Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0363/03636.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 43KB | 666 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03636}
$Pretitle{262}
$Title{Tanzania
Chapter 1C.   Social and Political Consequences of Trade}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Irving Kaplan}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{german
trade
africans
british
germans
area
slave
slaves
power
africa}
$Date{1978}
$Log{}
Country:     Tanzania
Book:        Tanzania, A Country Study
Author:      Irving Kaplan
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1978

Chapter 1C.   Social and Political Consequences of Trade

     In the first half or more of the nineteenth century, slave trading
dominated the activity on the southern route, but the chief interest of the
traders on the northern and central routes lay in ivory. Traders using the
central route in search of slaves tended to go as far as the Congo for them,
and the slaves they brought back via Tabora were often retained locally to
till the land that Arabs, Swahili, and many Nymawezi were too specialized and
busy to do.

     Kilwa had become an important slave exporting town in the latter half of
the eighteenth century in response to European, particularly French, demand
for slaves. In 1822 the Moresby Treaty, to which European powers and the
Sultan of Zanzibar were signatories, made the sale of slaves to Christian
powers illegal. The Europeans continued to buy slaves, however, until the
British developed a more adequate policing system later in the nineteenth
century. In any case the development of clove plantations on Zanzibar and the
existence of slave markets in the Middle East led to a sustained demand for
slaves.

     The effects of the slave trade varied from one region to another. In the
sparsely populated southeast inhabited by politically fragmented matrilineal
communities the impact was severe. The Yao, themselves matrilineal and not
centrally organized, had adapted early to commercial activity and led by
entrepreneurial raiders took slaves from the other peoples of the area such as
the Makua and the Makonde. Some of the peoples of southern and southwestern
Tanzania such as the Nyiha and Fipa were also dislocated by the slave trade to
some extent. In the far Northeast, the Pare and the Chaga were touched by the
slave trade to some extent especially after the middle of the nineteenth
century. In the case of the Chaga it was not so much that they were directly
raided as that interchiefdom warfare generated the taking of captives, and the
opportunity to sell them provided an additional reason for raiding. The Chaga
did not always export their captives but relocated them in such a way that
they became dependents and supporters of the chief who had taken them.

     Among the Nyamwezi, the Gogo, and others the slave trade led to the
displacement of elements in the population and to economic gain for those
involved. These groups did not so much export slaves as turn them into
cultivators. Among the peoples of northeastern and central Tanzania, the slave
(and other) trade led to the development of a system of stratification more
complex than the comparatively simple one in which the major difference lay
between the chiefly family or lineage on the one hand and commoners on the
other.

     In some parts of Tanzania slave raiding and warfare led to a change of
settlement patterns: the Nyiha and Fipa in the south and southwest, for
example, built fortified towns encircled by trenches, and the Nyamwezi and
others in the northcentral Tanzania concentrated their populations in towns in
response to interchiefdom warfare. Much later, during the colonial period,
these northcentral peoples were to revert to the dispersed settlement patterns
that had characterized them earlier.

     There were other effects of nineteenth century trade. In some places the
rectangular huts of the coast came to be built in place of or in addition to
the circular huts indigenous to most of Tanzania. Some groups, or at least
their more powerful and wealthier segments, came to wear cloth instead of
skins. The movement of peoples, particularly traders such as the Nyamwezi, led
to the development of the institution of the joking relationship (Swahili,
utani) in which members of one ethnic group passing through the territory of
another engaged in a kind of formal joking with them-a kind of substitute for
overt conflict. In the hinterland of the northeast a form of spirit possession
that had hitherto been limited to the coastal peoples spread to the Pare and
the Shambaa.

     The one element-Islam-that might have been expected to spread as a
consequence of the development of the trade routes had no significant impact
until after the establishment of European rule late in the nineteenth and
early in the twentieth century. The Arabs made no great effort to prosyletize,
in part because the conversion of Africans to Islam would have closed off a
source of slaves, in part because the Arabs and Swahili in the interior were
primarily traders. Moreover, except for a few sects, none of them then present
in East Africa, Islam does not emphasize missionary activity.

     Although chiefs often adapted to the slave and ivory trade in such a way
as to shore up their traditional status with the wealth and power acquired
through the trade, the nature of chieftainship changed. The religious base for
political power (and in some cases the primarily ritual character of the
chiefly role) gave way to military power or to wealth as bases for political
power. Military power and wealth were frequently associated, as when military
leaders were able to acquire and sell slaves and ivory, which in turn brought
them guns and supporters. Sometimes, however, traders were able to become
wealthy largely because of their entrepreneurial acumen and were therefore
able to acquire followers.

     Men who acquired wealth and guns were often members of chiefly families,
and competition for a chieftainship thus had an intradynastic character. At
times, however, commoners were among the successful entrepreneurs and were
prepared to challenge the chiefly family.

     In some cases competition for political power generated by economic
developments contributed to the dismemberment of large entities when neither
competitor was able to achieve complete victory, and the conflict permitted
hitherto subject peoples to break away from the control of the dominant
dynasty. In other cases the development of new bases for gaining followers and
more effective ways of enforcing a chief's will led to the establishment of
larger political entities than those that had prevailed earlier. Thus
Mirambo, a Nyamwezi chief who came to power in a small chiefdom about 1860,
established a considerable degree of control over the trade route from Tabora
to Ujiji, getting tribute from a number of other chiefdoms and tolls from Arab
traders with whom he was in intermittent conflict. He also sought to establish
links with the Sultan of Zanzibar and the king of Buganda. His successes were
largely a function of his adaptation of Ngoni techniques of warfare and his
use of a professional army, composed to some extent of non-Nyamwezi (see the
Ngoni Raiders, this ch.). Whatever his long-term visions and ambitions his
authority rested on coercion and material rewards for his followers, and he
came into conflict with too many competitors, Arab and African,
simultaneously. When, therefore, he was succeeded by a less able man the
political structure he had put together gradually disintegrated, a process
that was helped along by the presence in Nyamwezi country of other strong
warlord chiefs and, eventually, the coming of the Europeans.

     In addition to the specifically political consequences of nineteenth
century trade, there were other effects on the social system. Before the
extension and intensification of trade, the free cultivator, the hunter, and
the ritual specialist were the persons of highest status. Some highly
specialized hunters, such as the members of the Nyamwezi guild retained and
may even have enhanced their status because they provided the ivory and some
of the ot