Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
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COLONIAL CONSTRUCTION
workers especially tended to be away from home just when they
were most needed, and cultivation suffered in consequence, thus
hastening the retreat of men from advancing tsetse frontiers.
The economic contrasts within and between African societies
were overlaid by cultural distinctions introduced or intensified by
Europeans. By 1914, mission schools had in some areas produced
a first
or
even second generation
of
African teachers, clerks,
evangelists and also
priests;
in Uganda, Bishop Tucker encouraged
African leadership in the Anglican Church, in which 33 Africans
had been ordained by 1914. Many of these educated men were the
children
of
chiefs: literacy, like cash crops, could give new
strength to an old regime; yet schools also opened new paths of
advance to the hitherto unprivileged. To a large extent, of course,
the advance of cash-crops and literacy went hand in hand: Ganda,
Luo and Haya farmers were best able to pay the fees charged by
most mission schools, and many also made voluntary contrib-
utions. As yet, the Bible was the one book to make much impact
even on the handful of newly literate Christians, though already,
among the Ganda, this had influenced ideas of history as well as
religious
belief.
There was no challenge
to
the colonial order from educated
Africans, though
in
1914,
in
central Nyanza, the Nomia Luo
Mission was founded to build schools free from white missionary
influence. Violent resistance came from the grass-roots: most
fiercely in the Maji Maji rising
of
1905, but also in the Nyabingi
movement in south-western Uganda, and in 1914 from the Gusii
in South Nyanza and the Giriama on the coast. Central to each
of these was
a
local religious cult; in the case of Maji Maji, this
briefly united
a
huge area in common ritual and action, but the
rebels aimed at
a
very local, small-scale independence. The terrible
vengeance wrought by the Germans after Maji Maji made the facts
of European power more starkly plain
in
their territory than
anywhere else in East Africa. Yet neither there nor elsewhere was
this power passively accepted. Many opposed the extortion
of
unfree labour by deserting from recruiters' gangs or their place
of work.
In
German territory, especially
in
the north-east and
south-east, Islam gained much wider adherence than Christianity.
3
And as horizons expanded, new forms of solidarity were taking
shape. The colonial towns were racially segregated (for Indians
3
See chapter
4,
pp.
198,
Z13.
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EAST AFRICA
as well as for Africans) but they were nonetheless windows on
a wider world. They were still small, but growing fast: by 1911,
there were 17,000 people in Nairobi and 21,000 in Dar es Salaam.
Most of the Africans were probably short-stay migrants, but they
were likely to return home with a keener sense of ethnic identity,
as well as experience of a new kind of poverty and a better
acquaintance with the immigrants from overseas.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR, I 9 I 4-I 9 I 8
The East African campaign
In August 1914, Britain and Germany went to war. The German
government had no intention of fighting in East Africa. There,
its defence force
(Schuts>truppe)
was precisely that: 218 Europeans
and 2,542 askari (African soldiers) faced 73 Europeans and 2,325
askari in the King's African Rifles, drawn from the East Africa
Protectorate, Uganda and Nyasaland. Schnee, the German gover-
nor, thought his colony indefensible and hoped to preserve
neutrality. But the
Scbut^truppe
commander, Colonel Paul von
Lettow-Vorbeck, considered it his business to divert enemy
troops away from the conflict in Europe. The British, for their
part, were mainly concerned to prevent German warships from
threatening communications with India, and at first the India
Office took charge of the war in East Africa. On 8 August, the
British navy shelled a wireless station near Dar es Salaam.
Lettow-Vorbeck, in defiance of Schnee, promptly grouped his
forces near Kilimanjaro and captured Taveta, just inside British
territory. The British then set about the invasion of German East
Africa. However, they grossly underestimated the fighting power
of Lettow-Vorbeck's African troops and sent against them some
of the weakest units in the Indian army, under mediocre comman-
ders.
On 3 November part of this force landed at Tanga but
withdrew after heavy losses, while the rest were rebuffed far
inland, at Longido.
Soon after these reverses, the British War Office took control
of operations in East Africa but gave them low priority and a long
stalemate ensued, though in June 1915 the British captured
Bukoba, on Lake Victoria. In July the Germans surrendered in
South West Africa; this released South African troops for use
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THE FIRST WORLD WAR
\*A
15
R I C A
/•* "?/l
_J Land over 1500 metres
••• Main line of German retreat
"*" Main line of Allied advance
, 300km
24 The East African campaign, 1914-18
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EAST AFRICA
elsewhere.
In
February 1916 General Smuts took command of the
British imperial forces
in
East Africa; these
now
included
the
King's African Rifles, British
and
Indian regiments,
and
white
South Africans. Together they outnumbered the forces of Lettow-
Vorbeck
by
nearly five
to
one.
In
March 1916 Smuts launched
a new invasion from the East Africa Protectorate. He crossed into
Tanganyika near Kilimanjaro and captured Moshi, but he had yet
to encounter the main German forces. Despite his greatly superior
strength, Smuts was reluctant
to
risk battle with them; instead,
he deployed
the
Allied forces
in an
attempt
to
encircle Lettow-
Vorbeck. One column went after the Germans towards the central
railway, while Smuts himself advanced down the Pangani valley;
he captured Tanga
in
July, and Dar es Salaam fell
in
September.
Meanwhile
the
British took Mwanza
in
July,
and
General
Northey, advancing from Northern Rhodesia
and
Nyasaland,
captured Iringa in August.
In
the west, the Belgians took Ruanda
in May and Tabora in September. The German garrison at Tabora
escaped and eventually joined Lettow-Vorbeck
at
Mahenge, near
the Rufiji valley. Smuts
now
tried
to
surround
the
Germans
by
taking Kilwa
and
moving inland,
but in
December
he was
checked
at
Kibata.
Smuts's elaborate design played into Lettow-Vorbeck's hands.
The Germans and their askari were masters
of
bush warfare and
drew their pursuers across rugged
and
thinly peopled country
during the worst of the
rains.
In October 1916a British intelligence
officer wrote
in his
diary, 'What Smuts saves
on the
battlefield
he loses
in
hospital,
for it is
Africa
and its
climate
we are
really
fighting, not the Germans. '
4
By the end
of
1916 the Allied forces
were gravely depleted
by
sickness,
and
most British, South
African
and
Indian troops were replaced
by
West Africans
and
new recruits to the King's African Rifles. Early in 1917 Smuts left
East Africa. Heavy rains delayed further operations,
but in
July
the British began
a new
advance inland from Kilwa
and
Lindi.
In October,
the
column from Lindi finally confronted Lettow-
Vorbeck
at
Mahiwa. This was the fiercest battle
of
the campaign.
Lettow-Vorbeck escaped into Mozambique,
but
with
a
much
reduced force:
his
colleagues from Mahenge surrendered rather
than starve. Lettow-Vorbeck
had
little ammunition left,
but for
another year he kept on the move in northern Mozambique, where
4
R.
Meinertzhagen, Army
diary tS?y—if26
(Edinburgh and London, i960), 200.
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THE FIRST WORLD WAR
British forces pursued him
in
vain.
In
July 1918 he threatened
Quelimane, on the coast;
in
September he doubled back north-
wards and recrossed
the
Ruvuma;
in
October
he
crossed into
Northern Rhodesia. There was nothing
to
stop him reaching
Broken Hill when news of
the
armistice in Europe, in November,
obliged him
to
surrender.
The impact of
war
Smuts's strategy, and Lettow-Vorbeck's brilliant evasions, had
combined to inflict full-scale warfare on East Africa for two and
a half
years.
This was
a
personal triumph for von Lettow-Vorbeck:
his soldiers — never more than 15,000 — compelled the Allies
to deploy about 140,000 troops, nearly half
of
them Africans.
British imperial forces lost more than 10,000 men, two-thirds of
them from disease; the
Schut^truppe
had lost about 2,500. But for
the peoples of East Africa, the campaign was an appalling disaster.
Each side devastated large areas of German East Africa to provide
food
for
fighting men,
and the
whole region, together with
Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, was forced
to
supply both
soldiers and porters for the war effort. On each side, at least one
out of every ten soldiers from East Africa died on active service,
but the death-rate among porters was twice as high, and there were
far more
of
them. The newly built railways
of
East Africa were
of limited value in the fighting, since they mostly ran from east
to west, whereas the main thrust
of
Allied advance
in
1916 was
from north to south. Motor vehicles were little help; there were
few roads and they were useless
in
the rains. Tsetse flies killed
off draught animals. For the most part, munitions and supplies
had to be carried by porters, whose food had to be carried by yet
more porters.
Of
the East Africans recruited
for the
British
imperial forces, such followers outnumbered soldiers by 20 to
1.
Supplies for followers were miserably inadequate, and at least one
in five died, usually from dysentery
or
malaria. Altogether, well
over three-quarters of a million East Africans served in the war;
over 100,000 never returned.
5
s
See
G.
W.
T.
Hodges, 'African manpower statistics
for
the British forces
in
East
Africa, 1914-1918', journal
of
African History, 1978,
19, i,
101-16.
The
mortality
percentage rates among those porters and medical staff who served with
the
British
imperial forces, taking account
of
those classified
as
'missing, presumed dead', were
22 for the East Africa Protectorate, 20 for occupied German East Africa, 16 for Zanzibar
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EAST AFRICA
The mass conscription of Africans as porters had far-reaching
effects throughout East Africa. Many areas were virtually emptied
of men, and food-production was crippled. Women continued, as
always, to bear the brunt of sowing and harvesting as well as
grinding, but without men to clear new land they were often
obliged to cultivate existing plots to the point of exhaustion. Yet
it was just when the burden of war was heaviest that the region
suffered drought and disease on a scale which recalled the disasters
of the 1890s. Late in 1917 the rains failed throughout East Africa,
and they failed in Uganda a year later. Famine was widespread:
in the East Africa Protectorate it was partly relieved by food
imports from India and South Africa, but in parts of eastern
Uganda, in 1918-19,
one m
f°
ur
ma
y
nave
died of starvation,
while in Dodoma district one in five died of famine between 1917
and 1920. Lack of food lowered resistance to diseases spread by
returning porters. In 1917, at least 10,000 died in Uganda of
cerebro-spinal meningitis, while plague and smallpox also killed.
Towards the end of 1918, East Africa succumbed to the influenza
pandemic: this may have killed as many as 80,000 in German East
Africa, 25,000 in Uganda and 50,000 in the East Africa
Protectorate. One doctor reckoned in these terrible years that over
one-tenth of the Kikuyu people died of famine or influenza, or
while serving as porters. Yet this was not all: disease deprived
many of their chief store of wealth. Rinderpest, which had swept
northern Uganda in 1911, reappeared in western Uganda in 1918
and within two years killed over 200,000 cattle. Veterinary
surgeons would have saved them, but the war had stripped
governments of
staff.
Even then the cycle of destruction was not
complete: the death of people and cattle during the war meant
that large areas once cultivated and grazed now reverted to bush,
thus allowing the further advance of tsetse fly and sleeping-
sickness. In 1913 it had been reckoned that one-third of German
East Africa was infested by tsetse: by 1924 the proportion was
nearer two-thirds in what had become Tanganyika.
The disasters of the war years inevitably retarded the growth
of East Africa's export trade. Yet it continued, except in German
territory. There, many settlers had been ruined by the collapse of
and 8 for Uganda. About 22,000 African soldiers were recruited from the British East
African territories, of whom about 2,500 died; over 12,000 were recruited for the
Scbut^truppe,
of whom about 1,800 died.
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THE FIRST WORLD WAR
rubber prices in 1913, when vast new plantations
in
South-East
Asia came into production. When war broke out, all exports were
thwarted by
a
British naval blockade; after the British occupation,
exports (chiefly of
sisal)
were resumed. In Uganda, cotton output
scarcely increased,
but
European-grown coffee ranked second
among exports in 1915-17, contributing
16
per cent, while rubber
exports steadily grew: Uganda's planters, unlike those in German
East Africa,
had
chosen
to
grow Hevea
brasiliensis,
the
same
high-quality rubber as that which came from South-East Asia. In
the East Africa Protectorate, hides and skins provided more than
a quarter of total exports in 1918, but so now did sisal: the coastal
plantations came into production just as the war began
to
boost
demand
for
rope and twine. Soda ash provided 15 per cent
of
exports: this came from European works
at
Lake Magadi,
to
which
a
branch line was built with
a
British loan just before the
war. Coffee exports had slowly advanced, but formed less than
10 per cent of the total.
The export production of the war years was encouraged by high
prices,' but import prices also rose, and in any case exports were
sustained, like the military campaign, by stretching resources of
labour to the limit. These pressures greatly increased the tensions
already inherent in East African society. Government and private
employers drew closer together
in
attempts
to
co-ordinate
the
extraction of yet more labour.
In
the East Africa Protectorate,
a
war council was set up in 1915 which was dominated by settlers:
this reduced carriers' pay and in 1916 strengthened legal controls
over labour;
in
the same year, African taxation was increased.
These measures maintained European production for the market
while crippling that of Africans. The effect was most marked
in
Nyanza Province, which before the war had been the main source
of export crops but which then was heavily drained of both men
and cattle.
It
must also be noted that during the European war
a small but ugly war was waged by both Uganda and the East
Africa Protectorate against Turkana herdsmen, whose raids
by
1917 seemed to threaten European farms. Between 1915 and 1918
some 800 Turkana were killed, while far more were starved into
submission: they lost 400,000 cattle to the British.
At home,
no
less than
on war
service, Africans suffered
growing deprivation and frustration. Yet war was also
a
great
teacher. Mass mobilisation swept African men into organisations
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EAST AFRICA
of
a
scale, complexity and discipline such as few had ever known.
There was an abrupt exposure to European technology: men were
trained
to
handle radios, rapid-firing guns and motor-vehicles,
while
a few
became NCOs
and
even warrant officers.
And
alongside
the
European hierarchy
of
military power Africans
created organisations
of
their own which mirrored
it:
the beni
dance societies. These
had
originated
on the
northern coast
around the turn
of
the century; the war sharpened the element
of military parody, increased the need
for
the mutual aid they
offered, and spread their popularity far inland, among both armies.
There were but two societies: the Marini
for
soldiers and
the
Arinoti for porters, but by the end
of
1919 both had branches in
all the main towns of East Africa and the Marini leader, a former
akida, issued commands throughout
the
region from
his
headquarters
at
Iringa: he was known as Bismarck. There was,
moreover,
at
least one field
in
which Africans were able
to
supplant European leaders during the war. Both sides interned
and deported missionaries of enemy nationality, and many African
congregations were left to fend for themselves. Where, as among
the Lutherans, there were no African priests, teachers took charge,
and under their guidance several young churches learned
self-
reliance. When missionaries came back after the war, they were
often slow to recognise such proof of African ability, but Africans
were now less willing
to
take
for
granted the need
for
white
leadership.
Thus for all the physical destruction of the war years, people
all over East Africa were discovering new powers within them-
selves and exerting them in spheres far wider than family, clan or
chiefdom. They were also increasingly familiar with the large-scale
structures of colonial rule. In the next few years, white men were
to take major decisions about the place of Africans in the colonial
order
of
East Africa, but Africans too had thoughts on this and
were soon to give voice to them.
TERRITORIAL CONTRASTS, 1918-1930
Between the war and the world-wide depression
of
1930, there
were substantial changes in the material basis of life in East Africa.
External trade increased very considerably, and the region shared
in technological innovations which were then transforming the
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TERRITORIAL CONTRASTS
industrialised world. Most important, motor-transport became
cheap enough to make possible the large-scale movement of goods
and people away from the few railway lines.
It
was in this period
that large numbers
of
Africans became purchasers
of
imports,
especially hoes, bicycles, saucepans, boots and shoes, paraffin, salt,
tinned food, tea, sugar and cigarettes.
A
small
but
growing
number
of
Africans began themselves to engage
in
retail trade,
helped by savings from the sale of cash-crops and by skills learned
from immigrants. Greater dependence
on
external trade
heightened African sensitivities
to
economic fluctuations,
especially among teachers, farmers and traders who aspired
to
British material standards
of
living and increasingly compared
their own fortunes with those
of
their chiefs
and
those
of
immigrant communities. At the same time, governments inter-
fered much more than ever before: not only were their officials
more mobile, but rising revenues enabled their numbers
to be
greatly increased. This growth
in
economic and administrative
activity had the very important if unmeasurable effect of helping
to reverse the general decline of population which seems to have
been more or less continuous over most of East Africa from the
1890s to the 1920s. Mortality, disease and infertility were checked
by better medicine, hygiene and clothing, by famine
relief,
and
by the increased cultivation of maize and cassava. Yet the region's
modest growth
in
wealth after the war was distributed very
unevenly. This was partly due
to
growing divergencies
in
the
politics of the various East African territories.
In
the aftermath
of war, earlier assumptions were reappraised, and decisions were
taken which tended
to
sharpen territorial differences
in
social
policy. These decisions were prompted both by the immediate
effects of the war and by the impact of the economic depression
of
1920-1;
they were also influenced by competing pressures on
the British government from India and from British friends
of
South Africa.
Tanganyika
The effects
of
war were most obvious
in
the former German
colony. At the end
of
1918, the greater part of it was in British
hands;
the Belgians had retreated from Tabora in 1917, though
they still occupied the
far
north-west. The Peace Treaty with
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EAST AFRICA
Germany
in
1919 placed
the
territory under
a
mandate from
the
League
of
Nations.
The
Belgian share
of
this
was
confined
to
Ruanda
and
Burundi;
the
rest
was
assigned
to the
British,
who
named
it
Tanganyika Territory.
6
In
July 1922
the
terms
of the
British mandate were confirmed: Britain obtained full powers
of
legislation
and
administration;
it
was pledged
to
prevent slavery
(which
the
Germans
had
never abolished), forced labour
for
private gain, trade among Africans
in
arms and liquor,
and
abuse
of African land rights. Subject
to
these conditions,
the
territory
could
be
incorporated
in a
federation
or
customs union.
The stated
aim of
the mandate
was to
assure
the
primacy
of
'native interests',
but
there
was no
provision
for
enforcement.
The best safeguard
of
African liberties was provided not by paper
promises
in
Europe
but by
recent changes
in
Africa.
In 1914,
European settlers were well on the way to becoming the dominant
political force in German East Africa. The British invasion in 1916
obliged them
to
abandon farms
and
plantations,
and the
rubber
trade
had
already been crippled
by
competition from South-East
Asia.
Sir
Horace Byatt,
the
British civilian administrator, cleared
the country
of
German nationals between 1917
and
1922, when
the white population was half what
it had
been
in
1914. Several
estates were sold
or
leased, mainly
to
British firms, Greeks
and
Indians,
and
rubber estates were replanted with sisal. Exports
of
sisal were slowly resumed
but
hampered
by
lack
of
shipping,
and
the price fell
in
1921. Sisal remained
the
chief export,
but its
importance temporarily declined
in
relation
to
African-grown
crops,
mainly coffee
and
cotton,
but
also groundnuts, which
ranked second among exports
in
1921
and
1923. Whereas
in 1913
Europeans had contributed over half
the
country's exports,
in the
early years
of the
mandate well over half
was
produced
by
Africans. Still more important, the nature of European production
changed. By the early 1920s sisal was the only crop grown in large
quantities
by
Europeans,
and it
could only
be
grown
in
steamy
lowlands unsuited
to
permanent white settlement; besides, much
was produced
by
companies financed from abroad with
a
lesser
stake
in the
territory than independent planters.
The position of Europeans in Tanganyika was thus undermined
at
the
very period when Britain
was
framing
new
policies under
the mandate.
In
1921
the
Colonial Office agreed that Tanganyika
6
This partition thwarted South Africa;
see
above,
p. 57}.
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