German East Africa Research Articles

Small War as Global War: Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s Campaign in German East Africa, 1914-1918

This article discusses Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who commanded the Schutztruppe for German East Africa between 1914 and 1918, as a strategic thinker who clearly perceived the rupture that the First World War implied for colonial governance and the use of military violence. While local resistance to colonisation had been the predominant security concern before 1914, the globalisation of the First World War meant that many colonies became recruiting grounds for loyalist soldiers as well as battlefields in the clash of arms between colonial powers. Conversely, the possibility of anti-colonial rebellions presented a vulnerability for colonial powers that could have a global impact. Based on new archival material, this article shows how Lettow-Vorbeck recognised that small war had the potential to tip the scales in a global war and linked his efforts in German East Africa to the Imperial German strategic efforts to instigate global jihad against Entente colonial powers.

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905 by Matthew Unangst (review)

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905 by Matthew Unangst (review)

Preface. Multisensuality in Historical and Cultural Contexts

This section contains four original articles addressing the matters of interaction, coexistence and representation of the human senses in various historical and cultural contexts. The multisensory experience of the world in relations to the past, the present and the future constitutes the main theme of the selected articles. The authors analyze how, in various cultural texts and historical moments, human experience was depicted through the prism of sensory perception, sometimes combined with sensory memory and the powerfulness/powerlessness of the (non)human corporeality. The authors analyze a variety of historical and cultural sources to answer the question of the impact of multisensory experience on our view of the world: in the past, the present and the future. Nina C. Rastinger in her article “Capturing Extraordinary Multisensory Experiences in Writing: Reports on Natural Disasters in an 18th Century Newspaper Corpus” deals with written representations of natural disasters, which constitute extraordinary multisensory experiences, in historical newspaper texts. Natalia Giza in her study “Multisensuality in the Satirical Prints of the Georgian Era in England” shows how sensory perception enhanced visual humor in the satirical prints of Georgian England, examining how English caricaturists used various sensory elements such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Jules Sebastian Skutta in his paper “Tactile Vision and Othering: Ethnographic Engagements and Racial Differentiations in 19th Century Travelogues” demonstrates on the basis of ethnographic travelogues from German East Africa and from the time of German colonial rule that the transmission, emergence, and dissemination of features of racial differentiation are based on the interplay of different sensory perceptions. Finally, Bartosz Mroczkowski, in the article entitled “Designing the Future Through Touch” focuses on the sense of touch in the process of designing the future. The aforementioned articles illustrate that multisensuality is a multidimensional concept that requires a thorough analysis from different academic perspectives and with the use of various methodological approaches.

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905 by Matthew Unangst (review)

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905 by Matthew Unangst (review)

A Foot in the Door: The Colonial Section of the German Foreign Office and the Settlement of Germans in Interwar Tanganyika

After 1925, German settlers began to return to the former German East Africa, lost through the Treaty of Versailles and transformed into the British Mandate of Tanganyika. The German Foreign Office's Colonial Section took on a proactive role to facilitate these Germans’ settlement in their former colony, including working with German ministries to release funding and navigating the British administration and settlers on the ground in Tanganyika. While Germany had lost its overseas colonies, these officials, many of whom had served in the pre-war empire, did not view their activity in colonial spaces like Tanganyika as belonging to the past. Officials in the Colonial Section navigated the appearance of political neutrality while also promoting their ‘colonial-political’ goals, hoping to create footholds of Germanness in Tanganyika that would keep open the possibility of future empire.

Shauri, Images of Arabs, and Representation of Colonial Hierarchies in the Visual Sources of German East Africa

The article deals with the display of colonial hierarchies in the shauri scene (in German colonial practice shauri was a council, a meeting of the administration of the colony and local residents, where the decisions of the administration were announced and brought to the attention of the population; a court and other meetings with the participation of locals were called shauri too) in the visual sources of the German East Africa, namely on postcards, in photography, sketches, illustrations of memoirs, and on the so-called trading cards. Studying of these sources shows that the position in space and postures of shauri participants are never random: they demonstrate dominance, the presence of might, or, conversely, subordination, and reflect the balance of power that is relevant both for specific participants in the meeting and sometimes for the entire region. Significantly, in this expression of dominance, the Arab-Swahili component of the German East Africa population occupies a special place. Artistic and compositional means emphasize the significant influence of Arabs and Arabized Swahili on shauri; sources depicting them outside the council scenes also demonstrate visual superiority over African inhabitants of the colony. It turned out that there are stable contexts in which Arabs appear in the visual sources, notably in the scenes depicting trade, markets, and slave trade. The constant topos of Arabs’ connection with slavery and their role as brutal slave traders in German verbal and visual colonial discourse is also embodied in the shauri scenes and in the general visual material. These sources allow us to trace the reflection of the racialized and hierarchized picture of the world of both the German colonialists and the local Arab and Arab-Swahili elite.

Tactile Vision and Othering: Ethnographic Engagements and Racial Differentiations in 19th Century Travelogues

The transmission, emergence, and dissemination of features of racial differentiation are based on the interplay of different sensory perceptions, as this contribution will illustrate. For this purpose, examples from ethnographic travelogues from German East Africa and from the time of German colonial rule were selected to examine the functioning of tactile perception by means of the descriptions of skin colors and skin decorations. The source material reveals multisensuality in the form of synesthesia of the sense of sight with the sense of touch, in that the perception of tactile stimuli is determined less by direct touch and more by the visual representation of haptic properties.

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905.By Matthew Unangst. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. 360 pages + 7 b/w images + 6 b/w maps. $85.00 hardcover or eBook; After the Imperialist Imagination: Two Decades of Research on Global Germany and Its Legacies.Edited by Sara Pugach, David Pizzo, and Adam Blackler. Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Brussels, New York,

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905.<i>By Matthew Unangst. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. 360 pages + 7 b/w images + 6 b/w maps. $85.00 hardcover or eBook</i>; After the Imperialist Imagination: Two Decades of Research on Global Germany and Its Legacies.<i>Edited by Sara Pugach, David Pizzo, and Adam Blackler. Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Brussels, New York,

„I Die, but I Thank You…!“ Leipzig Mission at Akeri 1896, Squeezed between Its African Addressees and German Colonial Military

The following case study clarifies how these three different functions of mission are discursively entangled with one another. Mission as a bridge-builder (between people, cultures, and religions of different origin), as a traitor (cooperating with corrupt colonial and imperial powers), and as a victim (finding misery and death on the mission field). Each of these three terms (bridge-builder, traitor, victim) is, to an extent, applicable to the events that took place during the night of 19–20 October 1896 in Akeri on the slopes of Mount Meru (former German East Africa, today Tanzania). Using the concept of entanglement history, I will analyze the death of two young German missionaries of the Lutheran Leipzig Mission, “caught in the crossfire” between the African community to be outreached and the German colonial military. We will see how various symbolic systems collide in the year 1896 at Akeri. The systems are represented by: (1) German Lutheran missions activities; (2) A German colonial and military expedition; and (3) The resistance of African Maasai societies’ leadership. “Akeri 1896” (I will continue to refer to this event specifically as “Akeri 1896” throughout the article) had become in the following 100 years a complex entanglement of metaphoric meanings. The same event can be a placeholder for victory, for defeat, for disaster, for martyrdom, for Christ-centredness (of the missionaries in their own perception), as well as for evil-centredness (the Africans in their perception of the Western foreigners).

Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982 by Florian Wagner

Decolonization must be either “revolutionary or inexistent,” declared the Martinican poet and politician Aimé Césaire (356). So long as it enforces a relationship between domination and subjugation, colonialism cannot be “reformed” in any substantive way. The International Colonial Institute (ici, 1893–1982)—the subject of Wagner’s penetrating volume—begged to differ. The ici claimed that under the guidance of European experts, colonial subjects could become productive contributors to global capitalist society “voluntarily” and “without renouncing their culture and traditions” (354). It rejected modernization theory’s claims of liberal universalism, arguing instead for localized models. Nonetheless, ici experts shared “best practices” from around the world, creating a “trans-colonial” sphere of knowledge. Its ideas shaped colonial policies before 1945 and neocolonial practices thereafter; famous colonizers like Frederick Lugard and Hubert Lyautey were among its members. Wagner argues that the very consistency of the ici’s calls for reform reveals the hollowness of imperial apologetics.Despite the group’s significant influence, the ici has received little study. By conducting research in twenty archives across six countries, Wagner provides an account of the group’s institutional history, engaging critically with its central ideas and tracing its impact on policy. His central argument? “The ici is the smoking gun that proves the immobility of colonialism” (350).Wagner’s approach is mainly historical, though he has read relevant sources in other disciplines. Chapter 5 draws from law and sociology to show how ici experts like Cornelis van Vollenhoven used codification to manipulate indigenous laws for the benefit of colonizers. He draws from social theory, especially Foucault’s, to frame his interpretation of colonial reform as the search for “governmentality”—the control of colonies through elite knowledge and with the voluntary cooperation of the colonized.1Through the ici’s minutes and publications, Wagner reconstructs the group’s discourse of reformist colonialism. Chapter 3 explains the group’s standard discursive method. Colonial “experts” would begin by identifying a “stereotype” of successful colonialism (usually in Dutch Southeast Asia), which could be juxtaposed with unsuccessful ventures (often British India or settler colonies more generally). Experts would argue that successful practices respected indigenous traditions and attracted voluntary participation, and then lobby governments and private investors to bring these modalities to other colonies.Chapter 4 offers an especially revealing study of the Buitenzorg botanical garden in Dutch Java, the plants and techniques of which were imported to German East Africa, the Belgian Congo, and French West Africa. But according to Wagner, such supposed colonial success stories were inevitably based on “myths.” They were neither as profitable nor as transferrable as the experts claimed, and they actually relied on heavy doses of coercion and violence. The true function of places like Buitenzorg was ideological; they stood for the idea that trans-colonial science could improve colonialism. Thus, Wagner concludes that the main function of the ici was not to improve life for colonial subjects, nor even to enhance the productivity of the colonies. Instead, it helped its members to “boost their careers as colonial experts” (349), with commensurate salaries, pensions, and respect.Chapters 6 to 9 trace the group’s lasting influence from the 1920s into the decolonization era. By the 1930s, it stood in opposition to the liberal reformism of the League of Nation’s Permanent Mandate Commission (pmc) and became a haven for fascists and their sympathizers from Italy, Germany, and Portugal. The organization—which renamed itself the Institute of Differing Civilizations (incidi) in 1949—even admitted war criminals and notorious antisemites. The group continued to embrace “cultural relativism” and local knowledge, arguing not only that the pmc’s liberal universalism reflected ignorant Eurocentrism but that prominent anticolonial nationalists were unrepresentative of the diverse desires of their people.At times, the significance of the ici in shaping particular colonial policies can be difficult to ascertain from this book, and Wagner’s claims of wide incidi influence into the 1960s are not fully developed. Moreover, the book’s deep research can sometimes result in excessively dense passages. Wagner succeeds, however, in demonstrating the centrality of the ici to discourses about colonial governance. That the group’s members promoted a remarkably consistent narrative of reform throughout its lifespan should interest the many scholars tracing the role of empire in the construction of twentieth-century internationalism and development.

German Colonial Guerilla Warfare in German East Africa and the “China Matter” at the First World War

Robert Gaudi's book about the German guerilla warfare in East Africa led by General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck is a monography of military history in cultural historical approach.

Askari, Arabs, and Africans of Tanganyika: Colonial Times through the Eyes of German Photographers and Illustrators

The article deals with the representation of local population of German East Africa (in regards of its main part which later formed British Tanganyika) on the photographs, book illustrations, and postcards published by German editors and photographers. These images reflect German colonial discourse in relation to specific circumstances of East Africa, where Germany was for centuries preceded by other “foreign colonizers”, namely the Arabs. On the one hand, these images constitute a valuable source for the study of history and ethnography of East Africa, on the other hand, they reflect “visual colonization” of subjugated territory and its hierarchies. We have before us a visual history of the “colonial period” that allows us to better understand this historical era as a distinct segment of the historical process.

(De)Colonial historical geography and historical GIS

This article responds to a recent call from the journal’s editors to diversify the subjects of historical geography. It surveys Historical GIS (HGIS) and colonial cartography scholarship to offer a critique of existing GIS tools for the study of precolonial nonwestern histories. These tools, in the ways in which they turn Indigenous knowledge into computer-processed data, repeat the work of the colonial state. The article applies concepts from decolonial and design theory to address the problem, in particular Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s ideas about the decolonization of knowledge. If we think of cartography as as a language to communicate spatial information, then a decolonial map must be based in Indigenous mapmaking. To articulate what this might look like, the article explores Karl Weule’s work on Indigenous mapmaking in early-20th century mainland Tanzania (then the colony of German East Africa). It demonstrates that the most common means of applying GIS to historical maps distort the mapmakers’ original intentions and proposes an alternative design for a pluralistic decolonial map, based in Indigenous conceptions of space rather than just incorporating Indigenous knowledge.

Telecommunications and Conflict in German East Africa: 1891-1907

In modern Tanzania the ability to connect people and institutions within the context of the Internet and, even more specifically, via the mobile telephone network, would be considered an integral component of daily life. Yet there is almost no consideration by modern historians of the development of telecommunications within the country, a process that extends back well over a century. Within the entity that became known as German East Africa a telegraph line ran 791 kilometres from Tanga in the north to Mikindani in the south. It was created between 1891 and 1897. It was the ‘unbroken cable’ that literally tied together an initial strip of coastal territory under tentative control by the German colonial authorities. This essay looks at the circumstances in which this earliest physical infrastructure was constructed and used, and how it fit into a more pervasive postal framework. It also considers that there was an early public awareness of the functionality of such infrastructure, an awareness that led to it being dynamically targeted and then protected during several periods of internal insurgency. Since such insurgency primarily occurred south of the Rufiji, there is a particular emphasis on providing context for that geographical area.

From German East African Rupees to British East African Shillings in Tanganyika: The King and the Kaiser Side by Side

AbstractPallaver situates German East Africa within the framework of the broader East African region as a way to illuminate the processes of currency standardization in the colonial context. The monetary geography of the region was determined first by the circulation of the rupee and later by Great Britain’s interests to create a common currency for its East African colonies. Pallaver argues that transimperial, international, and regional contexts influenced currency circulation across and within colonies, drawing attention to forms of colonial money and their use by distinct groups, such as African laborers and Indian traders.

The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891–1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries, by Anna Maria Busse Berger

<i>The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891–1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries</i>, by Anna Maria Busse Berger

Colonial Schemes and African Realities: Vernacular Infrastructure and the Limits of Road Building in German East Africa

AbstractThis article studies infrastructure development in the colony of German East Africa from the early 1890s to 1907. By focussing on questions of continuity and change in the transition phase from the precolonial era to German colonial rule, the article demonstrates that colonial road planning coexisted and often collided with established infrastructure systems. After 1891, colonial authorities sought to transform existing caravan paths into all-weather highways. The analysis applies an actor-centred approach to explain why almost all of these efforts failed. A focus on those actors being expected to construct or maintain (residents) and to use (transport workers) colonial roads reveals the non-compliance of colonial subjects, the persistence of African spatial practices, and the resulting contestation of colonial rule in everyday life. In this way, the article illuminates how Africans responded to European interventions which restructured space and how these responses complicated and frustrated colonial road works. Hence, the article challenges classical narratives of infrastructure as a ‘tool of empire’ and instead highlights the resilience of vernacular structures and their producers under colonial rule.

The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891–1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries

The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany, 1891–1961: Scholars, Singers, Missionaries

Bagamoyo Imperial and Actual: Representation of the First Capital of German East Africa in Colonial Postcards and in the Works of Walter Dobbertin

In recent decades, items of colonial photography, including those dedicated to German East Africa, have become the subject of research by historians and anthropologists. Many of the photographs eventually became postcards issued to introduce newly conquered territories to the citizens of the empire, to a lesser extent their population, culture and way of life, and to a greater extent those achievements (both real and imaginary) that the metropolis had brought. This included military stations, churches, missions, infrastructure (railways, train stations, lighthouses), askari troops recruited from local population, etc. On these postcards we can see various species of acacias and palm trees, numerous Araberstrasse and Kaiserstrasse streets, monuments to the emperor and chancellor, ships in the Dar es Salaam bay, “native beauty” and “native quarters”. On the one hand, postcards reflect what colonizers wanted to display before their homeland, on the other they reflect what this homeland itself wanted to see, e.g. images of exotic hot tropics, successes of German administrators and troops. Postcards, being selected in their very plots and created for the propaganda purposes, depict German East Africa strictly deliberately and strictly as a colony. Bagamoyo served as this colony’s capital for about two years. On postcards depicting the town we see the quintessence of the German military and administrative presence: this is tangible both in the choice of depicted objects (fort, boma, Wissmann’s monument in memory of soldiers who died during the suppression of the coastal uprising, meeting place of the colonial administration, etc.) and the frequency of these choices. Images of local residents on postcards are marginal, the “black quarter” is opposed to new European buildings, and the elements of the Arab-Swahili cultural component of Bagamoyo are not represented at all. On the contrary, photography of Walter Dobbertin allows to have a look at Bagamoyo in the end of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th centuries in a much more complete and complicated way. He took photos of inhabitants of Bagamoyo with clear accent and opened vision – women, children, Arabs, Muslims in kanzu and kofias, without censoring either the phenotype or the cultural components of Islamic religion (mosque, Muslim cemetery, tea houses). It’s fascinating, because negative attitude toward Arabs and Islam is stressed throughout many German colonial narratives written by military and civil officers. The Arabs as “the first colonizers of the region”, i.e. predecessors of Germans themselves, almost never appear on the postcards, as well as Islam-associated objects like mosques or Muslim cemeteries. The article is concerned with this difference between postcards and photographs of Bagamoyo as the latter reveal what had been blind spots of official representation of colony’s first capital and give very personal and much more sincere vision offered by talented photographer Walter Dobbertin.

Resilience from Below: Technicians, Repair and Maintenance Works in Post-socialist Dar es Salaam, 1985-2020

Abstract Since its establishment by the German East Africa Railway Company in 1906, Dar es Salaam’s electricity infrastructure has been functioning precariously. Tanzania’s national power company (Tanesco) collaborated with donors to ameliorate these problems, but to no avail. Tanzania’s cities continued to experience both cascading and rolling blackouts, and such breakdowns of infrastructure became critical, especially from the 1980s onward, making electricity consumers vulnerable. This article illustrates that the failure of Tanesco’s systems does not mean that inhabitants in the city have remained passively exposed to the consequences of power breakdowns. Based on interviews, a literature review, and archival material, it demonstrates that electricians have become part and parcel of a socio-technical landscape that has enhanced household resilience—the ability to survive in a country partly plagued by failing critical infrastructure. The article reveals the active role played by formally and informally trained electricians (mafundi) in forging alternative solutions, increasing electricity users’ ability to cope with power outages. Employing innovative skills to repair electrical appliances and tinker with Tanesco’s infrastructure, street electricians increased the resilience of residential electricity users in the face of recurrent power failures. The author argues that urban resilience studies in African cities like Dar es Salaam need to consider street technicians to gain a full understanding of households’ responses to vulnerable electric infrastructure.