Curing the cancer of the colony: Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, and socioeconomic struggle in German East Africa

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 441-469

  Fabian, Steven ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950110077     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. A. J. Christopher, "Continuity and Change of African Capitals," Geographical Review 75, 1 (1985), 44-57;
2. G. Hamdam, "Capitals of the New Africa," Economic Geography 40, 3 (1964), 239-53;
3. Jonathan Moore, "The Political History of Nigeria's New Capital," The Journal of Modern African Studies 22, 1 (1984), 167-75;
4. Deborah Potts, "Capital Relocation in Africa: The Case of Lilongwe in Malawi," The Geographical Journal 151, 2 (1985), 182-96.
5. On the city of Dar es Salaam alone, see Tanzania Notes and Records 71 (1970), which is dedicated entirely to the former Tanzanian capital. See also David Henry Anthony, "Culture and Society in a Town in Transition: A People's History of Dar es Salaam, 1865-1939" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1983);
6. Jürgen Becher, Dar es Salaam, Tanga und Tabora: Stadtentwicklung in Tansania unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft, 1885-1914 (Stuttgart, 1997);
7. James R. Brennan, "Nation, Race and Urbanization in Dar es Salaam. 1916-1976" (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 2002);
8. Franck Raimbault, "L'Evolution de L'Espace Peri-Urbain à Dar es Salaam Durant la Colonisation Allemande (1880-1914)" (unpublished paper; special thanks to Jim Brennan for bringing this work to my attention);
9. and James R. Brennan, Andrew Burton, and Yusuf Lawi, eds., Dar es Salaam: Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis (Dar es Salaam/Nairobi: Mkuki na Nyota/British Institute in Eastern Africa, forthcoming 2007).
10. Justin Willis, Mombasa, the Swahili, and the Making of the Mijikenda (Oxford, 1993), 146. Another example is Bombay. The British developed this relatively insignificant port rather than imposing a more direct grip over the far more prosperous port town of Surat.
11. Norman R. Bennett, Arab vs. European: Diplomacy and War in Nineteenth-Century East Central Africa (New York, 1986), 30. Kilwa and Mombasa were ranked second and third most important trading ports after Bagamoyo.
12. Felix Chami suggests that the Germans may have been motivated to move their administrative seat to Dar es Salaam on account of their inability to control the town after unrest supposedly broke out following the hanging of local rebel leaders in 1889. I have found no evidence to support this claim. Felix Chami et al., Historical Archaeology of Bagamoyo Excavations at the Caravanserai (Dar es Salaam, 2004), 15-16, 21.
13. Clemens Gillman, "Dar es Salaam, 1860-1940: A Story of Growth and Change," Tanganyika Notes and Records 20 (1945), 6-7;
14. Salatiel Togolai Shemhilu, "The Economic History of Bagamoyo, 1885-1950" (MA thesis, University of Dar es Salaam, 1977);
15. John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979);
16. Juhani Koponen, Development for Exploitation: German Colonial Policies in Mainland Tanzania, 1884-1914 (Helsinki, 1994), 622.
17. Three authors who give some notion of the struggle between Bagamoyo and Dar are J.E.G. Sutton, "Dar es Salaam: A Sketch of a Hundred Years," Tanzania Notes and Records 71 (1970), 1-20;
18. Walter Brown, "A Precolonial History of Bagamoyo: Aspects of the Growth of an East African Coastal Town" (Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1971)
19. and Jürgen Becher, Dar es Salaam, Tonga und Tabora: Stadtentwicklung in Tansania unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft, 1885-1914 (Stuttgart, 1997).
20. Brown, "A Precolonial History"; Walter T. Brown, "Bagamoyo: An Historical Introduction," Tanzania Notes and Records 71 (1970), 69-83;
21. Walter T. Brown, "The Politics of Business: Relations between Zanzibar and Bagamoyo in the Late Nineteenth Century," African Historical Studies 4, 3 (1971), 631-43.
22. Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar (Oxford, 1987).
23. The Shomvi have been described as either descendents of Arab traders who had intermarried with East Africans long ago, or as a prestigious rank within Swahili society. In the case of Bagamoyo, the Shomvi were closely interrelated with the Wazaramo, the ethnic group who populated Bagamoyo's immediate hinterland. For some discussion, see E.C. Baker, "Notes on the Shirazi of East Africa," Tanganyika Notes and Records 11 (1941);
24. A.H.J. Prins, The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi, and Swahili) (London, 1967);
25. Jonathan Glassman, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888, (Portsmouth, N.H., 1995).
26. See Brown, "A Precolonial History,"
27. and Glassman, Feasts.
28. Henry M. Stanley, How I Found Livingstone (New York, 1969), 49-51; National Library of Scotland (hereafter NLS); Acc 9942/8, Cecil Murphy to Dr. Kirk, 19/2/1873, Zanzibar National Archives (hereafter ZNA), AA2/12, Cameron to Kirk, 2/3/1873; NLS, Ace. 10120/21, Copy of Lt. Cameron's Journal, 2/3/1873.
29. AStEsp, 2K1.3b2, Homer to Très Révérend Père Supérieur, 24/6/1864. Vibarua (kibarua, singular) slaves refer to slaves who could be hired out from their masters. These slaves shared their wages with their owners and represented the vast majority of slaves along the central East African coast. See Jan-Georg Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition: The Decline of Slavery in German East Africa, c. 1884-1914 (Oxford, 2006), Chap. 3.
30. AStEsp, 2K1.6a3; Horner to Très Révérend Père Supérieur, 14/11/1863, "Voyage à Bagamoyo"; R. P. Horner, Voyage a la Côte Orientale d'Afrique (Pendant l'Année 1866) (Paris, 1872), 133.
31. Horner, Voyage, 80.
32. See also Victor Giraud, Les Lacs de L'Afrique Equatoriale: Voyage d'Exploration Exécuté de 1883 à 1885 (Paris, 1890), 40; NA, FO 881/6338, Major Leverson to Salisbury, 17/9/1891.
33. Raimbault, Dar es Salaam, 18.
34. Gillmann, "Dar es Salaam," 2.
35. J.E.G. Sutton, "Dar es Salaam: A Sketch of a Hundred Years," Tanzanian Notes and Records 71 (1970), 4.
36. Norman R. Bennett, "The Arab Impact," in B.A. Ogot and J.A. Kieran (eds.), Zamani: A Survey of East African History (Nairobi, 1968), 221.
37. Stephen J. Rockel, Carriers of Culture: Labour on the Road in Nineteenth Century East Africa (Portsmouth, N.H., 2006).
38. Richard Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa (London, 1860), 39; NA, FO 84/1454, Kirk to Earl of Derby, 6/9/1876;
39. Lyndon Harries, ed., Swahili Prose Texts (London, 1965), 180.
40. Oscar Baumann, In Deutsch-Ostafrika Während des Aufslandes (Wien, 1890), 30-31.
41. J. Sturtz and J. Wangemann, Land und Leute in Deutsch Ostafrika: Erinnerungen aus der ersten Zeit des Aufslandes und der Blokade (Berlin, 1890), 32;
42. August Leue, "Bagamoyo," Beiträge zur Kolonialpolitik und Kotonialwirtschafi 2, (1900/1901), 11;
43. Eugen Krenzler, Ein Jahr in Ostafrika (Ulm, 1888), 71.
44. Brown, Precolonial History, 1.
45. Leue, Bagamoyo, 11-12 (original German text, with first verse in Kiswahili);
46. Brown, Bagamoyo, 6-7 (English translation).
47. Leue admits to translating the original Kiswahili liberally. My version is based on Brown's but with some corrections and word changes. E. Werth also recorded a song about Bagamoyo: "Njoo bana njoo/nikuage, nenda Bagamojo//Kwa heri bibi jangu/na kwenda Bagamojo ... " (Come here, mister, come here/I must take leave of you and go to Bagamoyo//Farewell, my woman/I go to Bagamoyo). E. Werth, Das Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Küstenland und die Vorgelagerten Inseln (Berlin, 1915), 273. I have yet to come across songs in praise of other coastal towns.
48. Sturtz and Wangemann, Land und Leute, 32.
49. J. Frederic Elton, Travels and Researches among the Lakes and Mountains of Eastern and Central Africa (London, 1879), 72-76. Elton noted Dar es Salaam's decay only a year after the Sultan's visit.
50. SOAS, MacKinnon Papers, Box 76/File 59, Unknown author to MacKinnon, 14/5/1879.
51. SOAS, MacKinnon Papers, Box 77/File 61, Sultan Bargash bin Saeed to MacKinnon, 3/5/1879.
52. Koponen, Development, 146.
53. Fritz Ferdinand Müller, Deutschland, Zanzibar, Ostafrika: Geschichte einer deutschen Kolonialeroberung, 1884-1890 (Berlin, 1959), 133.
54. DKZ, "Neue Erwerbungen Der Deutsche Ostafrikanischen Gesellschaft," 2/12 (1885), 669-70.
55. Adolpho C. Mascarenhas, "The Port of Dar es Salaam," Tanzanian Notes and Records 71 (1970), 91, 93.
56. Müller, Deutschland, 204, 209.
57. Müller, Deutschland, 218;
58. DKZ (1886), 60.
59. For an excellent and interesting examination of how East African tastes could dictate commerce as far away as Salem and Bombay, see Jeremy Prestholdt, East African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern, 2003)
60. and Jeremy Prestholdt, "On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism," The American Historical Review (2004), accessed 10 Feb. 2006 http://historycooperative.press.uiuc.edu/journals/ahr/109.3/prestholdt.html.
61. Norman R. Bennett, ed., The Zanzibar Letters of Edward D. Ropes, Jr. 1882-1892 (Boston, 1973), 98.
62. Susan M. Martin, Palm Oil and Protest: An Economic History of the Ngwa Region, South-Easiern Nigeria, 1800-1980 (Cambridge, 1988);
63. Robin Law, ed., From Slave Trade to "Legitimate" Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth Century West Africa (Cambridge, 1995);
64. Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa: The Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1997).
65. David L. White, "From Crisis to Community Definition: The Dynamics of Eighteenth-Century Parsi Philanthropy," Modern Asian Studies 25, 2 (1991), 303-20;
66. Lakshmi Subramanian, Indigenous Capital and Imperial Expansion: Bombay, Sural and the West Coast (Delhi, 1996);
67. Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat c. 1700-1750 in Gupta, India and the Indian Ocean World: Trade and Politics (Delhi, 2004).
68. See Glassman, Feasts, 1995, for the most thorough treatment of the causes of this rebellion and the initial stages of its outbreak.
69. G. Richelmann, Meine Erlebnisse in der Wissmann-Truppe, (Magdeburg, 1892), 130.
70. Richelmann, Erlebnisse, 120, 126, 143.
71. Richelmann, Erlebnisse, 138.
72. C.S. Nichols, The Swahili Coast: Politics, Diplomacy and Trade on the East African Littoral, 1798-1856 (London, 1971), 189; email correspondence from Edward A. Alpers, 27/2/2005.
73. Oscar Baumann, Deutsch-Ostafrika Während des Aufstandes (Wien, 1890), 202;
74. Bennett, Arab vs. European, 212.
75. Zanzibar Gazette, August 31, 1892.
76. Graf von Schweinitz, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika in Krieg und Frieden (Berlin, 1894), 14-15;
77. Schweinitz, Deutsch Ost-Afrika, 14-15;
78. There would be some compensation for loss of profit through wharf rents and the storage of goods in government go-downs. See L.W. Hollingsworth, Zanzibar under the Foreign Office, 1890-1913 (London, 1953), 63.
79. Erik Gilbert, Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar, 1860-1970 (Oxford, 2004), 75-77.
80. See Raimbault, L'Evolution, for a detailed analysis of the growth of Dar es Salaam during German occupation, 1890-1914.
81. For a selective few examples: NA, FO 881/6338, Major Leverson to Salisbury, 17/9/1891; Zanzibar Gazette, 9/5/1894;
82. Zanzibar Gazette, 10/2/1897;
83. Bagamoyo became a center of Islamic learning and spirituality, particularly regarding Sufism. See August Nimtz, Islam and Politics in East Africa: The Sufi Order in Tanzania (Minneapolis, 1980).