Society and Politics in the 18th Century
By the end of the eighteenth century most of the ancestors of the peoples of mainland Tanzania had arrived within its boundaries. Movements of small groups from adjacent territories continued into the nineteenth and even the twentieth century, but the only important arrivals were those of the Imo, already alluded to, and of the Ngoni, whose origins lay in southernmost Africa.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and. to a lesser extent, in the nineteenth, the internal movement and mixing of peoples characteristic of the earlier period continued. Often a group on the move brought to another that it encountered in situ a technique (a better way of smelting or working iron or of planting cereals), a symbol (the conus disc representing the sun or the drum as a symbol of authority), or apparent solutions to problems (how to organize a larger group, how to relate more adequately to the supernatural).
Out of these processes there emerged in many .cases political units of greater scale and encompassing more heterogeneous populations than that common in the first half of the second millennium. Few were very large, however, and none matched the scale and complexity of some of the systems that developed in Western Africa then or earlier.
In some cases state formation involved the conquest of one segment of a population by another, often intrusive, one. At least that is the version given in the oral histories of ruling dynasties. Rarely, however, was conquest the sole basis for the establishment of a state, whether large or small. Often the local population had some experience of chieftainship, even if only on a small scale, and at least some of the communities in a given area accepted the newcomers as bearers of techniques, symbols, and solutions to problems without the need for military conquest.
In the larger and more heterogeneous societies with more complex political hierarchies, inequalities of status and, to a lesser extent, of wealth also emerged. The links between social status and political power were not simple, however. Occasionally old dynasties that had lost political power retained ritual status and, not uncommonly, political arrangements incorporating diverse populations made a point of giving commoners certain powers as advisers.
Although many parts of the mainland remained sparsely populated, most areas were penetrated to some degree, and there must have been an overall increase in population. The variety of crops and of skills was greater than it had been, and local resources were more thoroughly exploited. Out of all this came the development of regional trade and even of limited links between one region and another. One source of trade goods was iron, a second was salt, a third, pottery. The availability of iron or better techniques for smelting and working it gave a group as a whole an advantage in local trade and to the smelters and smiths themselves status and sometimes power. Less significant politically, hut important economically, was the availability of good clays and ceramic skills.
By the latter half of the eighteenth century a reorganized and increasingly vigorous coastal economy led to a growing demand for ivory and other goods, to which some of the peoples of the interior responded. At this time, however, few Arab or Swahili traders penetrated to the interior themselves: the demand was communicated to hunters and others hi the coastal hinterland, and they often covered a great deal of territory in their quest. In addition some goods were passed from one regional network to another, eventually reaching the coast.
By the end of the eighteenth century some of the people in the interior took the initiative, carrying goods to the coast and back. Among the more important of these were members, called Nyamwezi by the people of the coast, of small chiefdoms in what is Tabora Region.
Much of the portrayal of developments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries relies on a source available to a very limited extent for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and not at all for the first half of the second millennium: the geneaologies of ruling groups and other oral history (sometimes cross-checked by natural events such as eclipses). Oral history has its shortcomings, especially when it seeks to recapture events and relations several centuries old. It may, however, be cautiously adduced to indicate general patterns, as it is here, even when it is ambiguous or uncertain with respect to particulars.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
