Uprising of the East African coastal population

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Uprising of the East African coastal population
"Arab uprising"
Northeast coast of what will later become German East Africa (around 1888, at the beginning of the coastal uprising)
Northeast coast of what will later become German East Africa
(around 1888, at the beginning of the coastal uprising)
date about August 1888 to about April 1890
place mainly Zanzibari mainland strip ( Mrima )
Casus Belli Hoisting of the DOAG flag at coastal locations
output German victory
consequences Consolidation of German colonial rule: Reich administration, formation of troops
Parties to the conflict

No flag.svg East African coastal population:

  • Coastal Arabs
  • Shirazi

Flag of the German East Africa Company.svg German-East African Society of the German Empire :
German EmpireThe German Imperium 

  • Naval associations
  • Wissmann troop

Sea blockade supported by: United Kingdom France Italy Portugal
United Kingdom 1801United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 
Third French RepublicThird French Republic 
Italy 1861Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946) 
PortugalPortugal 

Commander
Buschiri bin Salim
Bwana Heri
Karl August Deinhard
Hermann von Wissmann
Troop strength
approx. 600-800
(Bushiri's troops 1889)
about 800
( Wissmann troop 1889)

The uprising of the East African coast population (in German sources also Arab uprising ) in the years 1888 to 1890 a resistance movement against the attempt was German East Africa Company (DOAG), their domination over to Zanzibar belonging coast of present-day Tanzania expand.

The uprising quickly led to the collapse of the DOAG, which sought help from the German Reich and finally ceded its claims to the German state. This led to the establishment of the German East Africa colony .

occasion

Since the end of 1884, Carl Peters had concluded agreements with local rulers on the East African mainland on behalf of the Society for German Colonization, from which the DOAG emerged, thereby establishing colonial claims. On April 28, 1888, the DOAG signed a contract with Sultan Chalifa ibn Said of Zanzibar, according to which the company took over the administration of the Zanzibari mainland and the collection of the coastal tariffs in the name of the Sultan for an annual rent. Company employees took up positions in the port towns. When the treaty was supposed to come into force on August 16, 1888, the uprising broke out and quickly spread from Pangani over the entire coast.

In Pangani, as elsewhere, the trigger was the hoisting of the DOAG flag next to that of the Sultan. In addition, there were intercultural conflicts caused by the appearance of DOAG representative Emil von Zelewski in Pangani. During the Islamic festival of sacrifice , he and his dog entered a mosque in search of the sultan's Liwali (governor) . The flag could only be raised after a division of German marines had landed. On September 3, there was an incident in which Zelewski wanted to forbid the landing of a load of gunpowder. He was then trapped in his own home by an angry crowd. This time the Sultan's army intervened to free the prisoners.

Similar scenes took place in Tanga , where the DOAG personnel were also arrested after trying to take power and then released from custody by German naval troops.

In Bagamoyo, military action was again necessary to enforce the hoisting of the DOAG flag.

At the end of September there were attacks in Kilwa , in which the two German DOAG employees were killed. In Lindi and Mikindani , the DOAG employees fled on boats. Except for the embattled Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam , all DOAG stations were abandoned. In January 1889 the station of the Mission Benedictines of St. Ottilien in Pugu near Dar es Salaam was attacked and destroyed. The event served the Reich government as an occasion to convince a majority of the Reichstag to intervene in favor of the DOAG.

Intervention by the Reich government

The painter Rudolf Hellgrewe portrayed a German Sudanese company at the time of the uprising.

The DOAG was not able to counter the insurgency movement. The last two stations could only be held with the help of German marines. Thereupon there was an official request of the DOAG to the Reich government.

This dispatched the African-experienced officer Hermann von Wissmann as Reich Commissioner to East Africa, who set up a force made up of German officers and African mercenaries (" Wissmann troop "), with which he put down the insurrectionary movement. Several thousand people died - in addition to a few German soldiers, a majority of African men, women and children.

The German cruiser SMS Schwalbe pursued a dhow on the East African coast in 1889 (contemporary illustration around 1900).

The German Empire also set up a sea ​​blockade off the East African coast together with Great Britain . For this purpose, a German cruiser group gathered in the sea area. Karl August Deinhard and Edmund Robert Fremantle were in command of the international blockade squadron . The blockade, which France, Italy and Portugal also supported, was officially aimed at combating the slave trade. Ultimately, the attempt to control trade served but to assert colonial interests.

The medium-term consequence of the intervention was that the Reich took over the DOAG's claims to power by contract of November 20, 1890, which was then limited to a role as operator of plantations and trading companies.

Leader of the uprising

The leadership of the actual uprising, which spread in September, lay in the north with Abushiri ibn Salim al-Harthi , whom the Germans called "Buschiri". He was a plantation owner near Pangani and gathered gunmen around him. He had given up his loyalty to the Sultan because he saw the cession of the Zanzibari territory to the DOAG as treason.

Buschiri delivered an extensive bush war to the militarily superior Germans until he was captured and executed in December 1889. He was joined further south by the Sultan Bwana Heri (in German sources also: Bana Heri, Banaheri) from Saadani . He, too, resisted the Germans with the help of tribes from the hinterland until April 1890. Through the mediation of the government of Zanzibar, he finally surrendered to Wissmann and was able to return to Saadani.

Designation as "Arab Uprising"

In contemporary German sources - see the article in the Colonial Lexicon - the survey is often referred to as the "Arab uprising", which was initiated by the local Arab slave traders who feared that the Germans would enforce the ban on the slave trade.

This designation fails to recognize the cultural peculiarities of the East African coast. The leading strata of the long-established Shirazi families spoke Swahili , even though many of their relatives were proficient in Arabic through Islam, trade trips, Hajj and marriage relationships to Oman . These Shirazi dealt with long-distance trade by means of carrier caravans inland ( Islamic slave trade in Africa ), which delivered ivory and slaves to the coast, but they were also landowners who grew sugar cane for export. In contemporary German reports, no distinction is often made between Shirazi and Arabs.

In addition to them, Arab landowners from Omani families had also settled in Zanzibar and started their plantation business here. In Kilwa, slave traders also played an essential role in the uprising movement. The majority of those involved in the uprising, however, consisted of the African population of the coast and the hinterland. Apparently, especially at the beginning of the uprising, they were incited by the Shirazi and Arabs, but they also had their own motives for defending themselves against colonial rule, and the more of them were killed in the uprisings, the more the rejection rose against the colonial troops and increased the motivation to continue the uprising.

Indeed, economic considerations did play a role, according to a report by the African explorer Meyer about a conversation with Abushiri. But what Meyer's fellow traveler Baumann said from the conversation with Abushiri was more decisive for the majority of the population: The German representatives of the DOAG “behaved ... completely inconsiderate, tore down flags and hoisted others, gave us orders and regulations, and behaved as if they were masters of the land and we were all their slaves. We watched the thing for a while, then we just chased the whites away as one chases away cocky boys. "

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rochus Schmidt: Germany's colonies . Vol. 1, Berlin: Verlag des Verein der Buchfreunde Schall & Grund, 1898, p. 71.
  2. ↑ Bernd G. Längin : The German colonies . Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn: Mittler, 2005, ISBN 3-8132-0854-0 , p. 179.
  3. ↑ Treaty with the Sultan of Usagara of December 4, 1884 and letter of protection for German East Africa of February 27, 1885
  4. ↑ Barbara Köfler and Walter Sauer: Failure in Usambara. The Meyer-Baumann expedition in East Africa 1888. Wiener Geschichtsblätter, 53, 1, 1998 at notes 39 and 40 ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sadocc.at
  5. ^ Richard Hölzl: Missionaries as Victims of Muslim Violence? On the construction, dissemination and effect of a narrative pattern during the colonial war on the East African coast, 1888/1889 . In: Eveline Bouwers (ed.): Faith struggles: Catholics and violence in the 19th century . Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-525-10158-2 , pp. 242-267 .
  6. ↑ Thomas Morlang: A slap in the water , time online.
  7. ↑ Willi A. Boelcke: This is how the sea came to us - The Prussian-German Navy in Übersee 1822 to 1914. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-550-07951-6 , p. 202.
  8. ↑ Thomas Morlang: Sea blockade - Against slavery, in: Y Das Magazin der Bundeswehr. (Archive). ( Memento of the original from May 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.y-punkt.de
  9. ^ Keyword Arab uprising . In: Deutsches Koloniallexikon , Volume I, p. 68 ff., 1920 (from a colonialist perspective)
  10. ↑ Compare the statement by Wissmann in a letter of March 4, 1892 about his review of his role in the fight against the local resistance ".. to show that it is not about the interception of a robber captain, but about a fight against the whole population of a wide area "(p. 185, Colonial Yearbook ed. Gustav Meinecke, 1892, Berlin 1893)
  11. ↑ See the report on the history of the uprising in East Africa. Freiburg newspaper of January 12, 1889 (daily edition), 3rd page
  12. ↑ Reproduction by Barbara Köfler and Walter Sauer: Failure in Usambara. The Meyer-Baumann expedition in East Africa 1888. Wiener Geschichtsblätter, 53, 1, 1998 at note 96 ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sadocc.at

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