slaves and ivory, while along the more northerly routes ivory was the chief commodity purchased. As a result, the Swahili language (a blend of the Bantu language and an extensive Arabic vocabulary) and culture gained new adherents across pre-colonial Tanzania. Two thirds into the 19th century, several European missionaries and explorers visited various parts of Tanzania, notably Mount Kilimanjaro, Tabora, Lake Victoria, and Lake Nyasa. Colonialism 42. The colonisation of present day Tanzania can be traced back to German imperial ambitions. As the scramble for African territory among the European powers intensified in the 1880s, Carl Peters and other members of the Society for German Colonization signed treaties with some African chiefs (1884–85) in the Tanzanian hinterland. By an agreement with Great Britain in 1886, Germany established a vague sphere of influence over Mainland Tanzania, with the exception of a narrow strip of land along the coast that remained under the suzerainty of the sultan of Zanzibar. He leased it to the Germans.4 The German East Africa Company (founded 1887) governed the territory called German East Africa.5 As the Company had proved to be an ineffective ruler, the German Government took over the country (which by then included the coast) in 1891 and declared it a protectorate.6 However, the African tribes deeply resented the German presence, particularly when harsh forced labour methods were used to cultivate the new and alien crops. The result, in 1905, was a widespread popular rebellion which became known as the Maji Maji rising7. From 1905 to 1907, the Maji Maji revolt against German rule engulfed most of south-east Tanzania. It is estimated that about 250,000 Africans lost their lives from German military campaigns and the lack of food.8 43. During World War I, British and Belgian troops occupied most of German East Africa (1916). After the war ended, the treaty of Versailles, in 1919, granted Britain a League of Nations mandate to govern the former German East Africa – which acquired a new name, Tanganyika.9 British policy from the 1920s encouraged indigenous African administration along traditional lines, through local councils and courts. A legislative council was also established in Dar es Salaam, but African members were not elected to this until after World War II. By then, local political development was an obligation under the terms of the 1947 UN trusteeship under which Britain placed Tanganyika. The rise and triumph of nationalism 44. After World War II, Tanganyika became a UN territory under British control. In later years, Tanganyika gradually moved towards self-government and independence. The movement for independence was led by a group of people representing various ethnic groups under the leadership of the revered former Tanzanian President, the late Julius Kambarage Nyerere. Son of a chief, a convert to Roman Catholicism while studying at Makerere college in Uganda, and later an undergraduate for three years at Edinburgh university, Nyerere returned to Tanganyika in 1953.10 The following year, he and Oscar Kambona transformed the Tanganyika African Association (founded in 1929) into the more politically-oriented Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). From the start, its members featured prominently in elections to the legislative assembly. 45. On 29 March 1961, Britain agreed that Tanganyika would become an independent state. TANU easily won the 1958–60 general elections. In May 1961, Tanganyika became autonomous and Nyerere became Prime Minister under a new constitution. Full independence was achieved on 9 December 1961. Nyerere, fondly known as Mwalimu, then aged 39, was elected President when Tanganyika became a Republic within the Commonwealth, a year after independence. Tanganyika was the first East African state to gain independence. Tanganyika later joined with Zanzibar to form Tanzania. A second Anglo-German agreement (1890) added Rwanda, Burundi, and other regions to German East Africa. The Company’s aggressive conduct resulted in a major resistance movement along the coast by Arabs, Swahili (whose main leaders were Abushiri and Bwana Heri), and other Africans, that was only defeated with German Government help. 6 However, it was not until 1898, with the death of Mkwawa, the Hehe ruler who strongly opposed European rule, that the Germans succeeded in controlling the country. 7 Maji is the Swahili for ‘water’. The rising got its name because a belief spread among the African workers that a magic potion of water, castor oil, and millet seeds could turn German bullets to water. 8 The German commander, General von Götzen, used a strategy hardly more humane than that of his colleague von Trotha in Namibia, whose brutality had caused an international outcry only a year previously. Von Götzen decided that in the long term only famine would bring the rebellious native workers to heel. He instructed his troops to move through the country, destroying crops, removing or burning any grain already harvested, and putting entire villages to the torch. 9 Increasing numbers of Africans worked for a wage on plantations, especially after 1945, when economic growth began to accelerate. Also after 1945 Africans gradually gained more seats on the territory’s legislative council (which had been established in 1926). 10 At the time, Nyerere, a school teacher, was one of only two Tanganyikans educated abroad at university level. 4 5 32