History of Tanzania

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Location of Tanzania

The history of Tanzania begins with the merger of the two states Tanganyika and Zanzibar , from which today's Tanzania emerged in 1964.

Tanganyika was a British mandate from the League of Nations and then the United Nations (UN) from 1919 to 1961 . Until 1918 it was part of the German East Africa colony .

Zanzibar was an East African sultanate under a British protectorate , which shrunk to the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba during the colonial era . Immediately after independence, it experienced the overthrow of the monarchy in a revolution in 1963 , which was immediately followed by unification with Tanganyika.

Early history

The famous Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanganyika yielded numerous prehistoric finds, with fossil relics of mankind's earliest ancestors. The discoveries suggest that East Africa may have been the " cradle of mankind ".

Little is known about the history of inner Tanganyika in the early days. It is believed that the area was originally inhabited by ethnic groups who used a click language similar to that of the South African Khoisan . In the middle of the 1st millennium, arable Bantu immigrated, and in the middle of the 2nd millennium, migrating pastoralists of the Nilots reached the area. The long history of immigration cannot be summed up in years. Both ethnic groups partly occupied their own regions, but in rainier areas they overlapped and formed early state- like clan societies . The latter were economically more successful due to the combination of agriculture and cattle breeding (initially goats, from around the 14th century ankle cattle were added).

The coastal area probably had trade contacts with the Mediterranean as early as the first Christian centuries. The regular monsoon winds made it easier to travel with sailing ships along the coast, with stays of several months until the wind direction changed seasons. Place names such as Rhapta are known from an ancient seafaring manual , which is suspected to be in the space between Tanga and the Rufiji Delta.

Later, possibly as early as the 8th century, traders from Arabia and Persia settled on the coast. In their settlements, the mixing of Islamic merchants and seafarers with the local population gave rise to the Swahili culture . Highly developed cities and trading centers grew along the coast. In the Tanzanian area, among them, in addition to Zanzibar, is Kilwa in particular .

The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama explored the east coast of Africa in 1498 on his journey to India. The Portuguese government claimed power over the entire coast until 1506. However, this claim only existed on paper because Portugal only used its bases such as Mombasa and Zanzibar as intermediate stations for the Indian fleets on the way between Ilha de Moçambique and Goa . The Portuguese could only station a few soldiers and did not colonize this area. Portugal could no longer oppose the expansion of Oman at the end of the 17th century, and after the fall of the Fort Jesus fortress in 1698, the Omani Arabs also expelled the Portuguese from Zanzibar and achieved loose supremacy over the coastal cities in which they established their Welsh .

In the 19th century there was an economic upswing in Zanzibar through a plantation economy, in which the cultivation of the newly introduced profitable cloves in particular rose sharply. The immigration of Omani Arabs increased. The Omani ruler Sultan Sayyid Said (1804-56) increased his presence on the Swahili Coast and prevailed against the local rulers of Mombasa. In 1840 Sayyid Said even avoided the uncertainty in Oman for 11 years to Zanzibar, which combined peace with high income from customs and its own plantations.

In the Great Lakes area west of Lake Victoria existed (at least according to tradition) until 15/16. Century the probably only loosely connected empire of the Bachwezi . Through immigration of pastoral peoples from the north, hierarchically structured societies developed, which, as the Hinda dynasty, formed the ruling class in several larger and smaller kingdoms. Rwanda , Burundi and Buganda are some of the great empires that trace their origins back to legendary founder Ruhinda . The smaller kingdoms that were partly controlled and occasionally invaded by Buganda include Buhaya (with Karagwe ) in northwest Tanzania and Buzinza to the south . The Bukerebe owned a densely populated island nation .

Most of the inner regions were largely unknown to Europeans. European exploration began in the mid-19th century. Two German missionaries reached Kilimanjaro in the 1840s . The British explorers Richard Burton and John Speke reached Lake Tanganyika in 1857 . The Scottish missionary and researcher David Livingstone settled on his last mission in Ujiji , where he was "found" by the US journalist Henry Morton Stanley hired by the New York Herald .

colonialism

From around 1830, Oman's interest in the East African Swahili cities, which were under his nominal sovereignty, increased. With the move of Sultan Seyyid Said to Zanzibar, the influence of his government on the coastal cities also intensified.

Germany's colonial interests were established in 1884 by Carl Peters , who wanted to build a private colonial empire in the name of his colonial society for the Society for German Colonization (later: German-East African Society ) through numerous contracts with tribal chiefs . Despite reluctance, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's government felt compelled to issue the society with a letter of protection from the German Empire and to secure its claim against the Sultan of Zanzibar by means of a military demonstration of German warships .

The rule of colonial society collapsed shortly afterwards in the uprising of the East African coastal population of 1888, and the imperial government intervened directly militarily.

In 1886 and 1890, Anglo-German treaties were signed that regulated the British and German spheres of influence in East Africa and along the coast that had previously been ruled by the Sultan of Zanzibar. In 1891 the German government officially took over direct administration of the territory of the German-East African Society and appointed a governor with headquarters in Dar es Salaam .

While the German colonial administration designed the finances, agriculture, railways and general infrastructure in their favor, the European appropriation aroused the resistance of the Africans. Between 1891 and 1894 the Schutztruppe suppressed the resistance of the Hehe under their chief Mkwawa to German expansion. Mkwawa inflicted a first defeat on the colonial army, then after a period of guerrilla warfare, was ambushed himself and committed suicide in 1898.

The resistance reached its peak in the Maji Maji uprising from 1905 to 1907 . The uprising, which temporarily united numerous southern tribes, only ended after around 120,000 Africans died in battle or of starvation. In Tanzania, it is often considered the first expression of the beginning of nationalism . Research showed that traditional hostilities played a large role in the insurrection.

During the First World War , a first attempt at invasion by Great Britain was thwarted by the protection force under Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in the Battle of Tanga . The allied offensive since 1916 was only able to counteract guerrilla tactics during their retreat, but in 1917 they were pushed to Mozambique . The German colonial era came to an end during the war, when British and Belgian troops occupied the country. Combat operations, looting and the devastation of the country by the warring parties resulted in great casualties among the civilian population.

The formerly German territory was divided up among the winners. Belgium got Rwanda and Burundi ; Portugal the Kionga Triangle ; the rest of the area came as " Tanganyika Territory " under a League of Nations mandate to Great Britain, with the long-term mandate to prepare Tanganyika for independence. During the Nazi era , German administrations and associations pursued plans to restore German East Africa as part of a Central African colonial empire. However, competing goals of the Nazi leadership and the outcome of the war thwarted these plans.

After the Second World War , Tanganyika became a UN mandate under British rule. From 1947 it was the site of the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme , the largest agribusiness project in colonial history. Some infrastructure measures were carried out and the city of Mtwara was founded. The project failed due to serious planning deficiencies and was finally ended in January 1951. In the following years Tanganyika gradually moved towards self-government and independence.

independence

Julius Nyerere , chairman of the TANU and until 1990 also the CCM, first prime minister of the independent Tanganyika and until 1985 president of Tanzania (photo from 1976)

1954 the teacher Julius Nyerere organized a political party, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). In May 1961 Tanganyika gained autonomy and Nyerere became Prime Minister under a new constitution. Full independence was achieved on December 9, 1961. Nyerere was elected president when Tanganyika became a republic in the Commonwealth .

Zanzibar

The old Arab-Persian trading center of Zanzibar with the main island of Unguja came under Portuguese rule in the 16th and early 17th centuries, but was recaptured by the Arabs from Oman in the early 18th century. The high point of Arab rule was the time under Sultan Seyyid Said , who encouraged the cultivation of cloves in plantations under slave labor.

The Arabs set up their own garrisons in Zanzibar City , Pemba and Kilwa and continued the lucrative slave and ivory trade. By 1840, Said had moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar and established an Arab government. The trade increasingly passed to Indian traders whom Said had encouraged to settle on Unguja.

The spices of Zanzibar attracted ships from a great distance, such as the USA , which established a consulate on the island in 1837. Britain's early interest in Zanzibar was sparked by trade and the fight against the slave trade. In 1822 the British signed the first of a series of treaties with Sultan Said to stop this trade, but it wasn't until 1876 that the sale of the slaves was finally banned.

The Anglo-German Treaty of 1890 made Zanzibar a British protectorate , and the Caprivi Strip in what is now Namibia became a German protectorate. British rule exercised by the Sultan remained largely unchanged from the end of the 19th century until the period after the Second World War.

On December 10, 1963, Zanzibar regained its independence as a constitutional monarchy , which, however, was marked from the outset by deep internal conflicts. These erupted on January 12, 1964 in the Zanzibari revolution. The Sultan and the newly elected government were overthrown and thousands of citizens of Arab and Indian descent were killed. The "People's Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba" was proclaimed under President Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume . Karume soon entered into negotiations with Prime Minister Nyerere von Tanganyika about a merger of the two countries.

The United Republic of Tanzania

On April 26, 1964, Zanzibar and Tanganyika initially merged under the name United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar . The republic was then renamed the United Republic of Tanzania about six months later on November 1, 1964 . The syllables "Tan" and "San" from the two country names with the ending of the historical name " Azania " were combined to form the new name "Tanzania" and on October 29, 1964 the United Republic of Tanzania was proclaimed. Under the political union with Tanganyika in April 1964, the Zanzibar government retained considerable local autonomy. In 1967 the Arusha Declaration was adopted, which determined the politics of the next decades. The main features were ujamaa , a form of “African socialism ”, and self-reliance .

In order to establish a single ruling party in both parts of the Union, Nyerere united the TANU on February 5, 1977 with the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), the ruling party in Zanzibar , to form the CCM ( Chama Cha Mapinduzi - CCM Revolutionary Party). The merger was reinforced by the principles formulated in the 1982 Union Constitution, which were reaffirmed in the 1984 Constitution.

In 1985 Nyerere handed power to Ali Hassan Mwinyi from Zanzibar, but remained chairman of the CCM until 1990.

The severe economic crisis from the late 1970s made reforms inevitable. In 1986 agreements were made with the International Monetary Fund IMF and the World Bank . The state-controlled economy was gradually transformed into a liberal market economy . Market access was made easier for foreign investors and the school system was privatized.

One-party government ended in 1995 with the first parliamentary elections, which Benjamin Mkapa won with a large majority; he was sworn in on November 23, 1995. In 2005 Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete , a Muslim, was elected 4th President of the United Republic of Tanzania. Since 2015, John Magufuli has been the fifth president in office.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : History of Tanzania  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. on the motifs Mohamed Reda Bhacker, Trade and empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: roots of British domination; London 1994, ISBN 0-415-07997-7 , page 99ff
  2. ↑ James R. Brennan: Taifa. Making Race and Nation in Urban Tanzania. Athens 2012, p. 23 .
  3. ^ Kurt Hirschler: Tanzania: Conflict in the Land of Consensus. The overview. Journal for Ecumenical Encounters and International Cooperation, Issue 1, 2004, p. 111.