What is now
Tanzania was a colony and part of
Germany from the
1880s to
1919. It was
British from
1919 to
1961. Shortly after independence,
Tanganyika and
Zanzibar merged to form the nation of Tanzania on
April 26,
1964. One-party rule came to an end in
1995 with the first democratic elections held in the country since the 1970s.
Early history
Tanzania is home to some of the oldest human settlements unearthed by
archaeologists, including fossils of early humans found in and around
Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania, an area often referred to as "The Cradle of Mankind". These fossils include
Paranthropus bones thought to be over 2 million years old, and the oldest known footprints of the immediate ancestors of humans, the
Laetoli footprints, estimated to be about 3.6 million years old.
[1].
Reaching back about 10,000 years, Tanzania is believed to have been populated by
hunter-gatherer communities, probably
Khoisan speaking people. Between three and five thousand years ago, they were joined by
Cushitic-speaking people who came from the north – into which the Khoisan peoples were slowly absorbed. Cushitic peoples introduced basic techniques of agriculture, food production, and later, cattle farming.
[Absolute Tanzania: History]
About 2000 years ago,
Bantu Speaking people began to arrive from western Africa in a series of migrations. These groups brought and developed ironworking skills and new ideas of social and political organization. They absorbed many of the
Cushitic peoples who had preceded them, as well as most of the remaining Khoisan-speaking inhabitants. Later,
Nilotic pastoralists arrived, and continued to immigrate into the area through to the 18th century.
[[2] ]
Persian and Arab traders
Beginning in the early first Millenium CE, settlements were established in coastal towns by n and n traders. The Arabs and Persians intermingled with indigenous Bantu-speakers, giving rise to both the and. Over the next few centuries, trading outposts were established all along the coast as well as on the islands of the Zanzibar archipelago and. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, in a period known as the, these settlements flourished, with trade in ,and other goods extending as far away as and.
In 1498 became the first an to reach the East African coast, and by 1525 the had subdued the entire coast. Portuguese control lasted until the early 18th century, when Arabs from established a foothold in the region. Assisted by, the indigenous coastal dwellers succeeded in driving the Portuguese from the area north of the by the early . Claiming the coastal strip, Omani Sultan moved his capital to in 1840. The Omani focused on the inland and developed trade routes that stretched as far as and . During this time, Zanzibar became the center for the
European exploration & colonialism
When European exploration of the interior began in the mid-19th century, the interior regions were still largely unknown to Europeans. A part of the Great Lakes region the western shore of Lake Victoria consisted of many small kingdoms, most notably Karagwe and Buzinza, which were domainted by their more powerful neighbours Rwanda, Burundi, and Buganda.
Two German missionaries reached Kilimanjaro in the 1840s. British explorers Richard Burton and John Speke crossed the interior to Lake Tanganyika in 1857. David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary-explorer who crusaded against the slave trade, established his last mission at Ujiji, where he was "found" by Henry Morton Stanley, an American journalist-explorer, who had been commissioned by the New York Herald to locate him.
German colonial interests were first advanced in 1884. Karl Peters, who formed the Society for German Colonization, concluded a series of treaties by which tribal chiefs in the interior accepted German "protection." Prince Otto von Bismarck's government backed Peters in the subsequent establishment of the German East Africa Company.
In 1886 and 1890, Anglo-German agreements were negotiated that delineated the British and German spheres of influence in the interior of East Africa and along the coastal strip previously claimed by the Sultan of Zanzibar. In 1891, the German Government took over direct administration of the territory from the German East Africa Company and appointed a governor with headquarters at Dar es Salaam.
While the German colonial administration brought cash crops, railroads, and roads to Tanganyika, European rule provoked African resistance. Between 1891 and 1894, the Hehe — lead by Chief Mkwawa — resisted German expansion, but were eventually defeated. After a period of guerrilla warfare, Mkwawa himself was cornered and committed suicide in 1898. The resistance culminated in the Maji Maji Rebellion of 1905–1907. The rebellion, which temporarily united a number of southern tribes and ended only after an estimated 120,000 Africans had died from fighting or starvation, is considered by most Tanzanians to have been one of the first stirrings of nationalism, although many historians dispute this conclusion. Research has shown that traditional hostilities played a large part in the rebellion.
During World War I, an invasion attempt by the British was thwarted by German General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck at the Battle of Tanga, who, after the battle, mounted a drawn out guerrilla warfare campaign against the British.
German colonial domination of Tanganyika ended after World War I when control of most of the territory passed to the United Kingdom under a League of Nations mandate. Added to it was the west coast of Lake Victoria, which had previously been part of the German colonies of Rwanda and Burundi.
Unlike the Belgian, British, French and Portuguese colonial masters in central Africa, Germany developed an educational program for her Africans that involved elementary, secondary and vocational schools. “Instructor qualifications, curricula, textbooks, teaching materials, all met standards unmatched anywhere in tropical Africa.”[3] In 1924, ten years after the beginning of the First World War and six years into British rule, the visiting American Phelps-Stokes Commission reported: In regards to schools, the Germans have accomplished marvels. Some time must elapse before education attains the standard it had reached under the Germans.[3]
After World War II, Tanganyika became a UN trust territory under British control. Subsequent years witnessed Tanganyika moving gradually toward self-government and independence.
Independence
In 1954, Julius Nyerere, a school teacher who was then one of only two Tanganyikans educated abroad at the university level, organized a political party--the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU).
In May 1961, Tanganyika became autonomous, and Nyerere became Prime Minister under a new constitution. Full independence was achieved on December 9, 1961. Mr. Nyerere was elected President when Tanganyika became a republic within the Commonwealth a year after independence.
Zanzibar
An early Arab/Persian trading center, Zanzibar fell under Portuguese domination in the 16th and early 17th centuries but was retaken by Omani Arabs in the early 18th century. The height of Arab rule came during the reign of Sultan Seyyid Said, who encouraged the development of clove plantations, using the island's slave labor.
The Arabs established their own garrisons at Zanzibar, Pemba, and Kilwa and carried on a lucrative trade in slaves and ivory. By 1840, Said had transferred his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar and established a ruling Arab elite. The island's commerce fell increasingly into the hands of traders from the Indian subcontinent, whom Said encouraged to settle on the island.
Zanzibar's spices attracted ships from as far away as the United States. A U.S. consulate was established on the island in 1837. The United Kingdom's early interest in Zanzibar was motivated by both commerce and the determination to end the slave trade. In 1822, the British signed the first of a series of treaties with Sultan Said to curb this trade, but not until 1876 was the sale of slaves finally prohibited.
The Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty of 1890 made Zanzibar and Pemba a British protectorate, and the Caprivi Strip in Namibia became a German protectorate. British rule through a Sultan remained largely unchanged from the late 19th century until after World War II.
On April 26, 1964, Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, this was renamed the United Republic of Tanzania on October 29, 1964.
United Republic of Tanzania
Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom on December 19, 1963, as a constitutional monarchy under the sultan. On January 12, 1964, the African majority revolted against the sultan and a new government was formed with the ASP leader, Abeid Karume, as President of Zanzibar and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council. Under the terms of its political union with Tanganyika in April 1964, the Zanzibar Government retained considerable local autonomy.
To form a sole ruling party in both parts of the union, Nyerere merged TANU with the Zanzibar ruling party, the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) of Zanzibar to form the CCM (Chama cha Mapinduzi-CCM Revolutionary Party), on February 5, 1977. The merger was reinforced by principles enunciated in the 1982 union constitution and reaffirmed in the constitution of 1984.
References
★ Hyden, Goran (1980). ''Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry''. Berkeley: University of California Press.
★ Illife, John (1979) ''A Modern History of Tanganyika''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
★ Kjekshus, Helge (1996). ''Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History''. London: James Currey.
★ Koponen, Juhani (1988). ''People and Production in Late Pre-colonial Tanzania: History and Structures''. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of International Studies.
★ Koponen, Juhani (1994). ''Development for Exploitation: German colonial policies in Mainland Tanzania'', 1884-1914.
★ Waters, Tony (2007). ''The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture: Life beneath the level of the marketplace''. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Notes
1. Flat feet and doubts about makers of the Laetoli tracks
2. Phyllis Martin and Patrick O'Meara. ''Africa. 3rd edition''. Indiana University Press, 1995.
3. Miller, p. 21
4. Miller, p. 21
References and external links
★ Miller, Charles. ''Battle for the Bundu, The First World War in East Africa''. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1974. ISBN 0025849301
★ Background Note: Tanzania
★ History of Tanzania
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