Greetings, everybody.
This is the story of how Tanzania got its flag.
But first, it's history time.
Let's start in the 19th century, when Zanzibar was part of Oman.
That's right, Oman stretched all the way down there at one point.
And in 1861, Zanzibar became its own independent sultanate.
They weren't under the sultan of Oman anymore; they had their own Zanzibar sultan.
So that happened.
But in the 1880s, Germany and Britain were very interested in making East African colonies.
So in 1886, Germany started a colony called German East Africa.
And in 1890, Britain took over Zanzibar and made that a British colony.
Now, in the mainland, people weren't too thrilled about this German East Africa business.
There were, of course, plenty of people living there already.
There were various nations and tribes.
Quite a few of them actually.
There were the Hehe, the Maasai, the Ngoni, the Nyamwezi, the Matumbi...
There were tons of tribes already there.
Not everyone was thrilled about the way Germany was running the place, partially because of
the imprisonment and the torture and the rape and the slavery.
You know... these are some complaints.
And there were rebellions against Germany from time to time, and the people put up a
pretty good fight against Germany.
But eventually Germany crushed the rebellions, partially because they called in reinforcements
and partially because they figured out how to use famine as a weapon of war.
Nice guys.
So Germany eventually proved itself, "Yeah, we're in charge."
But it didn't stay that way for long, because then World War I happened.
And, as you probably know, Germany was not on the winning side of World War I.
They were on the losing side, and the League of Nations after World War I decided Germany
shouldn't get to keep its African colonies.
So in 1919, the League of Nations gave Britain control of German East Africa.
So they had to rename it, of course, but they couldn't name it "British East Africa" because
that was already the name of a colony next door they had.
So they named it Tanganyika, apparently naming it after Lake Tanganyika, which by the way
is the second-deepest lake in the world.
Really cool.
So now Tanganyika and Zanzibar were both British colonies, and it stayed that way throughout
World War II.
But after World War II there was change in the air, because colonies saw a really good
opportunity.
First of all, you need money to run colonies all over the world.
And a lot of the colonial powers in Europe, like Britain and France and others, were low
on money after World War II, 'cause wars are expensive too.
So all through the 1940s and 1950s and 1960, it was a perfect time for independence for
colonies all over the world.
And in 1961, it was Tanganyika's turn.
And now we'll get into the flags.
Thanks for being patient.
This was the flag of the TANU–the Tanganyika African National Union–which was the major
pro-independence political party of Tanganyika in 1961.
So when Tanganyika became its own country, they based the national flag off of the TANU
flag.
They just added a little bit of gold.
So this was the new flag of the new country of Tanganyika in 1961.
The green represented the land, the black represented the people, and the little gold
stripes represented the mineral resources.
But don't forget the British colony of Zanzibar.
They got their turn for independence in 1963, two years later.
The British gave control back to the sultanate.
However, this new sultanate didn't last much more than a month, because people were tired
of the sultan and his elite, and there was a lot of ethnic tension as well.
Now, this was the flag of the Afro-Shirazi Party, the political party that was behind
a revolution that took place a month after independence from Britain.
They overthrew the sultanate and established a republic instead in Zanzibar, because people
were tired of the sultanate.
So the Afro-Shirazi Party's flag was the basis for the new national flag of Zanzibar.
They just removed the hoe from the center.
The green represents land, the black represents the people, and the blue represents the sea.
In fact, there was another flag that was used at this time.
I don't know if it was ever used as the national flag, but it has been reported in vexillological
records.
So, there's a chance that less than, like, two months after independence, Zanzibar went
through three flags.
Yeah, 1964 was exciting for Zanzibar.
So, it's 1964.
Two brand new countries right next to each other: Tanganyika and Zanzibar, each with
their own brand new flag.
And I think you can see where this is going: they decided to unite.
The two countries got together and they merged their countries into one.
They merged their names into one.
Get it?
TANganyika, ZANzibar?
Tan, Zan, Tanzania!
It's clever, it's awesome.
And they merged their flags together.
That's right, the two countries did a fusion dance and combined their flags together.
They took the colors of the different stripes, and they merged it into one, and they made
the whole thing a little diagonal so it looks cool, and that's how Tanzania got its flag.
Thanks for watching, everyone.
Kwaheri.