The Inter-War Economy
After a slow start agricultural production rose steadily during the 1920s until it far surpassed the levels reached during the German period. Like the Germans the British encouraged the production of Arahica coffee by the Chaga on Mount Kilimanjaro and of Robusta by the Haya west of Lake Victoria. African farmers were, in fact, responsible for a large part of the territory's coffee production. The British emphasized export crops because of their potential as revenue earners. Little attention was given food production until World War II when territorial self-sufficiency in food became a goal.
Some gold was produced near Lake Victoria and along the Lupa River, and its production rose rapidly in the middle 1920s, hut gold was not to be an important resource in the long run. In general agriculture, whether for subsistence or the production of export crops, was to remain by far the most important sector of the economy through World War II and beyond. Diamonds were discovered near Shinyanga in 1940, but mining employed relatively few persons.
Revenues derived directly or indirectly from various kinds of taxes covered the territory's expenses by 1926, thus conforming to the British government's wish that its colonies be self-sufficient. but that self-sufficiency could be attained only by not attempting too much. Then and later much of the income derived from export crops or mining was not reinvested in Tanganyika given the liberal rules on the export of earnings.
An attempt was made in the late 1920s to expand government services, but the depression of the 1930s caused a swift retrenchment. After 1925 the government placed special emphasis on education for Africans, responding to critical reports on the educational situation by the Ormsby-Core East Africa Commission of 1925 and by an advisory committee on African education. Until that time there had been a number of mission schools and a very few government schools. Mission schools continued to be important, but a few more government schools were established, and beginning in 1927 grants-in-aid were given to schools established by African communities. Such grants were extended to Asian schools in 1929.
Education suffered cuts during the depression, however. Those cuts meant that the problems connected with the development of technical and secondary education that had just begun to get under way could not he solved in the 1930s. Education beyond the secondary level was not really available until after World War 11 and then only at a single college for all three British East African territories.
The development of so-called Native Authorities proceeded by adapting the principles of indirect rule to the exigencies of efficient administration as the colonial authorities saw them. Often the size of the chiefdoms characteristic of many of the mainland's ethnic groups was thought to he too small to warrant paid chiefs, and some of the chiefs in any area were thought to be either too uncooperative or uneducated to perform the tasks required of them.
If lack of cooperation or education were the sole problem, a chief might be retired early to make way for a brother or son who would be more satisfactory. If, in addition, an unsatisfactory chiefs domain were too small, consolidation of two or more chiefdoms might take place; a chiefly family then lost its rights and privileges. These developments did not always occur entirely at the initiative of the colonial authorities; ambitious chiefs careful to cooperate with district and provincial commissioners were sometimes able to influence consolidation if only because the presence of these chiefs suggested an alternative to the existing situation.
In some instances the use of the chiefs as agents of change led to difficulties between them and their people, although widespread problems were not to occur until after World War II (see The Road to Independence, this ch.). For example, when the Kilimanjaro Native Cooperative Union (KNCL') was established in the 1930s among the Chaga and mad, 7 the mandatory marketing agent for the coffee they produced the chiefs were expected to help enforce that requirement. At the time private buyers were prepared to pay more to the producer than the KNCU, and in 1937 riots broke out. focused primarily against the cooperative but also expressing bitterness against some chiefs.
By 1929 there were enough African teachers, minor civil servants, and others with some degree of Western education to form the African Association. It had a number of branches on the mainland, often located at district headquarters, and in 1939 the African Association of Zanzibar affiliated itself. Many of the association's activities were social and educational, but it did express political views from time to time in the 1930s. Another organization, the African Commercial and Welfare Association, whose members consisted of traders, businessmen, and urban workers, was also fairly active in the 1930s, but it was the African Association that survived into the postwar era to become the nucleus of increasing political activity.
Tanganyika was not a battleground during World War but the territory felt the effects of the war: approximately 80,000 Tanganyikans served in the British forces, especially in Ethiopia and Somalia against the Italians, on Madagascar, and in the Burma campaign. Emphasis was placed on self-sufficiency in food production, and after the Japanese seizure of plantations in Southeast Asia new stress was put on the production of sisal, and rubber production once again (and briefly) became important. Transportation facilities were improved, but education and medical care for civilians were given little emphasis. The estates of 3,025 Germans (who had been repatriated or were interned) were managed by neighborieg British farmers, by the staff of the Custodian of Enemy Froperty, or by companies. District officers, often preoccupied with other matters, gave the Native Authorities greater rein, and some of them took the opportunity to aggrandize their power even beyond that permitted or demanded by the colonial regime, thus alienating themselves from their people.
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