Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0363/03637.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 36KB | 568 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03637}
$Pretitle{262}
$Title{Tanzania
Chapter 1D.   Zanzibar to the End of World War I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Irving Kaplan}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{african
tanganyika
british
colonial
war
government
africans
authorities
education
world}
$Date{1978}
$Log{}
Country:     Tanzania
Book:        Tanzania, A Country Study
Author:      Irving Kaplan
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1978

Chapter 1D.   Zanzibar to the End of World War I

     The Anglo-German Agreement on East Africa of 1890 provided for the
British Protectorate over Zanzibar (including Pemba). Technically the control
of internal affairs and succession to the sultanate were left in the hands of
the traditional rulers. Great Britain was to take over foreign affairs. In
fact British control was gradually extended to all aspects of internal
administration and finance, including the sultan's income, and most key posts
were eventually filled by British personnel. In 1896 the British determined
the succession to the throne, and the sultan became even more dependent on
them than earlier ones had been.

     In 1913 the essentially colonial status of Zanzibar was acknowledged by
the transfer of Zanzibar's affairs from the Foreign Office to the Colonial
Office. A British resident replaced the consul general, and Zanzibar was
placed under the jurisdiction of the governor of the East African Protectorate
(then the name for that part of Kenya from the coast to the eastern edge of
the Rift Valley).

     The British formally abolished the slave trade in 1876, but they moved
slowly in enforcing the law and did not abolish slavery itself until 1897, in
part because they feared effects on the labor supply, in part because they saw
Zanzibar as an essentially Arab state, the social system of which would be
disrupted by the freeing of a substantial number of African slaves. Provision
was made for compensation to slave owners by the state, and the slaves
themselves were required to take the initiative in applying for freedom.
Moreover the use of slave labor was not made a crime, and some kinds of
slaves (for example, concubines) were exempted from the law. No employment
programs for freed slaves were devised, and former slaves were subject to
vagrancy laws if they were without a job or fixed residence.

     For these reasons, the lack of free land and an improvement in working
conditions, relatively few slaves applied for freedom in the first decade or
so. In 1909 a law eliminated compensation for slaves freed after 1911, a
sanction that speeded up their emancipation. Nevertheless forms of hidden
slavery and semislavery remained, and there was no program for helping
ex-slaves adjust to their freedom. Some of them became tenants on clove
plantations, exchanging their labor on the plantation for the right to build a
house and plant food crops on a small plot nearby. The demand for labor was
apparently not filled by these tenants, and many of the migrants from German
East Africa who came for the clove harvests stayed on as squatters.

     In these early years, and later, the British persisted in seeing Zanzibar
as an Arab nation. Although the Arabs had lost much of their authority to
British administrators, the sultan remained, and Arabs were given special
consideration with regard to such matters as government positions and
education.

Tanganyika from the End of World War I to World War II

     The British had established a rudimentary administrative structure in
1917. Sir Horace Byatt, who had been administrator of the territory while it
was occupied by British troops, became its first governor. British
administration was formally established by the Tanganyika Order in Council,
which empowered the governor to make ordinances but directed him to respect
"native law and custom." The Executive Council, consisting of the governor and
his four highest officials, was formed and the High Court instituted.

     On July 22, 1922, the Council of the League of Nations formally gave
Tanganyika the status of a mandated territory, making Great Britain
responsible for the "peace, order and good government of the territory" and
for promoting "to the utmost the material and moral wellbeing and the social
progress of its inhabitants." Although the Permanent Mandates Commission of
the league superintended the mandatory powers neither it nor the council of
the league had effective authority.

     The power of the commission was minimal. Such influence as it had
depended on the willingness of the European state holding the mandate to
respond to its appeals. In the case of Tanganyika, the commission's comments
on some matters, particularly labor conditions, had some effect. In the long
run the fact that Tanganyika had been a mandated territory was significant in
that it became a candidate for trusteeship under the United Nations (UN) after
World War II, a status that had greater consequence than that of a mandate
under the League of Nations.

     After the British takeover all Germans, including missionaries, were
expelled. During the war estates had fallen into decay, overseas trade had
stopped, and African production was neglected. Many Africans had been away
serving as soldiers or porters, and disease and famine had taken a toll. It
has been estimated that thousands of African porters died during the war and
that 30,000 Africans had perished because of famine. Others died in battle.

     Given this difficult situation and his lack of personnel and money, Byatt
moved slowly in his brief period as governor. He retained the German
administrative districts and permitted the more experienced maakida to remain
in power. Local administrative officers were permitted to make their own
arrangements for local government.

     In 1924 Donald Cameron, appointed as governor of Tanganyika, introduced
the system known as indirect rule, the basis of which was the use of
traditional sociopolitical systems as an integral part of colonial
administration. These systems were to be gradually adapted to new needs and
methods. It was felt that not only would Africans gain experience in managing
their own affairs without the dislocation resulting from the institution of an
entirely new system, but that it would be easier to implement new social and
economic policies if the traditional rulers became the agents of such change.
In addition to the political and philosophical considerations influencing the
decision to introduce the system there were others: at that point in the
history of British colonialism, there were comparatively few persons ready to
become colonial administrators at local levels, and Great Britain either did
not have or would not allocate the money to pay them.

     The notion of indirect rule had been developed in Northern Nigeria, an
area characterized by large-scale, hierarchically organized states, which, if
somewhat different from those of Western Europe in the early twentieth
century, seemed to the British to warrant the kind of system they introduced.
Typically when they came to a territory like Tanganyika in which such states
were rare if not nonexistent, they looked for chiefs that would fit into the
system of indirect rule and either misinterpreted what they found or tried to
convert what they found into what it should have been. In any case the process
of adaptation was often not so gradual. Beyond that, the colonial authority's
insistence that the chiefs, whether traditional or newly made, act as agents
of change eventually led to situations in which many chiefs, whatever the
basis of their traditional legitimacy, were seen by their people largely as
agents of the colonial regime. In general the colonial authorities tended to
assume that traditional authorities had more power than in fact they did, and
they also tended to overlook the traditional sanctions and checks that a
chief's people had been able to apply if they were unhappy with his rule.

     Under Cameron's governorship the districts were grouped