The political economy of colonial Tanganyika, 1890-1939 (Walter Rodney)

The political economy of colonial Tanganyika, 1890-1939
Author	Walter Rodney
First published	1974
Source	https://repository.uneca.org/entities/publication/8d204a91-2d33-554e-922c-4eebba402223
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Foreword by ProleWiki

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Part I – The creation of the colonial economy by violence, 1890–1906.

The nineteenth century was a period of considerable change in East Africa. Means of maintaining a livelihood, socio-political structures and cultural values were all steadily transformed. Coming on the scene in the latter part of the century, the colonialists altered the pace and direction of change; and the initiative for controlling their evolution was forcibly wrested from the colonised population. This could not happen overnight. Rather, the institutionalisation of colonial structures of production and political control occupied a phase, which in Tanzania lasted for about twenty years, beginning in 1885 and intensifying during the 1890s.

In 1890, the Imperial German government undertook direct political supervision of the colony of German East Africa. The D.O.A.G., the chartered company which previously shouldered this responsibility, was unable to carry out the first task of colonisation; namely, conquest. From 1890 onwards, the German government brought about subjugation and started to organise an economy geared towards exporting its surplus, particularly in the form of primary agricultural commodities. Annual reports for German East Africa during the 1890s and the first years of this century indicate a high level of investigation of the topography, geology, climate and the plant and animal species. The building of roads, bridges and the Usambara Railway (Tanga Line) were major inputs into the new colonial economy, along with the construction of a floating dock at Dar es Salaam and the introduction of lighters and riverain vessels. Other foundation works for the export-oriented economy included the issue of coins and notes, the establishment of government-controlled market halls and the spread of customs posts.

Trade between German East Africa and the outside world came under closer German control; this being one of the primary reasons for colonisation. By 1912, Germany supplied over half the imports of its East African colony, and the proportion was higher with regard to exports. This meant a doubling of the German share of import/export as it stood in 1895. Since Zanzibar for many years retained its nineteenth century dominance in trade with the coast, the D.O.A.G., and subsequent German administrations sought their share of the movement of goods to and from Zanzibar.

The political economy of colonial Tanganyika, 1890-1945.

Nor could India be easily eliminated from the Indian Ocean trade network. In order to cash in on African/Indian trade, the German East Africa Line ran a special shipping service to Indian ports.

Although German colonial preparations were thorough, and although Germans captured a large proportion of the trade to and from German East Africa, they remained restricted to the coast and to the trade routes which connected the interior and the coast. The Germans at first concentrated on ousting Arabs and Swahilis from the pre-colonial export trade which tied up with the Indian Ocean network. Hence, there arose the conflict with Abushiri in 1889/90. For years thereafter, the main concern of the German administration was to improve caravan roads. Thousands of porters were still used, experiments to introduce animal-drawn wagons being timid and unsuccessful. When the Usambara Railway was projected to start from Tanga in 1891, the aim was to reach Mombo and use it as an entrepot for up-country caravan, especially from Lake Nyanza (Victoria). The progress of this railway was extremely slow; and after the British completed their railway from Mombasa to Port Florence on Lake Nyanza in 1901/02, commerce was diverted into British hands. To succeed in their self-appointed task of extracting surplus from what is now mainland Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, the Germans hastened to implement their own major railway project – the Central Line, starting from Dar es Salaam in 1905 and reaching Morogoro by 1907.

African resistance was a decisive factor in the late start of the colonial economy. Many areas were not subdued until the early years of this century, especially in Kigoma and Ruanda/Urundi. The launching of colonial activities, such as the building of roads and government bomas, was intertwined with violent conquest; and forced labour was prominent everywhere. Then came the laws imposing taxes on the subject African population, although in some districts tax was not collected until a few years before the First World War. Often the drive to collect hut and poll tax was a thinly-veiled prolongation of the aggression of conquest, involving hut-burning, the seizing of cattle and snatching of women.

Both the slave trade and the institution of slavery as introduced by the Arabs stood in the way of colonial ventures, and they were eliminated by the Germans. However, a different form of forced labour was introduced, comprising short-term service on construction sites, on private European estates and on collective shambas whose produce went to the Germans. This coercion was set in train by German civilian and military authorities; and it was usually supervised by paid Swahili/Muslim agents, who became the jumbes and akidas of coastal and inland African communities. The front line of German colonial authority was also manned by Africans: namely, the askaris of the military and police units. They were originally drawn from Somalia, Sudan and southern Mozambique to ensure non-fraternisation with local Africans. Subsequently, Manyema from the Congo were favoured for the same reason; while recruits from within German East Africa were posted outside of their own areas.

A great deal of the dirty work of German colonialism was necessarily implemented by the jumbes, akidas and askaris. They saw to the requisitioning of forced labour, the collection of taxes and the punishment of default and insubordination. Through a relatively high wage in the case of the askaris, and through having their salaries tied to tax collection in the case of the jumbes and akidas, these particular Africans were given a stake in the colonial system. They had a relatively free hand when they were dealing with fellow Africans, and therefore they frequently resorted to intimidation and extortion. Many hereditary rulers were also reduced to the status of overseers in behalf of German masters. This applied even to the developed Bukoba, Ruanda and Urundi, whose rulers were given only a slightly greater measure of freedom than others. In most parts of the country, the traditional law enforcers such as the ruga and the Mnyamparas became in effect colonial askaris, who brought force to bear on their own people to get them to work for the Germans.

The widespread resort to coercion to initiate colonial production relations is largely explained by the fact that labour was not usually a commodity within the indigenous African economies; and there was little reason for this process to take place spontaneously. Some tens of thousands of central Tanzanians had become accustomed to porterage in the pre-colonial period. These (mainly Nyamwezi) were often willing to continue in this occupation or to make the transition to other forms of hired labour. But, without force, the Germans could not fill the ranks even of the porters; and violence was frequently necessary to get Nyamwezi to work on plantations. Besides, 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. Such mechanisms for alienating the product of people's labour were few and weak in pre-colonial East Africa. Their introduction inevitably evoked African bewilderment and hostility, which in turn were met by European force exercised in the name of law and order.

Colonised Africans were required to produce more and to produce new commodities. To gain access to exportable surplus which would immediately repay colonising efforts, the Germans forced or encouraged Africans to continue the hunting of ivory and to intensify the collection of beeswax and rubber. Tax at this early stage was often in kind, utilising these very products. However, by the late 1890s, the cultivation of sisal and of new varieties of cotton, rubber, groundnuts and coffee were demanded of Africans – either in the capacity of peasants or as paid labourers.

Having no special reputation as a producer of valuable minerals, East Africa was looked upon within the imperialist production system as on of the providers of agricultural raw materials to service increased human and industrial consumption in the metropoles and particularly in Germany. For instance, the demand for oil-seeds and coffee was tied up with the growth of a large consumer market as the petty bourgeoisie and the organised proletariat made successful demands for higher living standards. The demand for rubber from East Africa was consequent upon the growth of European technology, which put rubber to novel uses and found better methods of coagulation and processing. The promotion of cotton and sisal constituted another variant on the theme of metropolitan market dependency. The primary resources of East Africa were to be developed in order to assure metropolitan dependence on raw material sources such as hard fibres (i.e., sisal and henequen).

The colonial political economy was given its distinctiveness not so much by the new export commodities but by the socio-economic forms introduced for their production. The Germans experimented with communal farms which bore a superficial resemblance to the traditional African Shambas, but the labour was coerced. Alternatively, they left Africans to organise labour in their own way on their own land; and exploitation was effected through price mechanisms when the crop was sold. In this way, a market-oriented peasantry arose out of the self-sufficient communities. Africans near the coast in southern Tanganyika were the first to move to peasant production, with cotton as their staple. Those inland areas which were part of the earlier export connection involving ivory and slaves were also quickly tied to the metropoles by the cash crop nexus. Previous familiarity with a given crop or a similar species would obviously have made the transition easier, as with cotton on the Lakes, robusta coffee in Bukoba and groundnuts in central Tanganyika. However, the cultivation of a strange plant could be readily mastered – as happened with arabica coffee in Kilimanjaro from the 1890s. The presence of missionaries and white settlers in this area facilitated the acquisition of seeds and relevant techniques.

White settler agriculture was limited mainly to the Usambaras during the first two decades of German rule. A certain pro-settler strain had characterised German colonialism since the time of Carl Peters, but the practical results were few. There were only 86 settlers in the colony in 1900, and so the three-fold increase to 284 by 1905 was not really impressive. Plantations were far more significant than settler farms. They were distributed in the Usambaras, Tanga, Pangani, Lindi and along the first stage of the Central Line from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro. Coconuts, rubber, cotton and sisal were all "plantation crops" during the early years. By 1904, there were some 5 million to 7 million rubber trees, constituting the largest plantation sector. Sisal was not far behind in acreage and value. Cultivation having started in the 1890s, mature sisal leaves were being cut at the turn of the century, and by 1905 production was up to 1,397 tons worth 1.1 million marks.

The plantation was the most important innovation in the formative period of colonial political economy under German hegemony. It was a socio-economic entity ideally suited to metropolitan capitalist investment in the colony, and it fitted in with the terms of racist and cultural supremacy which went hand in hand with the desire to exploit Africa's resources. Combining both field agriculture and degree of first-stage processing, the plantations required large amounts of land, capital and African labor, along with a small elite corps of non-African supervisory staff. This particular form of the organisation of labour and capital was deliberately chosen and applied. There was nothing intrinsic to any crop which made it botanically or otherwise a "plantation crop". Rubber was cultivated on plantations, by settlers and by African peasants; copra was produced by Europeans, Arabs and Africans (sometimes within a semi-feudal framework); while cotton was already being grown by several Tanganyikan communities in the pre-colonial period.

As would be expected, striking differences existed between the political power of African peasants and that of the settlers and plantation owners. Indeed, peasants exercised no political power during the years in question. With regard to the other two groups, there was an interesting disparity in their relative access to power. Settlers wielded more influence than their numbers would suggest. Their communities were given legal status with representative District Councils from 1901, and they were represented on the Governor's Advisory Council and other boards. There were close ties between settlers, the administration and the military; and they were allocated half of the income from African hut tax, along with other subventions. Nevertheless, the settlers were at best small capitalists or petty bourgeois, and sometimes they ranked merely as impecunious farmers and adventurers. Neither within the colony nor outside could settler influence measure up to the power of the capitalists who owned plantations and who were associated with bankers, industrialists, shipping and railroad magnates, big commercial houses and rich capitalist landlords in Germany. In 1901, absentee plantation owners living in Germany founded the Union of German East African Plantations, an organisation which exercised quasi-governmental functions with respect to colonial policy.

Settler farmers, absentee plantation owners and plantation managers made common cause on the issue of labour. Their agricultural operations meant the alienation of African land as well as the reduction of the African population to the status of wage labourers. Without African labour, colonial capital investment was valueless and the forcibly acquired land was also useless. Therefore, farmers and planters used the colonial state to secure the coercion of African labour. The population in the actual plantation sites resisted plantation work, going there under constraints such as famine conditions. Otherwise, they found it more convenient to grow food for sale to the estates. Between 1900 and 1902, Tanga planters got the government to start settlement schemes to relocate some Nyamwezi labour near the plantations, but these failed, leading to dependence on short-term recruitment from considerable distances: notably from Songea, Unyamwezi and Sukmaland. Coercion and abuses were rampant in the sphere of recruitment, with African chiefs playing a role very similar to that in the slave trade.

Wages for plantation labourers and other workers were initially low, and they were depressed as soon as the colonial state machinery pushed more Africans onto 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.

Part II – Reform, entrenchment, and surplus generation, 1906-1914

Even where Africans had been 'pacified', they did not acquiesce in loss of sovereignty when this assumed the form of forced labour, taxation and brutality from Germans and their African minions. The Maji Maji wars provide conclusive evidence to this effect. Subsequent to and partly because of this resistance, the Germans sought to reform the worst excesses of exploitation and oppression. The German working class was strongly represented in the German parliament by the Social Democratics, who led the exposure of the kinds of abuses introduced into colonial territories by imperialist expansion. They voted for the creation of a formal political organ in Germany which would be answerable to parliament in governing the colonies; while in German East Africa the most important reforms tended to remove the power of coercing labour from the hands of private individuals and to emphasise government's role in supervising labour relations. For this latter purpose, District Commissioners were appointed. Forced labour was partially curbed, and so too was the arbitrary behaviour of government jumbes, akidas and askaris. As a complement to this lessening of coercive measures, a significant amount of encouragement was given to peasant production in the era of post Maji Maji reforms.

A more liberal phase was a prerequisite for the entrenchment of colonial capitalist relations. The colonial economy was entrenched when it incorporated the majority of the African population, and when it set in motion a series of factors which caused Africans to accommodate to the new order peacefully, willingly and even enthusiastically. Coercion remained a critical element within the colonial situation, but once the self-sufficient African economies had been penetrated, Africans themselves sought to participate in the emergent colonial economy and to influence the terms on which they participated. In this way, the maintenance and extension of colonial relations became spontaneous.

Given a choice, Africans preferred to meet their taxes and cash needs by growing a crop which was marketable for money - usually with the overseas market as the usual destination. Cash crop farming was the least onerous form of meeting the demands of an economic system in which Africans were powerless to reject and which they increasingly accepted as offering certain rewards in goods and service. The moment that transport became available in a locality in German East Africa, it was usually the African population which took active steps to bring commodities to a wider market. This involved initially little disruption to their previous agricultural cycle. They still grew their basic food and provided for their own subsistence. They knew their own environment and they were not very vulnerable to market fluctuations. For these reasons, African peasants were usually more efficient producers than the European new-comers, in spite of utilising only hand tools. They competed successfully with plantations and more so with settlers, who lacked capital in the amounts which would have been necessary to outweigh the advantages of peasants operating at near subsistence level. Recognising these facts, the Germans after 1906 turned to persuasion to augment the numbers and output of the cash crop peasantry.

Cotton was first grown as a plantation and settler crop at the Rufiji delta, at Sadani and around Morogoro/Kilosa, but the returns were poor as compared to crops which peasants brought to market at little economic cost to the colonists. After 1906, in spite of protests from farmers and planters, the Imperial German government and its agents promoted peasant-grown cotton through seed distribution, technical advice, increase of ginneries and small credit advances. An annual average of up to 800 tons of cotton seed was distributed in Kilwa, Rufiji and Lindi, and up to 500 tons went to Bagamoyo, Moshi/Arusha, Mwanza and Morogoro/Kilosa. Already in 1908, Africans were exporting two-thirds of the cotton exports; and by 1912 they accounted for five-sevenths of the total. The story of coffee was somewhat similar. Coffee ceased to be a plantation crop from 1909, but it proved to be one of the very few crops which settlers could successfully grow and contribute to the export-oriented economy which the metropolis envisaged. The German colonial authorities came to discourage settlers with small capital, and gave their backing to the white coffee growers who had large farms in the Kilimanjaro area. Nevertheless, African peasant production of coffee was also promoted and it caught up with settler output by 1912. Coercion and taxes were still used to extend African cash crop farming of coffee in Bukoba and cotton in Mwanza and Musoma. On the other hand, the alternative of cash crop farming was clearly preferred to such things as portage and migrant labour.

Apart from the major export crops, Africans furnished the Germans with a variety of agricultural products which could either be exported or consumed locally: notably, groundnuts, sesame, maize, millet, rice and beans. A large proportion of the labouring population was engaged in plantation or peasant production of cash crops which were not destined for the local market, even when they were edible. Therefore, some areas specialising in food were welcome. The German authorities regretted the importation of rice from India, and favoured the commercialisation of rice in Ulanga, Mwanza and other parts of the colony. After 1908, the amounts of hut and poll tax recovered increased steadily in all areas and markedly in others, such as Mwanza and Lindi. This was a good index to the growth of the peasantry.

Settlers, who numbered about 880 in 1914, remained too few to decisively shape the political economy of German East Africa, although their local influence spread to Kilimanjaro, Mbulu and the Southern Highlands. Those growing rubber fared disastrously when world prices fell in 1913. Rubber plantations also performed badly. For all practical purposes, sisal became the sole "plantation crop", and it proved immensely successful. On the eve of the First World War, sisal output was nearly 20,000 tons valued at 10.3 million marks, and it accounted for 30% of total exports. A characteristic plantation economy such as existed in the Belgian Congo was usually sharply differentiated from a characteristic peasant-based colonial economy such as the one which developed on the Gold Coast. The Tanzanian colonial political economy had acquired a unique duality before the end of the German regime, comprising plantation and peasant sectors which were fairly evenly rated with regard to output and value to the metropolitan production system.

Plantation sisal and settler-grown coffee were usually described as "non-native agriculture". In reality, they were possible only because of African labour. In the German East African context, plantations tapped the labour of many Africans as were reached by capitalism indirectly through peasant cash crops. By 1913, the wage-earning labour force comprised 172,000 Africans, estimated to have been about one-fifth of the able-bodied male population at the time. Porters accounted for a substantial proportion of this figure, and the Central Line railway was also a major employer during its period of construction up to 1914. But it was the plantation sector which did most to destroy self-contained family labour and to replace it at least partially with wage-earning. Between 1910 and 1914, the area under plantation cultivation increased by 110% to over 100,000 hectares. The rate at which new workers were created could not keep up with this jump, and further extension was constrained by the non-availability of labour. Nevertheless, in the last years before the war, some 14,000 Africans were brought onto the plantations annually, and the total increased from 32,000 in 1908 to about 92,000 in 1913.

Reformist labour legislation favourable to Africans was not always implemented, due to lack of supervisory machinery. Settlers and plantation managers often paid less than the agreed contract wages, and they exacted illegal fines. Some officials and missionaries passed on to the German government and public complaints about continuing abuses. After 1909, charges were brought against employers for assaulting workers, and several convictions were obtained. Nevertheless, although the legislation after 1906 was an improvement as far as labourers were concerned, the law was still an instrument of the employing class between whom and the government the contradictions were secondary. Relics of forced labour were still permitted, as in West Usambara, and the legally permissible punishments for worker 'desertion' were harsh. Wages never ranged higher than 12–14 rupees assigned task or Kipando, and they were often depressed through combination of employers to as low as 6–7 rupees. This means that the labourer completed 30 full working days over a period of six weeks or more, before he would earn the amount in question.

Because the migrants and the local labour worked on short contracts for six or nine months, there was a high turnover of the labour force. Besides the daily absentee rate was high and a marked tendency to run away completely was always evident. A small number of skilled Africans were to be found in the sisal factories, but the vast majority were unskilled and could not accumulate any skills, apart from the expertise of wielding a panga to cut sisal leaves. The productivity of labour was necessarily low, given the lack of skills, high turnover and little motivation. Yet it was a profitable system under colonial conditions, because (in contrast to the metropoles) the employer was not responsible for giving the worker a "living wage" which would feed himself and his family from one generation to the next. In the first place, the plantations robbed the indigenous economies of fully-formed male labour.

Secondly, the colonial employer on farm or plantation left the burden of subsistence on those parts of the country from which the labourer was recruited. The migrant engaged in subsistence agriculture before and after his stint on the plantation, while his wife and family fended for themselves while he was away. These were the bases for the huge profits made by the capitalist plantations.

Sisal companies almost invariably registered huge profits four or five years after they went into production, as soon as the first crop of mature leaves were reaped. In 1907/08, prices were down to 600 marks per ton, but Tanga planters cleared profits of 400 marks per ton. Little wonder that companies capitalised at about one million marks could in a single year make a profit of half a million marks and declare dividends in the region of 15% and 20%, especially in the years 1910 to 1914. Rubber investment suffered a severe setback in 1913, but prior to this the returns were so high that speculation was rife. In 1910, for instance, settlers were keen on preparing rubber estates for sale at considerable profit to larger enterprises – including English buyers. Up to 1912, the big rubber plantations were also declaring healthy dividends of 5% to 10%.

All elements of the German population who were involved in colonial enterprise, from the settler to the Kaiser, were guaranteed some profit by the Imperial German state and the specific colonial state machinery which was created for German East Africa. State support took the form of direct grants and loans, as well as duty exemptions, tax concessions, freight rebates and other indirect subsidies. One author of a study on German colonies remarks as follows:

To a small section of the (German) population, the colonies were doubtless a source of profit: the merchants and planters who exploited the natural and human resources of overseas possessions; the shipping companies, which received subsidies; the civil and military officials, who received posts - all had every reason to support colonial enterprise.

Yet the same author misleadingly concludes that Germany gave more to the colonies than it received. The central point of the colonial relationship was the transfer of surplus to strengthen the capitalist class and the capitalist mode of production. Ultimately, the bill had to be paid by many European workers whose labour was exploited at the point of production and more so by Africans whose entire way of life was brutally disrupted so as to integrate them into the global capitalist system.

When subsidies originated in Germany, they were transferred not to Africans but to German capitalists in East Africa. German shippers were granted subsidies to secure a greater share of the freight to and from East Africa. The railway-building concerns received even wider privileges, such as guaranteed credits and heavy payments when the construction enterprises were taken over by the government. The nexus of exploitation stretched from African labour to firms such as Philip Holzmann of Frankfurt, Lenz and C. of Berlin, the Krupp combine, and the Deutschen Bank. Above all, it is the history of the D.O.A.G. which consistently reveals how the colonial state nurtured and protected the interests of the big capitalists. After losing its political franchise, the D.O.A.G. was 'compensated' with loans and grants which were taken from East African customs revenues and which were therefore met through the exploitation of African labour. By 1903 there was another dimunition of the extensive privileges of the D.O.A.G. with regard to land, currency and banking; but it continued to enjoy a lucrative near monopoly of import-export trade and associated activities such as warehousing and lighterage at the Dar es Salaam harbour.

Between 1905 and 1913, the D.O.A.G. made over 7 million marks net profit. No other private company so completely dominated a given colonial economy as the D.O.A.G. with respect to German East Africa. Starting with a base in plantations and commerce, it spread its tentacles into every area of the growing colonial economy. Indeed, it was often pioneering the extension of the embryo export-oriented economy, and for this it was handsomely rewarded. It had a monopoly of buying cotton and rubber; and settlers sold exclusively to the D.O.A.G., from whom they borrowed money at 6% to 8% interest. It was part owner of two local banks; it operated the largest retail agency (in Tanga) from 1908; it bought the Hotel Kaiserhof and gained the concession to sell food to the railway; it secured shares in the mining industry; it founded a timber company in 1908; and by 1912 it had expanded into the Belgian Congo. Such economic power can be understood only in relation to the political power of the class which controlled both the German state and the colonial state of German East Africa.

The coercive arm of the colonial state of German East Africa was strengthened after the colonialists received a fright in the scope of Maji Maji. By 1913, the Schutztruppe or protectorate Force comprised 2,500 Africans commanded by 1,152 Germans. In addition there was a police force of 2,140 under 65 officers. Their weapons were not the most up-to-date, but they were good enough for their principal function – "to deal with local risings". Several small local risings did occur until about 1911, and they were all promptly quelled. For the most part the suppressive apparatus could now stand in reserve while the economy spontaneously expanded.

Economic activity in German East Africa was at a much higher level than in British East Africa on the eve of the First World War. It was also more varied – with a mining sector, obtaining gold from Sekenke and Mwanza and mica from the Ulugurus, and with several minor manufacturing establishments making consumer goods. The extractive colonial economy was strengthened day after day as Africans took a variety of steps, such as the Gogo bringing cattle to market or the Nyaturu accepting employment in mines. Many areas remained superficially 'traditional' because they were not directly under plantations/or cash crops and they were remote from towns and mines. But these were often deeply penetrated, especially when their labour was drawn off to serve colonialism in other districts.

By 1914, labour utilisation in German East Africa had been redirected, the overall social product had been increased and the surplus was being channelled outwards/to the colonial power and especially to its dominant class. As part of this process, there was a change in African consumption patterns which in turn affected the pre-existing African production and distribution of certain commodities. African-made cloth and iron tools and the trade in these items were already on their way out in German times, with only a few resistant pockets. The increased import of cotton piece-goods was the single most important index to the spread of new consumer habits. The African population was being condemned to produce that which it did not consume and to consume that which it did not produce.

It cannot be said that colonialism determined all social changes in German East Africa or in any other colony, nor can it be said that Africans completely lost control of their own environment and society, but they were well on their way to so doing. Rinderpest epidemics (only incidentally connected with the coming of the colonialists) had severely undermined the indigenous political economy of the whole territory in the late 1890s. Animal husbandry was never restored to its former pre-eminence, with all that this implied for environmental control. Similarly, diseases seriously affected millet during the early years of German rule. Millet was never re-established as the principal staple of the African people, and the population thereby lost the advantages of their own experience in its cultivation as well as the crop's proven resistance to drought in the Tanzanian and African environment in which it was domesticated. There was no possibility of resuming the former trend of development in the context of European colonial power. Famine, havoc and suppression associated with Maji Maji further clinched this fact. The African people were effectively disarmed; without a licence, they could scarcely hunt game or even defend their homes from wild beasts. Issues such as the choice of crop and the method of protection against tsetse fly were removed from African jurisdiction before the end of the German colonial regime.

To the purely economic phenomena, one must add the evolution of a formal colonial educational system and the considerable presence of the missionaries. Islam continued to spread at least as rapidly as the officially-sponsored Christian religion; but Christianised Africans were usually more closely involved in colonial economic activities. Missionaries did a great deal to initiate the colonial economy, especially in Kilimanjaro and the Southern Highlands; and of course they were in the forefront with regard to education and cultural imperialism. They helped reinforce a pattern of personal dependence imposed on Africans by employers and the colonial state – and symbolised by the necessity to salute all Europeans by bowing from the waist and saying jambo. This behaviour merely reflected the dominance of the intrusive capitalist mode of production/in a colonial situation.

Part III – War and the change of masters, 1914–1930

Many historians pass lightly over the period of the first world war in East Africa. In reality, it was a period of intense suffering. Since the British and the Germans fought their African campaigns mainly with African askaris, the majority of the casualties were sustained by African combatants. More staggering still were the losses among African porters. The record of the Carrier Corps attached to the King's African Rifles (K.A.R.) is a frightening one. Men toiled for long hours, with heavy loads, on empty stomachs along barely passable roads. Through a combination of ignorance and indifference to African welfare on the part of the British, the preparations for food and for preventive and curative medicine for the porters were scandalously poor. By 1917, the Carrier Corps employed some 150,000 porters; and at any given time at least 15,000 of those were so ill as to be confined to bed. Porters suffered severe hardships and casualties on the quagmire Dodoma/Iringa road, in the swampy Rufiji valley and on the could mountain paths from Nyasa into Songea – to mention the worst of their 'battlefields'. Over a period of 24 weeks in 1917, known deaths among porters were recorded as 11,484, which was an average of more than 68 per day. In the end, the war statistics did not bother to account for porters, dead and maimed.

Most parts of Tanzania felt the pinch of the war through having to supply provisions. Sometimes, Africans were induced to sell more food than they ought to have done in the light of their own requirements. At other times, the food was forcibly requisitioned: a procedure which could mean nocturnal raids and seizing of women as hostages. In a district as famous for food surpluses as Ulanga, famine resulted after the Germans exploited it as a food supply base for their armies. In central Tanzania, impressive herds of cattle, goats and donkeys were decimated; and the adverse effects were compounded because the area was already prone to drought. The Gogo in particular suffered tremendous hardships when famine struck, forcing them to abandon their homesteads. Understandably, disease claimed innumerable lives in the circumstances. Influenza, smallpox, diarrhoea, plague and cerebro-spinal meningitis killed tens of thousands. Influenza alone too an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 African lives from 1917 to 1919. Epidemics were the consequence of armies spreading infection from one end of the country to another, often bringing new diseases against which the population had no immunity. The colonialists were not capable of doing much about this, but in addition they were not motivated to do the best they could.

Because of war-time disruption of European trade and because of campaigns fought on East African soil, the export-oriented economy was set back. Peasants gave up cotton growing; settlers and missionaries abandoned their farms; and plantation production came to an early halt because Tanga was one of the first battlefields. However, the war did give a filip to industrialisation and technological experimentation. When cut off from Europe, the German civil and military administration turned to the local manufacture of cloth dyes, rubber tyres, benzene, soap ropes, bags, alcohol, jams boots, quinine and cigarettes. The last governor of German East Africa boasted that,

"We get all we require from the country. We find all our food supplies, materials and necessities in our German East Africa.… we find we have an adequate supply of such things as previously we have thought it necessary in import."

Such self-reliance went far beyond the petty manufactures permitted within a colonial economy in that period, and of course it ceased with the coming of peace and 'normality'. This helps strikingly to illustrate why colonialism has been referred to by some scholars as 'lop-sided' and 'perverse'. Industry in Tanganyika during the 1920s was confined either to the extraction of minerals or to the immediate processing of raw materials to facilitate export - and hence the profusion of ginneries. The colonial economy was not geared to maximise African control of the environment. On the contrary, it inverted the order of priorities followed in a system of production in which the people have some say in their own destiny.

The foundations laid by the Germans were unaltered when the British took over Tanganyika. The change of masters and the change of juridical form from colony to mandated territory were superficial ones. The British argued the superiority of their colonialism over that which had been practised in East Africa and elsewhere. As a justification for annexing German colonies, Britain amassed evidence concerning brutality, forced labour and other malpractices by the Germans with regard to Africans. Some charges were exaggerated and, in any event, the patterns were typical of colonial rule everywhere, as brought out in the counter-charges launched by the Germans against the British. On the other hand, superstructural differences were bound to emerge between one colonial regime and another, having their origins mainly in metropolitan traditions. For instance, the strong militaristic element within the German ruling class was well represented in the colonies. Parts of German East Africa remained under military jurisdiction throughout the German stay. But the British were extremely reluctant both at home and in the colonies to allow military power to intervene where the ruling class considered civilian administration to be sufficient. As their armies advanced into Tanganyika, civilian administrators were brought in from British East Africa and Nyasaland, and they assumed total control over conquered areas as soon as it was feasible. An interesting element of continuity is that those political officers collected taxes as laid down by the Germans and they administered German law, modified only by martial proclamations. Up to the mid-1920s, akidas appointed by the Germans remained in several districts.

Since the British regarded their first task as the establishment of law and order, great importance attached to the army and police, as seen from their share of the budget in early years.

Nevertheless, the K.A.R. and the police were not as dominant as their German counterparts. Conversely, the bureaucrat was prominent in the British colonial context. Even in the immediate post-war days when matters were most unsettled, the administrative corps numbered 108 as compared with the maximum of 78 officials in German East Africa (Ruanda/Urundi included). This corps had international experience. They brought with them the norms, administrative procedures and laws which had been fashioned in other British colonies. India played a special role as a model; while some colonial political institutions had their roots in the "old colonial system" maintained since the seventeenth century in the Americas. One such was the Legislative Assembly, which was introduced into Tanganyika in 1926.

Continuity and change must also be measured in terms of the metropolitan economic institutions which were set up in Tanganyika Territory. British firms naturally sought to inherit from their German rivals; and the transfer of ultimate political authority to Parliament in Whitehall was matched by the transfer of economic power to Mincing Lane, London's import/export centre. As a consequence of the changeover, several differences in economic organisation were noticeable. Firstly, no single British company acquired the pre-eminence of the D.O.A.G. Secondly, many more non-nationals were allowed to invest and participate in the Tanganyikan colonial economy, largely because British capitalists were less interested than the Germans had been. Thirdly, Tanganyika was merely a part of the British colonial sphere in East Africa, subordinated to Kenya through customs arrangements and through the fact that the link with the metropole was maintained by firms which had their East African head offices in Nairobi or Mombasa. Nevertheless, the function of the banks, import/export houses and plantation companies remained the same.

The typical post-war reconstruction goal of the British in Tanganyika was to catch up and surpass pre-war production – as expressed mainly in import/export indices. Government departmental reports and the Governor's addresses to the Legislative Council in the late 1920s indicated steady recovery as well as some original development in sectors of the colonial economy. For instance, the mining of mica in the Ulugurus and of gold in north Mwanza, Musoma and Sekenke was fairly well re-established by 1927–30; while the Lupa alluvial gold field was brought into operation after its scovery in 1922. The new government extended the infrastructure of roads, bridges and the telegraph; while the completion of the rail link from Tabora to Mwanza in August 1928 was a vital step, further integrating the densely populated Lake zone which had already known its potentialities under the Germans.

Much of the economic recovery was due to peasant efforts – notably, to the production of cotton in Mwanza and Musoma and to the extension of coffee growing in Bukoba and Kilimanjaro. Groundnuts, sesame, rice, hides and ghee were also among the peasant commodities which originated from the north-west and the centre of the country. Increased output was achieved by taxation (increased in 1925), by force and by "administrative persuasion" bordering on force. Cotton, which was accorded high priority by the British textile industry, was the crop which usually required a considerable element of force before it was taken up by Africans. Coercion re-appeared in the post-war years because the war had created a situation in some ways analogous to that faced by the Germans on their arrival. Nevertheless, the British were not starting absolutely anew. They could, for instance, point out with satisfaction that bark cloth had practically disappeared from Bukoba and the Haya were demanding cloth. This and other imported items acted as a stimulus, apart from the coercion which was applied to have the Haya grow more coffee. The same holds true for other cash crops elsewhere and for the process of going out to seek employment.

As the tempo of colonial activities quickened in Tanganyika in the late 1920s, Africans found themselves faced with a range of choices as to how to enter the colonial economy. The range comprised options as varied as becoming an askari, opening a butchery, and (for a few women) becoming prostitutes in the towns. Naturally, individuals and groups seized whatever option appeared to be most advantageous in their own circumstances, and their priorities did not necessarily coincide with those of the colonialists. The most dramatic illustration of this fact concerns the cultivation of arabica coffee. Coffee was consistently the best priced of the agricultural staples which were exported from Tanganyika, and arabica fetched the higher prices which were given for mild coffee. White settlers perceived this, and tried to make arabica their own preserve. However, in spite of vigorous settler efforts and the cooperation of the colonial administration between 1925 and 1931, Africans in Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Tukuyu decisively frustrated efforts to keep them from growing arabica. In the end the Tanganyikan colonial government gave up the campaign of discouraging African coffee cultivation, stating that nothing short of force could achieve this objective. It was not that Europeans wanted to keep Africans out of the money economy but they wished to dictate the terms on which they could join. Settlers in the Northern Province and in the Southern Highlands wanted African land and African labour rather than the rise of an African peasantry. They failed in this. The victories won by the respective African populations were not insignificant, but they ultimately strengthened the export orientation.

Meanwhile, recovery was also taking place in the plantation sector. The pre-war peak figure of some 20,000 tons of sisal was surpassed in 1926. By this time the area under sisal was extended, especially along the Central Line in the Morogoro region. Equally significant was the corresponding increase in labour and the sources of migrant labour. By the latter part of the 1920s, Kigoma and Njombe had joined Songea in making major contribution to plantation labour supply. Ufipa, Tukuyu, Singida and Biharamulo were also important in this respect. Recovery in the sisal industry was due mainly to labour inputs, with the profits from exploiting African labour being ploughed back to achieve sustained growth.

By the end of the first decade of British rule in Tanganyika, the dual plantation/peasant economy had re-asserted itself, with settler production coming a poor third – as seen from the accompanying table of the value of agricultural and pastoral products exported. It is important to bear in mind that if an area did not supply labour for the plantation sector or cash crops for export, it tended to grow food for those two sectors and for the towns – as in the case of Ulanga, Uparo and Uluguru. So that while (say) Tanga or Bukoba were peripheries of the metropole, other parts of the country were doubly peripheral.

Value in £	1922	1925	1928	1929
African Production	623,654	1,477,078	1,111,000	1,475,078
Sisal	289,388	688,451	1,336,000	1,485,593
Other European Production.	231,283	465,651	495,000	391,[828]
TOTAL	1,144,325	2,632,103	2,942,000	3,352,499

(Taken from T.N.A. 18699, memo to the Governor, 5/2/1930.)

As the administering authority of a mandated territory, the British claimed to have initiated in Tanganyika a policy of the "paramountcy of native interests". In practice, the above plantation/peasant dichotomy was reflected in two different systems of political control, neither of which was addressed to African interests.

Plantations required land alienation. Government authority was totally behind land alienation in the four sisal zones – Tanga, Morogoro, Linki and Moshi/Arusha – in order of priority. In these same areas, other African rights associated with land usage were trampled upon, as in the case of access to water free from the pollution of sisal waste. The colonial state assured conditions for the exploitation of labour with very little investment of metropolitan capital. This they did, firstly, by inducing labour to move to the plantations from de-facto labour reserves and secondly by guaranteeing the exploitation of the worker while on the estate. The Masters and Native Servants ordinance (1923) was one of the earliest pieces of major legislation passed by the British in Tanganyika. It borrowed a great deal from German East African labour legislation, and continued to impose penal sanctions for breaches of civil contracts. Under its authority, labour officers could and did frequently order workers to receive lashes. Desertion from the estate still merited imprisonment, while the migratory and piecework characteristics of the labour system were maintained to the detriment of the workers. Similar observations apply to the settler farms in the few areas where they were encouraged. And, finally, the control of the employers and the colonial government in the plantation/settler districts was uncompromisingly backed by the regular police force.

Labourers on the plantations and elsewhere struggled determinedly against exploitation and oppression, but they could not readily organise themselves. Estates had changed hands, after having been seized as enemy property during the war. They were sold cheaply not only to Englishmen but also to Greeks and Asians. Irrespective of nationality, plantation owners hastened to organise themselves, as had been done in German times. The Tanganyika Sisal Grower Association was formed in 1923, and for decades thereafter it was the most powerful pressure group in the colony. There were undoubtedly differences of opinion between the T.S.G.A. and the government from time to time. These sprung from the fact that the colonial state had to represent the interests of the whole metropolitan bourgeoisie and not just a part of it. The state had also to operate on a longterm basis, while the employers were tempted to pursue short-term gains. In the final analysis, however, their positions were perfectly reconcilable.

Outside of the towns plantations and settler districts, Africans were guaranteed possession of their land so as to cultivate cash crops and provide sustenance for producing cash crops in the peasant and plantation context. Here the political system was "indirect rule", aimed at silencing the vast majority and using a few indigenous authorities as instruments for disciplining the peasant masses. It was a means of exacting tribute with the minimum of overt political change, although some supposedly indigenous authorities were expressly created to serve as British spokesmen. Recent scholarship on colonial Tanganyika has invariably exploded one aspect or another of the myth that indirect rule sponsored African development and self-expression; and it is perfectly clear that real power never left the hands of the Governor, the P.C.s and the D.O.s. In another sense, however, the politico-administrative device of indirect rule was successful, since it helped secure the maximum surplus extraction from the peasantry. With the regular police held in reserve, the structures of indirect rule were to prove particularly successful during the depression of 1930–33.

Part IV – Dependency, Differentiation and Stratification, 1930–1939

To suggest that the international depression of 1930–33 was a turning point in Tanganyikan history may well appear 'Eurocentric.' Yet the simple fact is that the Tanganyikan economy was by then dependent on the capitalist metropoles, and no more vivid proof of this was needed than the spread of the depression from America and Europe. The moment that Tanganyika or any other part of Africa became integrated into world capitalism, it became subject to the same remorseless economic laws as the metropoles themselves. The sharp contradictions between production and consumption and between capital and labour, leading to periodic crises and recessions in America and Europe, also affected East Africa: notably, in 1907/08, 1921 and 1925. Then came the most decisive slump of all in 1930–33, casting ripples even into the most peripheral corners of a peripheral economy. Not only were Tanganyika sisal, coffee and cotton affected, but the marginal involvement of pastoralists was hit by falling prices for hides, while areas producing food for sale locally also found that the market had disappeared.

Overwhelmed by the extent of the great depression, European firms were forced to cut back in some areas of the colonial economy. Large import/export houses closed their Dar es Salaam branches or restricted themselves to a single Nairobi office. Sisal estates ceased expanding and instead reduced production and the labour force drastically. Even the government bureaucracy had to accept reductions in their salaries and fringe benefits. The manifest inability of Africans to pay taxes when no money was available led to some relaxation in tax collection, but on the whole Tanganyika survived the depression by placing the brunt of the burden on the workers and peasants. One of the indices to this effect is that the social services for Africans (which were minuscule enough to begin with) were the first to be sacrificed, they were cut most drastically, and they were the last to be restored to pre-depression proportions many years afterwards.

Events on the sisal estates followed a parallel course. Up to 1930, workers earned from Shs. 18/- to Shs. 36/- per assigned task or labour card (Kipande). With the slump, wages fell to Shs. 10/- to Shs. 12/-, and the size of the tasks were increased. No benefits were offered to the labourers after the slump ended, except that a bonus of Shs. 3/- was offered to certain categories of workers who completed the kipande within 42 working days. When another [recession?] emanated from Euro-America and hit Tanganyika late in 1938, the employers quickly withdrew the bonus and also reduced the numbers of workers receiving rations. It was not until after the second world war that workers' wages were again comparable to what they were in 1930, in spite of the fact that both the employers' profit levels and the workers' cost of living were known to be skyrocketing during the period 1940–45.

Many Tanganyikan wage earners returned to the land, rejoining those who were being exploited by incredibly low prices being offered for agricultural produce – when there was a market. In this crisis, the colonial government once more resorted to thinly-veiled coercion in the form of a "Grow More Crops Campaign". Its object was to get Africans to expand the area of production and to increase output in spite of remunerative prices. Throughout 1932 and 1933, the Governor made speeches on this topic, the Chief Secretary issued circulars, the D.O.S. held numerous conferences with their respective P.C.S, and above all the Director of Agriculture propagandised and [?] official conceded in October 1933 that "in the past, far too [?] of the slump has been thrown on the shoulders of the primary producer" but he nevertheless went on to urge "larger areas per man and more men working the land". Knowing that prices were too low to serve as an inducement and that they were still falling, he instructed his subordinates not to mention any price as likely to be paid for any given commodity; and he concluded with the warning that "any tendency to slack off and have a breather after this season's efforts should be checked and reported to my office and the Senior Agricultural Officer of the Province".

Years afterwards, other agricultural officers reviewed the Grow More Crops campaign as having been technically unsound. It sacrificed quality for quantity and encouraged extremely poor land usage. But it achieved its primary purpose of maintaining the level of surplus extraction in the midst of the greatest recession in the history of capitalism. Similar techniques had been tried on a smaller scale for earlier slumps in 1921 and 1925. When the next periodic crisis came along in 1938, the colonial state in Tanganyika and elsewhere in Africa was fully prepared to deal with it in the manner which had proven its efficacy: namely, by forcing Africans to paddle harder against the current, so that they might at least stay in the same place.

The depression induced permanent growth in the Tanganyikan peasant sector. Many migrant labourers never returned to plantation employment, especially in the case of the Sukuma. The T.S.G.A. complained bitterly against what seemed to have been a peasant-oriented colonial policy which was encroaching on their labour reserves. Government response was indeed to protect the enlargement of cash crop growing in Sukumaland, but it also took steps to guarantee a larger inflow of migrant labour to the plantations and the mines. They were helped in this by the backwardness of the political economy of Portuguese East Africa, which forced thousands of Makonde and some Yao to stream across the border. They sought employment in the Lindi sisal plantations, they walked on to Dar es Salaam and Morogoro, and by the early 1940s they had become a mainstay in the Tanga industry. A somewhat similar development took place with tegard to the Warundi, except that recruiters and the Belgian government itself took a more active part in supervising Warundi labour migration to Tanga and Central Line estates. Inside Tanganyika itself, Kigoma became the classic instance of the labour reservoir, maintained as such through the discouragement of other alternatives by which the population might have earned cash to meet their taxes and other monetary demands.

Therefore, the cash crop peasantry expanded throughout the 1930s side by side with the plantations and not at the expense of the latter. White settlers did not do as well. Many foundered during the depression; and settler coffee growing was virtually wiped out in the Southern Highlands. On the other hand, they were helped to re-establish themselves with new crops such as tea and pyretheum. Returned Germans came to dominate the settler field until the outbreak of the Second World War. Their own government served as a sponsor, along with an offshoot of the D.O.A.G. known as the Usagara Company. Boers continued to be encouraged, particularly in Arusha where they were heavily subsidised to grow wheat and maize. Settlers were always given preferential treatment – in terms of access to agricultural credit, grants, technical services and markets. Taxation, grading and price structures also discriminated in their favour vis-à-vis the peasants; while the police and the courts helped them to victimise African agriculturalists and pastoralists with whom they came into conflict. Paradoxically, however, the very necessity to provide such massive state support to a handful of settlers proved even to the colonialists themselves that (apart from the plantations and mines) the cash crop peasantry were the ideal form for continued metropolitan penetration, so as to ensure the expatriation of surplus from the colonial periphery.

The Grow More Crops Campaign was in effect part of a programme to ensure that Africans did not opt out of the money economy, however much it hurt them to remain. Other aspects of this programme included tighter control over marketing and insistence on currency transactions to counter the tendency to engage in barter. In this connection, the Asian middlemen traders proved to be indispensable allies of the colonial state and the metropolitan bourgeoisie. The association goes back to the earliest days of German colonialism, because Asian merchants were already pursuing the caravan trade/in the nineteenth century. They did a great deal to help establish the colonial economy in German East Africa as in British East Africa – by supplying porters, by providing small-spicie coins, by distributing imports and by making the innumerable small purchases of primary commodities which were necessary. The leading Asian merchants in German East Africa were Ismailis; and the Aga Khan was a firm friend of both the Germans and the British in turn, urging his followers after the First World War to open up the furthest recesses of the territory.

Asians outnumbered Europeans two to one in German times. Their population remained at about 9,500 during the war, while that of the Europeans dropped to 2,500 by 1931, Asians were enumerated at approximately 23,500 in Tanganyika. Even before the British took over, the Asians had made the whole of East Africa their sphere of operations, with their capital at Mombasa. Therefore, they had no problems making the transition to British rule and becoming closely integrated with British banks and commercial firms on the well-known 90-day credit arrangement. Asian middlemen constituted the clearest expression of the dependent nature of the colonial economy in Tanganyika and they were at the same time one of its strongest props. Their presence in itself meant that new stratification and class differentiation was taking place, coinciding roughly with the racial distinction between Europeans, Asians and Africans. The distinction was highly visible because of residential segregation within the towns, differences in life style and inequalities in access to social services and [government?] institutions. For a more precise analysis, one would [need?] to distinguish between the Asian comprador capitalist and the small retailers or dukawallas, between those who came to own huge [?] estates and those who merely hired themselves out as fundis or [?] men, and between contractors of bus-owners and lesser government clerical employees. But it was as a link in the import/export trade that the Asians were most valued by the system. Writing in 1934, one Tanganyikan colonial official put the matter succinctly as follows:

On the whole the Indian of the frugal, petty shop-keeping class – which is the most numerous – serves as a useful and necessary link between the European and the Native. Dealing as he does mostly in cotton-piece goods and in hardware, he acts as a retailer for the manufactured products of Europe which are distributed by the large firms at the coast and elsewhere.

A few members of Asian community had sufficient ready capital to purchase sisal estates cheaply from the Custodian of Enemy Property in 1920/21. These increased tremendously in value before the end of the decade, and a firm such as Karimjee Jivanjee Estates Ltd., was a multi-plantation venture which was soon to be so [?] and as influential with the T.S.G.A. as the foreign-[?] companies like Bird and Co. Meanwhile, other [small?] [?]lists became owner-managers of individual estates [?] overheads. They were found in Tanga but more so in the Morogoro/Kilosa region, where they cultivated both cotton and sisal. The capital invested was neither from Europe nor for India. It was generated locally, "ploughed back" and multiplied. Credit arrangements made with European banks served not so much to bring in fresh capital but to maintain capital in circulation and ultimately to export a significant proportion of it to Europe. Asians made their profits in the interstices of the system. This was well illustrated by their role in buying and reselling primary commodities. They not only purchased cotton but also established ginneries which processed the raw cotton for export and which also provided a base for more energetic Asian entrepreneurs to engage in soap and oil manufacture.

Conflicts arising out of the Asian middleman position in the economy often presented themselves in racial terms. From German times, settlers and other Europeans treated Asians in a disparaging fashion. European resentment increased with the growth in the economic strength of the Asians in the inter-war years, reaching a peak during the depression when Asian merchants were accused of sharp and underhand business methods – more so than usual, that is. The government stood firm against proposed discriminatory anti-Asian legislation, recognising their indispensability as a class. Besides, Asians had the capacity to organise and decend their class interests. They proved this in 1921 when they fought off government efforts to get more tax from them; and it is significant that they were allowed representatives in the Legislative Council when Africans were not. From the African viewpoint, there was also a tendency to denounce Asians as a racial group because of their activity as retailers. Popular "anti-Asian riots" were found from time to time from the 1920s until the latter part of the colonial period "Uacha huyu Muhindi" and "piga huyu banyani" were typical cries. Such "anti-Asian riots" were really aspects of the class struggle – inevitable once the colonial society began to stratify, but primitive because of the inability of exploited Africans to see or strike at the real controllers of the colonial political economy.

Meanwhile, African society did not remain homogenous. There was a considerable disparity between the amount of colonial activity carried on in the southern parts of the country as opposed to the north, due mainly to the transport infrastructure which concentrated attention on the Central Line and districts lying to the north. Up to about 1926, the convenient way of getting to Tukuyu from Dar es Salaam was via Beira and Nyasaland. After this changed communications south of the Central Line were still poor, and the linkages with the rest of the territory were tenuous. This basic sectional difference became more pronounced during the British period than it had been before, as large parts of the Southern Province never recovered from the effects of Maji Maji. Cash crops and other economic activities were more easily promoted elsewhere, and the 'South' in Tanganyika acquired a significance comparable to the 'South' in the U.S.A. or Italy – that is, one of backwardness. It actually became a place to which civil servants were posted as a form of demotion or punishment.

More usually, regional differentiation is taken to mean the contrasts between the indices of growth from one district to another. Kilimanjaro, Bukoba, Mwanza and Tukuyu showed high growth characteristics compared with Songea, Biharamulo, Musoma and Dodoma in terms of the money generated and circulated, the availability of roads, the type of houses and the provision of social services such as schools and hospitals. The growth areas corresponded partially with the bitter endowed ecological areas, and they were usually more closely integrated into the colonial economy than the non-growth (subsistence) or low-growth areas. For instance, this applied to Bukoba as compared to Masailand or Dodoma. Contrasts also came about because of the particular way in which sections were integrated. Songea and Kigoma were no less closely involved in the colonial economy than Kilimanjaro and Mwanza, considering the proportion of adult male labour affected. But the first two were labour suppliers, a role which did not bequeath the population with any tangible growth in their home areas. Neglected zones were indirectly disadvantaged by being isolated from interactions with other parts of the country. Ultimately, even Africans within the most fortunate pockets of peasant production were not developing any control over the environment, and they became more vulnerable to external forces as they increased their acreages. Growth and non-growth areas together constituted the dependent underdeveloped economy.

Further inequalities were to be found if one pursued the matter at a micro level. Thus, within Kilimanjaro, Rombo was a supplier of paid agricultural labour and a location with few amenities. Conversely, there were in Songea 'islands' of tobacco and coffee, whose inhabitants boasted more cash and did not have to migrate seeking employment. These finer distinctions lead on to the most decisive of the forms of differentiation: namely, class stratification within the African community.

Regional differentiation was mainly an expression of class stratification. To state that one place was more advanced than another within the Tanganyikan context was really to say that it comprised more of those individuals who came to be loosely referred to as the African elite and who, properly speaking, constituted the embryonic African petty bourgeoisie. These were the Africans who alienated land from their fellows, hired labour and (increasingly by the end of the Second World War) used ploughs and tractors to specialise for the market. With them were associated those who could invest small capital in a retail store or a bus or a coffee huller or some such venture which would help in the process of capital accumulation and a higher level of consumption. Above all, the large proportion of this class achieved its position not directly through economic means but because of access to education, especially to upper primary or secondary level. They were thereby guaranteed jobs in the lower ranks of the civil service, and their salaries went to reinforce such activities as purchase of land, cattle and so on.

Kilimanjaro, the best known of the growth areas in Tanganyika, serves as a useful specific illustration of the process of class formation from as early as the 1920/and the 1930s. Statistics referring to Kilimanjaro coffee production in this period usually mention only the gross and average figures. Thus, one might read that in 1932 the total number of coffee grower was 350, the average acreage was less than 1 acre, and the average annual returns were about Shs. 100/-. Such figures in themselves are useless and even misleading, because the 'average' hides the wide gap which had already arisen between the few coffee kulaks and the vast majority for whom it was still a supplementary activity earning them a few shillings per year. Fortunately, the above figures were explained by the colonial authorities in the following manner:

Percentage of growers	Size of farms
60%	1/2 acre or less
24%	1/2 to 1 acre
8%	1 to 1 1/2 acres
4%	1 1/2 to 2 acres
4%	over 2 acres.

A half-acre plot could contain 250 coffee trees at 9ft. spacing, and it would bring an annual income of Shs. 50/- to Shs. 75/- if well tended. Therefore, 60% or 7,800 of the 13,500 families than said to have been growing coffee would have earned no more than shs 75/- at the end of the year and possibly much less than shs 50/-. This was a year of low prices, but at the best of times the 84% with one acre or less would not have derived any livelihood from coffee. On the other hand, 4% or about 520 growers had 1,000 trees or more. Within this group, there were a few persons with 10,000 trees or more, while one individual with over

[End]