara-Post, 12 Oct. 1907 (Sonderbeilage). Dernburg in Budget Commission, 18 Feb. 1908, in Deutsches Kolonialblatt, 1 March 1908; Arning in Budget Commission, 25 Feb. 1908, Rt 1059; Sperling, 'Aufzeichnung', April 1908, RKA 5488/182-6; Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 19 March 1908, p. 4,108 (Dernburg). IO4

The European challenge ceived. Feilke complained that 'the future labour commissioners seemed to him to have undergone a transformation from labour commissioners to officials controlling the planters5.1 Feilke later admitted that the five commissioners appointed had proved their value, but less responsible Europeans continued to resent them. The second main source of contention was Rechenberg's insistence that labourers should receive a food allowance during their period of contract, even on days when they did not report for work. He held that an adequate supply of labour depended on attracting the c economic man' in the African cultivator, by offering him sufficiently attractive remuneration. c The East African labour problem', he asserted, 'is primarily a question of pay and feeding.5 Unless food were provided by the employer, the migrant labourer (who rarely brought his wife) must spend two or three days a week buying and preparing it, so that if he were paid by days worked his real weekly wage might be halved. However, unless the labourer could work his contract in the shortest possible time, he would return home without savings, which would deter others from accepting employment. This insistence on the provision of food was condemned by the planters, in Arning5s words, as 'a premium on idleness5.2 The limited powers of the labour commissioner, and the fact that desertion was to be a disciplinary offence, were both provisions which made Rechenberg's ordinances less stringent than he had hoped. Their efficacy was further reduced by the absence of other provisions which the governor thought crucial. First, recruiting was still disorganised. After his failure to create a central agency during 1907, Rechenberg again met the plantation owners while he was in Germany in January 1908. They agreed to form a syndicate, to which, by October, some 125,000 marks was subscribed. 1 2

' Sitzung des Gouvernementsrats beim Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika', Dar es Salaam, 20-23 Nov. 1908, RKA 812/273-302. 'Besprechung iiber die Arbeiterverhaltnisse in Deutsch-Ostafrika', Berlin, 2 Jan. 1908, RKA 120/28-33; Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 27 Feb. 1909, p. 7,214 (Arning). IO5

Tanganyika under German rule But the plan again foundered on the hostility of the smaller planters in East Africa, who feared for their independence. Negotiations dragged on until October 1910, when the scheme was abandoned.1 The recruiting legislation was later to prove inadequate where no central agency existed. The second notable omission from the ordinances was any reference to the £uchtigungsrecht, the right to inflict disciplinary corporal punishment on their employees which Europeans claimed by custom, and which the courts upheld. Dernburg was shocked by what he saw of this in East Africa, and the Colonial Office drafted an ordinance abolishing the right. Rather than abolition, Rechenberg demanded legal definition, which the settlers were determined to resist. Dernburg refused to issue the ordinance.2 There is no evidence of his reasons. He may have felt that legislation could only worsen the position. In view of his general attitude after the Reichstag debates of 1908, however, it is likely that he was simply unwilling to antagonise the settlers and their supporters. The result was predictable. During thirty months of 1909-11, 27 Europeans were convicted of brutality by the Dar es Salaam Provincial Court alone. Its magistrate, with his European assessors, awarded sentences which Rechenberg considered 'laughably small'. No study of German administration can have any reality without stressing the horrors of almost unrestricted flogging. In 1911-12, no fewer than 5,944 sentences of corporal punishment were awarded by the native courts of German East Africa—five a week, on average, at every district office in the country.3 The number administered extra-legally is quite impossible to estimate. Rechenberg deplored the position, but his legalistic approach to it suggests 1

2

3

'Besprechung', 2 Jan. 1908, RKA 120/28-33; VDOAP, 'Protokoll', 10 Oct. 1908, and *Aufzeichnung betr. Besprechung iiber die Arbeiteranwerbung in Deutsch-Ostafrika am 13. Oktober 19105, RKA 528/11-12, 27-31. Dernburg in Budget Commission, 18 Feb. 1908, in Deutsches Kolonialblatt, 1 March 1908; draft by Gerstmeyer [early 1908], RKA 5379/155-6; Rechenberg to RKA, 2 Sept. 1909, RKA 5380/48; minutes in RKA 5379Rechenberg to RKA, 21 June 1911, RKA 237/93-8; Fritz Ferdinand Miiller, Kolonien unter der Peitsche: eine Dokumentation (Berlin, 1962), p. 114.

IO6

The European challenge very clearly the limitations of his generation and of his own personality. Although conscious that it was incomplete, Rechenberg was especially proud of his labour legislation, claiming that it deserved to be compared with the freeing of the serfs or with the factory acts in Europe. The planters, he asserted, 'are no longer absolute masters of their labourers. The native labourer also has rights, so long as he fulfils his obligation to work, whereas he was previously in a position worse than that of a slave.' The only criticism which stung him into reply after his retirement was an attack on labour policy and conditions.1 And in this period, until June 1910, the evidence supported him. According to his own figures, the labour force on all European enterprises rose between 1908-9 and 1910-11 from 50,000 to 90,000. Even Liebert was obliged to confess in February 1910 that the labour position was 'definitely good'. 2 Only towards the end of his governorship did the inadequacy of his policy become obvious to everyone save Rechenberg himself. To the European community, the labour ordinances were the final proof that Rechenberg was the enemy. His claim that 'there are certainly. . .social and political privileges for Europeans in East Africa, but no economic privileges', seemed about to be fulfilled.3 Feilke resigned from the governor's council in November 1908 when the governor refused to introduce a pass law to prevent desertion. The legislation gave rise to angry debates in the Reichstag during February 1909. While the Colonial Secretary expressed his confidence in Rechenberg's administration, Arendt, for the Reichspartei, virtually demanded the governor's recall. For the first time the full extent of conflict over the ' Rechenberg 1

2

3

Rechenberg to RKA, 21 July 1910, RKA 122/83-92; Rechenberg, 'Die Arbeitszwang in Ostafrika', in Die deutscke Kolonialpolitik vor dem Gerichtshof der Welt (Basel, 1918), pp. 36-48. Reichstag Papers, 1909-11 session, no. 179, p. 409; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1910/11, part 1, p. 14; Reichstag Debates, 1909-11 session, 1 Feb. 1910, p. 986 (Liebert). Rechenberg to Methner, 24 Oct. 1907, RKA 120/105-8.

107

Tanganyika under German rule system' was made evident to the German public, while the settlers felt that they had regained the support alienated by their injudicious petition.1 The Northern League was discredited as an organisation of tasteless extremists, but the time seemed apt for a new and more potent body. The idea of a country-wide organisation of European unofficials emerged during 1908 from discussions between Feilke and Walter von St Paul-IUaire, a former district officer who had become the director of a large plantation company and was a man of weight and authority in right-wing circles. Acting through his plantation manager, a retired officer named Dabeler, St Paul-Illaire agreed with Feilke on the need to form local organisations which would then be federated in a territorial association. Apart from the Northern League, local bodies already existed in Morogoro, Moshi, Dar es Salaam, and Lindi, but all were moribund. They were reorganised in November 1908, Dabeler taking charge in Lindi and Schultz in Dar es Salaam.2 On 19 June 1909 delegates from the five regional organisations met in Dar es Salaam to found the Territorial Business League of German East Africa (Wirtschaftlicher Landesverband von Deutsch-Ost-

afrika). As was usual in settler politics, the meeting was dominated by articulate plantation managers, businessmen from the capital, and the several lawyers, competing for political influence and clients. In the keynote speech a lawyer, Nostitz, rehearsed the full catalogue of grievances against Rechenberg—his autocracy, his ignorance, his refusal to take unofficial advice, his indifference to European welfare. But the leaders, following St Paul-Illaire's design, were determined that this should be a peace meeting. Feilke —who was ill and absent in Germany—was elected president, with Nostitz as secretary, and Dabeler and Schultz as vicepresidents.3 Dabeler led a deputation to call on Rechenberg, 1 2 3

Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 26 Feb. 1909, pp. 7,191-4 (Dernburg) and 7,195 (Arendt); Usambara-Post, 17 April 1909. The negotiations are obscure. This account is based on scattered comments in the Usambara-Post during 1908. Usambara-Post, 26 June 1909. 108

The European challenge presenting a six-point programme headed by the wish that 6 an understanding between business and the government may be achieved immediately'. Rechenberg warmly agreed and offered certain concessions. The banquet to celebrate this rapprochement was marked by one of the governor's rare and platitudinous speeches, in which he expressed the rather ambiguous hope that c each may have his place in the sun in this so sunny land'. 1 For a full year after the formation of the Territorial League, relations between the settlers and the government were more equable than before. In the Reichstag budget debate of 1910, speakers from all sides welcomed the new accord. The League's second meeting in June 191 o was almost complacent. Characteristically, Rechenberg claimed much of the credit, attributing the changed mood partly to the restraining influence of Dabeler, partly to the settlers' Reichstag defeat of 1908, and partly to the success of his own economic legislation.2 Certainly the supply of labour was satisfactory. The Indian question had been shelved temporarily, while the rubber boom was bringing new prosperity to the settlers. Only the questions of local self-government and the northern railway produced serious disagreement. Although official relations between Dernburg and Rechenberg were strained, Dernburg's concessions improved his personal standing with the settlers. East Africa, which had been the centre of political attention in 1908, gave way to South-West Africa during 1909. The Budget Commission approved East Africa's budget for 1910 at a single meeting. In the colony itself, the Territorial League faced organisational problems. Feilke refused the presidency because of illness. Dabeler replaced him and almost immediately resigned for the same reason, to be succeeded by Schultz. Under its 1909 constitution, the League's committee was to be chosen from all parts of the country. This proved impracticable, and a new constitution was drafted which allowed the committee to be drawn en1 2

Deutsch-Ostafrikanische fitting, 23 June 1909. Rechenberg to RKA, 25 June 1909, RKA 1068/106-9. IO9

Tanganyika under German rule tirely from the local body acting as host to the annual general meeting. The meeting of 1910 which made this decision was badly attended and disrupted by rivalries. To prevent the League falling apart, the members flagrantly defied their constitution by turning themselves into a secret delegate meeting with block voting.1 The new constitution declared that the League was a federal body whose controlling organ was the public delegate meeting, at which each constituent organisation had a block vote, one vote for every ten members of the local body.2 In 1911 the League claimed some 270 members, all paid up at four rupees a year each. Resolutions were sent to the government, and also to the Colonial Office and Reichstag. Those members of the League who sat on the governor's council were regarded as its delegates. When in Germany, leading members met Reichstag deputies and the press; a number also belonged to the League of German East African Plantations and to the Colonial Society. With wide and influential contacts and the advantage of representing a 'national' cause, the League was an effective pressure group. Its annual meetings discussed, in Mrs Huxley's phrase, everything 'from worms in sheep to spleen in Governors'. The 1910 meeting passed comprehensive resolutions on land, labour, railways, and local self-government. In Tanganital, and probably also in Moshi, the League was accepted as spokesman for European interests, but elsewhere it had less influence.3 This, indeed, was always a weakness, for it was effectively controlled by the nucleus of the old Northern League, and this caused dissent. The Lindi planters withdrew in 1911 after a quarrel over labour recruiting. Europeans in Moshi asserted special interests, while non-German organisations were excluded from membership. Nevertheless, despite these weaknesses the League was more genuinely representative than its limited membership might suggest. 1

'Bericht iiber die General-Versammlung des WLVDOA', and 'Protokoll iiber die Delegierten-Versammlung des WVLDOA am 4. Juni 1910 im Hotel "Kaiserhof", Daressalam', TNA VIII/J/58/I. 2 Copy enclosed in WLVDOA to government, 21 Oct. 1910, TNA VIII/J/58/I. 3 See the reports of 1912 in TNA VIII/J/58/II. IIO

The European challenge To appreciate its efficacy as a pressure group, it is necessary only to consider the settlers' increasing control of local selfgovernment during the period between the budget debates of 1908 and Dernburg's resignation in May 1910. Dernburg's chief concession to the settlers during his visit to East Africa was a promise to consider the possibility of election for unofficial members of the governor's council. He took no action during 1908, however, and the initiative lay with Rechenberg, who felt nothing but hostility towards settler self-government. In April 1908 the governor issued a new list of council members. Five unofficials were nominated, but only three officials; others, the proclamation stated, would be summoned from time to time. The effect was seen at the next meeting, when the unofficial members were swamped by the governor, five official members, and no less than eight official, non-voting advisers. Feilke immediately protested, urging that more unofficials be chosen, if possible by election, and that officials be appointed by name rather than office—hoping thus that older officials more sympathetic to settler views would replace the bright young departmental heads summoned by Rechenberg. Feilke also argued that the council had an implicit c right to concur' (Mitbestimmungsreckt).1 Rechenberg was seriously alarmed by this last suggestion, pointing as it did towards some form of decisive power for the council: The fate of a colony whose revenue, in far the greater part, is drawn from the coloured inhabitants, can scarcely be decided by elements which stand more or less in a conflict of interest with those same inhabitants... After the most meticulous and sympathetic study, I can find in German East Africa only one authority able justly to weigh the interests of all those concerned, and that is the governor.2

To preserve the advisory principle, he was even willing to accept additional, elected unofficials, although he feared this 1

2

'Sitzung des Gouvernementsrates beim Gouvernement von DeutschOstafrika', Dar es Salaam, 20-2 July 1908, RKA 812/201-40; Feilke, 'Denkschrift betreffend Umgestaltung des Gouvernementsrates', 8 Aug. 1908, RKA 811/46-51. Rechenberg to RKA, 12 Nov. 1908, RKA 811/42-5. Ill

Tanganyika under German rule would be inefficient. The matter, however, passed from his hands. When the Reichstag met in February 1909, relations between the government and its critical supporters were at their worst. Arning demanded that unofficial members of the governor's council should be elected and official members appointed by name. Dernburg promised that more unofficials and fewer officials would be chosen. He then instructed Rechenberg that the council must have an unofficial majority even if the governor voted, that unofficial membership should be increased, and that presentative election1 should if possible be introduced. But Dernburg rejected Feilke's claim that the council possessed a 'right to concur'. It was to be advisory only, for any other ruling would have violated the Reichstag's budgetary rights.2 Although defeated on this point, the settlers had made an important gain. The next meeting was the first with an absolute majority of unofficials. Rechenberg's attitude to the council was modified after June 1909 by the creation of the Territorial League, which immediately demanded to be consulted on all proposed legislation. Faced with the threat of a 'settlers' parliament', the governor reversed his position and sought to build up the council as against the League. In December 1909 he drafted an ordinance establishing presentative election by all those of European legal status—including, for example, the large Goan community. The Colonial Office pointed out that the original ordinance stipulated that members must be white. It also urged that unofficial membership be increased from five to eight or ten. Rechenberg persuaded Dernburg to delay this,3 but unofficial thinking was now moving beyond even the Colonial Office view. A new precedent was available: the territorial council granted to South-West African 1

Selection by the governor from elected lists. Reichstag Debates, 1907-9 session, 27 Feb. 1909, p. 7,213 (Arning), 1 March 1909, p. 7,246 (Dernburg), 3 March 1909, p. 7,290 (Arning); Dernburg to government, 20 March 1909, RKA 811/58-9. 3 Rechenberg to Dabeler, 1 July 1909, TNA VIII/J/58/I; Rechenberg to RKA, and enclosure, 15 Dec. 1909; Lindequist to government, 28 Jan 1910 and 25 Feb. 191 o, RKA 811/62-79.

2

112

The European challenge settlers, with thirty members, half of them elected, of whom only three were officials.1 In June 1910 the Territorial League demanded increased unofficial representation and returned to the old demand for control of the local budget. Rechenberg's scheme for presentative election was accepted by the governor's council, but only as an interim measure.2 Thus when Dernburg resigned in May 1910, Rechenberg had been manoeuvred into an impossible attempt to elevate the governor's council above the Territorial League while restricting the council's own powers. Already there was an unofficial majority. Soon there was to be election. After that only the question of advisory or decisive powers would remain. Two of the three major concessions had been granted within two years, and this because organised European opinion had been able to take advantage of peculiarly German concepts of Selbstverwaltung, which were leading, far more quickly than had been anticipated, to a very large measure of settler control. As part of Rechenberg's financial reorganisation, the communes—representing a second aspect of Selbstverwaltung —were to be dissolved and replaced by a petty cash fund at the discretion of the district officer alone. Dernburg deferred the implementation of this plan until 1909. During 1908 it was agreed that nominated district councils should continue to advise the district officer, each council having a member to represent non-Europeans. Settler hostility again forced Dernburg to compromise with the parties of order in the Reichstag during 1909. The communes were dissolved, but the district councils were guaranteed the right to advise on the expenditure of at least 25 per cent of the taxation collected in the district concerned.3 The essential question 1

2 3

For this Landesrat, see Oskar Hintrager, Sudwestafrika in der deutschen Zeit

(Miinchen, 1955), chs. 15 and 16. WLVDOA, 'Protokoll', 4 June 1910, TNA VIII/J/58/I; 'Protokoll iiber die Gouvernementsratssitzung vom 9. bis 11. Juni 1910', RKA 813/97-103. Conze to government, 22 May 1908, RKA 799/90-1; Budget Commission, 24 Feb. 1909, Rt 1060; 'Verordnung des Reichskanzlers, betreffend die Aufhebung kommunaler Verbande in Deutsch-Ostafrika. Vom 31. Marz 1909', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 424-5. 8

113

ITU

Tanganyika under German rule remaining was the composition of the councils. Feilke, for the unofficial, demanded election. Rechenberg suggested that each should have two elected and two nominated members, with the district officer as voting chairman. The Colonial Office, already committed to an elected majority on the governor's council, proposed instead that three members be elected and one nominated, with elections confined to German citizens. Rechenberg again persuaded Dernburg to delay, but during 1910 the governor's council demanded elected majorities, and members of the Territorial League refused to participate in district council activities unless this was granted. The question was unresolved when Dernburg resigned.1 Meanwhile, the Colonial Secretary had made a major concession with regard to the form of municipal administration which was to replace the communes in Dar es Salaam and Tanga townships. Instructed to draft the legislation, Rechenberg proposed that the municipalities should be legal corporations, with control of their own budgets and power to float loans and levy taxes, subject to the governor's consent. The executive—in German terms the Biirgermeister—would be the district officer. Within this general framework, the most contentious problem was the constitution of the municipal councils. Rechenberg proposed that each should consist of one nominated and three elected members, all residents of European legal status being eligible. There should be a threefold voting system comparable to that of many German towns, one member being elected by all business-tax payers, one by all house-tax payers, and the third by all residents. Alongside this, however, Rechenberg proposed a 'coloured committee' (farbigen Ausschuss) of at least five German East African citizens, nominated by the governor and speaking Swahili. They would have a veto on all municipal decisions, 1

Rechenberg to RKA, 16 Oct. 1909, and draft legislation, RKA 237/17-19, 28-43; Dernburg to government, 28 Feb. 1910, RKA 800/10-13; 'Protokoll iiber die Gouvernementsratssitzung vom 9. bis 11. Juni 1910', RKA 813/97— 103; WLVDOA, 'Protokoll', 4 Juni 1910, TNA VIII/J/58/I. 114

The European challenge subject to the governor's overriding authority.1 The idea had been accepted by Dernburg early in 1908, when he had suggested that ' an attempt can be made to include a small number of "coloureds", for example the liwali and one or other rich Indian'. 2 It is the best indication of the transformation in Dernburg's thinking under right-wing pressure that he now abandoned this proposal. Rechenberg claimed that the leading local Europeans had agreed. This was very unlikely, although his allies among the traders may have accepted the proposal. Dernburg may have realised that he was being misinformed as to the state of opinion. He may also have felt that he could never gain Reichstag approval for the measure. At all events he drew back, rejected the 'coloured committee', and ruled that only German citizens should vote: Consideration for the relations between the colonising race and the natives prevents the inclusion of the latter section of the population in municipal self-government... I fear that the need to hear an organised coloured body would lead to embarrassing situations if the decisions of this body were found not to accord with the aspirations of the European municipal organ, or indeed with the government's aims.3

In his administrative decisions concerning the Indians, the northern railway, corporal punishment, and local selfgovernment, Dernburg had gradually abandoned the programme which he had accepted from Rechenberg in 1907 and carried through the Reichstag with such authority in 1908. When the irreverent Erzberger commented on this withdrawal, Dernburg hotly denied it.4 The denial, however, was unconvincing. Forced by the constitutional position of the colonies to be a political state secretary, Dernburg had tried throughout his term of office to maintain a Reichstag majority for his programmes by balancing between left and right, giving ground where necessary, abandoning even what to Rechenberg were points of principle. By May 1910, when 1 2 3 4

'Vorschlage fur die Bildung von Stadtgemeinden in Deutsch-Ostafrika \ [mid 1908], RKA 812/264. Dernburg to Gotzen, 24 Feb. 1908, RKA 799/78-9. Dernburg to government, 7 Jan. 1910, RKA 799/258-65. Budget Commission, 12 Jan. 1910, Rt 1061. 8-2

Tanganyika under German rule he requested permission to resign, Dernburg's position had become untenable. The exact reasons for his resignation were carefully camouflaged and are still obscure. He was under heavy criticism from Conservatives and Zentrum, the two parties supporting the government, for granting diamond concessions in South-West Africa to a capitalistic syndicate rather than to the settlers, and he had been indiscreet in handling the negotiations. Conservative criticism was especially heavy because there were fears that Dernburg might be a future Foreign Secretary, an office for which he probably had ambitions. Wider political considerations may also have been involved. Biilow had resigned in June 1909 when Conservatives and Zentrum had allied against the National Liberals to defeat a projected reform of the empire's financial and tax structure. Subsequently, this 'Blue-Black Bloc', although theoretically supporting the government, had resisted all reforms; in May 1910 it was successfully resisting a liberalisation of the Prussian franchise. Dernburg may have felt himself unable to work with this right-wing majority. He may have wished to avoid commitment to it. He may also have felt that his radical background, by antagonising the right wing, was an obstacle to reform.1 Dernburg had made too many enemies. 'At first', wrote a Zentrum leader, 'he had been cheered for "throwing Roeren and Erzberger out of his Colonial Office"; but when he also turned out the top Reichspartei and National Liberal men—Liebert, Arendt, Paasche, Arning, Semler—then their party colleagues, and they themselves, found this unprecedented.'2 Dernburg had reasserted the imperial factor in German colonial affairs. At first this had allied him with Rechenberg, but the alliance was unstable, for Rechenberg's conception of German interests saw East Africa as peripheral, while it was Dern1

2

See Schnee, Ah letzter Gouverneur, pp. 98-100; Kuno Graf von Westarp, Konservative Politik im letzten Jahrzehnt des Kaiserreiches (2 vols., Berlin, 1935), 1, 336-7; Theodor Seitz, Vom Aufstieg und Niederbruch deutscher Kolonialmacht: Erinnerungen (3 vols., Karlsruhe i. B., 1927—9), 11, 116. I am also indebted to Herr Pogge von Strandmann for information on this point. Bachem,

The European challenge burg's political task to project East Africa's importance on the public scene. Open conflict between them must have come, had not the Colonial Secretary resigned in May 1910. In his successor, Friedrich von Lindequist, Rechenberg recognised an old enemy and the settlers a loval friend.

117

CHAPTER 6

WHITE MAN'S COUNTRY While Dernburg remained in office, the debate over the future of German East Africa did not produce any decisive answer, although his concessions to European pressure shifted the balance towards the right. Under his successors, the pendulum was to swing further towards the European position, towards the objective of creating in East Africa what contemporary Englishmen called a white man's country. Rechenberg resisted this shift of policy, and during the last year of his governorship his opposition led him into acrimonious dispute with all the forces of right-wing opinion, now for the first time under energetic leadership. Friedrich von Lindequist, who had been Dernburg's Undersecretary since 1907, became Colonial Secretary on 9 June 1910. He was exactly a year younger than Rechenberg, and in several respects his earlier career ran parallel to that of the governor. Entering the consular service, he was posted to the South-West African administration in 1894. Six years later he became consul-general in Cape Town during the Boer War. Appointed governor of South-West Africa at the height of the rebellion in 1905, he saw European control restored to that country before returning to Germany and taking a leading part in the 1907 election campaign. Conspicuously the most able of Germany's colonial governors at that date, he was made Under-Secretary to the new Colonial Office and later succeeded Dernburg as an automatic choice. In August 1911, however, he became involved in a dispute between Germany and France arising from rivalry in Morocco. Treated contemptuously by the Foreign Secretary, and isolated within the government in his conviction that Germany had missed an opportunity to acquire territory in 118

White marl's country Morocco, he angrily resigned. Between the wars he was prominent in the campaign to regain the former German colonies. In 1945, at the age of 82, he committed suicide in the face of German defeat. While Dernburg was a politician who took all but his broadest outlines of policy from his civil servants, Lindequist was a professional administrator of real ability, honourable, rigid, industrious, utterly humourless. Political conservatism and South African experience moulded his convictions. * Thoroughly anti-British, yet impressed with the grandeur of the British Empire and eager to ape it', 1 his ambition was to create German colonies of settlement in Africa. Admired and supported by the right wing in the Reichstag, by the Colonial Society, by the settlers, and by the majority of administrators in the field,' his name was to become the symbol of German expansionism'.2 It was public knowledge that his belief in European settlement had led to constant friction with Dernburg, whom he had served with a dogged, disapproving loyalty. News of Lindequist's appointment led everyone in East Africa, officials and unofficial alike, to anticipate Rechenberg's imminent recall.3 The two administrators, so similar in age, in training and personality, had long been open enemies. When Lindequist had undertaken his expedition through East Africa during 1908 and 1909, Rechenberg had refused even to pay the expenses of the East African officials who had participated. So warmly had the settlers lauded Lindequist, that he had felt obliged to deny publicly that his presence implied any criticism of the governor.4 Rechenberg was not recalled. Indeed, when he tried to take leave in July 1911, with a view to resignation, Lindequist 1 2

3

4

M. J . Bonn, Wandering Scholar (London, 1949), p . 143. Willequet, Le Congo Beige, p . 209. For admiring accounts of Lindequist, see Schnee, Ah letzter Gouverneur, pp. 104-5; Hintrager, Siidwestafrika, pp. 81 et seq. See the judgment in a criminal case against G. A. E. Freiherr von Wachter, TNA unmarked file. Rechenberg to RKA, 24 Oct. 1910, RKA 303/138; Usambara-Post, 12 Jan. I9O9JI

9

Tanganyika under German rule refused until the request was supported by a medical report. There were probably three reasons for Lindequist's determination that Rechenberg should stay in East Africa. First, from a professional viewpoint, Rechenberg was a success. East Africa's trade trebled between 1905 and 1912. The imperial subsidy fell in the same period from 6,964,000 marks to an estimated 3,618,000, despite unprecedented railway construction.1 There was no rebellion. Even some of the plantations prospered. Rechenberg was a success, and it would have been bad administration to recall him. Second, Lindequist, like Dernburg, was inhibited by the political situation in Germany. When the National Liberals went into opposition in 1909, politicians began to discuss the possibility of a radical coalition from National Liberals to Social Democrats, an alliance which the government was anxious to prevent. A degree of cooperation did indeed assist these parties to win the 1912 election, only for the National Liberals to abandon the Social Democrats and rejoin the parties of order.2 In 1910 and 1911, then, Lindequist was obliged to placate all three major parties of order. Rechenberg was a constant source of political embarrassment. Although his hostility to plantations was anathema to the National Liberals, he was a general favourite with the Zentrum because he was Germany's only Roman Catholic governor. When Lindequist pointed this out, Rechenberg gave him no help at all. ' If criticisms and attacks do not come from one side of the Reichstag', the governor blandly explained, ' they will certainly come from the other... I have hitherto attempted to give no grounds for justified attacks of any kind, but not to be afraid of unjustified attacks.'3 It is likely that without adequate, professional reasons, Lindequist could not safely dismiss his only Roman Catholic governor. 1

Reichstag Papers, 1909-11 session, no. 179, p. 6,476; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1912/13, part 2, pp. 121, 401. 2 Bertram, Die Wahlen zum Deutschen Reichstag, p. 257. 3 Rechenberg to RKA, 4 Oct. 1910, RKA 122/157-8. I2O

White marts country There was a third reason why Rechenberg could not be recalled. This concerned his relations with the East African settlers, and especially with their leading newspaper, the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische £eitung. This had been founded in Dar es Salaam in February 1899 by one Willy von Roy, who had received a number of government concessions to make it viable. German provincial newspapers were a byword for virulent gossip, and Roy was a choleric man. Moreover, by a legal accident, the German press law did not apply to the colonies, and the matter was politically so delicate that no colonial press law was issued until 1912. Hence throughout Rechenberg's governorship the local press could safely print anything save libel, even official secrets. This situation induced Rechenberg to start his own newspaper, the DeutschOstafrikanische Rundschau, backed financially by the German East African Company and virulently anti-settler. He also cancelled Roy's concessions. A violent press war resulted. During 1910, the Zjitung published a series of articles chronicling a quarrel between Rechenberg and the military authorities. One month after Lindequist's appointment, the Rundschau retaliated by recalling a criminal verdict against the rival editor. Roy replied by insinuating that the Chief Secretary and other senior officials were involved in a homosexual scandal. The officials sued and Roy was imprisoned. Already sick, he now became decidedly unbalanced. Convinced of the dangers of Rechenberg's policies, he convinced himself also that the governor was a homosexual, and in October 1910 bribed a number of Africans to say so publicly. He was imprisoned and deported.1 The distasteful incident had three consequences. First, it demonstrated the bitterness of the right-wing parties towards Rechenberg, for Roy was pardoned by the Kaiser in 1912 in response to a petition 1

For a detailed discussion of the German East African press, see Dietrich Redeker, Journalismus in Deutsch-Ostafrika i8gg-igi6 (Frankfurt a. M., 1937). For the Roy case, see also Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung, 29 Jan. 1910, 2 and 5 Feb. 1910; Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Rundschau, 9 July 1910, 9 Nov. 1910, 7 and 10 Dec. 1910; Usambara-Post, 24 Dec. 1910; correspondence in RKA 4805 and 4836; above, p. 119, n.3. 121

Tanganyika under German rule countersigned by Arendt, Liebert, and Paasche, three of the governor's leading political enemies.1 Second, the incident destroyed the armistice between Rechenberg and the Territorial League. There was some evidence that the League had backed Roy. Rechenberg accepted its denial, but precisely two days after the first libel on his advisers, he opened a new attack on the League, refusing to consider its resolutions because its officers had been elected unconstitutionally. Its aspirations, he wrote, 'have nothing to do with the general welfare of the Protectorate, and I must respectfully ask that this fact should not be obscured by the patriotic cloak of Kaiser-toasts and loyalty-telegrams which they like to wear'. In reply, the League protested to Lindequist and sent the correspondence to Arning for use in the Reichstag.2 The third consequence of the scandal was to make Rechenberg virtually irremovable. Lindequist could scarcely recall a man who had just been wrongly accused of homosexuality, and who was already thoroughly successful and had the support of the strongest party of order. So long as the governor avoided direct insubordination, he could frustrate Lindequist's intentions with impunity. Lindequist's dilemma was vividly illustrated during the Reichstag budget debate of 1911. For the National Liberals, Arning retailed the story of Rechenberg's 'unnecessary pedantry' towards the League: ' I must ask the State Secretary—and I have discussed this with my party and speak on its behalf—to use his influence for the better in this direction.' Lindequist replied that he had given instructions to end this 'minor difference of opinion'. Arendt then made his annual demand for Rechenberg's recall. After this, there was only one thing Lindequist could say: 'Governor von Rechenberg is an extraordinarily industrious worker of a quite exceptional tenacity, which he has demonstrated even in East Africa's climate. I am also of the opinion that he is 1 2

Halm to Kaiser, 18 May 1912, RKA 4836/58-9. Rechenberg to RKA, 15 July 1910, RKA 1072/9-10, and 2 Sept. 191 o, RKA 79/I7I-5; WLVDOA to RKA, 11 Feb. 1911, TNA VIII/J/58/I. 122

White man's country a remarkably able official, whom we have primarily to thank for the good state of the East African budget.' Seizing his opportunity, the ubiquitous Erzberger promptly demanded that Lindequist undertake to uphold Rechenberg's policies. He received no reply; the budget was approved. For the Colonial Secretary it had doubtless been a most embarrassing afternoon. Everyone present knew he loathed Rechenberg and all his works.1 The conflict between Rechenberg and Lindequist was rooted in conflicting views of the national interest and of East Africa's future, but it was not conducted on this level. Lindequist's public statements were cautious, while Rechenberg rarely made public statements of any kind. The real struggle took place on the level of practical administrative decisions, the bureaucratic in-fighting at which both contestants were highly skilled. The progress of German East Africa towards a white man's country was marked not by grand initiatives but by the terms of leasehold contracts and municipal rating provisions. The progress was none the less real because of this. It is best illustrated by taking up again the controversy over settler self-government, and by introducing the issue of land alienation. The claim of the Territorial League to act in the position of a Reichstag as against the government had obliged Rechenberg to uphold the status of the governor's council as his sole advisory body. For this reason, he had accepted the principle of presentative election, but still refused to increase unofficial representation or to grant the council powers of decision. Lindequist, by contrast, was anxious to grant the settlers the maximum possible self-government. Rechenberg's dilemma was revealed when the Territorial League demanded a commission of officials and unofficial to enquire into the operation of the labour ordinances. Rechenberg refused, arguing that the council was his sole advisory body. Lindequist therefore instructed him to form a sub-committee of the council. The instructions were ignored. When this 1

Reichstag Debates, 1909-11 session, 24 March 1911, pp. 5,832-45.

123

Tanganyika under German rule was brought to Lindequist's attention, he was on the point of resigning and it was too late to take action.1 This minor victory was more than outweighed by the concessions which Lindequist made to the settlers on other levels of self-government. When Dernburg resigned, the question of the composition of the advisory district councils was still open, with the Colonial Office advocating, and Rechenberg resisting, an elected unofficial majority. Lindequist decided this question with little hesitation. Over the governor's continued protests, he signed an ordinance granting an elected majority. It was published a few days after Rechenberg finally left for Germany.2 A more complicated struggle surrounded the proposed municipalities. Dernburg had ruled that only Germans should vote and that there should be no ' coloured committee'. The municipalities therefore lost any attraction for Rechenberg. Lindequist, however, decided on taking office that action was needed. He immediately issued the amended municipal ordinance and told Rechenberg to implement it.3 In this he was foiled, for the governor sabotaged the plan. From the viewpoint of the townsmen, the drawback of the ordinance was that it made no provision for the financing of municipal government. For legal and financial reasons, the government was determined that, unlike the former communes, the municipalities should not receive any rebate from central government taxation. Dernburg proposed that they should instead be endowed with land. The Reichstag, however, resolved that they should be empowered to levy local taxation.4 Rechenberg insisted that the governor must be able to veto such taxation. Lindequist's ordinance 1 WLVDOA, 'Protokoll', 4 June 1910, TNA VIII/J/58/I; Rechenberg to RKA, 21 July 1910, Lindequist to government, 19 April 1911, Volkmann, 'Notiz', 6 Sept. 1911, and Haber, minute, 7 Oct. 1911, RKA 122/83-92, 186, 235. 2 'Verordnung des Reichskanzlers, betreffend die Bezirksrate in DeutschOstafrika. Vom 16. September 1911', Amt.Anz. 1 Nov. 1911. 3 ' Stadtverordnung. Vom 18. Juli 1910', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 425 et seq.; Lindequist to government, 20 July 1910, RKA 800/68-72. 4 Dernburg to government, 2 April 1909, RKA 799/177-80; Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 1,222. 124

White man's country left the question open. During 1910, both Tanga and Dar es Salaam demanded independent sources of revenue, Tanga requesting all hut tax collected in the township. Rechenberg reverted to Dernburg's suggestion that they be endowed with land. The Colonial Office, however, knew that the financial authorities would not approve this, for they had negotiated a complicated agreement with South-West African settlers by which the latter's municipalities received only a minimum of land. A more generous arrangement in East Africa was politically impossible.1 To sabotage the municipalities, Rechenberg, with a tactlessness that can only have been deliberate, informed the district officers that' my application to transfer a sizeable area of land to the municipalities free of charge has been rejected by the Imperial Colonial Office'. The result was foreseeable. Tanga district council resolved that unless it received a proportion of the local hut tax, or adequate land,' it is preferable to dispense from the start with a local self-government that brings with it only hardship for the inhabitants of Tanga'. 'Has Lindequist become a Dernburg?' asked a local newspaper, while the Social Democrat spokesman in the Reichstag retailed Rechenberg's arguments in a speech which suggests that he must have received a copy of the governor's despatch.2 The Colonial Office rebuked Rechenberg sharply for his indiscretion, suggesting that the financial arrangements could be made more palatable to the townsmen if they were offered ' a more liberal selfgovernment'. Rechenberg retorted that he saw nothing liberal about it. He was afraid that exploitative taxation by the municipalities might provoke unrest: 'local self-government means providing the funds oneself'.3 The Colonial 1

2

3

Tanga district council, 'Protokoll', 13 April 1910, and Prompeler to government, 25 March 1910, TNA IV/A/14/I; Volkmann, minute, July 1910, TNA IV/A/13/I; Haber, minute, 26 Nov. 1910, RKA 800/1 n-12. Rechenberg to Tanga and Dar es Salaam, 8 Feb. 1911, and Tanga district council, 'Protokoir, 9 Feb. 1911, TNA IV/A/12/II; Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung, 11 Feb. 1911; Reichstag Debates, 1909-11 session, 23 March 1911, p. 5,811 (Noske). Bohmer to government, 25 April 1911, and Rechenberg to RKA, 17 July 1911, RKA 800/139-40, 154-6.

"5

Tanganyika under German rule Office was still trying to find an acceptable compromise when both Lindequist and Rechenberg resigned. This issue, like those of the district councils and the governor's council, was to be resolved in favour of the European community by Rechenberg's successor. Lindequist was renowned as the advocate of white settlement, of the attempt to replicate South Africa. He liked settlers, understood them, and was respected by them; Methner described a farmer he visited near Iringa as 'a settler after Lindequist's heart, who loves his own land and will live and die on it'. 1 Yet in East Africa Lindequist was cautious. His study of settlement possibilities listed some twelve million acres with suitable soil and climate, but said nothing as to whether settlement was desirable in principle. As Colonial Secretary he stated only that 'the increase of the white population in East Africa... is to be considered most welcome'.2 The 'radish policy' which Lindequist had implemented in South-West Africa had been discredited in East Africa by the failure of the German Russians. Settlement was still experimental, and public funds were not available. Moreover, official initiatives were unnecessary. Tanganyika's white population grew steadily, from 2,570 when Rechenberg took office to 4,744 when he resigned. Even the land intended for the German Russians supported 108 European farmers in 1914.3 If settlement was an experiment, it was an experiment which was steadily succeeding. In practice, what mattered was not the Colonial Secretary's public statements with regard to settlement, but his administrative decisions on the problems which it presented. The first of these was the northern railway. When Dernburg conceded the building of the line from the River Pangani to Moshi, he insisted that this must be the terminus. Rightwing opinion disagreed. In February 1911 the Colonial Society petitioned the Reichstag for extension to Arusha, and 1 2 3

Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren, p. 316. Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1910/11, p. iv. Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 622, p. 3,725; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1911/i2, part 2, pp. I O - I I ; Usambara-Post, 11 April 1914.

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White man's country in July it revived the old idea of a line to Lake Victoria. Rechenberg had long opposed these views, but Lindequist accepted the Arusha line in principle, a decision which was to bind his reluctant successor.1 The second set of administrative problems caused by white settlement concerned land alienation, which provoked a very technical but revealing dispute between Lindequist and the governor. German land law in East Africa was designed to prevent the sort of speculation which had partitioned East Usambara before the government asserted its authority in 1896. Its principle was that save for land already in private ownership or possessed by chiefs or African communities, all land was unowned {herrenlos) Crown Land. Nobody might purchase or lease for longer than fifteen years from a native any rural land whatever, or any urban land of more than 2-| acres. Thus, save for titles acquired before 1895 and small township plots, all alienated land must be acquired from the government. The governor was empowered to alienate Crown Land, retaining powers of reacquisition in the public interest or in the interest of natives, and provided the land was not of potential administrative utility.2 It had been intended that a single investigation of title in each district should distinguish privately owned land (including that owned by natives) and Crown Land. This never took place. Instead, ad hoc land commissions were called at the request of applicants. A land commission consisted of the district officer and anyone he chose to invite, preferably the local headman and the chief or akida.3 The commission inspected the area, decided—if that were the case—that it was unowned, de1 2

3

DKG to Reichstag, 25 Feb. 1911 and 7 July 1911, DKG 214/230-1, 180-2; Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 9 and 16 Dec. 1911. * Kaiserliche Verordnung liber die Schaffung, Besitzergreifung und Verausserung von Kronland und iiber den Erwerb und die Verausserung von Grundstiicken in Deutsch-Ostafrika im allgemeinen. Vom 26. November 1895', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 212-24. The best guide to land law is Latz, 4 Zusammenstellung der Vorschriften und Dienstanweisung betreffend die Liegenschaftsrecht in Deutsch-Ostafrika. Nach dem Stande vom 1. Dezember 1905', TNA VIII/L/i/II. 'Verordnung, betreffend die Bildung von Landkommissionen. Vom 29. April 1900', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 219.

127

Tanganyika under German rule clared it Crown Land, and recommended its alienation to the applicant. The governor's consent was then needed, and the title had normally to be registered with the appropriate provincial court. After 1895, ^ e government recognised African rights to land only when it was physically occupied.1 Beyond this, land commissions were instructed to leave Africans sufficient for their needs and for future expansion; the requisite amount was defined as at least four times the existing cultivated area.2 This procedure was later described very fairly by Methner, the authority on land matters: If it was a matter of individual, scattered settlements, the natives were instructed to leave the land. In the presence of the headmen or elders, they then received an agreed cash compensation for their huts, existing fruit trees... and for their work with axe and hoe... It was also important to determine where the people were to move to; if necessary, suitable land was assigned to them. However, if the natives had genuine grounds to stay on their land— and this was especially the case if they had already once been bought out and officially installed in their present property—or if it concerned a sizeable number of huts, perhaps whole villages, the creation of native reserves was indicated. In calculating the size of these, account was to be taken not only of the existing number of inhabitants, but also of the natural increase.3

In West Usambara and the Pangani Valley, the result was to intersperse native reserves with settled areas. Any native reserve could subsequently be alienated if the governor so decided. After the land commission, a successful applicant applied to the governor for title. Gotzen began the practice of alienating land in the first instance only on 25-year leases. The lease was a Kaufpachtvertrag, a lease with option of pur1

2

3

' Runderlass, betreffend den Umfang des Okkupationsrechtes des Gouvernements und die Bildung von Landkommissionen. Vom 29. April 1900', Landesgesetzgebung, 11, 218-19. 'Verordnung des Gouverneurs, betreffend Anwendung und Ausfiihrung der Allerhochsten Verordnung. . .vom 26. November 1895. Vom 10. Februar 1896', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 218. Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren, p. 50.

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White marts country chase. The lessee might buy one-fifth of the land for each one-tenth he cultivated. When half was cultivated, he could buy the whole area. Even if he did not wish to buy, the lease required him to cultivate one-tenth of the land each year.1 This procedure reflected both a desire to prevent speculation and also tenurial custom in Germany where, in 1907, 82 per cent of the land was owner-farmed. German farmers thought instinctively of freehold, and found leasehold an unusual and inferior tenure. Even Dernburg, ulti a-cautious of alienating state property, refused to substitute long-term leases of the Kenyan type for freehold.2 It was the leasehold system which provoked conflict between Rechenberg and Lindequist. To prevent speculation or unproductive occupancy, the leasehold contract required the progressive cultivation of one-tenth of the land in each of the first five years. This was varied to allow capital investment in a house, farm buildings, etc., to count as equal to the cultivation of not more than one-tenth of the land. If strictly enforced, these terms were most onerous where land had to be reclaimed and graded up. Settlers stressed the nearimpossibility of cultivating half the land at any time when much must lie fallow, and they enquired whether a single annual crop was sufficient cultivation. Rechenberg insisted on the strict fulfilment of the lease.3 This was especially inappropriate to pasture. Gotzen had told the Boers who settled at Arusha that he would accept stocking in lieu of cultivation. Rechenberg withdrew this concession because settlers could borrow cattle to stock the land until it was purchased, then transfer them to gain ownership of another farm, and so ad infinitum. Where cattle disease was epidemic, fencing was the most valuable improvement to pasture. Rechenberg allowed ranchers to buy any land they fenced, and even exempted barbed wire from customs duty, a mag1

2 3

' Runderlass, betreffend Ueberlassung von Kronland. Vom 3. Oktober 1902', Landesgesetzgebung, 11, 224-6. Reichstag Debates, 1909-11 session, 1 Feb. 1910, p. 994. Wirtschaftlicher Verband vom Kilimandscharo to government, 25 Feb. 1910, and Spalding to Moshi, 26 April 1910, TNA VIII/J/46/I. 9

129

ITU

Tanganyika under German rule nanimous concession for him. But fences, like stock, could be moved, and a new clause had to be inserted in the lease to bind the landowner to keep his fences in repair.1 More contentious changes in the leasehold formula resulted from the financial law of 1908, which required the government to recover from landowners a sum in proportion to any increment in the value of their land as a result of public works. Chiefly aimed at concessionaries in other colonies, this had legal force in East Africa. Rechenberg added to the lease a clause by which both the lease price and the potential purchase price were raised on the approach of a railway. When Lindequist learned of this, he immediately disapproved. The law, he explained, applied to landowners, not lessees. Moreover, Rechenberg had applied it only to Europeans. Lindequist insisted that it was ' an obligation of loyalty' to apply it to Indians and Arabs also. After his usual rearguard action, Rechenberg suffered his usual defeat.2 A further problem was raised by the fact that the lease was normally inalienable. If it were surrendered, the lessee had no claim for compensation for improvements, but if the authorities would agree to re-lease the land to a specific applicant, the settler could negotiate a private bargain with the new lessee, so that a form of transfer could exist. After 1908, Rechenberg began to raise the price of land when it was re-leased. The settlers naturally complained that not only did this rule out the transfer of leases, but it meant that the government alone profited from improvements made by the first lessee. Rechenberg did not inform the Colonial Office of his action until the settlers forced him to, and Lindequist was understandably annoyed. He argued that land was not leased to secure maximum income, but to encourage cultivation and prevent speculation. There was no good reason to prevent transfers, and the law of 1908 did not apply to lessees. 1

2

Rechenberg to Wilhelmstal, 30 Sept. 1908, TNA BA Wilhelmstal XVII/A/I; Humann, ' Runderlass', 5 April 1912, TNA BA Mpwapwa IV/J/i. Lindequist to government, 22 July 1911, RKA 80/90-4; Rechenberg, * Runderlass', 8 Oct. 1911, TNA MPG 2373. 130

White marCs country Rechenberg was obliged to rescind his orders and permit re-leasing at the previous price.1 The settlers could find further grievances. Dernburg had ordered very considerable increases in the price of land. This was bad enough; worse was the fact that land had no fixed price. Not only was each district officer tempted to fix his own prices, but individuals complained of favouritism. Similarly, proof of sufficient capital to develop the land had long been required from plantation companies, but Rechenberg also required it from settlers, who felt that the requirement was misused on personal grounds. Rechenberg eventually promised to publish prices and capital requirements at standard rates, but he never did so.2 A more serious grievance was the fact that the leasehold system hampered agricultural credit because it offered no firm title as security. Despite right-wing demands, Rechenberg did nothing to devise an adequate scheme of agricultural credit. A Social Democrat observer once commented that Rechenberg's c passive attitude' towards white settlement earned him so much unpopularity that he never expressed his full hostility in public.3 His private opposition was never concealed. 'Any settlement by Europeans on a large scale', he wrote, ' must lead to a conflict with the natives, which could only be settled in bloody fashion.'4 He never forgot the danger of rebellion. Further, he believed that the proper goal of German settlement was Eastern Europe. With the sums needed to establish themselves in East Africa, settlers ' could easily acquire a smallholding in the Polish-speaking areas, where they are sure of support and are of quite as much value to Germanity [Deutschtum] as they are in Africa'.5 Nevertheless, despite his personal views, Rechenberg's public 1

2

3 4 5

Lindequist to government, 30 July 1910, RKA 79/82-4; Rechenberg, 'Runderlass', 8 Oct. 1911, TNA MPG 2373. Zache, 'Runderlass', 9 Jan. 191 o, TNA II/D/i/I; Methner to Mohoro, 28 April 1910, TNA LKV Rufiji 8 and 9; Rechenberg to WLVDOA, 20 Oct. 1911, TNA VIII/J/58/I. Noske, Kolonialpolitik und Sozialdemokratie, p. 154. Rechenberg to RKA, 21 Dec. 1910, R K A 15/211—13. Rechenberg to RKA, 13 March 1907, R K A 14/67-8.

Tanganyika under German rule attitude was constrained by the official policy that settlement was a desirable experiment. In consequence, he demonstrated his hostility through administrative pinpricks, frequently petty and often hostile to economic development, at least in the short term. The gradual defeat of his passive attitude by the combination of settlers and Colonial Secretary can be seen only in detailed administrative decisions, but these decisions are further evidence that the economy of German East Africa was gradually being orientated towards European agriculture as the basis of a white man's country. The facts of economic life were also running counter to Rechenberg's reconstruction programme, especially in the fields of labour and commercial agriculture. Rechenberg's labour policy, based on Prussian example and Manchester principles, was the achievement in which he felt most pride. He sought to facilitate the operation of the free market under the law, to provide incentives in higher wages and better conditions to attract migrant labourers to the plantations, and to regulate their recruitment. Up to 1910, labour was plentiful and conditions were probably improving. After mid1910 it was clear that the policy was failing. This was not the result of Lindequist's intervention. His only action was to repeat Dernburg's refusal to codify the European employers' right to inflict disciplinary corporal punishment.1 Rechenberg's labour policy failed because the market was not free to respond to increased demand. The supply of labour certainly increased rapidly during this period. Tanganital's plantation labour force doubled between 1908-9 and 1911-12 according to Rechenberg's figures which, although scarcely accurate, probably reflected general trends. The colony's total paid labour force in European employment rose by about 20,000 a year.2 This increase, however, was insufficient to satisfy the growing demand, 1 2

Lindequist to government, n Aug. 1910, RKA 5380/154-5. Reichstag Papers, 1909-11 session, no. 179, pp. 507-8; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1912/13, part 2, p. 79. 132

White man's country especially on the rubber estates. There were few complaints of shortage during 1909. The German East African Company's report for 1909-1o, however, warned that' the labour position was satisfactory during the year reported, but towards its end the supply of labour was sparser'. A sisal company's complaint of' an ever more threatening labour calamity' was typical of views expressed during 1911. Rechenberg denied the shortage, but the true position was probably that expressed late in 1911 by a settler leader: 'Only in exceptional cases does a real labour problem exist for the small plantations, and for the medium-sized at present only to a limited extent. On the other hand, it is more or less a question of survival for the large organisations dependent on recruitment in distant districts.'1 The labour problem, then, remained a recruiting problem. Rechenberg had failed to establish a central syndicate. Instead, labour was normally recruited by European contractors who were paid on delivery at the coast. 'Wanted to buy, 20 Nyamwezi, only good men', ran an advertisement in a local newspaper.2 Recruiting was the quickest way for a penniless European to make money. Early in Rechenberg's governorship, the recruiters' field was Unyamwezi and Usukuma. As the railways provided outlets for Nyamwezi and Sukuma crops, this source dried up. The recruiters moved into Ubena, Ufipa, and Iramba, and later into Lindi, Tukuyu, and Songea districts, until by 1914 they began to concentrate on immigrants from Mozambique. Before 1909 no contract need be made with the recruits, and although agreement might be reached, force, deception, and bribery were widely employed. 'Not one case is known to me', wrote an observer, 'in which any recruiter has told the truth to his recruits.'3 Certainly, no experienced recruiter would try to obtain labourers explicitly for the peculiarly unpleasant task of cutting sisal. Dernburg had been disgusted 1

2 3

Deutsches Kolonialblatt, i June 1910 and 1 June 1911; Usambara-Post, 16 Dec. 1911.

Usambara-Post, 19 June 1909. Hammerstein, 'Arbeiter-Anwerbung in Muanza, Tabora und Zwischenland' [early 1909], RKA 121/59-62.

Tanganyika under German rule to find that' the men have incited sultans against each other, dragged negroes from their huts at night, set fire to the huts, and appeared in false uniforms'.1 Chiefs were bribed to supply their less prestigious subjects. Rechenberg ruled that recruiters might induce chiefs to encourage their people to accept recruitment, so long as the people, and not the chief, were paid.2 His ordinance of 1909 made an officially attested contract the only legal means of recruitment. This may have prevented the worst abuses, but in default of a central syndicate it made recruiting highly competitive, raising the costs and producing 'the modern slave hunters', the coloured agents employed by European recruiters. There were said to be a thousand of these agents in Tabora district alone in 1913.3 Throughout the recruiting areas, their depredations caused misery and depopulation. An official in Kasanga reported: The many abandoned and decaying villages in northern Ukonongo and Ugalla are most conspicuous. In others one meets 75 per cent women... To my question I received the reply: the men have gone to work on the coast and have not returned... The village elders and the women complain bitterly that the men have already been away for years.4

Rechenberg continued to resist pressure for official recruiting, but came during 1911 to consider that it might be better to allow only one recruiter in each district, a regulation made by his successor in 1913.5 It is difficult to know whether Rechenberg's ordinances in fact improved conditions of work. His successor, although very critical of some plantation abuses, believed that the labour commissioners had abolished the worst exploitation. Certainly, wages for migrant labour rose during this period; 1

'Besprechung', 2 Jan. 1908, RKA 120/28-33. Herrmann to government, 15 June 1907, RKA 120/110-16; Rechenberg to Mwanza, 19 Nov. 1907, TNA VIII/E/190/II. 3 Statement by Schnee, ' Verhandlungen des Gouvernementsrats des deutschostafrikanischen Schutzgebiets vom 20. bis 23»Januar 1913', RKA 813/227. • BNS Bismarckburg to government, 30 Sept. 1910, TNA XII/C/21/I. For a scathing denunciation, see J. M. M. Van der Burgt, ' Zur Entvolkerungsfrage Unjamwesis und Usumbwas', in Koloniale Rundschau (1913), pp. 705-28. s Rechenberg to RKA, 11 Feb. 1911, RKA 122/180-4.

2

White man's country in Tanga district they increased between 1906 and 1912 from Rs. 9-11 per month to Rs. 12-15.1 Whether this reflected a real increase, or merely a greater circulation of money, cannot be determined. It was notable that wage rates for local workers were much lower than for migrant labourers— in Lushoto they were only half as high. This was not due simply to the greater permanence and professionalism of the migrant, but also to the direct political compulsion exercised on the local people by the administration at the behest of European employers. Rechenberg's legislation covered only workers on contracts of longer than a month. It ignored day labour performed locally. This was effectively beyond central government control, and here Rechenberg's policy was most seriously undermined. Legally, a district officer could only require all Africans to keep up the roads and oblige tax defaulters to work off their arrears either on public works or private undertakings. In areas of European agriculture, however, most Africans were obliged by usage to undertake a period of paid labour each year. The prevailing system originated in West Usambara. Cold and damp, the Usambara mountains were climatically unsuitable for migrant labour, while the Shambala themselves would suffer much rather than leave their hills. At first, European settlers had required the Kilindi rulers of the area to provide Shambala labourers. When Kilindi authority collapsed in 1903, each European was given sole labour rights over a defined area. Gotzen cancelled these rights in 1904, and three years of severe shortage followed.2 The problem was resolved early in 1907 by a new and energetic district officer, Nostitz, who neglected to inform Dar es Salaam of his actions. He was later censured for exceeding his authority, and the planters thought he had been dismissed for this, although Liebert denied it. Nostitz's solution may be seen from the rules reissued by the district office in 1

Reichstag Papers, 1909-11 session, no. 179, p . 6 , 5 3 3 ; D™ deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1912/13, part 1, pp. 20-2.

2

Meyer to government, 23 March 1905, printed in Miiller, Kolonien unter der Peitsche, pp. 46-9.

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Tanganyika under German rule 1910. These stated that each Shambala would be given a labour card: ' The cards are valid for four months. Whoever works for thirty days within this period for a European or Coloured... is exempt from public road construction. Others will be enlisted for this for those days up to thirty which they have not worked. They will receive only food.'1 Europeans employing Shambala had to pay a wage fixed by the district officer. Shambala could free themselves from this obligation by paying ten rupees. In theory, the arrangement spread the work load and allowed the employee to choose his employer, which seemed the best way of ensuring good treatment—this last point had been demanded by missionaries. Dernburg found that many settlers in Usambara could not survive without the system: ' In order not to harm the small planters, I told them: I leave you your labour cards, so long as you do not misuse them.' The government argued publicly that the cards were an amelioration, but added privately that the Shambala were likely neither to rebel nor to emigrate, while only in West Usambara were there sufficient public works in hand to make the threat real. Although he accepted Dernburg's ruling, Rechenberg feared that the system would create discontent, and refused to extend it beyond West Usambara.2 As European settlement spread, other district officers faced similar problems. Officially, the district officer was bound to 'encourage' labour without employing compulsion.3 As the demand for labour grew, the pressure of 'encouragement' naturally increased, and in practice each district officer had to find his own solution. In Morogoro, for example, Lambrecht argued that unless he helped the planters their economic needs would force them into actions dangerous to public security. He therefore let them establish a card system. The cards were given to headmen for distribution. Any African who accepted a card from a headman was liable to 1 2

3

Usambara-Post, 10 Sept. 1910. Dernburg in Budget Commission, 25 Feb. 1908, Rt 1059; Rechenberg to RKA, 21 July 1910, RKA 122/83-92. Rechenberg, 'Runderlass', 22 Feb. 1907, Landesgesetzgebung, n, 294-5.

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White man's country thirty days' work within 45 days on a European enterprise. Those who refused cards, or failed to work them off, were conscripted when necessary for public works. The governor questioned this, but the advantage of the system, according to Lambrecht, was, as in Lushoto, that it allowed the worker to choose his employer. As he told an akida, 'everyone is able to work where he likes, be it here or there'. 1 Another account suggests that the system operated in a manner rather different from that described by Lambrecht: The headmen are instructed to produce a certain number of workers for a specified plantation, in proportion to the number of inhabitants of their villages. Each plantation is allotted specific headmen's areas. These regulations are generally carried out with energy, if necessary by askari... The whole system is based on an arrangement between the planters and the district office.2

Other arrangements existed elsewhere. Tanga district had possessed a system akin to that in Lushoto, by which local Africans were forced to work on the plantations during coffee-picking. Rechenberg forbade this in 1910, save under exceptional circumstances, and the ruling seems to have been obeyed.3 The rule in Tanga was the use of'encouragement', expressed to the akidas in the Swahili word kutaka, which means anything from 'desire' to 'require', depending on the tone of voice. The akidas were told that ' the government wants {ataka) people to work for Europeans'. Or as one akida was told, ' Your people do not go at all to work for Europeans on their farms. Go and remind them that I very much want them to work for Europeans.'4 This, of course, simply passed the problem to the akidas. A letter from one well illustrates their dilemma: Herr Ranniger sent me a letter. He wants fifty men to work on his farm for one day. I told the people, [but] they said we cannot work now 1

Lambrecht to Mpwapwa, 6 Jan. 1908, TNA MPG 3665; Lambrecht to akida Salim of Magogoni, 21 April 1911, TNA MPG 40. 2 'Protokoll der Versammlung des Wirtschaftlichen Verbandes von Rufiji in Mpanganya', 12 Feb. 1911, TNA VIII/J/66/I. 3 Miiller, op. cit. p. 47; Rechenberg to Tanga, 9 Dec. 1910, RKA 122/223. 4 BA Tanga to akidas, 1 Feb. 1910, TNA Grants Tanga 634; BA Tanga to akida Sengenge of Kwa Marimba, 27 March 1909, TNA Grants Tanga 350.

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Tanganyika under German rule [because] we are cultivating our plots. I was not able to send them by force. I have given you this information. I want your advice.1

Perhaps understandably, the district officer in Tanga wanted to introduce the Lushoto cards. Rechenberg refused. In contrast to Tanga, stronger methods were used in Pangani district, especially under the rule of a pro-settler district officer named Mahnke. As he apologised to one settler: Unfortunately, I cannot provide you with the published compulsory labourers, because the Bondei hurriedly paid their taxes when they saw the askari. I hope, however, that you have meanwhile succeeded in obtaining men through the assistance of the akidas.2

The Lushoto cards clearly had their point. While district officer in Moshi, Methner wanted to introduce a variant by which those who worked for Europeans would be exempt from tax. Again Rechenberg refused on principle to permit ' a new form of slavery or compulsory labour5 for the planters, but by 1915 they had established their own card system.3 Moshi also faced the problem of ill-paid child labour picking coffee. When missionaries protested, Rechenberg refused to intervene. The problem, he ruled, must be resolved within the general terms of his labour ordinance.4 This was simply silly. The ordinance did not cover contracts of less than thirty days, and was therefore evaded by all the card systems invented by settlers and administrators. At the expense of the salaries of five labour commissioners, Rechenberg had established a degree of order and supervision in labour recruiting, and had ameliorated some of the worst evils of the plantations. But his recruiting system had encouraged the depopulation of the inland districts, and he had not prevented local administrators from regularising systems of more or less open compulsion. For once he had 1

Akida Mohamadi bin Fakili of Tangata to Tanga, 18 Nov. 1909, TNA LKV Tanga 96. Mahnke to Songa Pflanzung, 5 May 1911, TNA Grants Pangani 247. 3 Moshi district council, 'Protokoll', 30 Aug. 1907, TNA IV/O/3/I; Rechenberg to Methner, 24 Oct. 1907, RKA 120/105-8; Wirtschaftlicher Verband am Kilimandscharo, 'ProtokolP, 13 June 1915, TNA VIII/J/46/I. + Rechenberg to Moshi, 10 Nov. 1909, TNA IX/B/i/VII. 2

138

White man's country been left a free hand; the Colonial Office had not intervened. Left to himself, Rechenberg had relied on formal legislation followed by the operation of the free market. Yet the market was obviously not free, and could not have been free in the circumstances. Employers were not willing to pay the wages needed to attract sufficient labour. When, during 1911, Rechenberg considered licensing only one recruiter in each district, he implicitly recognised that European power in East Africa was such that the government must regulate—and thereby legitimise—that power. Rechenberg never brought himself to do this, at least in labour matters, for it conflicted with his whole objective of' a land of free negro peasants'. 'There are certainly... social and political privileges for Europeans in East Africa, but no economic privileges', he had proclaimed. He refused to admit the obvious contradiction: economic privileges inevitably followed social and political privileges. By 1911, Rechenberg's labour policy, like his local self-government policy, had been subverted by European pressure. As a reconstruction programme, the Nyamwezi and peanut policy of 1907 was dead. Certainly, for the majority of Tanganyika's peoples the production of indigenous crops and the exchange of small surpluses was still the basis of economic life. For most district officers, too, the local harvest of maize or millet, of groundnuts or cassava was still the most important consideration after the maintenance of peace and order. But from the governmental viewpoint, as a determinant of planning in other economic and political fields, the emphasis on indigenous crops no longer accorded with the facts. The Nyamwezi never produced those great quantities of groundnuts. The growth point of the economy, for both European and African, was now the modern sector which produced cash crops for the European market. The viability of large-scale plantation agriculture was still in question. The world price of sisal, for example, reached its lowest point for fourteen years in 1911. Companies with small capital outlay—such as the Sisal-Agaven-Gesellschaft, which paid 12 per cent in 1910 and 16 per cent in 1911—

Tanganyika under German rule were still profitable, but many of the larger sisal companies continued to operate only because their output was inelastic.1 Nevertheless, private settlers experienced unprecedented prosperity. The rubber boom continued. The world price fell gradually during 1911, but production remained very profitable, and by this date there were some twenty million rubber trees in the colony. The value of East Africa's exports fell, but the 4,780,966 marks earned by rubber in 1911 made it the largest single item in the export figures.2 The settlers continued to discount official fears for the future of the crop. The drought-resistant manihot grown in East Africa was very difficult to tap, because the liquid rubber did not flow freely from the tree. The very imperfect product was considered by some experts to be the worst rubber in the world. The enormous investment in Hevea brasiliensis plantations in South-East Asia during this period led far-sighted observers to predict over-production and a fall in prices which would make the East African product uneconomic. The settlers, however, ignored the standardising agency created by the Colonial Economic Committee, without as yet damaging their capacity to export. Moreover, in this period European settlers at last began to produce coffee profitably. The steady fall in world coffee prices was checked in 1910, and was followed by a boom which continued until the outbreak of war. Even the old plantations in Usambara became economic again. In 1911-12 the largest company, the Kaffeeplantage Sakarre Aktiengesellschaft, paid its first and only dividend—4 per cent—as a result of which the price of its shares trebled. But the real success of European-grown coffee took place on Kilimanjaro and Meru, where the average yield per bush was four times that obtained in Usambara. As early as 1909 European planters in this area had owned nearly a million bushes, and the number increased 1 2

3

See the reports of the Sisal-Agaven-Gesellschaft in RKA 508 and 509. H. Waltz, * Die Pflanzungen der Europaer in unseren tropischen Kolonien i m J a h r e 1 9 1 1 ' , i n Jahrbuch tiber die deutschen Kolonien, deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1911/12, part 2, pp. 98 et seq. See the sources cited above, p. 101, n . i .

140

v ( 1 9 1 2 ) , 1 1 7 ; Die

White marts country 1

steadily until 1914. To the end of Rechenberg's governorship, rubber and coffee supported an expansion of private settlement in East Africa which he had thought impossible. The settlers' political gains in this period reflected not only their favourable political position but also an advantageous market situation. Rechenberg seemed to be battling not only against the trend of German politics but also against the terms of international trade. By 1911 the governor was weary of the struggle. After several applications for leave, he was finally allowed to quit East Africa in October 1911, at the moment when Lindequist was also on the verge of resignation. Rechenberg went very quietly, the only ceremony being a farewell dinner given by his departmental heads, the only European allies he retained in Tanganyika.2 Few were sorry to see him go. He had never courted popularity, and assuredly he had never gained it. Nothing in East Africa bore his name save the 'Rechenberg Library5, a series of simple readers in Swahili and German designed for the newly literate, which he had partly financed from his own pocket. He wrote no books about East Africa and published no memoirs. Between the wars he took no part in the campaign for the return of Tanganyika to Germany. His name was completely unknown to Tanganyikans in the 1960s. For Rechenberg, East Africa had been a temporary diversion from a career devoted to the extension of German influence in Eastern Europe. But a memorial did exist. It was Tanganyika's greatest single constructional achievement—the central railway. And that, ironically, was a monument to a policy which had failed. How far it had failed was probably not apparent even to Rechenberg himself. It required two years of his successor's administration to make the new direction of East African affairs fully clear. His concessions to the European community will be considered in the last chapter of this study. First it is necessary to turn to other aspects of Tanganyikan history during the era of reform. 1

Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1909/10, part 1, p. 15; ibid. 1912/13, part 1, p. 33; 2 Sakarre report in TNA MPG 3500. Methner, op. cit. p. 271. 141

CHAPTER 7

THE COLLAPSE OF THE LOCAL COMPROMISE The reshaping of German East Africa during Rechenberg's governorship was not the result of European action alone. It is necessary also to study the developments taking place within African societies, to analyse their changing responses to colonial rule. This is very difficult. German East Africa was a land of numerous small-scale societies. Uganda's modern history can be written quite reasonably around the nuclear kingdom of Buganda; Kenya's rests on five major tribes and Rhodesia's on two; while the historian of Malawi can focus on valid distinctions between north and south. Tanganyika has no such aid to simplification and order. The historian is therefore obliged either to restrict his study to a single society or group of societies, or to fall back on broad generalisations which can be illustrated only by local examples and which are rarely true of all parts of the country at any one time. This problem is especially difficult for the period with which this study is concerned. It was a time of reorganisation, when the degree and direction of change were often a function of the intensity and nature of European pressure. This pressure was itself most unequal during this period. Remote areas—such as Buha—were still engaged in primary resistance at a time when more accessible regions had already experienced twenty years of European rule. Generalisations for the colony as a whole are therefore peculiarly difficult. Further, the evidence available is most unsatisfactory. While official sources contain copious information on economic policy and implementation at the territorial level, they are usually silent on local administration, for the 142

The collapse of the local compromise relevant records of the German East African government are lost, while the Colonial Office was rarely informed of district affairs. The difficulty of identifying general lines of change is increased by the nature of local administration. Rechenberg's solutions to economic problems were sufficiently consistent to be termed a policy. Besides certain economic aims, he had definite views on how to achieve them, and he expected his field agents to use these means, although they often did not do so. Rechenberg also had certain basic political aims, primarily peace, order, and economy. It appears, however, that he never formulated any general instructions as to how they should be achieved. There is no evidence that he had a c native administration policy' in any sense which his British contemporaries would have understood. The logic of his economic programme suggests that his intervention in local affairs would normally have aimed to minimise political involvement.1 Nevertheless, his concern, like that of the Colonial Office, was probably limited to matters which might provoke controversy or unrest. District officers were required to report only their most important decisions to Dar es Salaam.2 In normal circumstances, they acted at their own discretion. Here also the nature of German administration encouraged a diversity of local political development. The district officer held enormous power and responsibility. Over those legally 'natives' his authority was restricted only by an order defining the punishments which he might impose;3 nothing defined the offences for which he might impose them. As Rechenberg once wrote, Africans were in law c totally in the 1

The one fully documented intervention by Rechenberg in local administration relates to Burundi. It suggests a rather short-sighted concern with security and minimal German involvement. See P. Ryckmans, Une page d'histoire coloniale: Voccupation allemande dans VUrundi, Institut Royal Colonial Beige,

2 3

Section des Sciences Morales et Politiques, Memoires, xxix (Bruxelles, 1953), passim; Wm. Roger Louis, Ruanda-Urundi 1884-1gig (Oxford, 1963), pp. 132-3. Theodor Gunzert, ' Eingeborenenverbande und -Verwaltung DeutschOstafrikas', in Koloniale Rundschau (1929), p. 242. ' Verfugung des Reichskanzlers wegen Ausiibung der Strafgerichtsbarkeit. . . Vom 22. April 1896', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 199-203.

143

Tanganyika under German rule power of the administration'.1 Half-humorously, the Germans referred to an officer's district as his Reich, and spoke of making a Grenzabkommen, a border agreement, with him. His essential tasks were to maintain peace, order, and good government, and to carry out the characteristic duties of early colonial rule—'to give law, collect taxes, and build roads', as Gotzen once defined them.2 Not only were the field agents very powerful, but it was difficult in East African circumstances to achieve administrative responsiveness, to ensure that an order from the top would be carried out to produce the effect intended, or that information from the field would be properly understood at headquarters. There was no provincial organisation to provide supervision and to give the central government a second opinion on local affairs, simply because Rechenberg refused the expense of additional personnel. There could be little inspection by senior officers in a land so vast and meagrely staffed. The system of public communications was rudimentary. Local self-government operated for only a fraction of the population. There were no permanent disciplinary tribunals. Administrative responsiveness in Germany3 was ensured chiefly by selecting recruits from the professional classes and training them in rigid traditions of administrative discipline and procedure, but this community of tradition did not exist in East Africa. Until 1910 the colony was staffed, from the governor down, by men on secondment from other ministries who expected to return to their parent departments. When Dernburg established a colonial service in that year, with continuity from colony to colony and its own disciplinary structure, it was still integrated with the home civil service and guaranteed return to this without loss of seniority.4 1 2 3

4

Rechenberg to RKA, 21 Dec. 1910, RKA 237/74-83. Gotzen, Deutsch-Ostafrika im Aufstand, p. 35. For the concept of responsiveness and its application to German administrative practice, see Jacob, German administration since Bismarck, pp. 1-10, 63-4. 'Kolonialbeamtengesetz. Vom 8. Juni 1910', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 107 et seq. The official handbook of colonial regulations is Johannes Tesch, Die Laufbahn der deutschen Kolonialbeamten (6th edn, Berlin, 1912).

144

The collapse of the local compromise In consequence, the background and experience of district officers varied greatly. Four of those in office during this period had come up through the ranks as district secretaries. Others had gained their African experience as soldiers during or just after the German invasion. Others again were young men with the administrative training of an Assessor, while a fourth group contained professional bureaucrats on shortterm secondment from Prussian or imperial ministries. Further, they were encouraged to remain in one district for as long as possible. Of the twenty in office in 1907, seven were still at the same posts when the First World War began. Stuemer administered Bukoba from 1904 to 1916, which was the longest uninterrupted period of all. Their districts inevitably took the imprint of their views and personalities. Stimulated by the long and bitter quarrels in the higher ranks of the administration, many district officers paid little heed to Dar es Salaam. 'Generally speaking', explained a local newspaper, ' Rechenberg's whole system exists only on the coast. Most of the district commanders in the interior have far too developed a sense of responsibility to endanger German rule in the colony by applying so absurd a system.'1 Generalisations about political change are therefore hampered by the variety of African societies and of the pressures on them, by the inadequacy of the available evidence, and by the diverse backgrounds of the field administrators, their power and their lack of responsiveness. Nevertheless, it is possible to isolate certain lines of change which were generally true of the colony as a whole in this period. In the broadest context of Tanganyikan history the years which followed the rebellion formed a transitional period, during which the situation first created by European invasion was undermined, and new responses to colonial rule became more common and, for the future, more significant. The base point for the process was the local compromise, the arrangement of power and privilege between and within societies which 1

Usambara-Post, 8 May 1909. For a jaundiced view of Dar es Salaam, see Gunzert, 'Service in German East Africa.' 10

145

IT

u

Tanganyika under German rule resulted from their diverse responses to European invasion. Despite their great variety, these local arrangements had certain common characteristics. However traumatic for those who experienced it, the establishment of European administration at first made rather limited demands on African societies: a recognition of superior power, the provision of limited quantities of labour and building materials, an emphasis on diplomacy rather than force as the means of resolving disputes. Further, the benefits offered by this early administration were equally limited; usually they were restricted to political and military support for those most willing to co-operate. Consequently, African societies in Tanganyika established their relations with the German government in terms of existing political practice and without serious violence to their structures. Nowhere in Tanganyika, it appears, was the local compromise attended by anything resembling a 'Christian Revolution', the process which took place, for example, among the Ganda and Lozi, and by which a firm relationship with European authority was attended by a consolidation of power in the hands of a modernising section of the aristocracy.1 A Christian Revolution required either a greater political sophistication or greater opportunities for change than existed anywhere in Tanganyika during the German invasion. Even those who saw most clearly the advantages to be gained from accommodation with the Europeans saw these advantages in ' traditional' terms: that is, they saw European power as a new factor in political and social conflicts which already existed, either in rivalry between different societies or in rivalry between different groups within the same society. Dr Austen has aptly described this as a 'diplomatic' response to European occupation.2 German power was a new factor in an established pattern of diplomatic calculations; it was not yet seen as a source of change which would make this pattern 1

2

C. C. Wrigley, ' T h e Christian revolution in Buganda', in Comparative studies in society and history, n (1959), 33-48; Ranger in Gann and Duignan, History and politics of colonialism in Africa, vol. 1. Austen, * Native policy and African politics', p. 88.

146

The collapse of the local compromise redundant. Hence the most substantial change attending the local compromise was commonly a shift of power between African societies, often expressed in a form of' sub-imperialism5 by those allied to the Germans over those who had refused or neglected accommodation.1 The pattern of German rule was fairly clearly established in all but the more remote areas by the late 1890s. In most regions it was based on a series of sub-imperialisms, tacit arrangements by which the Germans supported certain groups and societies at the expense of others, in return receiving from their allies the support and services without which their rule would have been impossible. The local compromise, of course, was never static. It was always subject to adjustment as the needs of administration changed, as the ambitions of the privileged and the frustrations of the unprivileged intensified, and as new opportunities for social and political change became available. Nevertheless, it is generally true that until the Maji Maji rebellion the local compromise provided a reasonably stable relationship between African societies and their German overlords. One process which took place in many parts of Tanganyika during and after the Maji Maji rebellion was the collapse of the local compromise. This collapse was so widespread that it may be seen as a feature of the history of the country as a whole, but the reasons for it were not the same in each area. The rebellion itself, by compelling commitment and dividing societies, destroyed many of the local arrangements existing in the south and east. Elsewhere, sub-imperialism often proved to be the point of weakness, because it focused the discontent of unprivileged groups against their subjection to a rival African authority which had European support. The Germans might find that the sub-imperialism of their allies endangered their own authority, and might themselves assist a realignment of forces. Attacks on sub-imperialism normally took place within the pattern of diplomatic intrigue. More 1

For a pioneer analysis, see A. D. Roberts, 'The sub-imperialism of the Baganda', in JAH, in (1962), 435~5O147

IO-2

Tanganyika under German rule disruptive, perhaps, was the violence done to the local compromise by novel administrative demands. The most important of these was the demand for tax, the urgency of which was much increased by its central position in Rechenberg's reconstruction programme. In this period, the most common result of the collapse of the local compromise was the creation of a new one on rather similar lines, a rearrangement of power and privilege in which leadership remained within the established hierarchy, whose response to colonial rule remained predominantly diplomatic. Nevertheless, new factors and attitudes often entered into the process. Thus a society which committed itself to the German side in Maji Maji, and subsequently obtained European support to the disadvantage of local rivals, might also logically be either a society already further committed to the Europeans, or one which subsequently extended its commitment to a greater receptivity to other aspects of the European presence, such as Christianity and education. Similarly, unprivileged groups concocting a diplomatic intrigue against a sub-imperialist might seek to broaden their support by a closer relationship with European settlers or missionaries, where these were present. When the solvent was a novel European demand, the new compromise logically favoured those most willing and able to satisfy the demand. It follows that although the new compromise was normally made within the context of diplomatic alliance, the new allies were commonly those societies which displayed the greatest willingness to accept and utilise the novel aspects of the colonial situation. Yet receptivity to western education, a willingness to grow cash crops, or the ability to collect tax in a reliable manner, implied a new response to colonial rule, a response which saw European power and techniques not merely as factors to be utilised in the struggle for advantage within the established framework, but as factors to be utilised in order to change African societies and by implication to improve their position vis-a-vis the European rulers. The diplomatic response to colonial rule gave way to a response 148

The collapse of the local compromise of adaptation. Two further points are relevant here. First, a whole society could not make this transition simultaneously. Rather, the transition was made by a shift of power within the society from groups which sought to preserve the old structure to groups which sought to improve both the society and their own positions by utilising novel opportunities. As European and African aims and opportunities changed, so the old intermediaries were superseded by men with the skills of the European world. The second point, however, is that these new men of the age of improvement were commonly drawn from the more privileged sections of their societies. As Dr Lonsdale has shown for the Luo, access to new sources of privilege was limited in this early period, and was generally more easily available to those who were already privileged.1 Opportunity begat opportunity: the sons of a chief often had a better chance of education than the sons of a commoner; the chief himself commonly had greater opportunity to benefit from economic change than his neighbours. Thus the transition from diplomacy to improvement was attended, and perhaps facilitated, by an element of continuity. The argument is therefore concerned with the transition from the relative stability of the local compromise to the more dynamic situation of the age of improvement. Two aspects of the process are emphasised. This chapter considers the factors leading to the collapse of the local compromise in several areas of German East Africa in the years surrounding the rebellion. The next chapter describes some of the groups who first acquired western skills and sought to use them in order to modernise their societies. One theme is common to both parts of the argument. In contrast to the rebellion, this transition took place within the small-scale societies of Tanganyika. The improvers had not yet reached the conclusion, to which they would ultimately be compelled, that a modern and effective African society must also be one enlarged in scale. 1

J. M. Lonsdale, 'A political history of Nyanza 1883-1945' (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1964), ch. 4.

149

Tanganyika under German rule The Maji Maji rebellion destroyed many of the arrangements of power on which German authority in the south and east of the colony rested. The greatest disruption took place in Ungoni. Because the Ngoni committed their whole military organisation to the rising, and fought with a persistence and degree of unanimity unparalleled elsewhere, defeat was especially catastrophic for them. The original Ngoni moved northwards across the Zambesi in the 1830s, under the leadership of Zwangendaba. They paused in Ufipa, where Zwangendaba died in about 1848. His followers then divided. One section, under Zulu Gama and Mbonane Tawete, settled to the east of Lake Malawi in what was later Songea district, where it divided into two chiefdoms, Mshope in the north and Njelu in the south.1 The segmentary pattern of Ngoni society, so well adapted to migration, always threatened division when the migrants settled in their promised land. When the Germans reached this area in 1897, the more remote and recently conquered Mshope was still strongly centralised under nkosi Ghabruma, but the south was already fragmenting. It was a more settled area where discipline might naturally have been weaker. Further, nkosi Mputa, who succeeded in 1899, was considered illegitimate by some of his ndunas, while the great warrior Songea established a virtually independent chiefdom on the eastern marches.2 The Ngoni did not resist German occupation, probably because they did not foresee its permanence. 6 Songea was not aware of the political and imperial intentions of the Germans', writes Mr Mpangara. 'He seemed to associate them with the past Europeans who had visited him.'3 Songea became the pivot of the German position in Ungoni, providing land, labour, and building materials for 1

2

3

J . D. Omer-Gooper, The Zulu Aftermath (London, 1966), ch. 5; J . A. Barnes, Politics in a changing society (London, 1954), pp. 7-23; Elzear Ebner, History of the Wangoni, p p . 30—83. Friedrich Fiilleborn, Das Deutsche Njassa- und Ruwuma-Gebiet, Land und Leute

(Berlin, 1907), pp. 137-8, 143-4; Mpangara, 'Songea Mbano'; O. B. Mapunda,' Nkosi Mputa Gama', research seminar paper, University College, Dar es Salaam, Oct. 1966. Mpangara, 'Songea Mbano\ 150

The collapse of the local compromise the military station. Mputa was also accommodating, and tolerated a major mission station at nearby Peramiho. Chabruma, a more remote and autocratic figure, tried to ignore European control. As the demands of the administration grew, all three major leaders sought a solution to their dilemma. The arrival of maji provided the Ngoni with an opportunity to reunite in order to make good their failure to resist the first European invasion. There was little of the millennial enthusiasm and reckless gallantry which characterised the rebellion elsewhere. The risks were calculated and accepted. 'Let us "drink" the majimaji medicine', Songea is supposed to have said, 'so that we may all perish.'1 In the north, nkosi Chabruma ordered all his people to 'drink', a command which was apparently obeyed. In the south, those ndunas who accepted the maji did so independently, but after early failures a great ceremony was held at the River Lumecha in September 1905, at which the maji was administered to the united forces of the three major leaders. The Ngoni resisted a German expedition for more than a year. Unity and commitment were greater in Mshope than in Njelu. Consequently, the northern Ngoni experienced a more devastating defeat than their southern fellows. The Germans made the cessation of hostilities in Mshope dependent on the surrender of Chabruma and his ndunas. They were not surrendered, but fled to Mozambique, where Chabruma was murdered. He was succeeded by his son Mwanalifa. The population scattered—Songea district was described in 1907 as 'virtually depopulated'. 2 The Germans destroyed the nduna system and recognised a number of petty headmen in its place. The devastation in Njelu was also severe. Songea was hanged and replaced by his schoolboy son AH. Mputa, also, was executed, and was succeeded by his brother Usangila. But the nduna system seems to have been preserved and the offices kept within the aristocracy. Two of the western * Ibid.

2

Dernburg, 'Bericht', Nov. 1907, Rk 924/99.

Tanganyika under German rule ndunas, Putire and Chabruma (son of Hawayi), had opposed the rebellion and soon regained their positions. Nevertheless, as Dr Gulliver has shown, Maji Maji brought an end to the old Ngoni way of life.1 It broke down much of the distinction between the 'true Ngoni5 aristocracy and its partially assimilated followers. It weakened the territorial organisation of political authority. The pattern of administration imposed on the new leaders was bureaucratic, dependent on literate clerks, and saw the leaders as agents of the district office machine.2 In Ngoni minds, no doubt, the old loyalties continued. Perhaps they were even strengthened, for much of Ngoni history over the next fifty years was to centre on attempts to restore the old patterns of leadership. For the immediate future, however, the local compromise between the German authorities and a functioning tribal system collapsed under the pressures of revolt. Where participation in the rebellion was less unanimous than that of the Ngoni, the outcome was commonly the rise of one or more loyalists into a sub-imperialist position. The best-documented example is the power gained by the Mlolere family in Upogoro.3 The Pogoro regarded the Kilombero Valley as their homeland, but the majority lived on the Mahenge Plateau overlooking it from the south-east. Their basic unit of social organisation was the clan, whose members, although some might be widely dispersed, concentrated in a number of villages, each under a clan elder recognising a certain authority in the head of the whole clan. When the 1

2 3

P. H. Gulliver, 'An administrative survey of the Ngoni and Ndendeuli of Songea District', typescript, 1954, Gory Papers, University College Library, Dar es Salaam. I am indebted to Professor Gulliver for permitting me to use this paper, on which this account of the aftermath of the rebellion in Ungoni is based. Songea annual report 1908, TNA I/A/8/XVIW. This account is based on two unpublished papers in the University College Library, Dar es Salaam: Aquilin Engelberger, 'Hadithi ya Utuwa wa Akina Mlolere', and Anastas Brantschen, 'Randglossen und Erganzungen zu obigem Manuskript'. The material in both comes ultimately from the Mlolere family. For comments on these papers, see A. A. Kazimoto,' Political Development of Mahenge' (B.A. dissertation in political science, University College, Dar es Salaam, 1967).

152

The collapse of the local compromise Germans occupied this area, they tried to rationalise the multiplicity of authorities by recognising a number of village heads as headmen (majumbe). They inevitably overlooked some who had genuine claims to authority and recognised others who lacked adequate standing. One of the latter was Mlolere Chimata, a village head who was merely an assistant to his grandfather who lived in a neighbouring village. Sent to parley with the Germans, Mlolere instead represented himself as an independent ruler. On the advice of coastal traders, he met the Europeans with food and accommodation and later provided a site for their military station. German favour gave him and his successor, Mlolere Liukawantu, a standing roughly equal to the other recognised headmen in Upogoro before the rebellion. When this began, Mlolere Liukawantu was one of three Pogoro headmen who refused to c drink' the maji. Instead he took refuge in the military station, where his warriors served as auxiliaries and his son conducted reprisals in rebel villages. With rebel defeat, Mlolere's position was strengthened not only by government support, but also by the fact that rebel headmen who wanted to make their peace with the Germans went to him as the available intermediary. At the same time, he became the ally of the Benedictine mission which had been established at Kwiro in 1902, and encouraged the widespread acceptance of Christianity and education which took place in Upogoro after the failure of the rising. The family naturally grew in power and favour. In 1911 and again in 1914 Amri Mlolere, son of the elderly chief, visited Dar es Salaam at government expense. By 1910 German records speak of'Sultan Mlolere of Upogoro'. 1 This does not necessarily imply a paramountcy, and Mlolere's authority must always have been very limited in so remote an area, but the title does suggest a status far removed from that of the ordinary Pogoro headman. The same combination of loyalism during the rebellion and subsequent commitment to westernisation explains also the rise to power in this period of two other sub-imperialists in Mahenge 1

TNA LKV Mahenge 8.

Tanganyika under German rule district, Kalimoto of the Mbunga and Undole of the Ndamba. 1 Loyalism during the rising, and subsequent European favour, were not the only reasons for success in the years which followed Maji Maji. Important also were the effects of the rising on the structure even of societies which had taken the German side. By its nature, the challenge of the maji intensified local disunity, whether it led to open civil war within a decentralised society, as among the Pogoro, or to political conflict within a centralised society, conflict which might subsequently weaken the unity on which its position had hitherto rested. Something of this latter type appears to have happened in the Southern Highlands. After the defeat of Mkwawa in the 1890s, the German position in this area rested partly on the powerful garrison in Iringa and partly on alliance with Mkwawa's two main rivals, Kiwanga, the Hehe ruler of Kibena-speaking peoples in the upper Kilombero Valley, and Merere, chief of Usangu. Each had helped the Germans against the Hehe, and each had been rewarded by the extension of his territory. Meanwhile, attempts to rule Uhehe through surviving members of the royal family failed, and the area was divided among a number of headmen, some of established position and others who were purely nominees. Over these the Germans placed two akidas. The akida in central and western Uhehe was Mtaki, a servant of Mkwawa who joined the German side after being reprieved from the death penalty. The east and the border area of Uzungwa were supervised by Mfaluhenga, who, as the commander of a Hehe outpost in Usagara, was the first important Hehe to join the Germans as they advanced on to the Iringa Plateau.2 This local compromise was destroyed first by the rebellion and second by the administration of Captain Ernst Nigmann, a romantic admirer of the Hehe, who was district commander of Iringa from 1903 to 1910. When Kiwanga 1

2

P. Aquilin Engelbergers Wapogoro- Tagebuch (ed. J. Henninger, Micro-Biblio-

theca Anthropos no. 13, Freiburg, 1954), pp. 387-42 7; Blasius Undole,' Habari za Wandamba'. Redmayne, 'The Wahehe People', pp. 184-90, 210-26.

154

The collapse of the local compromise received news of Maji Maji, he executed all available hongo and hastened his forces to Mahenge, where he helped to restore German control of the Kilombero Valley. In the process, however, he was himself killed by the rebels. He was succeeded by his chosen son Salimbango, but Salimbango was only eleven, and the regency was held by only one faction within the chiefdom. The new chief misruled his people 'in boyish fashion'. Dr Culwick has noted a slackening of chiefdom ties during this period, and it became deliberate German policy to decentralise power among a number of headmen.1 It is clear that the close alliance between the dynasty and the government was dissolved by Kiwanga's death, and it is also likely that Kiwanga's vigorous response to the rising may have caused division which subsequently weakened the regency and restricted the value of the alliance to the Germans. A process of this type seems also to have taken place in Usangu. Unlike Kiwanga, Merere IV caused the Germans intense concern during the rebellion. The strongest ruler in Iringa district, he fortified his capital and was twice persuaded to supply auxiliary warriors only by the approach of German forces. His death in 1906—from poison, in Nigmann's belief—did nothing to calm German fears. Usangu, the Chief Secretary wrote in June 1906, was a 'political weathercock' whose loyalty could be ensured only by a permanent garrison.2 Although this was established, the situation continued to deteriorate, until by the end of 1909 Nigmann considered it a serious danger to German authority. The young Merere V was 'a vain, lazy, extravagant, and stupid tyrant, who fleeced his subjects in the most unworthy manner', 'the best-hated man in his whole country'. 3 He was 1

2

3

H. Fonck,' Bericht iiber die wirtschaftlichen Verhaltnisse in der Ulangaebene und ihren Nachbargebieten', 15 Jan. 1908, RKA 276/66-88; A. T. and G. M. Culwick, Ubena of the Rivers (London, 1935), pp. 88-90; Militdrisches Orientierungsheft, section 4. Kleist, 'Bericht iiber die Tatigkeit der 8. Feldko.', 4 May 1906, RKA 700/232-41; Ernst Nigmann, Die Wahehe (Berlin, 1908), pp. 6, 11; Haber to AAKA, 25 June 1906, RKA 767/73-7. Iringa annual report 191 o, TNA I/A/8/XIX*/; Rechenberg to RKA, 7 Jan. 1911, RKA 702/130-1.

155

Tanganyika under German rule deported to Mafia Island in October 1910 for misgovernment. It appears that Rechenberg did not intend to appoint a successor, but with or without his consent Nigmann recognised Mtengela, half-brother of Merere V. 'It is judicious policy5, noted a military handbook, 'not to let the sultan become too powerful.'1 As the local compromise with Kiwanga and Merere collapsed, the Germans began to establish new relations with the Hehe. Only the eastern borderland of Uhehe—Uzungwa —took part in Maji Maji, and then only in a peripheral manner. Its akida, Mfaluhenga, was hanged and replaced by Mtaki, but the loyalism of the majority of the Hehe convinced the Germans that they had little to fear from their former enemies.2 The first sign of new confidence was the appointment of two Hehe agents, Dumuluganga and Ngurukuru, to rule Mfrika, the western area of highland Ubena, which had long been disputed between Sangu and Hehe conquerors and which had been ruled by the Sangu since the defeat of Mkwawa.3 Then in 1912 Chief Secretary Methner travelled to Iringa, taking with him Sapi Mkwawa, German-educated son of the great chief, to discuss whether he should be reinstated in his father's office. Although the government decided that this would be premature, the fact that it could even be discussed showed a marked change in the balance of power in Iringa district, which was now, as a result of the rebellion, shifting away from the allies of the early years of German occupation.4 Thus the collapse of the local compromise as a result of the rebellion was not simply a question of loyalists against rebels, but reflected also the strains imposed on different societies by 1

2

3

4

Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1910/11, part 1, p. 1; Rechenberg to RKA, 7 J a n . 1911, RKA 702/130-1; Iringa annual report 1910, TNA I/A/8/XIX*/; Militarisches Orientierungsheft, section 4. H. A. Tomaschek, 'Der Aufstand in Deutsch-Ostafrika und die Wahehe', in Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 30 Sept. 1905; Gotzen, pp. no—12; Redmayne, pp. 232-3. Njombe District Book; Marc J . Swartz, 'Continuities in the Bena political system', in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, xx (1964), 247-9. Methner, Unter drei Gouverneureny pp. 313-19.

156

The collapse of the local compromise the choices they were forced to make. The decline of the Wakinamanga and Merere dynasties illustrates very clearly the exposed position of a sub-imperialist who owed his power to a fortunate compromise with the Germans during the period of occupation. If his pretensions grew too exorbitant and the opposition to him became too intense, the ally once favoured by the Germans could become a source of danger and weakness to them. Such a situation existed on Kilimanjaro during this period. When the Germans reached the mountain in the late 1880s, its Chagga inhabitants were divided into numerous petty chiefdoms, one of which, Kibosho, had come to dominate the south-western slopes.1 Kibosho was inaccessible and somewhat uncompromising, so the Germans instead allied first with chief Rindi of Moshi, the leading enemy of Kibosho. Incited by Rindi, they attacked and defeated Sina of Kibosho, placing a Swahili agent at his court to ensure his good behaviour.2 After Rindi's death in 1891, power passed to the clever, cruel, and ambitious Marealle, chief of the hitherto insignificant Marangu. Marealle's position rested on willing provision of auxiliary warriors for campaigns to extend German authority in the surrounding country, on personal friendship with the local commander, Captain Johannes, and on a mastery of intrigue which played on German insecurity. In 1892 Marealle 'framed5 the new chief, Meli, of Moshi, and weakened his position in German eyes. Five years later he was probably responsible for the poisoning of Sina.3 Finally, in 1900, Marealle engineered a brilliant plot linking the chiefs of Kibosho and Moshi with unrest among the Arusha and Masai.4 Both were hanged, together with seventeen other leading men from several chiefdoms. In return for his loyalism, Marealle achieved a near hegemony over the south-eastern slopes of the mountain, and received special consideration 1 2 3 4

Stahlj History of the Chagga, chs. 8 and 9. Ibid. pp. 176-90, 252-8; Haber to government, 5 March 1905, RKA 700/93-124. Stahl, History of the Chagga, pp. 261-7, 192. Ibid. pp. 194-8, 272-4, 331-2.

157

Tanganyika under German rule in regard to land rights and economic opportunities, including license to plunder women and cattle from the outlying eastern area of Rombo.1 After 1901, however, Marealle's power waned. A new commander, Merker, resented the privileges which his predecessor had granted the chief. The few but influential German settlers on Kilimanjaro regarded Marealle as an over-mighty subject whose exploitation of Rombo endangered their main source of labour. Finally, the leading chief of Rombo, Sengua of Mashati, hatched a counter-plot accusing Marealle of conspiring with the Masai. Alarmed by this combination offerees, Marealle fled to Kenya in December 1904. His loyalty was never seriously questioned, but the incident convinced the Germans of the dangers of undue favour to one Chagga leader. They decided that disunity could best be encouraged by destroying Marealle's special position and instead building up each chief as an independent power. When Marealle was persuaded to return during 1905, he was restored only as chief in Marangu. 2 A year later Rechenberg appointed a new district officer, Methner, who thought it dangerously short-sighted to impose a loyal chief illegitimately on the people. Although believing Marealle an 'intelligent and trustworthy man', Methner sought to establish a political balance among four predominant chiefdoms. He rested most confidence in Sianga (brother of Sina) in Kibosho, Salema (brother of Meli) in Moshi, Ngulelo in Machame, and Marealle in Marangu. 3 The first three had all been Marealle's nominees, but he had lost authority over them. A young German magistrate who visited the elderly chief in 1912 gave a rather melodramatic account of his decline: What remains of him now is only a shadow of his former self.. .He complained volubly, not without emotion, of the great days of the past, 1 2

3

Stahl, p. 329. See also the land commission reports for Moshi district in TNA. Stahl, pp. 333-4; Haber to government, 5 March 1905, RKA 700/93-124; Abel to government, 17 Oct. 1905, TNA III/G/6/I, and 23 Oct. 1906, TNA IX/A/7/II; correspondence in TNA MPG 9396; R. Meinertzhagen, Kenya Diary 1902-1906 (Edinburgh, 1957), pp. 3l4rl5Methner, pp. 142-9.

158

The collapse of the local compromise when the most powerful of the white conquerors had been proud to call himself Marealle's friend, and then sank again into apathy with the significant remark: ' I t surprises me that I possessed so much understanding in my youth, for to-day I know nothing.' 1

The fall of Marealle is a revealing example of the pressures at work during this period to destroy a local compromise based on sub-imperialism. The key element—Sengua's plot —was a diplomatic intrigue on the old lines, but the balance created by Methner was a more dynamic situation of rivalry, which was to be played out in the future as much in terms of competition for education and economic development as in the previous language of diplomacy and arms. It is important, for example, that Methner should have numbered Machame among his four predominant chiefdoms, for Machame's strength lay in having been the first centre of Lutheran missionary activity on Kilimanjaro, with a school attendance at this period which probably exceeded that of any other chiefdom.2 In the early years of British rule, Chief Abdiel Shangali of Machame's advocacy of tribal modernisation through education and commercial agriculture was to win him a position on the mountain which approached that of Marealle in his heyday.3 The contrast between the two is a striking illustration of the manner in which the collapse of the local compromise led on to the politics of improvement. Although the local compromise might be undermined from within through the rivalry which it stimulated, the most common reason for its collapse was the use made of it by the Germans themselves. An arrangement which traded favour for a minimum of services was frequently unable to bear the weight which more intensive administration put upon it. The best-documented examples of this process concern administrative demands for taxation. This is one point at which 1

2 3

Hans Poeschel, Bwana Hakimu: Richterfahrten in Deutsch-Ostafrika (Leipzig,

n.d.), p. 80. Nevil Shann, 'The educational development of the Chagga tribe', in Overseas Education, xxvi (1954), 49-50. Stahl, pp. 141-6. My interpretation of the sources of Chief Abdiel Shangali's power differs from Mrs Stahl's.

159

Tanganyika under German rule Rechenberg's reconstruction programme helped to determine the direction of African political development. The first taxation ordinance was issued in 1897.1 Areas under full political control were subjected to a hut tax whose main object was stated to be 'educational', in that it was intended to oblige Africans to accept paid labour and accustom themselves to European administrative discipline. Unpaid labour on public works could be offered in lieu. The 'educational' objects were soon subordinated to the pressing need for current revenue. In 1905 Gotzen abolished labour in lieu of tax and substituted paid work to earn the necessary sum, with compulsory labour for defaulters. He also fixed the maximum assessment at three rupees per hut.2 By this date, annual payment had become a normal feature of life on the coast and in the more closely administered areas elsewhere. But in many inland regions tax was still virtually tribute, 'i.e. the station commander must be satisfied with what he gets'.3 As described by Gotzen, methods of collection remained crude: The akida, his clerk or deputy comes to a village and normally finds every hut empty, since everyone is hiding in the bush. After he has waited a few days the people emerge, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes when the akida has confiscated the cattle which he has found hidden somewhere in the vicinity. Then the people normally pay the whole tax at one time.4

African taxation already provided 34 per cent of the government's total local revenue.5 There can be no doubt that it had also contributed largely to the growth of the plantation labour force. An increase in hut-tax revenue lay at the heart of Rechenberg's reconstruction programme. With it he hoped to service the capital loans for railway construction, and without it his 1

2

3 4

Text in Alexander Bursian, Die Hduser- und Hiittensteuer in Deutsch-Ostafriha (Jena, 1910), appendix. 'Verordnung des Gouverneurs, betreffend die Erhebung einer Hauser- und Hiittensteuer. Vom 22. Marz 1905', Landesgesetzgebung, 1, 364-9. Gotzen to AAKA, 8 Dec. 1903, RKA 1054/132-63. 5 Ibid. Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 1,106, p. 6,552. 160

The collapse of the local compromise articulated programme of peasant agriculture would collapse in a howl of financial protest from the Reichstag and the Ministry of Estimates. Should he obtain the increase only at the cost of expensive military action, he could expect similar criticism. In the event, as is shown by table 2, revenue from this source more than doubled during his governorship, without provoking substantial unrest. An especially determined effort was made to increase revenue from the districts approached by the central railway. Tabora's tax income rose from Rs. 80,469 to Rs. 201,865 in one year (1906-7). * Mpwapwa's increased between 1906 and 1908 from Rs. 34,864 to Rs. iig,3i3. 2 The increase was obtained, not by raising the maximum assessment, but by tightening the net, increasing the amount collected from each adult male to the statutory maximum, and substituting poll tax for hut tax, which increased the numbers liable and avoided the undesirable social effects of taxing houses. District officers were pressed to maximise their collections in so far as this was possible without causing unrest. Requests for lower assessments were not welcomed.3 As elsewhere in Africa under early colonial rule, taxation was the most burdensome, and often the only, direct impact made by the administration on the mass of the people. This study is concerned especially with the effects of the demand for tax on the local arrangements on which German power rested. A rather simplistic example is that of the Mbulu area, one of the most disturbed regions in the colony at this date. This relatively fertile region in the south of Moshi district was inhabited by the Iraqw tribe, a basically acephalous people whose ritual leaders were drawn from an immigrant family whose head, after 1899, was named Isara.4 A remote 1 2 3 4

Reichstag Papers, 1909-11 session, no. 179, p. 554. Humann to RKA, and enclosure, 5 Feb. 1912, RKA 1056/159-60. Minute on Tabora annual report 1908, TNA I/A/8/XVIIrf. But see Gunzert, 'Service in German East Africa', p. 35. For the Iraqw background, see the notes by A. E. Kitching (1922) and F. J. Bagshawe (1930) in Mbulu District Book; R. Fouquer, Irakou: histoire d'un peuple et d'une mission (n.p., 1955). Isara's accession is dated by an anonymous list of native authorities in TNA BA Moshi M/VII/A. 11

l6l

ITU

Tanganyika under German rule 2. Hut, house, and poll tax revenue, with total local revenue, 1905-12, in marks

TABLE

(*)

Tax

Total local revenue

1,675,047 1,924,964 2,409,295 3,026,721 3,151^57 3,708,745 4,273,354 5,096,173

4,879,276 5,885,941 6,541,266 7,548,135 8,764,774 10,542,088 11,885,943 13,877,806

(a)

Year 1905 1906 1907 1908 J 9O9 1910 1911 1912 (est.)

(a) as %of(b) 34 33 37 40

36 35 36 37

Sources: Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 1,106, p. 6,552; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1909/10, part 1, p. 57; ibid. 1910/11, part 2, p. 333; ibid. 1911/12, part 2, p. 370; ibid. 1912/13, part 2, p. 408.

area, it had only passing contact with the Germans until 1902, when Captain Merker visited Mbulu, recognised Isara as chief of the Iraqw, and instructed him to collect tax. Isara, however, was a religious rather than an administrative leader and had a number of rivals, prominent among them a local leader named Dagaro. In April 1906 Isara ordered the payment of tax. A month later, Dagaro rose against him with the support of most Iraqw leaders. Isara's cattle were seized, his life was threatened, and he fled towards Arusha. Concentric German expeditions brought 245 askari into Mbulu. Dagaro and several of his chief supporters were hanged. Their cattle were confiscated and a number given to Isara, whose nominees replaced the rebel leaders. The officer who commanded these reprisals listed four reasons for the rising. The Iraqw had not seen a sizeable German force for years. Dagaro had wanted to be chief. The sub-chiefs had wanted independence from Isara. Finally, only Isara's people had in practice paid tax, for only over them had he possessed sufficient authority to exact it. In future all must pay, so that the 162

The collapse of the local compromise loyal could be sure ' that they are not the fools V The attempt to extend regular taxation beyond the newly built military post, however, kept Mbulu in turmoil until the end of German occupation. The commander reported in October 1910 that in some directions his 'sphere of peaceful power5 extended less than three hours' walking distance, while in 1912 his reprisals against passive resistance led to the deaths of 22 Iraqw, a figure which he considered 'not especially high'. 2 Events in Mbulu illustrate the problem of transition from the first phase of German rule, which could adequately rest on a local compromise which was essentially diplomatic, to the second, more strictly administrative phase, which demanded quite different responses from the German allies, responses which many were unable to make. Where more intensive administration threatened to destroy the political compromise, the Germans experimented with two solutions. One was to supplement, or even to supplant, the indigenous political structure by an alien system dependent on literate agents. This method is discussed in the next chapter. The other solution was to make tax collection a purely European function, so that the indigenous leaders were neither challenged by a rival African cadre nor obliged to undertake administrative tasks which might destroy their local standing and hence their utility for other German purposes. This technique was attempted by one of the ablest German district officers, Theodor Gunzert, who administered Mwanza district and its largely Sukuma population from 1907 to 1916. The political structure of Usukuma was typical of the woodland savannah country of central Tanganyika, with some thirty independent chiefdoms each with a ruler, entitled ntemi, of immigrant origin, whose functions were primarily ritual and judicial.3 In his memoirs, Gunzert states that he 1

Abel to government, 22 July 1906, RKA 725/11-15. I am also indebted to Mr A. L. Malley for information on this rising. 2 Rechenberg to Moshi, 10 Jan. 1911, TNA IV/O/i/I; Tafel to Moshi, 1 April 1912, and Knaak to government, 16 April 1912, RKA 702/201-3. 3 Hans Cory, The Ntemi (London, 1951). 163

11-2

Tanganyika under German rule was determined to preserve the chiefs' authority and use it in developing the Sukuma economy, 'strengthening the authority of the tribal organisations by renewing their old powers5.1 When he wrote this account, however, Gunzert had long been an expert on the theory of indirect rule. During his administration he showed less respect for the position of the ntemi: These authorities have not inherited important political pretensions from their predecessors, even those who reigned before the establishment of German rule. Their official functions were always less political than religious... According to Sukuma law, the sultan commands neither the person, the property, nor the land of his inferiors, not even the unused communal land. With such a limited sphere of action, to make a fortune was out of the question... The Sukuma ntemi remained a poor devil. The German administration has to start from these circumstances; the old rainmaker is not to be converted into an autocrat by artificial means, especially among so self-assertive a people. It is enough if he retain so much uneroded authority as he needs to be the executive organ for official orders.2

Specifically, Gunzert excluded the ntemi from any part in the collection of tax: The hut tax... is collected by the district office staff directly through the village elders, to the exclusion of the sultan, so that this tribute, personally offered, may effectively remind each individual of his status of subjection to the German government.3

Thus for what was in practice the most important single function of government, Gunzert felt constrained to bypass indigenous leadership. The same process took place in this period in Tabora district, another region from which Rechenberg expected a rapidly increasing revenue. Like Gunzert, the district officer held that c tax collection by coloured aliens, Swahili and the like, is quite out of the question, for they would probably be killed'. He concluded, therefore, that 'tax collection must be left, in the future as in the past, to the 64 superior chiefs and the c. 260 headmen5.4 As elsewhere, 1 2 3

' Memoirs of a German District Commissioner', TNR, LXVI, 178-9. Mwanza annual report 1908-9, TNA I/A/8/XVII*. Ibid. 4 Herrmann to government, 18 June 1907, TNA IV/A/2/I.

164

The collapse of the local compromise this proved both politically impossible and administratively inefficient. By 1911 Tabora had adopted Mwanza's system, by which tax was collected directly from the people by a touring European, who in this district had paid and literate Nyamwezi assistants.1 The local compromise, the first basis of German power, was collapsing. Subverted in the south and east by rebellion, and elsewhere by resentment of sub-imperialism, it could not bear the transition from the diplomatic relationship of military occupation to the bureaucratic relationship of intensified civilian administration. In place of the chiefly ally was emerging a new figure: the headman's clerk in Ungoni, the newly converted Pogoro follower of Mlolere, the former schoolboy from Machame, the Nyamwezi tax clerk. For Tanganyika, the age of improvement was opening. 1

Methner to RKA, 27 April 1911, RKA 1056/99; Shinyanga District Book.

165

CHAPTER 8

THE AGE OF IMPROVEMENT Resistance to German invasion was defeated because it was disunited and technologically inadequate. Rebellion tried to overcome these weaknesses by the use of ideology, but failed. The diplomatic manipulation of the European rulers in order to contain their impact on established social patterns was increasingly unsuccessful. New techniques were needed, techniques which would redress the technological inequality between black and white, would provide Africans with the skills and resources which made Europeans powerful, would offer 'effective alternatives to the spear'. 1 As elsewhere in colonial Africa at this date, Africans in Tanganyika turned increasingly to the improvement of their societies and of themselves. 'Improvement 5 accurately describes this process. It implies evolution rather than revolution, an acceptance of the framework of colonial rule while attempting to modify its character. It implies a pre-eminent concern with local affairs. It suggests a moral seriousness and social awareness strongly apparent in the prominent figures of this period. And it implies the belief, unquestioned at this time but later to be challenged by radical nationalists, that there was no conflict between personal and social improvement, that the man who won advancement for himself thereby won a victory for his people. While the leading personality of the local compromise was the chiefly diplomat, and while the commanding figure of Maji Maji was the prophet of violence, the characteristic man of the age of improvement was the 1

The phrase is taken from Carl G. Rosberg, Jr. and John Nottingham, The

myth of'Mau Mau9: nationalism in Kenya (New York, 1966), p. 27.

166

The age of improvement literate pastor or priest, akida or clerk, trader or teacher, the new intermediary between European and African. This, of course, is an oversimplification. No society responded to colonial rule in a monolithic fashion, and none changed its response overnight. The men of improvement were still a minority, their behaviour still untypical. Nor did all the various societies of Tanganyika respond to colonial rule in identical ways. To see Maji Maji as a watershed between an 'age of diplomacy' and an 'age of improvement' is possible only at the broadest level of generalisation. Literate pastors, clerks, and teachers had existed in Tanganyika before the German invasion. Most African societies were still led, long after the rebellion, by established rulers whose aims and behaviour belonged essentially to the age of diplomacy. Nevertheless, in the widest context of Tanganyikan history, it was in the years which followed Maji Maji that improvement became the dominant historical theme, the dynamic of change. It was to remain so for thirty years.1 One important area of improvement in this period was commercial agriculture. Rechenberg's programme, it has been seen, stressed African production of indigenous crops. The European revolt against this emphasis has already been described. There was also an African revolt, in the sense that a number of the more responsive and advantageously situated African societies did not accept the limitation on the speed of economic change which Rechenberg's policy implied. By 1914, four areas of Tanganyika had emerged as producers of tropical crops for the European market. Cotton was grown in the Rufiji Valley and Usukuma. Kilimanjaro and Buhaya were centres of coffee production. An outline of agricultural change in these areas will help to clarify the process of improvement in African societies. The origins of African cotton production show how European and African initiatives for improvement met and 1

For a sketch of the wider context of improvement, see my chapter, ' Tanzania under German and British Rule', in B. A. Ogot and J. A. Kieran (ed.), ni: a survey of East African history (Nairobi, forthcoming).

167

Tanganyika under German rule mingled with each other. Of the two production centres, the lower Rufiji Valley was the survivor of Gotzen's disastrous scheme of 1902. When this plan was abandoned early in 1906, administrators assumed that it would leave the Rufiji peoples with an insuperable hatred of cotton. They were therefore astonished to find that the response of the cultivators to the economic disruption which followed their defeat was to plant larger acreages of cotton under their own control,1 Nothing could demonstrate more clearly that the rebellion was not merely a protest against change. By 1911, according to Rechenberg's calculations, an African cultivator on the Rufiji could make 120 rupees a year from cotton, and occasionally up to 300 rupees, which was considerably more than the annual salary of an African schoolteacher.2 The value of the colony's cotton exports trebled between 1910 and 1912.3 While much of this increase came from the Rufiji, the most rapid expansion took place in a new development area, Usukuma. Cotton was introduced into this area by a planter named Wiegand, who settled in Nera chiefdom and organised a share-cropping scheme by which young married Sukuma lived on his land and received cotton seed, Wiegand buying back the crop for one penny a pound, in the money of the time. In 1906 it fetched the very high price of a shilling a pound in Hamburg. 4 By then, however, the Nera people had lost enthusiasm and continued the scheme only under administrative compulsion. Rechenberg forbade this, and since the land was poor and the seed degenerate he decided that the Sukuma should concentrate on groundnuts.5 This suggestion, however, foundered on the independence of the district officer and the initiative of the Sukuma. Although ordered to 1 2 3 4

5

Grass to government, 18 Jan. 1909, RKA 8181/215-24. Rechenberg to RKA, 10 May 1911, RKA 126/118-23. From 751,299 marks to 2,110,236 marks. Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1911/12, part 2, pp. 98 et seq.; ibid. 1912/13, part 2, pp. 158 et seq. Theodor Gunzert, * Baumwollkultur im Muanzabezirke', in Der Pflanzer, 19 March 1910; Meyer to government, 3 July 1906, RKA 119/96 et seq.; Wiegand to KWK, 7 Sept. 1908, RKA 8182/122-7. Meyer to government, 11 May 1906, RKA 119/67 et seq.; Rechenberg on Wiegand to Dernburg, 1 Nov. 1911, RKA 8180/167.

168

The age of improvement abstain from compulsion, Gunzert 'ignored the ruling and, through the chiefs, or the assistants assigned to them, arranged for each peasant to be allotted an annually increasing area for the cultivation of export crops'. After experimenting with indigenous crops—groundnuts and rice—Gunzert concentrated increasingly on cotton, introducing the more suitable American Upland variety and supporting the crop with public funds.1 By 1910 cotton was gaining acceptance as a Volkskultur in Mwanza. Output doubled in that year, as it did again in 1911, when Mwanza exported 163,334 pounds of raw cotton.2 An edited, but probably reliable, African account shows how the demonstration effect of early success spread the crop more widely through the district: About 1910 cotton cultivation was introduced first in the Nassa chiefdom. Gunsrat [Gunzert] brought seed to Simba who was then chief and ordered him to distribute it and force each able-bodied man to plant a certain acreage. That year they had a wonderful crop which was bought up by the German Agricultural Officer. People in other chiefdoms seeing the profit in it also began to demand seed, which the following year was distributed in other chiefdoms as well.3

The African initiative for change, under-estimated in Rechenberg's reconstruction programme, was demonstrated also in the beginnings of the Chagga coffee industry on Kilimanjaro. Coffee was brought to the mountain by Roman Catholic missionaries in the 1890s. They persuaded friendly chiefs to grow it, and catechists subsequently carried the crop to many parts of Kilimanjaro. Production expanded slowly alongside the successful European plantations, until by 1907 the local planters were protesting against the danger of disease and the threat to their labour supply which they anticipated from Chagga competition. The district officer, Methner, reminded Rechenberg of his principles. It would be foolish, Methner argued, to allow the Chagga to expose 1 2 3

' Memoirs of a German District Commissioner', TNR, LXVI, I 76-7. Gunzert, Der Pflanzer, 19 March 1910. D. G. MacGillivray, 'History of European settlement and government from its advent until the Great War as seen through the eyes of Kiyumbi, native of Mwagalla', typescript, 1931, in Maswa District Book.

169

Tanganyika under German rule their economic future to the fluctuations of the world market. Instead of coffee, he suggested, they should be encouraged to grow vegetables. Rechenberg, however, had another and conflicting principle. It was the duty of the government, he explained, 'to develop this country...by encouraging all economic forces, but not to monopolise for a few interested parties any line of business which promises a good return'. 1 Unwilling to press Africans to grow new cash crops, he was equally unwilling to prevent them. It is difficult to estimate the success of Chagga coffee production under German rule. It has been said that they were unable to sell the crop, and certainly no elaborate marketing organisation was created, but apparently the coffee was sold without difficulty to coastal traders.2 Marealle was said in 1909 to have planted 15,000 bushes in Marangu, an improbably high figure which does nevertheless suggest an appreciation by some Chagga of the new opportunities.3 At this date, however, Kilimanjaro was a much less important producer than Buhaya. Lowquality robusta coffee was indigenous to Buhaya, where the berries had ceremonial significance and had been grown only by the chiefs. The first Bukoba coffee was exported in 1898,4 but the main stimuli came from the transport facilities provided by the Uganda Railway and from an energetic local officer, Stuemer, who arrived in 1904. By the next year, Bukoba's coffee exports totalled 51,564 marks; in 1909 they were worth 112,771 marks, and their value was to double annually until, with an income of 749,079 marks in 1912, Buhaya was producing roughly a third of German East Africa's total coffee exports.5 As elsewhere, the first benefits 1

2

3

4

5

Rechenberg to RKA, 27 Sept. 1907, and Rechenberg to Methner, 24 Oct. 1907, RKA 120/104-8. According to information received at a seminar of the Historical Association of Tanzania, Moshi, 1966. For the contrary view, see Kenneth Ingham, 'Tanganyika in the 'Twenties', in TNR, LII (March 1959), 20. H. H. J. Meyer, Das Deutsche Kolonialreich: Band I: Ostafrika und Kamerun (Leipzig, 1909), p. 379. T. S.Jervis, 'Bukoba coffee: inspection and grading', in Bukoba District Book. Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 622, p. 3,702; Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1912/13, part 1, p. 30; part 2, pp. 158 et seq.

170

The age of improvement of commercial agriculture went largely to the chiefs, especially to the two who otherwise proved to be most responsive to European pressures, Kahigi of Kianja and Mutahangarwa of Kiziba. Not only had they a traditional monopoly, but they were used by the administration to mobilise their sometimes reluctant subjects, and they had the opportunity, through their suzerainty over land, to acquire the most suitable plots. Indeed, shortly before the war Stuemer was obliged to limit the share of the coffee crop which the chiefs demanded from their subjects and tenants.1 Thus improvement reinforced economic and social differentiation. Privilege begat new privilege: in this early period of improvement, commercial profit commonly went to the already influential. Other forms of improvement also stimulated change and differentiation. The most important of these was western education which, unlike the educational systems previously existing in African societies, was available only to certain sections of the population. It is impossible to discuss here the whole range of educational aspiration and opportunity existing in Tanganyika at this date. Instead, three examples will be taken. The first is Buhaya, where Dr Austen's research has revealed a process very characteristic of tribal improvement at this date. The second is the emergence of a small but most important intelligentsia educated in Zanzibar. The third is the cadre of young African bureaucrats created by Rechenberg's administration. The history of Buhaya in this period illustrates the process by which a diplomatic response to colonial rule gave way to a response of improvement, and by which differential access to education favoured certain groups within society. Three Haya chiefdoms—Karagwe in the west,2 Ihangiro in the south, and Greater Kyamtwara in the east—were ruled by families of the Hinda clan. The northern chiefdom, Kiziba, 1 2

Austen, * Native policy and African polities', Ph.D. dissertation, pp. 190-2, 207.

More accurately a Nyambo chiefdom, the Nyambo being closely related to the Haya. 171

Tanganyika under German rule was ruled by a section of the Bito, a clan which also governed Buganda. Perhaps in the eighteenth century members of another pastoral clan, the Nkango, migrated north from Buzinza and settled in Greater Kyamtwara. After civil war, Greater Kyamtwara split into four sections: Kianja and Bukara, ruled by Hinda, and Bugabo and Kyamtwara proper, ruled by Nkango.1 When the Germans arrived, Haya affairs were racked by conflict between the four successor states of Greater Kyamtwara and by the incursion of the Ganda from the north, with the aid of their tributary, Mutatembwa of Kiziba.2 As elsewhere in Tanganyika, prior experience of outside intervention guided the response of the various Haya groups when the first Germans arrived in 1890. Unwisely relying on Ganda support, Mutatembwa defied the Germans and was defeated.3 In Greater Kyamtwara, the dominant figure was Kayoza of Bugabo. His weaker enemies, Kahigi of Kianja and Mukotani of Kyamtwara, had previously sought Ganda support against him, and now welcomed the Germans. Over the next twenty years, the succession dispute in this area was resolved largely in favour of Kianja, where Kahigi's diplomatic skill enabled him to manipulate successive German officers. Kahigi was of the Hinda clan, and his object was to restore unified Hinda rule to Greater Kyamtwara, while avoiding the collapse of chiefly power which Buganda had experienced as a result of European intervention. Kahigi offered services and unwavering support to the Germans. He had his first reward in 1895, when Mukotani was deposed for allegedly stealing guns from the military station. Kianja gained four sub-chiefdoms from Kyamtwara. Six years later, Kahigi rumoured that the chief of Bukara was also stealing guns. Bukara was partitioned be1

2

3

E. Cesard, 'Histoire des rois du Kyamtwara d'apres Tensemble des traditions des families regnantes', in Anthropos, xxvi (1931), 543; idem, 'Le Muhaya', in Anthropos, xxx (1935), 85. For the origins of these chiefdoms, see Oliver in Oliver and Mathew, History of East Africa, 1, 171-99; Hans Cory, Historiaya Wilaya Bukoba (Mwanza, n.d.), passim. Gory, op. cit. pp. 85, 119; Wilhelm Langheld, gwanzig Jahre in deutschen Kolonien (Berlin, 1909), p. 86. Cory, op. cit. pp. 85, 119; Langheld, op. cit p. 91.

172

The age of improvement tween Kianja and Kyamtwara. Somewhat later, the Germans abandoned their attempt to prop up the ruling house of Karagwe, weakened by a succession of child rulers and natural disasters, and installed Kahigi's brother-in-law, Kiobia, as regent.1 Kahigi's position in Buhaya was the most striking example in the colony of the success which could be won by diplomatic means within the established pattern of inter-African relations. Kahigi was not wholly conservative. He was an enthusiastic coffee producer, was keen to adopt German military techniques, taught himself the rudiments of literacy, and was perfectly capable of operating a system of tax collection. He utterly refused, however, to have anything to do with missionaries.2 The general and intense hostility of the Haya chiefs to Christianity may have been due to their knowledge of the disruption which it had caused in neighbouring Buganda. Kahigi differed from his fellow rulers merely in being more successful. While Roman Catholic missionaries were active in Kiziba from 1891, and while Kyamtwara was forced to accept them in 1892, Kahigi's favour with the local administration led it to refuse them entry to Kianja.3 Consequently, Kianja temporarily fell behind in education, for which growing numbers of Haya showed enthusiasm during the later years of German rule. The result was the reemergence of Kiziba as a centre of improvement and as a potential rival to Kianja's primacy. The first Haya to acquire western education were Ziba who visited neighbouring Buganda in the early 1890s, became readers with the Church Missionary Society, and returned to Kiziba to establish a wholly African church which met in lake-shore caves and suffered much persecution from Mutatembwa. 4 1

2 3 4

Austen, 'Native policy and African polities', pp. 77-80, 85-7, 93-8, 177; Cory, pp. 133-9; Haber,' Die innerpolitische Verhaltnisse im Bezirke Bukoba', 30 June 1904, RKA 1029/97-105. Austen, op. cit. pp. 96-8, 110-11, 180, 191. Ibid. pp. 79-80, 198-9. A. Kajerero, Aus meinem Leben (Bielefeld, 1959); Carl-J. Hellberg, Missions on a colonialfrontier west of Lake Victoria (trans. E. Sharpe, Lund, 1965) .pp. 80-7.

173

Tanganyika under German rule Gradually, however, the Ziba rulers began to appreciate that education and mission favour offered them a new means of redressing the unequal local compromise in Buhaya. Mutatembwa's son and heir, Mutahangarwa, was taught to read and write by a Roman Catholic catechist. Mission support restored him to favour in the late 1890s, and after his accession in 1903 he quickly acquired the reputation of being the most progressive chief in the district. According to some accounts, he was the first to popularise commercial coffeegrowing. When Gotzen visited Buhaya in 1905 he proclaimed Mutahangarwa, alongside Kahigi, as a 'superior chief (Obersultan).1 Meanwhile, members of the Ziba aristocracy gained an educational advantage which was to give them leadership of modern politics in Buhaya until the 1940s. One, Fransisko X. Lwamgira, was a relative of Mutahangarwa who graduated from Mutatembwa's court and the Roman Catholic mission to become the German officer's confidential adviser on Haya affairs. Another aristocrat, Klemens Kiiza, also served at Mutatembwa's court, the mission, and the district office. Subsequently, in the 1920s, he was to become the pioneer of modern politics in Buhaya as founder of the Bukoba Bahaya Union.2 The process and consequences of improvement at tribal level are thus admirably illustrated by events in Buhaya. A local compromise based on Kianja sub-imperialism was challenged during this period by the emergence in unprivileged Kiziba of a generation of young and educated men who, through their skills and their desire for improvement, claimed to be the most effective intermediaries between Europeans and Africans and the most capable men to lead their people into the new, European-dominated society. 1

2

Austen, * Native policy and African politics*, pp. 93-8, 178; Adolf Friedrich Herzog zu Mecklenburg, In the Heart of Africa (trans. G. E. Maberly-Oppler, London, 1910), pp. 14-15; Hellberg, Missions on a colonial frontier, p. 72. Austen, * Native policy and African polities', pp. 202-3; Otto Mors, 1 Geschichte der Bahinda des alten Kyamtwara-Reiches am Victoria-NyanzaSee', in Anthropos, L (1955), 712 n.5. For the role of the Ziba aristocrats in later Haya politics, see Austen, chs. 10 and 13.

174

The age of improvement Their rivalry with the chiefs was not yet open (as it was to become in the 1920s), nor was it yet a rivalry with implications of social radicalism, since the new generation was recruited largely from the same sources as the old, thanks to privileged access to education. Indeed, the royal courts were still the fields of action which the new men preferred. Nevertheless, the contradictions in Haya society were growing as the balance of African power and the pattern of African response shifted away from old-style diplomacy. While the evidence from Buhaya illustrates the transition to improvement within a single tribe, it is too slender to demonstrate the complexity of the process or the aspirations of the men concerned. To provide better documentation, it is useful to focus not on a tribe but on a particular group of men who more than any others in Tanganyika demonstrated the patterns of thought and action characteristic of the age of improvement. These were the former pupils of a single school, St Andrew's College at Kiungani in Zanzibar. Although situated in British territory, Kiungani drew most of its students from the German-occupied mainland. It was the central college for the Universities Mission to Central Africa, an Anglican body founded in 1859, which established its headquarters in Zanzibar in 1864. It then opened three mission fields on the mainland, in Bonde, the Masasi area, and the eastern shore of Lake Malawi. Kiungani was opened as a primary school for freed slaves in 1869. Fifteen years later it was converted into a training college for teachers and clergy, and remained the U.M.C.A.'s leading educational establishment until transfered to the mainland in I925-1 Much of the history of Kiungani is relevant to German East Africa, but in certain respects it was untypical. First, it was a much older establishment than anything existing on the mainland. At least two of its alumni—Cecil Majaliwa, 1

For the early history of the mission and the college, see A. E. M. AndersonMorshead, The history of the Universities Mission to Central Africa: Volume I:

i8jg-igog (6th edn, London, 1955).

175

Tanganyika under German rule the first priest, and Hugh Peter Kayamba, a teacher—received secondary education in England before the German invasion, an experience more common in West than in East Africa. In consequence, the scale of Kiungani's educational work was long unique in German East Africa. Given an average enrolment of sixty students a year between 1869 and 1912, and assuming that each spent an average of four years at the college, as many as 600 men may have passed through Kiungani by the end of Rechenberg's governorship, the great majority of them at least qualified to be primary schoolteachers.1 By 1909, Masasi archdeaconry employed some sixty African teachers, in addition to clergy and other staff,2 while five years later the Bonde archdeaconry had eighty African teachers and clergy—' they are a great power in the land', commented the archdeacon.3 To provide a contrast in a tribal area, the Lutheran seminary for teachers and pastors at Old Moshi on Kilimanjaro did not open until 1902, when it had nine pupils, while the Roman Catholic Central School at Kibosho probably opened at about the same date, and by 1913 had seventeen student teachers.4 Thus Kiungani's former pupils were much more numerous, and more firmly established, than any other group of men with western education in German East Africa. They formed an exceptionally close-knit, although somewhat isolated community. Most were German subjects educated in a British colony, and taught—for theological and practical reasons— to speak and read English rather than German. Christians trained in the Islamic environment of Zanzibar, they were distinguished even on the mainland by the theological 1

Many uncertainties surround this figure, but it is unlikely to be underestimated. In the late 1870s, the college had some 88 students; in 1896, 106; in 1901, 72; in 1906, during a crisis, 45. Eighty were expected in 1914. See AndersonMorshead, History of UMCA, 1, 74;' St Andrew's College, Kiungani, Zanzibar: lists of pupils 1896-1908', UMCA D/9; Weston to Maynard Smith, 20 Jan. 1901 and 3 Aug. 1906, UMCA A/i/XVII; A. G. Blood, The history of the Universities Mission to Central Africa: Volume II: igoy-ig32 (London, 1957), p. 113. 2 Weston to Travers, 28 Sept. [1909], UMCA A/i/XVII. 3 Woodhead to Travers, 9 Sept. 1914, UMCA A/i/XXI. 4 Shann, Overseas Education, xxvi, 50-1.

176

The age of improvement differentiations emphasised by their Anglo-Catholic faith. They were bound together in a bewildering network of kin and other relationships.1 The most striking feature of the college, of course, was its multi-tribal character, paralleled on the mainland only by the German Government School at Tanga. The students were conscious of this. ' We are so many boys in this house5, wrote a future priest, c and of different tribes, Yaos, Makuas, Bondeis and Nyassas; but we all speak Swahili language.'2 While many of the first students were freed slaves, a large proportion of those during the 1890s and 1900s were drawn—as in Buhaya—from families of high status in their societies. Many of the Bondei at the college belonged to the network of kinship surrounding the Kilindi rulers of Usambara. Both Martin Kayamba, who was at Kiungani from 1902 to 1906 and later became the most prominent political figure among the group, and Petro Limo, long the elder of the community, were great-grandsons of Kimweri za Nyumbai, the mid-nineteenth century ruler of Usambara. In the south, the outstanding figures belonged to the extensive matrilineal families of Matola I, Yao ruler of Newala, who was baptised on his deathbed, and Barnaba Nakaam, who was baptised before he became chief of Chitangali. Two priests, Daudi Machina and Samwil Chiponde, and two teachers, Leslie and Cecil Matola, were sons of Matola I, while another priest, Kolumba Msigala, was his nephew. Yohana Abdalla, Danieli Usufu, and Francis Sapuli were all priests and all nephews of Barnaba Nakaam. 1

2

To give a relatively simple example which illustrates their wide dispersion and influence in East Africa at this date, Augustine Ramadhani (senior African teacher at Kiungani) married the sister-in-law of Samwil Chiponde (senior priest in Zanzibar), who was brother of Leslie Matola (teacher in Pemba) and Daudi Machina (priest in Masasi), who himself married Florence Majaliwa (daughter of the first African priest). Augustine Ramadhani was a friend and classmate of Martin Kayamba (in British service in Kenya), whose godfather was Alfred Juma (senior African teacher at Tanga Government School) and whose godmother was Margaret Durham Mdoe, mother of John Baptist Mdoe (deacon near Dar es Salaam) and Samwil Mwinyipembe (teacher near Tanga). I am indebted to Mr J. A. Ramadhani for explaining these relationships to me. Yohana Abdalla to Isobel Hall, 2 Jan. 1894, UMGA A/5. 12

177

ITU

Tanganyika under German rule By this period, indeed, many of Kiungani's students were children of former pupils. The new intelligentsia was beginning to consolidate its position of educational privilege.1 For the present purpose, the relevant aspect of Kiungani and its students is that they were the most articulate 'new men' of the last years of German rule. Among them the aspiration for improvement was all-pervasive. It was implicit in their very acceptance of Christianity, which was none the less sincere for being so closely combined with the desire for western education. 'A man who has brains can best do the work of God to the full5, reflected one student as he prepared to return as a teacher to his home on Lake Malawi.2 In a striking passage, a priest recalled the confusion of motives which drew him to the mission: One day, when we came out of school, we said: ' Let's go on till we really know,' and another said: 'Let's go on till we wear the cross'; for by now we knew that he who wore the cross (a catechumen) was one who really knew his teaching.. .The next morning we told the teacher that we wanted to be taught for the cross, and he was very glad and he taught us, and at the end of the month.. .we were made catechumens.3

The teaching they sought was a literary education in English, for in a European-style education in a European language, they believed, lay the source of European power and the route to equality. When the white missionaries from the mainland made one of their periodic attacks on Kiungani's English bias at the diocesan synod of 1908, they were strongly opposed by the African clergy, who insisted that a knowledge of English was an essential qualification for ordination.4 'Those who think that literary education is unsuitable for Africans', Martin Kayamba was later to write, 'ignore the fact of its importance and indispensability to any sort of education, and therefore deny the Africans the very means of 1

2 3 4

For a vivid impression of family solidarity, see ' Reminiscences of the Revd. Canon Kolumba Yohana Msigala of Chilonji.. .started in July 1955', manuscript, UMCA D/3. Wallace Kantukanji to Maynard Smith, [1899], UMCA A/i/XVII. Manfred Mabundo, An African David and Jonathan (Westminster, n.d.), p. 14. Anonymous notes of 1908 synod, Zanzibar, UMCA A/i/XVIII.

178

The age of improvement 1

progress.' Improvement was not seen in terms of education alone. Commerce was equally relevant. Kayamba rejected the mission's intention that he become a schoolteacher and instead joined the British civil service in Kenya and Uganda. In 1912 he returned to Zanzibar as a teacher, only to resign again and establish himself in Bonde as a trader, since ' I thought I needed some more money to better my prospects.'2 The missionary bishop Frank Weston complained in 1908 of'the commercial tendency of our native priests. They are nearly all making a lot of money—one by teaching, others in commerce. . . Sehoza and Limo [the two senior priests in Bonde] have shares in a commercial undertaking, and make each a hundred rupees a month. . . they rightly say that after all they have only invested money as do many priests at home.' 3 Weston, indeed, came to believe that aspirations for improvement were so strong as to hamper the true work of the mission. His ideal, as he expressed it, was 'a vigorous African Church, the expression of the strong corporate faith of the African people, with a ministry of Africans supported by Africans' offerings, the backbone of African life, the leaders of African progress'.4 The existing ministry, he believed, mistook superficial westernisation for spiritual commitment. ' We have set up Intellect as the basis of Vocation in the place of Spirituality', he complained, and protested in a bitter passage: ' If it is true that the African is going to wear a frock coat and top hat some day, it is no part of the Mission's duty to teach him to do so.'5 It would be unjust to lay the charge of purely superficial westernisation against this generation of Kiungani students, for many served their peoples with devotion and little material reward. But the possibility was inherent in the aspiration for improve1

* The Story of Martin Kayamba Mdumi. . . written by himself, in Margery Perham (ed.), Ten Africans (London, 1936), p. 248. Kayamba in Perham, Ten Africans, pp. 176-84. 3 Weston to Travers, 5 Dec. [1908], UMGA A/i/XVII. 4 Quoted in H. Maynard Smith, Frank, Bishop of Zanzibar (London, 1926), p. 32. 5 Weston, memorandum for UMGA committee, 25 March 1900, UMCA A/i/XVIII; Maynard Smith, p. 60. 2

179

12-2

Tanganyika under German rule ment, and it was Weston's closest African friend, Samwil Chiponde, who later declared in a moment of irritation that 'people can say what they want, but to the African mind, to imitate Europeans is civilization'.1 Although exceptionally articulate exponents of the ideals of improvement, the alumni of Kiungani were almost entirely excluded from office in the German administrative framework by their English education and dubious loyalty. They formed an intelligentsia, but not yet an elite. To study the interplay between administration and improvement during Rechenberg's governorship, it is necessary to turn to another group of educated men, the akidas. The existence of this group gives the history of German East Africa during this period a special quality. In colonial history, the normal European response to widespread rebellion was to decentralise, to encourage 'strong and isolated tribal nationalism5.2 It was of great importance to Tanganyika that the German administration did not do this after Maji Maji. Instead, it tended to reinforce centralisation and bureaucracy, creating for the purpose a cadre of African subordinate administrators. These were the akidas. Before the German invasion, the akida was a functionary found in the coastal towns. He belonged to the younger generation and was a chosen war-leader, responsible for keeping order and controlling public festivities.3 He was subordinate to the liwali of a coastal town, who was appointed or recognised by the Sayyid of Zanzibar. The Germans adopted this terminology but changed the akida's functions, appointing a number as administrative officers in the rural areas of the coastal districts. When taxation began, collectors called akidas were posted into some of the districts further 1

2

3

Report of an educational conference, Dar es Salaam, 1925, quoted in Ralph A. Austen, 'Notes on the pre-history of TANU', in Makerere Journal, ix (March 1964), 2. Rosberg and Nottingham, The myth of'Mau Mau', p. 56, quoting the acting governor of Kenya, 1917. A. H. J . Prins, The Swahili-speaking peoples of Zanzibar and the East African coast, Ethnographic Survey of Africa, East Central Africa, part xn (London, 1961), p. 96. 180

The age of improvement inland. When Kinyasi of Usambara abdicated in 1903 and the Kilindi administration broke down, the tax collectors became the intermediaries between the district office in Lushoto and the local headmen.1 Lushoto thus became the model of a new administrative system which was wholly rural—there was no liwali in Lushoto. By 1905, administration through akidas was the rule along the coast, in most of the hinterland of the coastal districts, and in parts of Songea district. There were few other akidas.2 Although some were indigenous to their areas, the majority were literate coastal men, the all-purpose field agents of Germany's bureaucratic tradition of administration. As such, they were especially abhorrent to Gotzen, who desired to preserve and utilise tribal institutions. Even before the rebellion, Gotzen planned to replace the akidas gradually by c officials originating from the native population'. 3 The rising seemed to compel even greater urgency. Akidas were attacked, and sometimes killed, throughout the rebel area. Not all of them acted with courage or decision. Commissions of enquiry unanimously blamed them for at least part of the unrest. Missionaries, who resented akidas because many were Muslims, supported the demand for the abolition of the system. In consequence, the acting governor announced in 1906 that all akidas were to be dismissed : ' The government has. . . decided to remove the akidas and to give official authority over natives to Europeans alone.. .Where it is absolutely necessary to operate with coloured officials, the native authorities will be utilised... The present intention of the government is that where it is impossible to rule through whites, it will not rule'. 4 Rechenberg abandoned this extraordinary plan within three months of his arrival in East Africa. He thought that it might be 1 2 3 4

Little is known of the reasons for this collapse. See Edgar V. Winans, Shambala: the constitution of a traditional state (London, 1962), p. 26. Those in Iringa district were of a quite different type. Sub-chiefs in Moshi district were also called akidas. Note to 1906 budget, section 1/10/3-4, enclosed in Gotzen to AAKA, 20 May !9O5, TNA brown 983. Statement by Haber, 'Sitzung des Gouvernementsrats beim Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika', Dar es Salaam, 18-19 May 1906, RKA 812/96-162. 181

Tanganyika under German rule possible to administer in the interior through the chiefs if these were given literate clerks, but on the coast or in areas of mixed population no chiefs were available. The akidas could be more closely supervised, and as a long-term aim it might be desirable to replace them by trained indigenous Africans, but to abolish the system altogether was impossible. Finance, if nothing else, dictated that akidas were a 'necessary evil'. 1 After the rebellion, akidas were removed from Songea district and possibly from Undonde and the Matumbi Hills in Kilwa district.2 These dismissals were more than outweighed by the appointment of akidas for the first time in Mpwapwa district in 1907 and Morogoro district in 1913. In effect, and despite the lessons of the rising, the system was extended and regularised during Rechenberg's governorship. He was a coastal bureaucrat with little enthusiasm for tribal institutions and no prejudice against literate young men from the coast. He wanted revenue and found akidas to be relatively efficient at collecting it. He was perfectly willing to build a European type of civil service out of the new men who were emerging from the government schools on the coast. In the year 1912-13 the three post-primary schools in Tanga, Bagamoyo, and Dar es Salaam produced 192 pupils from their top forms.3 Men of this type increasingly gained administrative office in the later years of German rule, forming Tanganyika's first territorial elite. Their functions are described in a report from Bagamoyo district: The akidas are chiefly engaged in tax collection. Further, in general administrative matters they act as intermediaries between the district office and the natives of their akidat. Lastly, it is their duty to adjudicate simple cases of voluntary and contentious jurisdiction. Their civil competence extends to disputes up to a value of fifty rupees, and in criminal cases up to fourteen days rigorous imprisonment, ten lashes, and fines up to five rupees.4 1 2 3 4

Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 622, p. 3,691. Kilwa district estimates 1906, TNA III/A/19/I. Die deutschen Schutzgebiete, 1912/13, part 1, p. 17. Gordon to Chief Secretary, 11 Sept. 1924, TNA SMP 3763, quoting a report of 1909, the original of which is lost. 182

The age of improvement It is important to appreciate that in this period the akida was less often a low-caste, semi-Arab, ex-slave-trading Statthalter than a young man of the age of improvement, characterised less by his brutality than by his lack of confidence. The system operated at its purest in Tanga district, where there were eleven akidas and a liwali.1 The liwali of Tanga from 1905 to 1912 was the distinguished Swahili historian Abdallah bin Hemedi el Ajjemy. Zanzibari son of an Arab father and Machinga mother, Abdallah served Kimweri za Nyumbai and later passed from Kilindi to German service. Akida successively of Sega and Muheza, his elevation to the liwaliate, when approaching his seventieth year, gave him one of the half-dozen highest posts open to a non-European.2 For Abdallah, as for many others, akidaship was a career, with systematic transfer and promotion, and with a graduated salary scale matched against both the importance of the post and the experience of the holder. The bottom rung of the salary scale was designed to lead upwards from the highest salary which could be earned by schoolteachers, from whom some akidas were drawn.3 For example, when Abdallah, the senior akida, was promoted to the liwaliate in 1905, he was replaced at Muheza by Athmani bin Pongwe, who had previously administered Mkuzi, which was subordinate to Muheza.4 Somewhat later, the Mkuzi post was upgraded and filled by an experienced akida, Sengenge bin Muhina, who had previously served in Marimba. This post, in turn, was given to the akida of Pongwe, Khalidi Kirama, a graduate of Tanga School later taken to Germany for further training.5 The same pattern of literate bureaucracy existed in the 1

Lists in TNA III/A/38/I. Khalidi Kirama, 'Tarekh ya Sheikh Abdalla', in Abdallah bin Hemedi, Habari za Wakilindi, pp. 9-11. 3 Sperling to government, 18 July 1905, TNA IX/B/12/I. 4 TNA LKV Tanga 53, 95 and 122, 116, 162, 182; Usambara-Post, 6 Oct. 1906. s TNA LKV Tanga 49 and 56, 75, 90, 95 and 122, 98 and 152, 116, 155, 167, 197. See also 'Khalidi Kirama Nilivyokuwa', manuscripts in the collection of the Institute of Swahili Research, University College Library, Dar es Salaam. 2

183

Tanganyika under German rule neighbouring Lushoto district, although here it was modified by an attempt to bring in more indigenous elements. The ten akidas and four deputy akidas in Lushoto district included elderly coastal agents, younger bureaucrats, one recognisable Kilindi, one Shambala, and a number of uncertain origin. The Kilindi was the former ruler, Kinyasi, who had withdrawn after his abdication to Mlalo, an isolated area of traditional independence.1 The Shambala akida was Tupa of Bungu, 'fiercely hated by the Wakilindi as an upstart5.2 Bumbuli, Lushoto, Vugiri, and Mashewa were in the hands of coastal men, and again a system of transfer and promotion operated. Thus when the elderly Kilindi sub-chief Kibanga died in 1908, his sub-chiefdom of Bumbuli, a centre of Kilindi discontent, was put under akida Abdallah, who had previously held office in Lushoto and Korogwe.3 He was replaced in Korogwe by Archie Semanyi, a local Christian who had been trained for ordination at Kiungani but instead had become interpreter in Lushoto district office until given his first administrative post.4 Lushoto also administered South Pare, through a true Statthalter, akida Ngoma of Kihurio, who is said to have been a freed slave.5 Similar patterns of authority existed further south, but with significant variations. Thus Pangani district, which included most of Uzigua, had an unusual number of indigenous rulers as akidas, including the only pure African liwali in the colony, Mbwego of Handeni, who had previously been akida of his home area of Mgera on the district's western border.6 Kilwa and Lindi districts, by contrast, were dominated by loyalist heroes of the rebellion. Liwale was administered by Abdallah bin 1 2 3 4

5 6

Lushoto District Book. TNALKV Lushoto 165, 201, 239; Rohde to Direktion, Kaffee-Plantage A.-G. Sakarre, 23 Oct. 1908, TNA IX/A/16/I. TNA LKV Lushoto 67, 72, 76, 122 and 146, 166, 199 and 245, 252. TNA LKV Lushoto 86, 171, 191, 214, 247, 257. For Archie Semanyi, see the wartime journal of Samwil Mwinyipembe, typescript, UMGA D/i, and Woodward to Travers, 9 Dec. 1909, UMGA A/i/XXI. TNA LKV Lushoto 87, 144 and 145, 205, 249. TNA LKV Pangani 87; W. L. S. Greening in Handeni District Book; Reuss, ' Wazeguha (Pangani)', in Beantwortung des Fragebogens.

184

The age of improvement Maftali, who had commanded a group of loyalist irregulars guarding a supply post on the road to Kilwa.1 The liwali of Mikindani, Mohammed Ahmed, was a Sudanese ex-askari who had been promoted for services during the rising as akida of Ilulu on the Mwera Plateau. The two Christian chiefs, Matola II and Barnaba Nakaam, were both akidas, while Masasi was administered by akida Mursal, formerly a sergeant in the defence force, who had displayed great courage during the rebellion.2 Obviously, neither Ngoma in Kihurio nor Sergeant Mursal in Masasi could be described as an incipient bureaucrat. Administration in the more remote areas remained rudimentary. There was still room for the strong man of uncertain origins and irregular methods. Nevertheless, the general trend is clear: the Germans were engaged in recruiting and training an administrative cadre of the type to which they were accustomed and which was equipped to exercise the functions of systematic administration. This is most clearly shown in the two districts into which akidas were first introduced after 1906, Mpwapwa and Morogoro. Sperling, who took over Mpwapwa in 1907, had long been district secretary in Tanga, the home of akida administration. He found that his new district was loosely ruled through 253 local headmen. Taxation had begun in 1903, but two years later the district commander had complained that its collection was inefficient, although he hesitated to introduce alien tax collectors.3 Sperling swept the fears aside. With Rechenberg's qualified approval, he looked for suitable men. C I respectfully ask you', he wrote to the Church Missionary Society at Kongwa, 'to supply me with an intelligent Mkaguru, able to read and write, who could be installed as government akida in Mamboya.' At the same time he welcomed an offer of a Sagara, aged about twenty—remark1 2 3

Kilwa district estimates 1906, TNA III/A/19/I; Gotzen, Deutsch-Ostafrika im Alt/stand, p. 204. Ewerbeck to government, 15 Sept. 1905, RKA 723/59-62; C. Kiinster, 'Aufstands-Gefahr im Hinterlande von Lindi', 1910, RKA 702/50-9. Styx to government, 18 May 1905 and 6 July 1905, TNA III/G/35/I.

185

Tanganyika under German rule ably young even for an akida—with three years' schooling.1 Although this man was not in fact appointed, Sperling soon assembled his five akidas, all educated, and including three local Christians.2 Reviewing his creation a year later, Sperling justified it by a trebling of the tax revenue. Akidas were necessary, he argued, if only because they were literate; without them, efficient administration would have been impossible.3 In the neighbouring Morogoro district the same pressures existed. Until 1913, this district had the same administrative system as had once existed in Lushoto, by which the government both recognised the many local rulers and at the same time divided the district into taxation areas (Steuerkreise). There were twelve such areas in 1908, and by 1912 there were 26 tax collectors, while several headmen had clerks, who may or may not have been the same people. In that year the district came under the control of Mahnke, who had previously served in Pangani and believed, like Sperling, in rationalising administration on coastal lines. During 1913 he converted the tax areas into akidats and appointed a number of the collectors to administer them. Again the drive for revenue and the availability of literate agents transferred administrative authority to new hands.4 The argument, then, is that during Rechenberg's governorship the desire of Africans to secure western skills joined with the governor's economic and administrative policies to inaugurate an age of improvement. It is well, however, to remember that improvement was not the only possible response to the situation which followed the rebellion. Indeed, it is the diversity of African response to colonial rule which is most characteristic of this period. To illustrate this point, it is necessary to leave tribal, Christian, and administrative 1

Sperling to CMS Kongwa, 23 March 1907, and Sperling to Kilosa, 25 March 1907, TNA MPG 3665. 2 Reichstag Papers, 1907-9 session, no. 1,106, p. 6,256. 3 Mpwapwa annual report 1908-9, TNA I/A/8/XVTL?. 4 Morogoro annual report 1908-9, TNA I/A/8/XVIIt; Mahnke to government, 29 Dec. 1912, TNA IX/A/16/III; Morogoro land commission reports in TNA.

186

The age of improvement affairs, and to turn instead to the developments taking place within Tanganyika's Islamic communities during Rechenberg's governorship. It has been seen that many akidas were of coastal origin. This may seem surprising when it is remembered that the basic qualification for appointment was literacy in Latin script, for which mission education might seem the necessary training. The point, however, is that a literary sub-culture had existed on the Tanganyikan coast for centuries before the German invasion, and that after the first resistance of 1888-9 sections of coastal society came to terms with European power. The coast became the base for German operations. The first government schools were opened there and the coastal peoples gained an educational lead over all but a very few other societies in Tanganyika.1 As the Germans pushed inland, the coastal peoples followed them as servants, traders, and administrative subordinates, swelling the Swahilispeaking trading colonies already established in the interior. The expansion of coastal society inland, which had begun in the nineteenth century, was thus accelerated during early colonial rule, and was one of the most important aspects of Tanganyikan history in this period. This is best illustrated by a contrast with Kenya, where the coastal sub-culture never deeply penetrated the interior and where, despite the existence of a modern port in Mombasa, the coast became a backwater. Kenya came to look towards the central highlands and Lake Victoria, while Tanganyika continued to look towards the coast.2 But as the coastal sub-culture expanded inland, it was modified by a process of mutual assimilation, being both 'Africanised' by the inland peoples who accepted it (or some aspects of it), and 'westernised' in certain aspects through the European impact on the coast itself. In consequence, the sub-culture, always eclectic, be1 2

See George Hornsby, 'German educational achievement in East Africa', in TNRy LXII (March 1964), 83-90. For an attempt to explain this contrast, see J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in East Africa (Oxford, 1964), pp. 54-67.

187

Tanganyika under German rule came a distinctive and pervasive blend of African, Islamic, and western elements.1 Under European rule, there grew up within Tanganyika what may be termed a Swahili society. Originally Islamic, it gradually accommodated some followers of African religions and members of certain Christian denominations, until its criteria ceased to be religious and instead became its non-tribal character, the predominance within it of urban values, and the speaking of the Swahili language by preference rather than merely as a necessary means of communication. It is impossible here to demonstrate these assertions fully, for this would require a full-scale cultural history of Tanganyika. But it is relevant to suggest that the existence of such a Swahili society profoundly modified the cultural context within which social and political change took place in Tanganyika, as contrasted with neighbouring African territories. The importance of Swahili as a territorial language is obvious, but the context has been of wider significance than this. For example, popular movements which in neighbouring territories adopted a Christian colour, because they existed in a Christian context, often took 'Swahili' features in Tanganyika. In Central Africa, for instance, popular movements to eradicate sorcery drew on mission Christianity for techniques and syncretistic elements which gave added prestige, as in the mchapi movement of the 1930s. Although mchapi tried to enter Tanganyika, it never successfully penetrated beyond the region around Lake Malawi. Instead, enormously popular eradication movements in Tanganyika were normally based on the coast and drew on the coastal sub-culture for techniques and syncretistic beliefs.2 Further, this non-Christian context may explain the absence of widespread Christian independency which is so striking a contrast between Tanganyika and its neighbours. 1 2

There is no adequate study, but an impression may be gained from J. A. K. Leslie, A survey of Dar es Salaam (London, 1963). I owe this information to an unpublished paper by Professor T. O. Ranger, 'Witchcraft eradication movements in Central and Southern Tanzania and their connection with the Maji Maji rising', research seminar paper, University College, Dar es Salaam, Nov. 1966.

188

The age of improvement It is likely that many of the frustrations which were elsewhere expressed in direct confrontation between African and European were absorbed in Tanganyika into an alternative social order—a social career open to talent—which did not involve direct competition with Europeans. The prestige accorded to noted Swahili poets illustrates the existence of such an alternative system of cultural values. Again, the Swahili subculture offered an alternative source of skills. In Central Africa, the leader of a society which sought education but was unable to attract a Christian mission or the government sometimes appealed to an independent African church.1 In Tanganyika, a leader in this position might turn instead to coastal teachers. Chief Makwaia of Usiha in southern Usukuma, for example, had such a resident teacher.2 Similarly, a leader whose prestige in the tribal order was weakened might look to Islam, both as a new source of strength and as a means of rejecting European control. Both Ali bin Songea, son of the executed rebel leader in Ungoni, and Kinyasi of Usambara, after his abdication, became at least nominal Muslims.3 According to one account, the Ngindo people turned to Islam during Maji Maji in the same way as the Pogoro turned to Christianity after it.4 It is certainly true that Swahili society became the refuge of those who had reason to abandon tribal life.5 For the present purpose, the relevant point is that the literate Swahili sub-culture formed one context for the expression of varied responses to colonial rule, a context which, because it was territorial in scope, permits wider generalisation than is possible from examples confined to a single tribe. The event which provides the material for an analysis of the 1

See, for example, T. O. Ranger, 'The "Ethiopian" episode in Barotseland, 1900-1905', in Rhodes-Livingstone Journal, xxxvn (June 1965), 26-41. Austen, 'Native policy and African polities', p. 112. 3 Nordeck to government, 23 Jan. 1913, TNA IX/A/16/III; G.H.Becker, 'Materialen zur Kenntnis des Islam in Deutsch-Ostafrika', in Der Islam,

2

11 ( 1 9 1 1 ) , 1 5 .

4 BNS Liwale to Kilwa, 5 Dec. 1912, TNA IX/A/16/III. 5 See especially Alison Redmayne, * Preliminary report on a Hehe community', E.A.I.S.R. conference paper, July 1962.

189

Tanganyika under German rule variety of response was the arrival on the East African coast in July 1908 of what the Germans called the ' Mecca Letters'. These were documents of a type common in the Islamic world.1 They purported to be an account by one Sheikh Ahmad, Keeper of the Prophet's Tomb, of a vision in which Mohammed instructed him to warn all Muslims that the Day of Judgment was approaching, and that they must therefore return to piety and discipline, holding themselves aloof from unbelievers: I saw the Prophet.. .in a dream on the night before Friday. He was reading the mighty Quran and said to me, * O Sheikh Ahmad, the condition of the Believers fatigues me because of their violent disobedience... Tell them that the hour is approaching. There is only a little time left in the existence of the world.'... I awoke from my sleep and I found the warning written in green script on the side of the Prophet's Tomb. The Prophet says... * Whosoever reads this and does not pass it on, I shall be his opponent on the Day of Judgment.'2

If credited, such documents had an obvious eschatological implication, and were generally linked by the Germans to an increasing emphasis on Mahdist doctrine in the current teachings of East African Islam.3 The German expert consulted, C. H. Becker, thought that the letters might have been directed to Somalia and then passed on down the coast.4 According to German investigations, the letters were brought from Zanzibar to Kilwa and then taken on to Mroweka, near Lindi. The askari in Lindi reported their arrival to the district officer, adding that the people were agitated, violence was being planned, and the movement was directed especially towards women.5 Rechenberg obtained a copy without much difficulty from the liwali of Dar es Salaam, and despatched 1

For expert analysis of a similar document, see G. Snouck Hurgronje, De laatste Vermaning van Mohammed aan zijne Gemeente (Amsterdam, 1884). 2 I am indebted to Dr B. G. Martin for this translation from an Arabic original in TNA IX/A/16/I. The term * Mecca Letters' was invented by askari in Lindi. The Prophet's Tomb is in Medina. 3 See Becker's article in Der Islam and Martin Klamroth, ' Ostafrikanischer Islam', in Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, xxxvn (1910), 477-93, 536-46. 4 Becker to Stuhlmann, 24 March 1909, TNA IX/A/16/I. s Wendt to government, 26 July 1908, and Rechenberg to RKA, 12 Aug. 1908, TNA IX/A/16/I. 190

The age of improvement to Lindi a retired liwali, Sheikh Suleiman bin Nasor. He reported great religious fervour in Lindi but claimed that a public meeting had calmed the people.1 Somewhat later, similar letters were propagated in Bagamoyo by a Muslim teacher named Abu Bakr. Suleiman bin Nasor was sent again, and at a great meeting in Bagamoyo mosque on 26 April 1909, with no European present, Abu Bakr was obliged to state that the letters were spurious and to sign an extremely degrading declaration of loyalty.2 Meanwhile, the letters were taken inland via Mroweka and the Makonde Plateau. The Mwera of Mtama akidat received them and reported the matter immediately to their akida, because, as they said, they wanted no more trouble after Maji Maji. Further south, however, there was sufficient unrest to demand the establishment of a military post at Mkwiti on the Makonde Plateau, and to require a minor action during August, when a number of ' ringleaders' were arrested.3 This was the only violence provoked by the letters, but they spread further afield. A Yemeni trader took copies from Bagamoyo to Mpwapwa, where they were considered genuine and aimed at lax Muslims. The district officer in Morogoro purchased a highly coloured copy in the local market for half a rupee; it resembled the printed talismans common on the coast. In Kondoa the letters were judged spurious and were ignored. In Iringa, however, they created greater excitement. All the Muslim servants of Europeans resigned and several askari requested their discharge. Letters also reached Mombasa, Tanga, Tabora, Kilimatinde, Mahenge, Songea, and Lake Malawi.4 Such was the affair of the Mecca Letters. Its interest lies 1 2 3 4

Rechenberg to Lindi, 27 July 1908, and Mohammed bin Abdurahman to government, 4 Aug. 1908, TNA IX/A/16/I. Suleiman bin Nasor to government, 9 May 1909, and Dinckelacker to government, 10 May 1909, TNA IX/A/16/I. Wendtto government, 26 July 1908, 3 Aug. 1908, 12 Jan. 1909, and Rechenberg to RKA, 12 Aug. 1908, TNA IX/A/16/I. Sperling to government, 17 Sept. 1908, Lambrecht to government, 24 Sept. 1908, Sauer to government, 6 Nov. 1908, Nigmann to government, 10 Sept. 1908 and 11 Feb. 1909, TNA IX/A/16/I.

Tanganyika under German rule less in its eschatological implications than in the responses of various groups and individuals to the excitement which the letters aroused. By examining the careers and beliefs of those involved, it is possible to reconstruct a spectrum of reactions to German rule within Swahili society at this date. On the extreme right of the spectrum was Sheikh Suleiman bin Nasor el Lemke. An Omani Arab born in Zanzibar, Suleiman was a leader of the puritan Ibadhi community. He served the Germans as liwali of Pangani, Bagamoyo, and Dar es Salaam until he resigned after a quarrel in 1903. Rechenberg cultivated his acquaintance and Dernburg called on him while touring East Africa. During the Mecca Letters crisis, Suleiman was persuaded to come out of retirement in order to win over the people of Lindi and Bagamoyo. To understand Suleiman's prestige and authority, it is necessary to go back to the coastal resistance of 1888-9. It has been seen that after the defeat of this resistance the Germans negotiated with a peace party of Omani Arabs. Suleiman was the leader of this party, which he created while acting on behalf of the Sayyid of Zanzibar.1 After such valuable service, he settled down to grow rich and powerful in German service. As he wrote in 1911, CI have been a government servant and subordinate to the government for 23 years.'2 Suleiman was thus the leading member of a group of Omani patricians who had committed themselves to European rule and had secured the most prestigious posts in coastal administration. Also involved, although remotely, in the events of 1908 was a very different man, Amur bin Nasor, the liwali of Bagamoyo. During the crisis, he was host to Hussein bin Mohammed, the liwali of Iringa, who was believed to have 1

2

Rechenberg to RKA, 12 Aug. 1908, TNA IX/A/16/I; Schmidt, Geschichte des Araberaufstandes, pp. 78, 195, 205; Muller, Deutschland—Zanzibar—Ostafnka, pp. 440, 453; Bongard, Die Studienreise des Staatssekretdrs Dernburg, p. 23. Suleiman bin Nasor to Pangani, 21 Oct. 1911, TNA LKV Pangani 4. He later became a member of the Zanzibar legislative council and was awarded the O.B.E. 192

The age of improvement taken the letters home with him and thus to have been responsible for the excitement in Iringa. 1 But Amur was himself unsympathetic to the movement. He belonged very clearly to the age of improvement, for he was one of the most successful of the young men of coastal origin who acquired western education and thereby gained administrative position under German rule. Son of an Omani Arab, he spent a brief period at school in Zanzibar before he was chosen as an informant by the linguist C. G. Buttner. Buttner took him to Berlin, where he taught Swahili at the Oriental Seminar.2 Returning with a knowledge of German, he was made liwali of Bagamoyo, a post of considerable distinction at this time. He was long the only non-European member of a district council. Amur, then, was a young man who, like the akidas, had made his way by western skills. The interesting point about him is his standing in Bagamoyo. At least superficially westernised, he had little contact and less influence with the people, and he was at feud with the town's leading Islamic teacher Abu Bakr who, it will be remembered, had admitted receiving Mecca Letters.3 While both Suleiman bin Nasor and Amur bin Nasor were Arabs who had gained administrative power under German rule, Abu Bakr, of Somali origin, was a mwalimu.4 The mwalimu (pi. waalimu) was the central figure in East African Islam. He was a literate teacher, normally presiding over a Koran school, who frequently combined this office with that of imamu or prayer-leader in a mosque, and with medical functions whose Islamic or more purely African content varied with the extent of his learning. In otherwise illiterate communities, the waalimu were men of authority. 1 2

3 4

Nigmann to government, 11 Feb. 1909, and Weber to government, 9 March 1909, TNA IX/A/16/I. See his autobiography, 'Hekaya ilmezkur abd rasul Allahi Amur bin Nasur il-Omeiri. Bijedihi', in C. G. Buttner, Anthologie aus der Suaheli-Litteratur (Berlin, 1894), P a r t *> PP- X47~75 (an