Tanzania - History
Consensus scientific opinion places human origins in the Great Rift Valley, which dominates the landscape of much of East Africa. Northern Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge has provided rich evidence of the area's prehistory, including fossil remains of some of humanity's earliest ancestors.
Interior Tanzania’s great cultural and linguistic diversity is due to the various histories of migrations from elsewhere in the region. In some instances, groups of migrants separated, leading to different cultural developments. In other cases, various groups merged, creating new cultural identities and languages. Most Tanzanians are aware of their cultural origins and the traditional histories of the ethnic community with which they identify. The peoples of the interior traded with coastal communities, which in turn traded with all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean.
Long standing patterns of political organization, economic production, and trade were disrupted by the violent escalation of the Arab-led slave and ivory trades in the 18th and 19th centuries. Bagamoyo on the coast and Zanzibar town were major slave ports serving markets for slave labor mostly in the Arab world. These societies, already severely stressed by the violence of the slave trade, came under further pressure once European explorers (mostly military, some missionary) opened the way to European conquest (first by semi-private European companies, later by European states) from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.
Coastal and island Tanzania organized into city-states around 1,500 years ago. The Swahili city-states traded with the peoples of the interior and the peoples of the Indian Ocean and beyond (including China). Many merchants from these trading partner nations (principally from inland Africa, the Arab world, Persia and India) established themselves in these coastal and island communities, which became cosmopolitan in flavor.
The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama explored the East African coast in 1498 on his voyage to India. By 1506, the Portuguese claimed control over the entire coast. This control was nominal, however, because the Portuguese did not settle the area (except for a few forts) or explore the interior. Instead, they violently enforced a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade, denying the Swahili city-states their main means of livelihood. The Portuguese also demanded tribute, bombarding and looting communities that refused to pay protection money. The coastal peoples rose up against the Portuguese in the late 1700s. Their resistance was assisted by one of their main trading partners, the Omani Arabs. By the early 19th century the Portuguese were forced out of coastal East Africa north of the Ruvuma River and the Omanis moved in.
Based in Zanzibar, the Omani Sultanate maintained close trade and diplomatic relations with the major trading powers, including the United States as of 1837. They also maintained close relations with some states in the interior with whom they were partners in the ivory and slave trades. European exploration of the interior began soon after the Omanis had consolidated their control of the coast and Zanzibar. Two German missionaries reached Mt. Kilimanjaro in the 1840s.
British explorers Richard Burton and John Speke crossed the interior to Lake Tanganyika in 1857, with Speke going on to Lake Victoria. David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary-explorer who crusaded against the slave trade, established his last mission at Ujiji, where he was "found" by Henry Morton Stanley, an American journalist-explorer, who had been commissioned by the New York Herald to locate him.
The Omani Sultanate, which had been heavily engaged in selling African slaves principally to the Arab world, outlawed the slave trade in 1876. British influence over the Sultanate steadily increased in the 1880s until Zanzibar formally became a British Protectorate in 1890.
German colonial interests were first advanced in 1884. Karl Peters, who formed the Society for German Colonization, concluded a series of agreements of dubious validity with "leaders" of questionable standing purporting to accept German "protection" for their inland African states. Prince Otto von Bismarck's government backed Peters in the subsequent establishment of the German East Africa Company. In 1886 and 1890, Anglo-German agreements were negotiated that delineated the British and German spheres of influence in the interior of East Africa and along the coastal strip previously claimed by the Omani sultan of Zanzibar. In 1891, the German Government took over direct administration of the territory from the German East Africa Company and appointed a governor with headquarters at Dar es Salaam.
German rule, which featured "hut taxes" and conscript labor to fund administration and infrastructure that benefitted German settlers at the great disadvantage of African communities, provoked African resistance. The Maji Maji rebellion of 1905-07 united the peoples of the Southern Highlands in a struggle to expel the German administration. The German military killed 120,000 Africans in suppressing the rebellion.
German colonial domination of Tanganyika ended after World War I when control of most of the territory passed to the United Kingdom under a League of Nations mandate. After World War II, Tanganyika became a UN trust territory under British control. Subsequent years witnessed Tanganyika moving gradually toward self-government and independence.
In 1954, Julius K. Nyerere, a school teacher who was then one of only two Tanganyikans educated abroad at the university level (University of Edinburgh, Scotland), organized a political party--the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). TANU candidates were victorious in the Legislative Council elections of September 1958 and February 1959. In December 1959, the United Kingdom agreed to the establishment of internal self-government following general elections to be held in August 1960. Nyerere was named chief minister of the subsequent government.
In May 1961, Tanganyika became autonomous, and Nyerere became Prime Minister under a new constitution. Full independence was achieved on December 9, 1961. Julius Nyerere, then age 39, was elected President when Tanganyika became a republic within the Commonwealth a year after independence. Tanganyika was the first East African state to gain independence.
Zanzibar
Under the Sultanate, the Arab population comprised the ruling class and landed aristocracy. Arabs, primarily from Oman, seized large tracts of land on Unguja (except in the less fertile far north of the island) to set up highly profitable spice plantations. Dispossessed indigenous Zanzibaris (known as Shirazis) became agricultural workers, sharecroppers, or semi-serfs. The plantations were also worked by slaves or former slaves, originating from the mainland. There was also significant mainland migration to the islands, especially Unguja, to work menial jobs during the boom years of the spice trade. The Afro-Shirazi population of Unguja mostly resented their Omani and British rulers.
Shirazis from the northern tip of Unguja, the nearby island of Tumbatu, and Pemba enjoyed symbiotic commercial relations with the Arab new arrivals and their Sultanate. They were not dispossessed of their lands. They mostly prospered under the Omanis. Pemban and far northern Ungujan Shirazis tended to identify their interests with the Sultanate.
The British ruled Zanzibar on behalf of the Sultan, not on behalf of his subjects. Their policies explicitly favored Arabs and Asians over Shirazis and mainland Africans (in that order). A series of pre-independence elections revealed two camps: the anti-Sultanate, Africa-oriented, and secular Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) with a stronghold in the densely populated areas of Unguja; and the pro-Sultanate, Arab World-oriented, and explicitly Islamic Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) and its Pemban ally (the Zanzibar and Pemban People's Party - ZPPP), which was supported by most Arabs, Asians, far northern Ungujans, Pembans, and those who worked for the state. The ASP consistently received a larger share of the popular vote (though not by much), but the ZNP and its ally received more seats because they predominated in more constituencies. At independence, the British handed power to the two parties friendliest to the Sultanate and the status quo: the ZNP and ZPPP.
In January, 1964, 1 month after independence from Britain, Zanzibar (specifically Unguja) experienced a bloody uprising against the institutions of the Sultanate, the ZNP/ZPPP government, the Arab and Asian communities, and any Shirazis considered friendly to the state (such as ZNP members and Pembans). Although specific figures vary, several thousand Arabs were killed. Rape and other atrocities were widespread. Arabs were expelled or fled in large numbers. Asian shops were looted. Property was expropriated and re-distributed to ASP supporters.
After a period of confusion, the ASP leadership and its allies assumed control under a "Supreme Revolutionary Council" and extended their control to Pemba (which had not participated in the uprising). Pemba was ruled by "Commissars" who used floggings, forced labor, and public humiliation to enforce their will over a hostile population. After a few months, the ASP leadership opted to accept an offer of union with Tanganyika (forming the nation of Tanzania), both to prevent a counter-revolution and to buttress the political position of the ASP leaders among other members of the Supreme Revolutionary Council. The Union Agreement (signed April 26, 1964) granted wide-ranging autonomy for Zanzibar. This date is observed in Tanzania as Union Day. It is Tanzania's official national day.
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