German East Africa was a German colony in the African Great Lakes region, which included
what are now Burundi, Rwanda, and the mainland part of present Tanzania. Its area was 994,996 km2,
nearly three times the area of present-day Germany.
The colony was organized when the German military was called upon to put down a revolt against
the activities of a colonial company during the late 1880s. It ended with Imperial Germany's
defeat in World War I. Afterwards, the territory was divided between Britain and Belgium and
reorganized as a mandate of the League of Nations.
History Like other powers, the Germans expanded their
empire in the Africa Great Lakes region on the basis of fighting slavery and the slave
trade. Unlike other imperial powers, however, they never actually formally abolished it,
preferring instead to curtail the production of new "recruits" and regulate the extant
slaving business. The colony began with Carl Peters, an adventurer
who founded the Society for German Colonization and signed treaties with several native chieftains
on the mainland opposite Zanzibar. On 3 March 1885, the German government announced it had
granted an imperial charter to Peters' company and intended to establish a protectorate in
the Africa Great Lakes region. Peters then recruited specialists, who began exploring
south to the Rufiji River and north to Witu, near Lamu on the coast.
When the Sultan of Zanzibar protested, since he claimed to be ruler on the mainland as
well, chancellor Otto von Bismarck sent five warships, which arrived on 7 August 1885 and
trained their guns on the Sultan's palace. The British and Germans agreed to divide the
mainland between themselves, and the Sultan had no option but to agree.
German rule was quickly established over Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, and Kilwa, even sending the
caravans of Tom von Prince, Wilhelm Langheld, Emin Pasha, and Charles Stokes to dominate
"the Street of Caravans". The Abushiri Revolt of 1888 was put down the following year. In
1890, London and Berlin concluded the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty, returning Heligoland to Germany and
deciding on the borders of German East Africa. Between 1891 and 1894, the Hehe tribe, led
by Chief Mkwawa, resisted German expansion. They were defeated because rival tribes supported
the Germans. After years of guerrilla warfare, Mkwawa himself was cornered and committed
suicide in 1898. The Maji Maji Rebellion occurred in 1905 and
was put down by the governor, Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen. But scandal soon followed,
with stories of corruption and brutality, and in 1907 Chancellor Bülow appointed Bernhard
Dernburg to reform the colonial administration. It became a model of colonial efficiency and
commanded extraordinary loyalty among the natives during the First World War.
German colonial administrators relied heavily on native chiefs to keep order and collect
taxes. By 1 January 1914, aside from local police, military garrisons of Schutztruppen
at Dar es Salaam, Moshi, Iringa, and Mahenge numbered 110 German officers, 126 non-commissioned
officers, and 2,472 native enlisted men. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, was a successful
general in German East Africa during World War I.
Economic development Commerce and growth started in earnest under
German direction. Early on it was realized that economic development would depend on
reliable transportation. Over 100,000 acres were under sisal cultivation – the biggest
cash crop. Two million coffee trees were planted and rubber trees grew on 200,000 acres, along
with large cotton plantations. To bring these agricultural products to market, beginning
in 1888, the Usambara Railway, or Northern Railroad, was built from Tanga to Moshi, Tanzania.
The longest line, the Central Railroad covered 775 miles from Dar es Salaam to Morogoro,
Tabora and Kigoma. The final link to the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika had been completed
in July 1914 and was cause for a huge and festive celebration in the capital with an
agricultural fair and trade exhibition. Harbor facilities were built or improved with electrical
cranes, with rail access and warehouses. Wharves were remodeled at Tanga, Bagamoyo and Lindi.
In 1912 Dar es Salaam and Tanga received 356 freighters and passenger steamers and over
1,000 coastal ships and local trading vessels. By 1914, Dar es Salaam and the surrounding
province had a population of 166,000, among them 10,490 (1,050 Europeans, 1,000 of them
Germans. In all of the German East Africa were 3,579 Germans. In its own right, Dar
es Salaam became the showcase city of all of tropical Africa.
Gold mining in Tanzania in modern times dates back to the German colonial period, beginning
with gold discoveries near Lake Victoria in 1894. The first gold mine in the colony was
the Sekenke Gold Mine, which began operation in 1909 after gold was found there in 1907.
Despite all these efforts, German East Africa never achieved a profit for the German Empire
and needed to be subsidized by the Berlin treasury.
Education Germany developed an educational program for
Africans that involved elementary, secondary and vocational schools."Instructor qualifications,
curricula, textbooks, teaching materials, all met standards unmatched anywhere in tropical
Africa." In 1924, ten years after the beginning of the First World War and six years into
British rule, the visiting American Phelps-Stokes Commission reported: "In regards to schools,
the Germans have accomplished marvels. Some time must elapse before education attains
the standard it had reached under the Germans." One of the influences of this German development
of education in their colony is the word "shule" that means school. Since Germans were the
first colonialists to establish a solid educational program in the African Great Lakes region,
the word "shule" has been borrowed into the Bantu Swahili language, the lingua franca
of the African Great Lakes. First World War
The story of German East Africa in the First World War is essentially the history of the
colony's military commander, General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. A vibrant officer,
he spent the war harrying the forces of the British Empire, tying down with his band of
3,500 Europeans and 12,000 native askaris and porters, a British/Imperial army 40,000
strong, which was at times commanded by the former Second Boer War commander Jan Smuts.
One of his greatest victories was at the Battle of Tanga, where von Lettow-Vorbeck beat a
British force more than eight times the size of his own.
Lettow-Vorbeck's guerilla campaign compelled Britain to commit significant resources to
a minor colonial theatre throughout the war and inflicted upwards of 10,000 casualties.
Eventually weight of numbers, especially after forces coming from the Belgian Congo had attacked
from the west and dwindling supplies forced Lettow-Vorbeck to abandon the colony. He withdrew
into Mozambique, then into Northern Rhodesia where he agreed to a ceasefire three days
after the end of the war, on receiving news of the armistice between the warring nations
Lettow-Vorbeck was acclaimed after the war as one of Germany's heroes, and his Schutztruppe
was celebrated as the only colonial German force in the First World War not to have been
defeated in open combat. The askari colonial troops that had fought in the East African
campaign were later given pension payments by the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic
of Germany. The German light cruiser SMS Königsberg also
fought off the coast of the African Great Lakes region. She was eventually scuttled
in the Rufiji delta in July 1915 after running low on coal and spare parts, and was subsequently
blockaded and bombarded by the British. The surviving crew stripped out the remaining
ship's guns and mounted them on gun carriages, before joining the land forces, adding considerably
to their effectiveness. Another and smaller campaign was conducted
on the shores of southern Lake Tanganyika over 1914–15. This involved a makeshift
British and Belgian flotilla, and the Reichsheer garrison at Bismarckburg.
The Treaty of Versailles broke up the colony, giving the north-western area to Belgium as
Ruanda-Urundi, the small Kionga Triangle south of the Rovuma River to Portugal to become
part of Mozambique, and the remainder to Britain, which named it Tanganyika.
German placenames Most place names in German East Africa continued
to bear German spellings of the local names, such as Udjidji for Ujiji and Kilima-Ndscharo
or Kilimandscharo for Mount Kilimanjaro. The few exceptions to the rule included
Wilhelmstal or Wilhelmsdorf on the Pangani River in the northeast of the country
Neu-Hornow in the Pare Mountains in the northeast of the country
Bismarckburg on the southeastern end of Lake Tanganyika
Wissmannhafen, its port Gottorp or Neu-Gottorp near the northeastern
end Langenburg and Neu-Langenburg north of Lake
Nyasa Altlangenburg
Neu-Langenburg Weidhafen and Sphinxhafen on the eastern shore
St. Moritz Kirondathal and Sachsenwald, two gold mines
Neu-Trier Neu-Bonn
Neu-Bethel Mariahilf
Marienthal Emmaberg
Kaiseraue Leudorf
Friedberg Fischerstadt
Peterswerft Bergfrieden
Hohenfriedeberg Hoffnungshöh
as well as German translations of some local phrases, such as Kleinaruscha for Arusha-Chini
and Neu-Moschi for the settlement that is now known as Moshi. Lake Eyasi was known as
the "Hohenlohe Sea", and the mission town of Sankt-Michael near Kahama was formerly
more important. Maps
Gallery
See also
German East African rupie German East Africa Company
German Kamerun German Namibians
German South-West Africa List of colonial heads of Tanganyika
List of former German colonies German Colonial Society
Togoland Footnotes
References
External links