Buhaya
Buhaya is the historical empire of the Haya ethnic group in northwestern Tanzania on a highland on the west bank of Lake Victoria , which is geographically between and historically in the shadow of the East African kingdoms of Burundi and Rwanda in the south and Buganda in the north. The settlement area of the Haya extends over the districts of Bukoba , Muleba and Karagwe in the administrative district of Kagera .
The basis for a relatively highly developed agricultural economy was bananas as a permanent culture and a hierarchically structured social system with a ruler ( Omukama , plural Bakama ) at the head of individual small empires.
geography
In terms of landscape and culture, the area is more closely linked to Rwanda and southern Uganda ; the high rainfall is an exception for Tanzania. Buhaya was bounded in the north by the Kagera , in the west by the highlands of Karagwe or the upper reaches of the Kagera (depending on whether Karagwe is included in Buhaya or not), in the south by the border with the Biharamulo district and in the east by Lake Victoria.
Several north-south trenches and clods form a zonal structure. The densely populated heartland of Buhaya, which is the rainiest with 1400–2000 mm of annual precipitation, includes the approximately 25 km wide chains of coastal hills and the offshore islands. It is the traditional growing area for bananas, cereals, cassava and coffee. The name “Buhaya” originally only applied to this narrow coastal strip and was only later transferred to the larger area. In the rain shadow of the hills to the west, a sparsely populated central depression follows, which formerly formed a buffer zone between Buhaya and the dry highlands of Karagwe, which are more suitable for cattle pastures. The subsequent fertile depression along the Kagera is one of the earliest settlement areas.
Myth and (pre-) history
There is more agreement about the fact that arable Bantu settled from the middle of the first millennium than about the dating of the possibly pre-Christian use of iron in the Buhaya area, which is discussed by archaeologists. Iron processing, which is associated with the expanding Bantu population, went down from history in a mythology that is still alive today. The beating of the drum ( Nyambatama ), which accompanied the enthronement of the Buhaya kings, symbolized the beating of the hammer on the anvil of the early iron smelters. Drum, spear, and chairs were the insignia of royal power. The iron objects used in the cult and the king's spear were actually the work of Ndahura , the founder of the Bachwezi empire . This people ruled Kitara , the great empire of demigods that had preceded the Buhaya and the other states in the inter-sea region. Oral tradition has it that they were born human, but they became immortal and simply disappeared after their time.
Historically, it was a loosely organized Bantu empire from around 1100–1600, stretching in the south to Burundi and in the west to the Congo . According to tradition, there was a center of power, which is suspected on the basis of excavations in southern Uganda at the middle reaches of the Katonga River (possibly Bigo Bya Mugenyi ). Their food was based on growing grain and keeping goats; in individual clan groups they spread over sparsely populated areas. The increasing use of iron implements in agriculture and hunting helped the Bachwezi to achieve economic dominance and ritual power at the same time. During this period, the ankoler cattle and coffee growing are also assumed to spread.
The mythical Batembuzi lived even further before . As the first humans on earth, they were immortal and disappeared into the underworld. The creator is Ruhanga , successor Nkya , his son Isaza , the last ruler of the Batembuzi. From his connection with Nyamate , the daughter of Nyamyonga , the king of the underworld, the son Isimbura emerged. His son is the first mentioned Bachwezi Ndahura . Historical statements about the lifetime of Ndahura (14th century?), The size of individual dwarf states (population a few thousand) and reasons for the fall of the empire (great drought?) Are speculation.
In the 1970s, Peter Schmidt used the oral tradition of the Buhaya in a field research in the area to identify archaeological sites. The cause of the downfall of the Bachwezi dynasty in the 16th century is assumed to be too great an expansion of the empire, which was no longer able to control possible revolts. The process of decay was only accelerated by the invasion of Luo . These Nilotic shepherds from what is now South Sudan came to the Inter- Seas region in several waves of immigration from the 15th century, which subsequently led to the establishment of several large hierarchically structured empires. First founded in Bunyoro the Babiito dynasty.
Economic development
The pre-colonial Buhaya was derogatory to contrast its importance with an empire like Buganda, as "the fishing villages on the coast". Together with the Kingdom of Buganda, however, Buhaya has its economic basis in the cultivation of bananas , which, as a permanent culture, led to sedentariness and soon to private property on land. It is unclear when banana cultivation began. Estimates range between the 6th and 13th centuries for the area.
Different conclusions are drawn about what private land ownership meant for clan society : clan chiefs who had previously organized the distribution of the free land have either been weakened by private households that own land, or feudalism is worked out for Buhaya, in which a central ruler weakened the clan chiefs . With the latter thesis, the Omukama began to distribute large banana groves ( Nyarubanja ) to favorites who thus became landlords ( Abatwazi ) who employed landless workers ( Abatwarwa ). These feudal structures introduced by the king would have softened the traditional dependencies within the clans. Legally, the Bakama had the power of disposal over the whole land, in practice it was managed as a family property. In any case, a ruling class developed in this banana economy as well as in the areas with predominant cattle breeding (including the dry mountainous region of Karagwe), where the dominant class ( Hima , Tutsi ) defined itself by owning cattle.
Opposite the south ( Sukuma land) operated shifting cultivation with extensive fallow periods allowed the banana culture has a higher population density, as can also be used all year for year-round harvest workers, and was the number of workers as the most important, economic development limiting factor. As evidence of pre-colonial surplus production, beer celebrations are cited, for which large quantities of pombe (banana beer) were required. Around a third of all bananas (lowest estimate) were made into pombe. Beans and coffee were planted between the banana trees, while sweet potatoes , sorghum and peanuts grew outside .
In pre-colonial times, coffee was not prepared as a drink in Buhaya; the whole fruit was boiled in water, dried and eaten as a delicacy or used for certain ceremonies. In addition, the cultivation was associated with taboos. Coffee was a royal privilege. Each man was only allowed one coffee tree, with whose fate he felt connected, which he therefore cared for and allowed to grow tall.
Cultivation methods
As pollen analyzes show, the evergreen rainforest began to be cut down in pre-Christian times. The fact that iron tools were used for this is seen as further evidence of an early Iron Age, along with archaeological findings. Deforestation led to soil deterioration, the secondary vegetation suffered from grazing, so the better technical equipment initially led to a deterioration in resources. A suitable agricultural system had to be developed.
A village looked like a single large banana grove with houses hidden in between, surrounded and clearly separated from extensively cultivated grassland. In the grasslands the cultivation of peanuts or Bambara peanuts took place alternately with fallow land for several years. The loamy soils of the banana groves received nutrients from dung from cattle grazing on the grasslands and from the mulch of plant remains. In addition, grass brought in from outside was distributed.
trade
Little is known of regional trade. Salt was probably obtained from the salt lakes of Katwe on Lake Edward ( Acholi area ) and exchanged for bark and cowries . There were larger salt deposits further south in the area around Tabora . When ivory traders came to Lake Victoria from the middle of the 19th century , they brought salt from Tabora with them. On their way there was also Buzinza (small state south of Buhaya), from where the traders brought hoe leaves and spearheads. Otherwise the iron equipment came from the ore stores in Bunyoro . Buhaya had little to contribute to the ivory trade. Only a little coffee went to long-distance trading, but Haya was active as a porter and reseller.
The slave trade around Lake Victoria was generally low. The monopoly lay with the Ganda , who sold the prisoners abducted during occasional raids to traders. It was mostly women who were abducted to other states in the intermediate seas.
society
The colonial Hamite theory was of little use in explaining the existing forms of society, but it contributed (as can be seen in Rwanda) to the intensification of the differences between the local farmers and the immigrant pastoral elite. Hierarchical structures can usually only be explained by the societies concerned themselves with the immigration of a group. It is characteristic of traditional kings that they justify their claim to power with an origin from outside. For Buhaya arose from the immigration after the 15th / 16th. Century the new Hinda dynasty, and the Bachwezi, who were glorified by the previously resident population as demigods or spirits, can be imagined as religious opposition to the new rulers. If the Bachwezi spirits are specifically associated with the old blacksmiths, control over them becomes the same power factor as the Hima’s power of disposal over cattle. The founder of the Hinda dynasty was Ruhinda , whether historical or not, he was in any case a shepherd from the north.
In the centuries before the beginning of the colonial era, the population was assumed to be fairly constant. Theories that describe sawtooth-shaped population developments with periodic famines are considered to be refuted. The worst were epidemics such as rinderpest , which is transmitted by tsetse flies and which, for example, almost completely destroyed entire livestock in the 1880s. The disease could never be properly controlled, but was kept in an ecologically unstable equilibrium to humans through various measures such as bush fires, deforestation of affected areas and smoking of cattle. Smaller wars with the neighbors (“cattle theft”) have not had a significant impact.
The Haya society was divided into over a hundred patrilineal clans, which were divided into ranks. The leading clans derived their origin directly from Ruhinda, who should have come from Bunyoro. Other top-tier clan chiefs wanted to descend from the Buzinza in the south or the Bito in the north. One level below were the Hima clans as cattle breeders from the north ( Nfuro ). Originally farming clans followed, who had risen through merit over the generations. The majority of the arable farmers belonged to the clans of the Iru (originally "slave"). Various interrelationships and opportunities for advancement made the system partially permeable.
Due to this strong structure, society is less characterized by the contrast between cattle ranchers and farmers, but the title Omukama for the king, which is translated as “milk drinker”, “milker” or “milk giver”, is an indication of the primacy of the former shepherd nomads.
German colonial times
The German colonial rule began in 1890. In July Buhaya put Germany and the UK established its territorial claims. Emin Pasha , who was supposed to secure Lake Victoria with his expedition , marched further north from Karagwe into what was already British territory, without bothering to draw any borders . On the way there, he founded the German station Bukoba in October 1890 on the coast in the Kyamutwara area . At the time, the Haya area consisted of eight dwarf states : Kyamutwara, Bugabo, Kiziba, Missenyi, Karagwe, Ihangiro, Kianja and Bukara , which were mutually antagonistic. The Germans gained control by playing off the Bakama of the individual areas with their arguments against each other. It made some of the Bakama more influential than others. Especially Kahigi, the Omukama of Kianja, excelled through intrigues, caused the deposition and flight of two rivals and the division of the opposing Bukara. Here, conversely, the Germans were played out, Kahigi was extremely successful politically and later also economically.
After minor uprisings, the Germans had established largely stable indirect rule by 1895 , and the Bakama were known as "sultans". In 1906, the Bukoba military station was converted into the Bukoba Residency , four Bakama, including Kahigi, were promoted to "upper sultans". In 1898 there were eleven Europeans in Buhaya, five of them in the county office and six missionaries. The district had 330,000 inhabitants. Since Buhaya was never declared a German settler area, major conflicts with the local economy, such as in the Kilimanjaro region, could be avoided.
The population had to pay taxes to the Bakama, who had to meet the demands of the colonial administration. The supplied cowries and tusks were initially sufficient to operate the station, and workers were also called in to build it. In 1898 a general "hut tax" was introduced, which was supposed to force the population to work in the fields for the market. Since the Haya did not have enough money - rupees were now widespread, the tax was often performed as a labor service. In 1905 the hut tax was replaced by a " poll tax " which was payable in cash and which was increased in 1912 to three rupees per adult man per year. The taxes for the Omukama (about one rupee) had to be paid independently. In total, the taxes corresponded to about a month of wage labor, the market value of 7 to 13 kg of coffee or a porter service to Rwanda (6 rupees each way).
Economy in the German Colonial Era
The main objective was to introduce production for the market. Changes in the agricultural economy resulted from the compulsion to cultivate certain foods, first for the German administration and only later for export. The cultivation of wheat and potatoes was enforced for self-sufficiency, tree planting was supposed to serve as a supply of timber. Plantation economy arose to some extent, but was not planned.
Coffee turned out to be the most important export product , but not until 1905, after the completion of the British Uganda Railway created an economic transport link. From 1905 coffee exports in the Bukoba district grew from around 235 tons to a maximum of 648 tons in 1912. There were some larger coffee plantations by Europeans, some smaller ones with Indian or Arab owners, but most of the coffee came from the permanent cultures of the locals who also became traders in the new market economy. The German concept was called coffee cultivation as "folk culture". Bakama took tribute from growing coffee or appropriated land for their own plantations.
From 1905 onwards, peanuts, hides and skins, some of which came from Rwanda and Burundi, ivory from the Congo and beeswax, which was unknown in the area before the colonial era, were also exported. Experiments with growing cotton were unsuccessful.
A devastating rinderpest had destroyed over 90 percent of the cattle in East and Southeast Africa in the ten years up to 1896, and around 1890 it had reached Lake Victoria. There was famine. Although Buhaya suffered similarly high losses, the effects were less here because of the greater importance of agriculture. Another rinderpest epidemic with a pathogen that also affects humans caused around 300,000 deaths in Buganda from 1901 to 1905 and 500,000 in the Congo. The Buhaya got away with a few thousand sick people, as they were probably better able to protect themselves from animal transmission.
Proselytizing
In Buganda in the 1880s there was ongoing fighting between King Mwanga and the three other parties, Catholics ( White Fathers ), Anglicans and Muslims. In 1889 both Christian churches came to power as a union for a short time. From 1890 they fell out, and in 1892 a war broke out between them for power. The Catholics, headed by Bishop Hirth, had to flee and tried first in Bunyoro and, after being expelled from there by the British, to temporarily settle in Buhaya. In order to avoid religious conflicts here, the German colonial administration imposed a preventive mission monopoly in favor of the Catholics. In return, they were initially only rejected by the Bakama. Disappointed, Bishop Hirth traveled to Europe on a vacation before returning to Tanzania in 1895. Since he was also badly received in Mwanza , he finally settled in Rwanda. Mission stations could often only be founded in the presence of military threats.
Basically, the interests of the mission and the administration were quite different. The district administration relied on good cooperation with the Bakama, while the missionaries sought to weaken their reputation for expanding their own power. The missionary work via schools was also not very successful at first, as the subjects reading and religion offered were not very attractive. As they later came into competition with state schools, they expanded their curriculum.
The Catholics received a different competition in 1907, when the Bethel Mission (official name only since 1920) wanted to relocate its main activity from Usambara to Rwanda, where Bishop Hirth could do missionary work alone up to that time. The Bethel Mission needed a base in Bukoba to supply the new stations in Rwanda. Initially only local missionaries who had come from Uganda were active. From 1910 the colonial administration allowed a German missionary to be sent; when British troops marched in after the First World War there in 1916, the German missionaries were expelled.
Until independence
In 1920 Buhaya became part of the British Mandate Tanganyika . After independence in 1961, the small states were dissolved as a prerequisite for the socialist transformation of the country.
Individual evidence
- ↑ United Republic of Tanzania. Kagera region. Official website with climate and other data
- ^ Peter Schmidt: Historical Archeology. A Structural Approach in an African Culture. Westport, Connecticut 1978, p. 12
- ^ Peter Schmidt: Archaeological views on a history of landscape change in East Africa. The Journal of African History, October 1, 1997. Beginning of the article (See also the chapter on cultivation methods below.)
- ^ Peter Robertshaw: Seeking and keeping power in Bunyoro-Kitara, Uganda. In: Susan Keech McIntosh (Ed.): Beyond Ciefdoms. Pathways to Complexity in Africa. Cambridge University Press, New York 1999, chap. 10, pp. 124-135. Robertshaw reports on the debate as to whether the Batembuzi / Bachwezi were ruled by gods or rulers of an empire. Mittelweg are loose clan groups. Collection of quotations : Peter Robertshaw: "Two Tons of Excavated Potsherds." Reflections on State Formation in Western Uganda. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 180 kB)
- ↑ Peter Schmidt: Historical Archeology : Criticism was later exercised with the question of whether a memory tradition can have been preserved since the Iron Age. Schmidt's contribution to understanding the Bachwezi and the history of the Great Lakes is widely recognized.
- ↑ Satoshi Maruo: Differentiation of Subsistence Farming Patterns among the Haya Banana Growers in North Western Tanzania. African Study Monographs, 23 (4) 2002, pp 147-175. Article as pdf
- ↑ Buluda Itandala: Feudalism in East Africa. Utafiti Vol VIII No.2, University of Dar es Salaam 1986. Online (PDF file; 1.01 MB)
- ↑ Markus Boller. Coffee, children, colonialism. Economic and population development in Buhaya (Tanzania) during the German colonial period. Münster, Hamburg 1994. - The applicability of the term feudalism is discussed on p. 34 ff. On land law p. 74 f.
- ↑ Boller 1994, pp. 63, 71; he follows Schmidt 1978, p. 36f
- ^ Calculated by Boller 1994, p. 161
- ↑ Gudrun Honke u. a .: When the whites came. Rwanda and the Germans 1885–1919. Wuppertal 1990
Web links
- Rulers.org: Tanzania Traditional Politics. Ruler list