MA IN ARMED CONFLICT AND PEACE STUDIES
CHS 560: DIPLOMACY WAR AND WARFARE IN EASTERN AFRICA
TERM PAPER: MAJI MAJI REBELLION
ODHIAMBO PAULINE ADHIAMBO: C50/72182/2008
FEBRUARY 2009
Introduction
East Africa today is made up of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania consist of about 636,707 square miles of land surface and roughly 42,207 square miles of water or swamps. Tanzania (Tanganyika merged with Zanzibar in 1964) forms the largest area within this region, with a total, including Zanzibar and Pemba, of 342,170 square miles of land and 20,650 square miles of water or swamp. The country boarders: Kenya to the North, Mozambique and Malawi to the South, Zambia to the South West, Congo, Rwanda and Burundi to the West.
It emerges that Tanzania is a land of extreme ethnic diversity. Indeed the north-central part of the country, with its Khoisan, Cushitic, Nilotic and Bantu-speaking population, is the most linguistically diverse area on the whole African continent. The rest of Tanzania is entirely Bantu-speaking; in fact ninety-five per cent of present Tanzanians are born into families speaking one or another of a hundred or more Bantu dialects. The Arabs who settled along the coast were assimilated into Swahili with the increased contact between the coast and the interior in the 19th century and fully integrated in the 20th century.
The early visitors into Tanzania were mainly the Arabs from Oman, Muscat and other parts of Arabian Peninsula. These early visitors were followed from the beginning of the sixteenth century by the Portuguese who ruled the coast until their defeat by the Omani Arabs in 1698. In the nineteenth century came the Germans and the British. Tanganyika remained under the Germans control until 1919 when she signed the Versailles treaty in France. One of the terms of the treaty was territorial dispossession of Germany. Germany lost all her colonies in Africa and other
References: 1. Iliffe John, Tanganyika under German Rule 1905-1912, Cambridge University Press, 1969. 2. Kimambo I. N. and Temu A. J. (Eds), A History of Tanzania, East African Publishing House, 1969. 3. Hatch John, Tanzania, Pall Mall Press, London. 1972. 6. Okoth Assa. Essays on Advanced Level History. Africa: 1885/1914, Heinemann Educational Books (E.A) Ltd, 1985. [2]G. C. K. Gwassa and John Iliffe (Eds.). Records of the Maji Maji Rising, Part 1 (Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1968). [5] Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity (London, Oxford University Press 1966), 40-41