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The Germans used forced labor to construct infrastructure such as roads and railway systems, and instructed villages to grow cotton as a cash crop instead of traditionally grown food crops, and subjected the population to high taxation, enforced through repression and violence. The policies and practices of German rule were extremely unpopular with the local people, and the German colonizers were met with significant resistance.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" />
The Germans used forced labor to construct infrastructure such as roads and railway systems, and instructed villages to grow cotton as a cash crop instead of traditionally grown food crops, and subjected the population to high taxation, enforced through repression and violence. The policies and practices of German rule were extremely unpopular with the local people, and the German colonizers were met with significant resistance.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" />
In an analysis of the political economy of the colonial period in what is now Tanzania, historian [[Walter Rodney]] wrote that German East Africa was a "typical colonial situation in which taxes were imposed on Africans not so much for the revenue which resulted but as a means of propelling them into the labour market and the money economy, and thereby drawing off the surplus." He further wrote that the introduction of such mechanisms for alienating the product of people's labor "inevitably evoked African bewilderment and hostility, which in turn were met by European force exercised in the name of law and order."<ref name=":18">{{Citation|author=Walter Rodney|year=1974|title=The political economy of colonial Tanganyika, 1890-1939.|title-url=https://repository.uneca.org/handle/10855/42657|pdf=https://repository.uneca.org/bitstream/handle/10855/42657/b11950316.pdf|city=Dakar|publisher=United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP)}}</ref>
===== Plantations and labor conditions =====
According to Walter Rodney's analysis, plantations were "the most important innovation of the formative period of the colonial political economy under German hegemony", being "a socio-economic entity ideally suited to [[Imperial core|metropolitan]] capitalist investment in the colony" as well as fitting [[Racism|racist]] notions of [[White supremacy|supremacy]]. Plantations required large amounts of land, capital, and African labor, along with "a small elite corps of non-African supervisory staff". The local population resisted plantation work, and coercion and abuses were rampant in recruitment.<ref name=":18" /> Rodney describes the extremely poor labor conditions of the plantations as follows:<blockquote>Wages for plantation labourers and other workers were initially low, and they were depressed as soon as the colonial state machinery pushed more Africans on to the labour market, as was the case by 1903. Living and working conditions were extremely poor; and any attempt to escape was branded as 'desertion', and treated as a criminal offence liable to imprisonment. Africans who were in the employ of Germans suffered day to day abuses and brutality, and these first decades of the German East African colonial regime were notorious for the frequency and severity of whippings applied by private employers and by state officials.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>While the productivity of plantation labor was low, it was a profitable system under colonial conditions because the employer was not responsible for providing the worker a living wage to feed himself and his family and left the burden of subsistence to the countryside from where the laborer was recruited, an arrangement very profitable for the colonizing capitalists while indigenous economies were robbed of the labor of those who were away working at plantations.<ref name=":18" />


===== Maji Maji Uprising (1905-1907) =====
===== Maji Maji Uprising (1905-1907) =====
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The rebellion spread all throughout the colony, eventually involving 20 ethnic groups who wanted to oust the colonizers. In August 1905, several thousand warriors attacked a German stronghold, but failed to overrun it. The German response was brutal, killing men, women, and children and adopting famine as a weapon. It is estimated that between 75,000 and 120,000 Africans were killed and many more were displaced from their homes during this two-year period of revolt against German rule.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" />
The rebellion spread all throughout the colony, eventually involving 20 ethnic groups who wanted to oust the colonizers. In August 1905, several thousand warriors attacked a German stronghold, but failed to overrun it. The German response was brutal, killing men, women, and children and adopting famine as a weapon. It is estimated that between 75,000 and 120,000 Africans were killed and many more were displaced from their homes during this two-year period of revolt against German rule.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":3" />


Although the uprising was ultimately unsuccessful, the German government was pressured to institute some reforms, such as domestically creating a formal political organ in Germany which would be answerable to parliament in governing the colonies, as well as creating District Commissioners in the colonies to attempt to have more government supervision of labor relations. However, as noted by Walter Rodney, a "more liberal phase was a prerequisite for the entrenchment of colonial capitalist relations" and many of the harsh labor conditions and low wages continued, as "the law was still an instrument of the employing class between whom and the government the contradictions were secondary."<ref name=":18" /> Despite these outcomes, the uprising would become an inspiration for later freedom fighters against European colonial rule.<ref name=":3" />
Although the uprising was ultimately unsuccessful, the German government was pressured to institute some reforms. Furthermore, the uprising would become an inspiration for later freedom fighters against European colonial rule.<ref name=":3" />


==== First World War ====
==== First World War ====
{{Main article|First World War}}
After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, British and Belgian troops occupied most of German East Africa. With the defeat of Germany, the League of Nations gave Britain control of the region that is now Tanzania, while the areas that are today Rwanda and Burundi were handed over to Belgian rule.<ref name=":1" />
After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, British and Belgian troops occupied most of German East Africa. With the defeat of Germany, the League of Nations gave Britain control of the region that is now Tanzania, while the areas that are today Rwanda and Burundi were handed over to Belgian rule.<ref name=":1" />


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==== Second World War ====
==== Second World War ====
{{Main article|Second World War}}
==== Trust territory under British rule (1946-1961) ====
==== Trust territory under British rule (1946-1961) ====
Following the Second World War, along with the other remaining League of Nations mandates, Tanganyika became a United Nations (UN) trust territory, with Britain as its administering power.<ref name=":4" /><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=United Nations|title=List of former Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories|url=https://www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/en/history/former-trust-and-nsgts}}</ref> Under the terms of the trust agreement, Britain nominally had the responsibility of preparing Tanganyika for independence, and was considered accountable to the UN's Trusteeship Council in that regard, though in practice the British governed Tanganyika similarly to their other colonies.<ref name=":5" /> As a trust territory, the government of Tanganyika had to report every three years to the UN's Trusteeship Council as well as be periodically assessed by a visiting mission from the Council to study the trust territory's conditions.<ref name=":8">{{Citation|author=Sophia Mustafa|year=1961|title=The Tanganyika Way|title-url=https://archive.org/details/tanganyikaway0000unse|city=Dar es Salaam|publisher=East African Literature Bureau}}</ref>
Following the Second World War, along with the other remaining League of Nations mandates, Tanganyika became a United Nations (UN) trust territory, with Britain as its administering power.<ref name=":4" /><ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=United Nations|title=List of former Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories|url=https://www.un.org/dppa/decolonization/en/history/former-trust-and-nsgts}}</ref> Under the terms of the trust agreement, Britain nominally had the responsibility of preparing Tanganyika for independence, and was considered accountable to the UN's Trusteeship Council in that regard, though in practice the British governed Tanganyika similarly to their other colonies.<ref name=":5" /> As a trust territory, the government of Tanganyika had to report every three years to the UN's Trusteeship Council as well as be periodically assessed by a visiting mission from the Council to study the trust territory's conditions.<ref name=":8">{{Citation|author=Sophia Mustafa|year=1961|title=The Tanganyika Way|title-url=https://archive.org/details/tanganyikaway0000unse|city=Dar es Salaam|publisher=East African Literature Bureau}}</ref>
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