Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914: Tensions of Transport (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies) 303089469X, 9783030894696

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Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914 Tensions of Transport Andreas Greiner

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series Editors

Richard Drayton Department of History King’s College London London, UK Saul Dubow Magdalene College University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK

The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a well-­ established collection of over 100 volumes focussing on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures that emerged from, and challenged, colonial rule. The collection includes transnational, comparative and connective studies, as well as works addressing the ways in which particular regions or nations interact with global forces. In its formative years, the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, but there is now no imperial system, period of human history or part of the world that lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome the first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies by more senior scholars, and welcome collections of essays with a strong thematic focus that help to set new research agendas. As well as history, the series includes work on politics, economics, culture, archaeology, literature, science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to collect the most exciting new scholarship on world history and to make this available to a broad scholarly readership in a timely manner.

Andreas Greiner

Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914 Tensions of Transport

Andreas Greiner German Historical Institute Washington (GHI) Washington DC, USA

ISSN 2635-1633     ISSN 2635-1641 (electronic) Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ISBN 978-3-030-89469-6    ISBN 978-3-030-89470-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Image Collection of the German Colonial Society, Frankfurt am Main University Library, 003-1047-01 This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Tina and Till

A Note on Spelling, Currencies, and Measurements

I have adapted the German transliterations of East African place and group names to today’s spellings. Where the contemporary German name differs significantly from the Kiswahili name (e.g., Bismarckburg = Kasanga), I have added the respective name in brackets. All translations are my own unless indicated otherwise. In the time period under review, different currency systems coexisted in East Africa. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, payment in cloth, cowry shells, and beads was common. Common currencies in long-­ distance commerce also included the Austrian Maria Theresa dollar and the Indian Rupee (exchange rates 1 Maria Theresa dollar = 2.10–2.23 Rupees and 1 Maria Theresa dollar = 2.92 German Marks). Under German rule, the main currency was the Rupee, divided into 64 Pesas resp. 100 Heller after 1904. Exchange rates with the German Mark were fluctuating, ranging between 1 Rupee = 1.48 Mark (1891) and 1 Rupee = 1.06 Mark (1895). After 1904, exchange rates were fixed at 1.5 Rupees = 2 Marks. The common weight unit of the precolonial trade was the frasilah, equaling c. 35 lbs. Although the metric system was commonly used in German East Africa, weight was often measured in the British imperial system with 1 British imperial pound (lb.) = c. 0.45 kg.

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Acknowledgments

Caravan journeys and academic journeys have at least a few things in common. Travelers usually know the place of departure. And there may be at least a rough understanding of the desired outcome (a bargain; a book). But those who dare to travel far and wide can never quite tell what awaits them on the road. The journey evades those who seek to plan it. Only seldom can caravans travel straight from point A to point B. Most often, they advance in zigzag routes, hoping to strike good deals on the go and to be admitted into one of the legendary centers of trade or wisdom, where distraction and support are plenty. Back on the road, some stages are easy, some are difficult climbs, and sometimes two divergent roads only lead to either a rock or a hard place. Ultimately, when the end is in sight, caravan travelers dress up, blow their trumpets, and return triumphantly from their safari. During my journey with this book, I have encountered a few stages, all of which have left their traces in my life and work. Initial travel plans were made at my alma mater, the University of Heidelberg. There, Roland Wenzlhuemer and the research seminar on modern history allowed me to formulate my idea for the first time. Many of the comments from that seminar stayed with me through the subsequent years. The actual journey began in 2016, at the University of Bern, where I received an early career fellowship. I am immensely grateful to Christian Gerlach, Stephan Scheuzger, and Christian Büschges, who were the first to place their trust in this project. Their guidance and the strong institutional support at Bern allowed me to organize my thoughts. ix

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My longest layover was at ETH Zurich, where the project evolved into a PhD thesis. I am deeply indebted to Harald Fischer-Tiné for his constant support over the years. His invaluable comments and unceasing encouragement helped me conceptualize my research and take it in directions that otherwise would have never occurred to me. I am also grateful to my co-advisors Michelle R. Moyd and Andreas Eckert, who offered their kind support and advice. At ETH, I had the privilege of being part of a wonderful team of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. I have grown immensely through our regular exchange of ideas and support of each other. The collegiality helped me through the hardships which writing a doctoral thesis sometimes entails. After the Swiss Alps came the hills of Tuscany. In Florence, a Max Weber Fellowship at the European University Institute (EUI) gave me the necessary time to work on transforming my thesis into a book. In many ways, my research has profited from the great support of the Max Weber Program and the countless inspiring conversations with so many engaged colleagues. I am also obliged to Lucy Riall for her mentorship. When the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly ended my stay in March 2020, I was welcomed into the home of the Oepen family in northern Germany. I am deeply indebted to my parents-in-law for providing a bright shelter during the dark months of lockdown. Along the way, this book has benefitted greatly from the input of many colleagues, who have been generous to share their time, ideas, and knowledge during the last years. I am indebted to Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, Will Jackson, Julia Tischler, Michael Pesek, Felicitas Becker, Tanja Bührer, Michael Offermann, Juri Auderset, Joanna Simonow, Dominique Biehl, Soni, Elena Valdameri, Michael Brunner, Ian Hathaway, Nikolaos Mavropoulos, Joshua Grace, Frank Schubert, Marek Pawełczak, Bernhard Gissibl, Deborah Bryceson, Ravi Ahuja, Cyrus Schayegh, and Pieter Judson. In Dar es Salaam, I was lucky to benefit from the expertise and support of Abdul Sheriff, Felix Chami, and M.J. Chuhila. In Bagamoyo, Fr. Kyara of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit opened the door to the Catholic Historic Museum and its collection to me. I would also like to thank Said el-Gheithy and Erich Meffert for their advice on the Zanzibar National Archives. In the past years, many great scholars have kindly agreed to read drafts of this book at various stages, and they all fulfilled this task with great commitment. Thank you, Bernhard C.  Schär, Sujeet George, Tomás Bartoletti, Philipp Krauer, Robert Heinze, Jakob Odenwald (also for

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being a great friend over the years), Kai Florian Herzog, Kai Roder, Norman Aselmeyer, William Lyon, D. Anca Cretu, Tristan Oestermann, Michael Rösser, Friedrich Ammermann, Andreas Eckert, Harald Fischer-­ Tiné, and Thaddeus Sunseri. I’d also like to express my thanks to all of the members of the research seminars at the German Historical Institute Washington, the EUI, and the University of Basel for discussing chapters-­ in-­progress with me. Their comments and critiques have improved this study in so many ways. I am especially indebted to Stephen J.  Rockel, whose groundbreaking work on East African porters provided a great source of inspiration for my own study. Without his pioneering research and his advice, the present book would not have been possible. I have been fortunate to discuss parts of my research at different conferences and workshops of which I would like to name but one: the first conference I attended, fatefully titled Der Träger/Le porteur. The great atmosphere at La Réunion and the helpful feedback of Anne D. Peiter and Sonja Malzner were a big boost for me, as a first-year PhD student, and for this project. Many years later, I am now obliged to the European Network in Universal and Global History for the Walter-Markov-Prize, which gave me another motivational boost to finish my work. To Béatrice Schatzmann-­ von Aesch, Jashwanni Grewal, Anne Kadolph, and all of the other staff members at academic institutions: I thank you for guiding me and my colleagues through the most dangerous passage of the academic journey—which is, of course, bureaucracy. This work would not have been possible without the energy and kindness of archivists in Germany, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and Belgium. I would especially like to thank COSTECH for granting me access to the Tanzania National Archives. Heinz Peter Brogiato receives my warmest gratitude for keeping the archive at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography open to me as long as possible before Germany entered another partial COVID-19 lockdown in November 2020. I am very appreciative to the editors of the Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series at Palgrave Macmillan for their belief in the value of this book, and to Lucy Kidwell in particular for her help with its production and for her patience. I would also like to thank Charlotte Hoes, Allison Ruman, Janna Müller, Yella Nicklaus, Erik Brown, and Julia Oepen for their assistance in finishing the manuscript. Many thanks to Alyson Price, Ian Copestake, Casey Sutcliffe, and my dear friend Carolyn Kerchof, who have given their best to help me make my English sound less

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Germanic; as well as to Annelieke Vries-Baaijens for creating the maps for this book. The journey comes to an end in Washington, DC. I am glad to have found a new academic home in the dynamic and supportive environment of the German Historical Institute. It is an honor to join this great group of scholars and friends, who have provided such a wonderful welcome for me and my family. I also warmly thank Simone Lässig for generously giving me the freedom I needed to finish this manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their love and support, no matter the distance. Although we have seen each other only occasionally in these last years, my parents and my brother have always followed my path with great interest and supported me with love and patience in my academic endeavors. Tina Oepen, my wife, is the greatest source of emotional support that I could ever have wished for. I owe it to her, her patience, and her confidence in me that I never doubted that I would pull through. Meanwhile, another adventure has only begun. While I put the finishing touches to the manuscript, Till, our son, is about to make the first steps of what I hope will become a journey of a thousand miles.

Praise for Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914 “Employing the evocative concept of ‘vernacular mobility,’ Greiner’s study of East African transport workers, caravan entrepreneurs, and German colonial efforts to govern them is an authoritative history of African transportation logistics and ‘the porter question.’ The book examines internal caravan dynamics and the many individual choices African workers made as participants in the harsh yet indispensable labor regime of long-distance, and often trans-colonial, porterage. At the same time, Greiner’s analysis explores colonial efforts to govern porterage to serve German interests, showing the limits of the colonial state’s ability to regulate the caravans. Colonial officials were vexed by a problem of their own making: they viewed porterage as a practical necessity on one hand, and as a plague in need of eradication in favor of a fantasy version of railway modernity on the other. Greiner’s meticulous and fascinating research, expressed in clear and well-organized prose, demonstrates that African transport workers exercised certain forms of autonomy, even as they were constrained by colonialism’s multifaceted violence. This book is a major contribution to African labor history, the history of everyday life under colonialism, and the history of logistics.” —Michelle Moyd, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA “The European claim to colonize mobility was characterized by weakness and violence. Illustrating the example of caravan transport and human porterage in German East Africa, Andreas Greiner offers a sophisticated analysis of the dynamics and tensions that shaped colonial policy-making, as well as of the potential of Africans to participate in this process. This superbly researched and clearly argued book provides fresh insights into the limitations and legacies of colonial rule and the transformations it engendered.” —Andreas Eckert, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany

Contents

1 Introduction: Tensions of Transport  1 2 Shouldering  the State: Violence, Coercion, and Professionalism in State-Organized Transport 37 3 Facing  an Established Business: The Self-­Limitation of Colonial Rule 85 4 Carrying  On: Caravan Labor and Legislation in the Colonial Era121 5 Managing  Mobility: The Colonial State as a Gatekeeper of Caravan Travel157 6 Challenging  Spatial Relations: The Colonial Quest for New Infrastructures185 7 Epilogue221

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Contents

Glossary231 Bibliography233 Index267

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Fig. 2.3 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 4.1

Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, “Karawane und Eisenbahn,” 1908. Source: Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1001/4536, 60 Map of German East Africa, 1914 The three caravan corridors with the major routes as observed by German officials in 1891. Adapted from BAB, R 1001/1107, 44 A map drawn by Sabatele, a porter of the Central Depot. It depicts the central route and the major caravan hubs, including Dar es Salaam (1), Mpwapwa (7), Tabora (13a), Ujiji (14), as well as Mwanza (15). Source: Weule, Native Life, 9 Wage trends for specific routes starting in Dar es Salaam, 1894 to 1902. Sources: BAB, R 1001/786a, “Runderlass,” 19 May 1894, 16; BAB, R 1001/786c, “Runderlass,” 5 March 1897, 18; BAB, R 1001/786d, “Runderlass,” 8 October 1898, 135; BAB, R 1001/786d, “Runderlass,” 16 March 1899, 207; BAB, R 1001/786e, “Runderlass,” 6 April 1900, 136; BAB, R 1001/786e, “Runderlass,” 13 May 1902, 28 Barnabas, “Caravan on the march.” The drawing depicts a German expedition in south-eastern German East Africa, 1906. Source: Weule, “Eingeborenen-Zeichnungen,” 41 Ivory exports from German East Africa, 1888 to 1912. Source: Schnee, Kolonial-Lexikon I, 558–559 Porters with umbrellas, undated. Source: Image Collection of the German Colonial Society, Frankfurt am Main University Library, 012-1256-08

2 3 19

56

64 66 108 130

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List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4

Bagamoyo Caravanserai, 1897. Source: Frankfurt University Library, Image Collection of the German Colonial Society, 012-1135-01162 Hans Meyer, “On the trail,” undated. Source: Saxon State and University Library, 71792075 196 “Trade routes before the inauguration of railways, c. 1890,” 1912. Source: Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1001/6568, 19 206 “Trade routes 1912,” 1912. Source: Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1001/6568, 18 207 Porters on the Usambara Railway, undated. Source: Image Collection of the German Colonial Society, Frankfurt am Main University Library, 006-1137-02 209

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Tensions of Transport

An endless file of porters, slowly advancing through savannah plains. Headed by two Europeans, the caravan is clandestinely watched by a group of warriors from their forest hideout. In 1908, the German lobby group Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee used this iconographical scene of European exploration in its flyer Karawane und Eisenbahn (“Caravan and Railway”), of which it circulated over 100,000 copies in Germany (Fig. 1.1).1 The flyer also depicts a second scene. In it, both the forest and the caravan have vanished. Instead, railway tracks, a navigable river, and a road have restructured not only transport but the entire space and economy: along these colonial infrastructure systems, cotton and sisal grow on the fields of a flourishing plantation. A fully packed train and river steamer are ready to bring its harvest to the homes of global buyers. The two scenes were meant as a before/after illustration.2 With it, the Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee promoted accelerated railway expansion in the colony Deutsch-Ostafrika or German East Africa (1885/1891–1918)—comprising present-day mainland Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi (Fig. 1.2). The caravan scene was to represent the “before”: a world, only recently touched by European arrival, in which life and transport still proceeded in the same “anachronistic” way as they had allegedly done for ages, presenting a “dark” and timeless Africa. Contrasting this scene, the second illustration displayed the promised © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2_1

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A. GREINER

Fig. 1.1  Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, “Karawane und Eisenbahn,” 1908. Source: Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1001/4536, 60

effects of mechanized transport. Technology transfer, following the flyer’s key message, would enable German rulers to bring order and civilization to their East African colony, to render the landscape and its population “useful,” and to eliminate vernacular forms of mobility.3 As the flyer’s caption calculates, each cargo train would be 20 times more profitable than caravan transport, replacing the work of 10,000 porters. “Caravan and Railway”—for the German lobby group this dyad appeared contradictory.4 The flyer was certainly not the first pamphlet to stress the social and economic advantages that colonial railways allegedly possessed compared to manual transport. For three decades, businessmen, abolitionists, and state officials across all European empires had praised the promise of mechanized transport. In 1890, the Brussels Act, the treaty of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference, had urged all colonial powers active in sub-Saharan Africa to foster the construction of railways “in view of substituting economical and rapid means of transport for the present means of carriage by men.”5 To the representatives of the empires convening in Brussels, caravan mobility was equivalent to slave trading, making the construction of alternative infrastructure systems a quasi-missionary task. While caravan transport thus became synonymous with backwardness and inertia in colonial debates and literature, steam-powered infrastructure was regarded as its antidote, being expected to eliminate human porterage.6 And yet, by 1908, when the Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee circulated its flyer, the railways in German East Africa had only vaguely

1  INTRODUCTION: TENSIONS OF TRANSPORT 

BELGIAN CONGO

3

Lake Albert UGANDA BRITISH EAST AFRICA Bukoba

Lake Victoria Mwanza

Mt. Kilimanjaro Moshi

Usumbura (Bujumbura) Kondoa Irangi

Tabora

Lake Tanganyika

ra mba Usa way l Rai

Ujiji

Cent ral R ailwa y

BELGIAN CONGO

Tanga Wilhelmstal PEMBA (Lushoto) Pangani Mpwapwa ZANZIBAR Bagamoyo Dar es Kilosa Morogoro Salaam

R

Iringa Bismarckburg (Kasanga)

ufiji Rive r

Kilwa Kivinje

Indian Ocean

Lindi Songea Lake Nyasa NYASALAND

PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA

www.cartographicstudio.eu, 2021

Fig. 1.2  Map of German East Africa, 1914

redeemed their promises. Two lines had initially been projected as early as the 1880s. Sufficient funds for their construction, however, were not provided by the metropole as German East Africa was run “on the cheap,” its

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governance being marked by a reluctance of the German Empire to invest in its new overseas territories. Until after the turn of the century, neither the parliament, the Reichstag, nor the German government was willing to substantially strain German taxpayers for colonial railway extension.7 By 1908, only about 340 kilometers of track existed in German East Africa, a colony twice the size of Germany.8 “Caravan and Railway” could thus instead be read as “African realities and European visions.” While German colonizers dreamed of transferring technology to their colony, the reality was a transport system not introduced by European outsiders but developed from within East Africa. Human porterage was the only available transport mode. Throughout the nineteenth century, vast areas of East and Central Africa were infested with the tsetse fly, the main vector for the animal trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness—a disease leading to weakness and death in affected animals. Sleeping sickness along with other livestock diseases shaped the lives of both humans and animals.9 Along with impassable terrain and difficult climate, they rendered almost every use of pack or draught animals over longer distances impossible. Even though a dense network of caravan routes had connected the East African interior with the Indian Ocean coast since at least the middle of the nineteenth century, donkeys could only be used on a regional level because many trade routes ran through infested areas. As early as the 1870s, European missionaries carried out experiments with ox-drawn carts in the coastal hinterland, all of which remained without success.10 Instead of animals, human porters mediated almost all transport: first in the trade in ivory and other products and later in the colonial system. Historian Stephen J. Rockel summarizes their role as that of “innovators at the forefront of East African engagement with the international capitalist economy. They were key players in the development of new social, economic and cultural networks across East and much of Central Africa during the late precolonial period.”11 Porters traveled in organized caravans, sometimes consisting of twenty participants, sometimes numbering over one thousand.12 By 1900, a decade into the colonial rule, about 100,000 porters continued to arrive every year in the coastal towns at the Indian Ocean, and despite attempts to emancipate transport from their heads and shoulders, caravan labor remained the engine of trade in German East Africa, as much as it was the engine of colonial occupation and administration.

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This book explores the conflictual history of porterage and caravan transport in German East Africa. Engaging the relation between vernacular mobility and colonial power, it has two aims: first, to work towards a more nuanced understanding of how statehood was constituted, negotiated, and challenged in German East Africa. Second, it discusses the transformative impacts of European conquest on African societies. Using the example of caravan transport, it uncovers the longevity of vernacular concepts, structures, and practices, and assesses the power and resilience of their agents—South Asian, Omani, and African caravan entrepreneurs as much as the transport workers themselves. Locating colonial rule in everyday interactions and expanding upon the conception of colonial states as “social fields,” a framework originally proposed by George Steinmetz, the chapters in this book explore how caravan porters, traders, and financers challenged and shaped colonial policymaking and through it the processes of state formation.13 The study of caravan mobility offers an innovative and unique perspective on the inner workings of colonial statehood. By asking how colonizers organized and governed long-distance trade and transport the contestations and contradictions inherent to the colonial rule are brought to the fore, tensions which were embodied in the contemporary “porter question” and its multiple solutions.

The “Porter Question” and the Tensions Within The long nineteenth century was an “age of questions.” Since its early decades, Holly Case has recently argued, terms such as “the social question” had gained momentum in public discourse across Europe, expressing a demand for political action: “Instead of being understood as questions to be answered, these were treated as problems to be solved.”14 In Germany’s African realm, the most pressing issue was the Arbeiterfrage, the “labor question.” At its core was the problem of the constant shortage of African workers in different colonial economies and the question of how to recruit and discipline a labor force to solve it.15 While the Arbeiterfrage has received considerable attention in history writing, a second problem-turned-question of equal significance, at least in Eastern Africa, has until now mostly evaded the historian’s gaze, namely the Trägerfrage or “porter question.”16 To the colonizers of East Africa, the “porter question” existed in two versions, which were interrelated yet somewhat incompatible. The first

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version entailed the question of how transport labor could be utilized for their own colonial ambitions. On the eve of colonization, European explorers traveling in expeditions with porter crews were the first to explicitly formulate this question. Expeditions were sites of cultural encounter— or “contact zones” in the words of Mary Louise Pratt—in which the experiences and expectations of European newcomers to safari travel met and conflicted with those of their personnel.17 Labor as a resource was controlled by those offering it: the porters themselves. Many experienced porters were reluctant to hire their labor power out to European outsiders.18 For Europeans, caravan transport never worked smoothly. Those porters who joined expeditions were accused of being unruly and unpredictable, of stealing from their employers, and of deserting them. In German travelogues, Claudia Essner observes, the “porter question” soon became a Leitmotiv.19 In 1890, for instance, explorer Emil Holub remarked already on page 23 of his travel account that “before we had even marched one single kilometer, the porter question already caused me great agony and gave me an idea of what was yet to come.”20 Three years later, German officer Georg Maercker concluded that “the porter question is the main difficulty in all ventures in equatorial Africa. There is strong suspicion that all ill-fated expeditions failed because of the conduct of their porters.”21 After the German takeover, the “porter question” became one for the new colonial administration, the Kaiserliches Gouvernement (Imperial Government), too. Porter labor defined the state’s mobility as much as the colonial economy. How many people engaged in long-distance transport in late nineteenth-century Tanzania is hard to quantify. In 1892, officer Rochus Schmidt estimated that an annual 80,000 caravan travelers passed the central route, the main artery of commerce running through central Tanzania, in direction of the coast.22 In the late 1890s, another German official, Franz Stuhlmann, confirmed these numbers, estimating that about 90,000 people from the region of Unyamwezi in central Tanzania traveled annually to the Indian Ocean coast. In 1901, the Dar es Salaam-based newspaper Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung counted a total of 100,000 porters, calling them “a threat to our colony.”23 Statistics on caravan arrivals at and departures from most economic hubs at the coast were published in the government’s annual reports and can help to verify these estimates. The numbers provided must be taken with a pinch of salt as will become clear in later parts of this book. Porters not traveling to or from the coastline as well as those leaving the German

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territory en route were not counted. On the other hand, we must assume that porters were counted multiple times if they made several journeys within one year.24 It is impossible to tell how many porters should be added to or subtracted from the statistics. Still, estimating that the annual labor force on Tanzania’s northern, central, and southern coast-inland routes consisted of at least 100,000 long-distance transport workers around the turn of the century seems justified, with the vast majority working on the central route.25 Even with this modest estimate, as historian Karin Pallaver observes, porters “were still the largest group of paid laborers in GEA.”26 Their employment made colonial mobility a highly contested affair. If porters were reluctant or refused to pick up loads for the state, imperial logistics could come to a standstill. Moreover, given the lack of mineral resources or a developed plantation sector, the established trade in ivory and other products was the only source of income for the young colony.27 Securing a share of the trade profits by collecting export customs was hoped to fill the public purse: elephant hunting and the acquisition of ivory, historian Bernhard Gissibl states, became “instrumental in the establishment of German colonial rule: ivory served as the main subsidy and currency of conquest.”28 Unhampered caravan mobility within the colony was thus essential after the colonial takeover and the first version of German East Africa’s “porter question” was spelled out as: how could the colonial administration ensure the constant supply and collaboration of reliable porters for both trade and state-organized transport? The second version of the Trägerfrage stood in stark contrast to the first. It was embodied in the Karawane und Eisenbahn flyer as much as in countless other pamphlets which demanded “a solution to the porter question that has cost the lives of so many people and drains our cultural efforts.”29 In this version, the term “porter question” did not address the question of how to organize a mobile labor force but, quite the opposite, how to abolish it—or at least inhibit its negative effects. From the perspective of German colonizers, these negative effects linked to two tropes characteristic of high imperialism: the promise of economic valorization and the rhetoric of the “civilizing mission,” or Kulturarbeit (“cultural uplift”), its German equivalent.30 First, manual transport imposed constraints on colonial capitalism. Those entrepreneurs and agitators who promised a profitable plantation economy regarded caravan transport as a hindrance to economic exploitation. To them, it appeared inefficient in terms of time, cost, and

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manpower. Because porter labor was expensive, products of comparatively little value, such as coffee, could not be brought to the coast without financial losses.31 In addition, porterage was held responsible for labor shortages in the plantation sector. The colonial Arbeiterfrage and Trägerfrage were intertwined as it was believed that the scarcities stemmed from the employment of tens of thousands of young men in the caravan sector. Abolishing porterage, according to this argument, would relieve them from their occupation and push an expected 40,000 to 100,000 workers to European plantations.32 It was not economic concern alone that made caravans a damnable business in the eyes of European outsiders. Animosity, secondly, was also caused by the question of what status porters in trade caravans actually had. Stephen J. Rockel has demonstrated that slaves designated to be sold were of marginal importance as porters in caravans and expeditions. But contemporary anti-slavery propaganda of different national campaigns associated slavery with caravan mobility, claiming that slaves were regularly employed as porters and that slave raiders traveled along the route network.33 It was not only illicit slave caravans that demanded action. In addition, metropolitan discourse constructed porterage itself as opposed to colonial progress. Depicted as an anti-modern institution and a relic of times past, porterage was under suspicion of causing “a backfall into nomadism and with it a barbarization of the character.”34 Europeans believed that porters’ uprootedness and vagrancy led to disorder, violence, and moral decline along the caravan routes, as well as to the spread of Islam and epidemic diseases.35 Given these implications, the “porter question” became a much-­debated problem within the German state apparatus in its second version, too. In early 1892, one year after the official takeover of German East Africa, Governor Julius von Soden reported to Chancellor Leo von Caprivi that the caravan business had attained the severity of a “veritable plague.”36 In March of the following year, the Reichstag saw its first debate on the Trägerfrage, in which MP Wilhelm Oechelhäuser, an industrialist and promoter of colonial railway extension, addressed this issue as “the question of survival for the colony,” contending that “the complete extinction [Ausrottung] of the caravan trade is a matter of the utmost importance for the colonial administration.”37 In his response, Chancellor von Caprivi concurred that “this caravan traffic is one of the most fatal dangers for East Africa, a severe hindrance for the progress of civilization [Kultur].”38 However, given the parliament’s reluctance to invest in railway construction, the Chancellor conceded that for the time being “caravan transport is indispensable.”39

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This was the fundamental contradiction underlying the issue of porterage in colonial East Africa: the ambition to eliminate this purportedly “archaic” transport mode, on the one hand, and the reality of depending on it, on the other. There was no suitable pack animal because of the sleeping sickness, and no railway because of financial constraints. Therefore, caravans were the single mode of long-distance transportation. As such, they remained vital for both the colonial economy and the logistics of the colonial regime and could not easily be banned. When a parliamentary delegation visited German East Africa in 1906, the Reichstag members still experienced the transport problem first-hand. Upon return, the Catholic Center Party MP Wilhelm Schwarze called the caravan transport system a “dangerous cancer for our colony,” admitting at the same moment that “there is no remedy in sight which could minimize porterage.”40

State, Mobility, and Caravan Transport: A Research Agenda These tensions are at the center of this book. Its focus is twofold: first, to explore how German state agents dealt with the established transport mode and what impact the expanding colonial state and colonial capitalism had on the caravan sector and the lives of those working in it. Second, conversely, it studies the impact of caravan mobility and its agents on state formation and illuminates the dynamics and competing agendas that shaped it. The analysis follows Ann Laura Stoler and Frederick Cooper’s plea to pay close attention to contradictions inherent to statehood when studying the operative mode of colonial regimes. In their anthology Tensions of Empire (1997), they argue that colonial states were not monolithic actors but deeply contested from within and without.41 Stoler and Cooper’s work expands upon earlier research by John Lonsdale and Bruce Berman on colonial Kenya.42 There, British state agents saw their own power significantly limited as they had to mediate between opposing European and African factions and different modes of production. Anxious to “cope with the contradictions,” Lonsdale and Berman argue, colonizers “faced the ambiguous project of promoting change while supervising continuity.”43 These contradictions thus resembled those underlying the “porter question” in neighboring German East Africa. It was at the very heart of the “colonial rule of difference” (Partha Chatterjee) that colonized groups were excluded from state-making.44 And yet, colonial subjects could make

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themselves heard by capitalizing on such inner conflicts because, according to John Comaroff, they “opened up fissures through which the contradictions inherent in colonialism became visible.”45 Questions of how powerful colonial states were in the era of “high imperialism” have long informed history writing on sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier notions of colonial states as a “crushing and relentless force”46 have given way to more nuanced interpretations, which put the “weak capabilities and modest ambitions” of colonial states in their center.47 Historians have repeatedly pointed to the limitations that affected most colonial regimes: scarce personnel and financial resources, the resulting dependency on intermediaries, the inability to control colonial subjects, and the resilience of vernacular concepts and agents.48 As Michael Pesek in particular has argued extensively with regards to German East Africa, shortages of resources and manpower caused the exercise of colonial power to restrict itself to the few administrative and military stations and their immediate surroundings. Away from these “islands of colonial rule” (Inseln von Herrschaft), he has argued, the colonial state remained ephemeral, an observation that the present book will confirm.49 Research on mobility in late nineteenth-century colonial Africa reflects the wider debates on colonial statehood. More recent history writing has defied earlier notions of colonial infrastructure as a “tool of empire” (Daniel Headrick), which went along with the idea of an omnipotent colonial state.50 Newer studies instead spotlight local conditions and actors and point to the fragility and vulnerability of colonial infrastructure systems.51 Moreover, an increasing number of studies focus on African actors and how they negotiated, contested, and appropriated technological interventions. Studies by Jennifer Hart and Joshua Grace, for instance, explore how Africans embraced new technologies and invested in motor vehicles in Ghana and Tanzania, respectively.52 The research of Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga calls for a further shift of frameworks towards indigenous technologies of movement.53 Using the example of hunting in Zimbabwe, he shows how European outsiders assimilated to existing socio-spatial patterns.54 Central to these outlined studies is the claim of understanding African actors not as passive recipients or victims of technology transfer anymore but as agents; “not as outsiders looking in but as coauthors,”55 in the words of Mavhunga. Regarding the question of colonial transformation in Tanzania, historian Oswald Masebo recently remarked that the colonial state “lacked the resources to exert power and influence over the private sphere. It was

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unable to control the private and family life as well as the reproduction of social, cultural, political, and economic relations. Their continued existence enabled families, households, and societies to endure the violent colonial disruption.”56 Studies with a focus on regional longue durée developments have indeed pointed to the limits of German rule, but also unveiled its transformative impact. Research by James L. Giblin, Thomas Spear, or Thaddeus Sunseri, among others, highlights that rural societies upheld specific ecological practices while at the same time being exposed to environmental crises and a forceful drive to market-oriented cash crop agriculture.57 Bernhard Gissibl’s research on African hunting and colonial wildlife protection likewise points to environmental conflicts and their social effects. He suggests that these conflicts were important factors leading to the outbreak of the Maji Maji War in 1905.58 But Gissibl also emphasizes “the social and political implications of elephant hunting and its enormous ramifications for the making of colonial rule” and points to the “important continuities between precolony and the German takeover.”59 While Masebo’s observation that “many precolonial institutions stood the test of colonial rule”60 is certainly correct, Gissibl’s careful study reminds us that an important aspect when studying questions of disruption and continuity is to understand when and why colonial statehood embraced precolonial structures and in which ways it sought to appropriate them. The analysis in the subsequent chapters pays close attention to the processes of assimilation, cooptation, and transition. Uncovering the hitherto overlooked tensions of transport, it makes two central arguments. The first argument is that mobility in German East Africa was a bricolage (Claude Lévi-Strauss) of colonial practices interwoven into a preexisting system.61 Building on previous studies investigating the history of long-­ distance transport since the early nineteenth century, the following analysis engages questions of continuity and change in the transition from the precolonial to the colonial period. Focusing on a form of mobility emerging out of Africa, it follows Joshua Grace’s recent call to defy exclusively Western notions of mobility and development and instead take into account the “host of vernacular practices, technologies, and ideas about movement, its meanings, and its longer histories.”62 Building on Grace’s conception of vernacular mobility, the analysis contradicts the still-vibrant conceptual focus on infrastructure as a European invention and ventures beyond studying the adoption of European technological imports by Africans. Instead, it illuminates how colonizers adapted themselves to

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existing African ideas and structures, but also shows how they adapted and transformed them. Uncovering which elements of the precolonial caravan economy continued to exist and which were removed or coopted by German colonizers, the present book thus assesses both the resilience of preexisting structures and the transformative effects the German colonial state was able to unfold on the lives of its subjects. The second main argument relates to the role of colonized actors in these processes—meaning African, South Asian, Zanzibari, and Omani (generically referred to as “Arabs” in colonial discourse). Understanding colonial state formation with Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale as a “historical process whose outcome is a largely unconscious and contradictory process of conflicts, negotiations and compromises between diverse groups,”63 the book contends that the agents of the established caravan economy were not passive victims of political and economic transformation brought upon them from outside. Instead, it demonstrates that these actors interpreted the processes of state formation, reacted to them, and shaped them from the margins—on the microlevel of expeditions and caravans as much as on the macrolevel of the broader economic and political system. Non-European autonomy and  agency are at the core of this book.64 The question as to what extent African workers retained control over their workplace has long been debated in the historiography of African labor. Scholars have uncovered the extent to which migrant workers in southern African mines or slaves on Kenya’s plantations were able to shape their work environment, to evade controls, and to negotiate the conditions of their work.65 Focusing on slaves and caravan porters in Tanzania, Jonathan Glassman sheds light on the ongoing struggles over participation in the coastal societies.66 Stephen J. Rockel points to the labor culture of wage-­ earning porters and the autonomy they retained in caravan and expeditionary travel (see below). Regarding the German East African state, it was the “Dar es Salaam School,” a group of historians working in the late 1960s, that first pointed to the impact of African actors on processes of colonial state formation.67 In Tanganyika under German Rule, 1905–1912 (1969), John Iliffe argues that it was African initiative that provoked the many political reforms under Governor Albrecht von Rechenberg.68 Subsequent literature has often focused on the role of European pressure groups in German East Africa while also paying attention to their conflicts and interactions with the African population.69

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A few studies draw a direct link between indigenous agency and colonial state-making in German East Africa. The work of Michelle R. Moyd draws attention to African state agents as she demonstrates how African colonial soldiers, called Askaris, enacted the colonial state in everyday life through both their state functions and their social activities.70 Thaddeus Sunseri argues that labor migrants and rural dwellers were able to shape labor patterns significantly and to cause the administrators of German East Africa to abandon their support of planter interest through their day-to-­ day activities.71 In like vein, Jan-Georg Deutsch argues that the gradual end of slavery in Tanzania depended to a great extent “on the persistent attempts of slaves to gain more meaningful control over their lives.”72 At the same time, his study offers important insights into the role of other colonized actors, who were on an intermediary level between the African population and European colonizers. Slavery as an institution, he observes, was not abolished in German East Africa because the authorities were afraid that abolition might undermine the power of the slave-owner elites, who were allies of the Germans.73 Building upon this research, my book seeks to systematize the study of non-European agency in German East Africa. Colonial mobility depended on the compliance of porters to work, which made their actions and reactions decisive for the implementation and continuation of administrative measures. The same applied to caravan entrepreneurs, who were seen as guarantors of the state’s income. Throughout the subsequent chapters, the analysis constantly zooms in and explores how colonial decisions regarding the governance of caravans reverberated in the everyday practices of these groups. But more than that, by locating colonial rule at ground level, where colonial policies faced the agendas of those people they claimed to rule, the study also explores how the activities of these people reverberated within the state apparatus. As an analytical frame, I understand the colonial state as a social field, as suggested by George Steinmetz. In his conception, based on Bourdieu’s field concept, a variety of actors negotiated the colonial forms of governance in a field full of struggles and conflicts. They took shape through debates within the bodies of legislation and, equally important, through interactions with those who were to be governed. The outcome of this competition then shaped colonial policies.74 The social field surrounding caravan mobility consisted of a range of actors: state officials on different levels with competing interests, planters, settlers, overseas trade firms, missionaries, the metropolitan government, the interior population, caravan

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financiers, traders, and porters. Along the themes of legal frameworks, control modes, and spatial interventions, my analysis plunges deep into this field and investigates the role of the different actors in coproducing the governance of caravan mobility. “Native policy,” Steinmetz observes, “depended on the colonized agreeing to play their assigned roles.”75 Of course, most often they did not. With their autonomy and agency, caravan porters, traders, and financers were “veto players” (George Tsebelis) to German rule.76 Negative responses to enacted tools, a vote “with their feet” (e.g., through desertion or outmigration), could alter policymaking. More than that, as we will see throughout this book, the mere anxiety of how different agents of the long-distance caravan economy might react to future regulations led to an astonishing degree of self-restriction on behalf of the colonizers.77 As much as this book is about the colonial state, it is also about transport. Focusing on East African long-distance porterage, it joins a small but significant corpus of literature. It was Robert Cummings who first identified the professional status of transport workers among the Akamba in Kenya, whom he called “the first wage-earning laborers of interior East Africa.”78 Following in the wake of his study, scholars have identified similar labor relations for porterage in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa.79 Scholarship since the 1970s has also focused on the agency of porters in expeditions, spotlighting violence and exploitation in European-led ventures, but also highlighting the dependence of explorers on established structures and intermediaries.80 Stephen J. Rockel has provided the first and most significant systematic study of porterage and the caravan sector in East Africa. His PhD thesis, articles, and seminal monograph Carriers of Culture (2006) examine the social, political, and commercial history of both porterage and the precolonial caravan economy. Regarding the network of long-distance trade routes, Rockel’s meticulous analysis draws our attention to the activities of travelers and the interior population in the formation and operation of caravan infrastructure. He discusses the different ways in which caravanners and residents produced these spatial arrangements in their interaction and shows that their usage was regulated through systems of conventions and practices. Regarding the social and cultural history of porterage, Rockel provides deep insights into the life and daily routines in caravans and expeditions. Challenging the prevailing misconception of porters as slaves, his research has revealed that Tanzania’s long-distance porters were a distinct group of skilled wageworkers with a high level of professionalism

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and a shared “crew culture.” As he demonstrates, wage-earning transport workers, especially those from the central Tanzanian region of Unyamwezi, developed routines, norms, work standards, and honor codes. They retained autonomy and were able to defend this caravan culture through individual acts and collective labor struggle.81 Rockel’s study, which is of the highest importance to the present book, has already shed some light on porterage under German rule. Although his focus is clearly on the precolonial era, his discussion of the inner workings and contestations of power in safari travel also draws on expeditions in the colonial period. It thus offers insights into different aspects of colonial porterage, such as remuneration, corporal punishment, strategies of resistance, and the job profile itself. Only briefly, however, does his analysis deal with state politics and the colonial governance of porterage.82 Following his research, different scholars have touched upon porterage in the colonial period. Michael Pesek studies porter labor in expeditions, focusing on German explorers and early state-organized caravans in German East Africa, and points to the continuities between the precolonial caravan economy and colonial state formation.83 The various contributions of Karin Pallaver not only provide additional insights into the caravan economy by drawing on the rich archive of the White Fathers missionary society, but her book Lungo le piste d’Africa (2008) also contains a chapter on the trajectories of caravan transport during the German period. In it, Pallaver already outlines some of the administrative measures discussed in detail in the present book. Moreover, she traces the European efforts to develop alternative means of transport and discusses precolonial road building projects as well as colonial railway expansion in light of the problems associated with porterage.84 The German stance towards the caravan system has also been partially addressed by Jennifer Kopf. In one chapter of her PhD thesis, she identifies the caravan trade as one of the main problems of German rule and points to the political action taken to stop violence along the caravan trails. However, owing to her identifying Islam as the main antagonist of German policymakers, she tends to overlook the tensions inherent to manual transport (in which not only “Arab”-led caravans were considered dangerous, but the transport mode itself) and thus does not take account of the broad spectrum of measures implemented to govern porterage.85 Naturally, John Iliffe and Juhani Koponen have also addressed a number of aspects relating to porterage and caravan trading in their seminal monographs on Tanzania under colonial rule, including forced labor, the colonial trade in

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ivory, and the quest for alternative pack animals.86 Thaddeus Sunseri’s important study Vilimani (2002), finally, investigates the changing patterns of labor migration and rural transformation in German East Africa, focusing on the group of Wanyamwezi. His key study sheds light on important aspects of German labor policies and provides a detailed examination of the everyday lives and work rhythms of migrant workers and their families.87 Taken together, these scholars have already addressed different aspects of porterage under German colonial rule. However, their studies remained limited in their scope and a systematic understanding of caravan mobility and its complex implications for colonial statehood is still lacking even today. Studies focusing on colonial state formation, on the other hand, have looked at porterage in different colonies almost exclusively in light of how the state authorities organized their own logistics.88 A detailed study combining both aspects, the state-level as much as the inner life of caravans, and examining how colonial administrators organized and governed different forms of porterage, I argue, is particularly capable of illuminating the rationale behind colonial transformation efforts and of assessing their impact on African lives and structures. The present book is the first study to thoroughly engage the history of caravan transport in German East Africa. Regarding the commercial caravan sector, it offers new insights into transport labor in the colonial economy by studying the everyday experience of workers, paying attention to the opportunities porterage offered to them while also illuminating the presence of exploitation and violence. Wage-earning porters as well as porterage as a profession, it demonstrates, proved resilient en face transformative processes; workers were capable of coping with change and adapting to new conditions.89 At the same time, the book highlights the violent transitions that colonial rule brought to caravan travel, investigating the degrees of coercive power on the microlevel of state-run and private caravans and expeditions. Another major focus of the following chapters is to study the different regulations and measures implemented to govern and transform caravan transport between the late 1880s and 1914. Underlying this analysis is the observation that the German authorities developed a tendency to transform mobility into patterns that were administratively controllable or “legible” (James C. Scott).90 For different colonies, scholars of nineteenth-­ century Africa have identified efforts to reduce the complexity of African life for the purpose of control.91 Regarding the management of mobility

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flows, Darshan Vigneswaran and Joel Quirk argue in their anthology Mobility Makes States (2015) that states in Africa have often appeared as both preventors and promoters of mobility. They thus call for researchers “to examine how decision makers continually recalibrate the balance between prevention and promotion at numerous locations and settings.”92 This continuous recalibration can indeed be observed for the governance of porterage: sometimes devised tools were coercive and implemented with force; sometimes the state was too weak to alter the life of its subjects; in other instances, colonial governance deliberately remained “blind,” not only being too weak but also unambitious to manage mobility. In line with Vigneswaran and Quirk’s call, this study seeks to make sense of these contradictions. Beyond identifying a tendency for “legibility,” it sets out to identify its rationale and the dynamics that shaped it. At the same time, the study closely follows the activities of porters and investigates how administrative measures were enforced and challenged on a day-to-day basis. It inquires to what extent colonial legislation and administrative tools were capable of altering the lives and practices of porters and how affected porters responded to them. The book also traces the trans-colonial dynamics of African mobility. Porterage and long-distance caravan trade were not unique to the German colony. In the neighboring Congo Free State (founded in 1885), for instance, an estimated total of 2.7 million loads was carried from Kinshasa westward to the ports of export before the opening of the Matadi-Kinshasa Railway in 1898; not to mention the many ivory trade caravans in the regions west of Lake Tanganyika, which often chose the eastern route across German East Africa to the Indian Ocean.93 In all of Central and East Africa, existing caravan routes crisscrossed what had become colonial borders after the mid-1880s. While it is beyond the scope of this study to examine caravan transport outside of German East Africa in detail, my analysis puts the governance of porterage and caravan mobility into a trans-colonial context and explores cooperation and competition between different colonial regimes. In the historiography of the German Empire, a growing corpus of literature has placed German colonialism in a trans-colonial and global analytical framework and made visible the extent to which the German Empire shared concepts and practices with different empires.94 Colonial knowledge, that is, the knowledge produced in colonial settings, circulated between empires and world regions.95 Most prominently, Ulrike Lindner’s

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research demonstrates that German authorities in South West and East Africa took their British neighbors as a role model when drafting their own concepts and regulations.96 Understanding Eastern Africa as one sphere, my book adds to the study of trans-colonial entanglements. It introduces a shift in the question of why and how colonial administrations began to interact with one another, away from state officials towards the activities of the colonized. As I will show at several points, it was often African actors and their mobility who furnished connections across colonial boundaries and initiated trans-colonial entanglements by causing the administrations to engage with their neighbors.

Historical Context: The Long-Distance Caravan Economy Before concluding this introduction with an overview of the source material and the book’s structure, in the following pages I present a brief outline of the commercial and social world of nineteenth-century caravan trade. The historical processes underlying the precolonial caravan system were decisive for the later establishment of the colonial state because they defined its restrictions and limits. Although a thorough discussion of the decades before the late 1880s is beyond the scope of this book, knowledge of these processes is thus necessary to understand the continuities and ruptures observed in later chapters. The history of long-distance caravan trade has received considerable scholarly attention in the past fifty years. The fundamental research of Abdul Sheriff, Marek Pawełczak, Thomas F. McDow, and other scholars provides deep insights into the complex caravan economy, its trade goods, actors, and their practices.97 Of the highest importance to the following discussion are Stephen J. Rockel’s various contributions to these topics. His research discusses the formation and operation of caravan routes and provides an in-depth analysis of the life and work cycles of those engaged in transport.98 The present section is based on these and other scholars’ key contributions and, being an introduction to the historical context, provides a summary of their findings. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a dense network of trade routes existed in Central and East Africa (Fig.  1.3). Rather than single paths, these routes should be understood as collections of smaller trails, branching from or running parallel to each other and being populated by

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Lake Victoria

Moshi

Ujiji

Mpwapwa

Lake Tanganyika www.cartographicstudio.eu, 2021

Tanga

Tabora

PEMBA

Pangani

ZANZIBAR Bagamoyo Dar es Salaam

Kilwa Kivinje

Indian Ocean

Lindi

Lake Nyasa

Fig. 1.3  The three caravan corridors with the major routes as observed by German officials in 1891. Adapted from BAB, R 1001/1107, 44

caravans.99 Three main trade corridors cut across present-day Tanzania. In the north, routes led from the northern Swahili coast—the coastal area stretching from today’s Mozambique to southern Somalia—inland to Mount Kilimanjaro and further in the direction of Lake Victoria or towards Ugogo. In southern Tanzania, a second trade corridor ran between the coast around Kilwa and Lindi to Lake Nyasa and into Malawi and Mozambique. The most important corridor was the so-called central route. Its branches began in different coastal hubs facing Zanzibar and converged in Mpwapwa. From there, the route ran westward to Tabora in central Tanzania and to Lake Tanganyika with a branch route to Lake Victoria.100 Rockel, whose PhD thesis provides a detailed analysis of the

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route network, observes that a fourth corridor had existed for some time, running from the coastal town of Mbwamaji through south-central Tanzania towards the trade center of Tabora. Its importance decreased sharply from the 1840s on, when the inhabitants could no longer supply enough food for the growing number of caravan travelers.101 The expansion of trade relations from the early nineteenth century onwards created new spatial hierarchies. Marketplaces that were entirely new or had only been of regional significance became important stopping places for caravans.102 In caravan hubs such as Tabora, Mpwapwa, or Ujiji, located at the western end of the central route, caravans stopped to resupply, trade, and recruit additional porters. In coastal termini, the long-­ distance trade space merged with the Indian Ocean maritime world. On the southern coast, Kilwa Kivinje became an important trading hub. Farther north, Bagamoyo emerged as the most important coastal town, owing to its proximity to the Zanzibar archipelago. It was here where most caravans set off and where they arrived from the inland.103 The main products traded along the network of long-distance routes in the direction of the coast were slaves and ivory. They were complemented, among others, by salt, iron tools, as well as gum copal and rubber.104 Slave trading had existed in Eastern Africa before 1800 but increased in the first half of the nineteenth century and in the decades after the mid-century when the demand for labor grew on Zanzibar’s clove plantations.105 The trade in ivory was a driving force behind the expansion of the network. Ivory tusks became a booming export product when new consumer patterns in Europe and the United States increased its demand. After the 1860s, the regions around Lake Tanganyika served as the main ivory reservoir and the hunting of elephants in western Tanzania and the eastern Congo subsequently became a lucrative industry.106 Ivory and the other products of the mainland were traded for imported commodities, with interior ivory owners selling tusks in return for beads, rifles, gun powder, brass wire, and textiles.107 Imported cotton cloth from America (called merikani) or India (kaniki) functioned as a common currency along with glass beads.108 Ivory tusks were brought to the coast by caravans and shipped to the Sultanate of Zanzibar via sailing vessels, so-­ called dhows. The maritime state became “a commercial intermediary between the African interior and the capitalist industrialising West,”109 as historian Abdul Sheriff puts it. From the archipelago the majority of ivory was exported to Europe, America, and the Indian Ocean world.110 Based on a collection of trade reports, historian Katharine Frederick provides

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evidence that ivory exports in the 1870s were on a consistently higher level than in previous decades and reached their peak in the 1880s and early 1890s.111 The precolonial caravan trade season followed the weather. Tanzania usually experiences two periods of rain during the course of a year, the main season from March to May and a lighter season around November. It was during the dry season when porters were most easily available. From the interior, caravans traveled down the routes to sell their tusks at the coast. In particular, people from Unyamwezi, a region south of Lake Victoria and east of Lake Tanganyika, were seen regularly on the tracks. Their caravans had pioneered coastward long-distance travel in the first half of the century and continued to play a leading role in the caravan system after 1850.112 As Rockel observes, [m]any Nyamwezi entrepreneurs were members of the ruling class, but lesser citizens, such as subordinate chiefs, hunters, medicine men and ordinary people also operated trading caravans. Often the caravans were formed by individuals carrying their own trade goods, and small employers who hired just a few porters each.113

At the coast, arriving caravanners usually sold their products to South Asian merchants and shopkeepers. Nyamwezi enterprises, Rockel argues, “were probably more numerous than those of coastal traders until at least 1880” and continued operating well into the colonial period.114 Traders traveling overland from the coast were the second major commercial group in the long-distance trade. Often referred to as Arabs by European outsiders, many of them were either of Omani origin or members of the Swahili community, the hybrid coastal society.115 Their operations were backed by South Asian financers, referred to as Indians, of whom many had their roots in Gujarat in western India. A minority came from Goa, then a Portuguese colony. Residing in Zanzibar or in the major coastal towns, South Asians operated trade firms and shops, in which they sold commodities to the African population and bought up the products of long-distance trade.116 It also became part of their business to advance capital and imported barter goods to Omani and Swahili traders who planned caravan journeys but lacked the necessary means.117 Future caravan entrepreneurs approached South Asian merchants and asked them for credits. An example of the procedure for such negotiations is described in a report on the

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caravan trade, compiled by Mtoro bin Mwinyi Bakari, a Swahili lecturer at the School of Oriental Languages in Berlin, who was born near Bagamoyo. According to him, merchants demanded securities and warrantors before advancing products or cash. Once these issues were settled, the creditor and debtor agreed on the maximum length of the journey and signed a deed or a notarized certificate of debt.118 With their loans, traders “bought time,” as Thomas F.  McDow has recently revealed: “They took on debts to access small amounts of credit and used the time between loan and repayment for the uncertain prospects of cheap ivory deep in the interior.”119 After having secured a loan, Omani and Swahili traders formed caravans to march into the Tanzanian interior and purchased ivory and other products in return for the advanced barter goods. But it could take several years until they returned to the coast to pay back the loans.120 Unlucky traders were deeply indebted to South Asian merchants and shopkeepers, or they never returned to the coast, which could eventually mean losses for the merchants’ own businesses.121 Despite this risk, the most potent South Asian money lenders could grow rich from their investment in caravans. They could not only expect a high interest rate but also a payback of the loans in the form of ivory tusks. In addition to dozens of smaller South Asian shops and warehouses in Zanzibar and along the coastal belt, in the last third of the nineteenth century merchants like the famous Tharia Topan, Sewa Haji Paroo, and Allidina Visram established considerable business empires.122 European traders had no direct access to the caravan economy. Several European and American import-export firms had followed the call of business prospects to the Sultanate of Zanzibar as early as the 1840s. The Hamburg-based companies Wm. O’Swald & Co. and Hansing & Co., for instance, opened their branches on the archipelago in 1847 and 1854, respectively.123 But the Sultan, exerting control over trade between Eastern Africa and the world market, would not allow these foreign companies to conduct business on the mainland itself.124 Instead of outfitting their own travel parties, European trade firms were better advised to concentrate their efforts on buying up goods from trade caravans arriving at the coast and then exporting them to global buyers. Gaining access to the flows and sales prospects of the long-distance trade, however, was very difficult.125 To capture a market share, Europeans engaged coast-based South Asian agents, who functioned as brokers between the structures of the caravan business and foreign companies.126 In this business cycle, European traders imported commodities from overseas and sold them to South Asian

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shopkeepers on credit. The latter then used these European products to buy ivory, copal, and other goods from caravans arriving at the Swahili coast. In a final step, the South Asians forwarded these products to the European trade houses to clear their debts.127 The most important actors in this economy were the wapagazi (sg. pagazi), the porters. A safari, a caravan journey, from the Indian Ocean coast to the trade center of Tabora took about three months. Marching for a distance of up to thirteen miles (or 21 kilometers) per day, most often in bare feet, porters carried assigned loads of an average of 70 lbs. on their heads and shoulders.128 To carry such loads over such distances required special skills, and it was Stephen J. Rockel who first revealed that long-­ distance porterage was the profession of wage-earning specialists.129 Porterage as wage labor was found among certain groups from the coast and the East African interior. In the eastern Congo and western Tanzania, Manyema worked as porters in large numbers. On the south-­ eastern routes Yao men, along with slaves from Kilwa, were often found as caravan porters.130 The largest group employed as long-distance porters on the trails of the central route were Wanyamwezi from central Tanzania, a category that often also included Sukuma, Kimbu, Sumbwa, and other porters from surrounding regions.131 To many of these people, porterage was a transitional form of wage labor, as Rockel notes: it was “shaped by indigenous precapitalist labor norms but closely linked to merchant capital and the global economy.”132 Nyamwezi men often pursued porterage as a seasonal occupation. Every year in April or May, a large percentage of the region’s male population took up work in coastbound trade caravans organized by upcountry traders or traveled to the coast on their own account. These tens of thousands of people—the boldest contemporary estimates assessed their number at one quarter of the male population of greater Unyamwezi—returned home in October or November to cultivate their own land before the rainy season.133 For those not returning, porterage became a full-time profession. As Rockel has illuminated, more and more labor migrants from the interior regularly hired themselves out to Nyamwezi, Swahili, or Omani caravan employers.134 As a professional labor force, these people often joined another caravan after the end of a journey and made twenty or more journeys during their careers.135 Caravans on the central route consisted of porters of different origins, but the two largest groups were usually Nyamwezi seasonal and full-time professionals as well as, to a minor extent, porters residing in the coastal

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belt.136 Many of the latter, referred to as Swahili or Zanzibari by European travelers, were slaves or freed slaves who claimed the status of waungwana, a self-description of persons identifying with the urban Swahili culture based on material consumption and an Islamic affiliation.137 According to Rockel, the lines between freed and enslaved porters blurred on the road: often, it was the slaves themselves who decided on joining caravans. Like free porters, they received wages but usually had to pass half of their advance pay on to their masters.138 Similar to ship crews, Rockel shows, seasonal and full-time professionals developed a distinct labor culture and were able to oppose exploitative conditions, especially under European employers. His research draws our attention to the many “customs” that “increasingly defined working standards and regulated disputes related to working conditions, food, wages, and payment.”139 Many of these norms, he argues, were rooted in Nyamwezi culture and “became the standards that were accepted by newcomers until the disruption of colonial conquest.”140 By the late 1880s, many porters used names during the journey which were different from the names under which they were known in their home communities.141 These names—using Kiswahili rather than a language from the interior— often reflected the experience or skill of the porter, such as Tabeebu (i.e., tabibu, physician) or Resasi (risasi, bullet).142 “Certain skills, great stamina, and devotion to the safari were marks of a professional pagazi or msafari,” Rockel concludes.143 The use of travel aliases exemplifies how transport workers took pride in their work and created their own self-­ identification with their profession.144 It was for the processes outlined in this section—the simultaneous emergence of a caravan economy, its autonomous labor force, and their culture—that by the time European interests in the world region grew, the outsiders saw themselves confronted with an institutionalized system: a system whose continued existence after the colonial takeover would produce what in the following chapters I will call the tensions of transport.

Sources and Chapter Outline Writing a history of subaltern life and agency under colonial rule is challenging and demands a meticulous study of the available source material. A way of dealing with the lack of sources produced by Africans is to draw on a methodological toolkit developed by scholars working in the field of African and postcolonial studies. Reading the available European sources

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“against the grain” helps to retrieve the experiences and agency of African actors from the biased records created by the European colonizers.145 Simultaneously reading the colonial archive “along the grain,” as proposed by Ann Laura Stoler, reveals the ways in which colonial officials perceived porterage, how they talked about it, and how they dealt with it. Moreover, the composition of archival records—containing edited and scrapped draft laws, press clippings, complaint letters, or petitions—also reflects the contrasting voices and thus the tensions surrounding political action.146 Three sets of sources form the base of the following historical analysis. The first set consists of unpublished reports and field journals of European explorers, missionaries, and state officials. They provide insight into the microcosms of expeditions, into the changes and continuities of porterage under the influence of colonial rule, as well as into the ways power was negotiated in everyday interactions. The book draws its main corpus of primary documents from the state-generated records of different colonial institutions. The Tanzania National Archives, Dar es Salaam, holds records compiled by the Kaiserliches Gouvernement, its reports and plans, as well as its correspondence with different districts. By 1914 the administration in Dar es Salaam had filled three files addressing porterage, of which only the first volume has survived the First World War, containing documents from 1892 to 1902.147 Additional information extending beyond this time period as well as the correspondence between the governor in Dar es Salaam and the imperial government in Berlin are stored in the German Federal Archives, Berlin. This archive holds chiefly material compiled by the Colonial Bureau (Kolonialabteilung) of the Foreign Office, resp. the Imperial Colonial Office (Reichskolonialamt). It also contains a large selection of correspondence with private companies, expeditions, and colonial lobbyists. This set of sources is complemented by records of missionary societies and trade firms; the German consular records of the Zanzibar National Archives, Stone Town; as well as British state records. The third, complementary, set comprises published sources, including journal and newspaper articles, pamphlets, reports, statistical accounts, and a range of travelogues and memoirs produced by European travelers, officials, missionaries, and settlers.148 By cross-referencing these different sets of sources, my analysis retrieves both the influence and agency of those silenced in most documents and the contradictions and fissures characteristic of the colonial arena.149

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Each of the following chapters deals with one specific aspect of caravan transport related to the outlined research agenda. Following a systematic rather than a chronological order, the chapters each follow their own respective chronologies. While a certain geographical emphasis is on the central caravan route and the regions it traversed from the Indian Ocean coast opposite Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika, the book does not have a strict regional focus. All chapters substantiate their respective arguments with evidence from different regions and pay close attention to regional differences and specifics. Inherent to all chapters is a multi-layered analysis. The study is “grounded” in the everyday interactions on the road and practices of caravan travel. Neither the techniques of governance nor the activities of porters and traders, however, were limited to the ground level. Colonial intervention reached from violent assaults on the porters’ bodies up to grand scheme infrastructure planning and the trans-colonial circulation of administrative practices. Porters and caravan entrepreneurs, on the other hand, had determining votes on all levels of colonial governance. To grasp this multitude of layers and their interplay, my analysis constantly shifts its scale. Zooming in and out helps to trace the tensions of transport throughout and brings to light how activities on one level triggered reactions on another.150 To study these feedback loops, the chapters do not focus exclusively on state activity or worker/trader activity but provide combined analyses of both. Chapter 2 investigates the organization and governance of porterage in state-run expeditions and caravans from the late 1880s through the first decade of the twentieth century. On a macrolevel, it discusses the ways in which German officials safeguarded their own logistics. On a microlevel, the analysis in this chapter addresses the question of how porterage and the everyday experience of workers changed through the intrusion of colonizers into the caravan economy. It assesses how porters experienced the increase in violence and military discipline and highlights the strategies they used in response. In this way, the chapter draws attention to both continuity and change in the employment of porter labor in the colonial period. Continuity and change are also at the core of Chaps. 3 and 4, which study the private caravan sector under German rule and the role of non-­ European “veto players” in its governance. Chapter 3 looks into the regulation of caravan mobility and the different competing actors and actor groups involved in negotiating it. Despite an increase in violence on behalf

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of caravans along the trade routes, authorities shied away from tightening controls on travel parties in deference to South Asian caravan entrepreneurs. The chapter illuminates how this cautious policy came about and reveals the challenges it faced from the inside and the outside of the colonial state apparatus. Chapter 4 discusses the integration of porterage into colonial capitalism. Observing that porterage became a popular occupation among groups who had previously not been involved in caravan trading, it discusses the adaptivity of those engaged in the business and illuminates the possibilities caravan labor offered them. At the same time, the chapter pays close attention to precarious work relations, exploitation, and everyday violence in the colonial caravan sector, as well as to the legislative framework that facilitated them. In Chap. 5, I look into German efforts to make traffic controllable and to channel caravan mobility across the colony. Officials sought to establish the state as a “gatekeeper” to the Tanzanian interior through both legislative and spatial practices. Regarding trans-border mobility and the dangers it allegedly entailed, especially the spread of sleeping sickness, the chapter also investigates how the authorities in the different East and Central African colonies synchronized their control regimes. As source evidence indicates, the different modes of caravan monitoring remained piecemeal on the scene because caravan workers developed strategies to subvert these mechanisms. Chapter 6 engages the efforts to replace porterage with “modern” transport means. It asks what capacity colonial rule had to transform the established system of circulation through investment in infrastructure, in particular roads and railways. By assessing the transformative power of colonial rule, it demonstrates how the Germans succeeded in realigning trade flows, but it also reveals how caravans subverted these spatial interventions in their everyday practice. Across the colony, porterage remained an important link in the economy by the eve of the First World War. The Epilogue offers an outlook on porterage in the war before summarizing the main findings of the book.

Notes 1. For the numbers, see “Bericht über die Arbeit des KolonialWirtschaftlichen Komitees im Jahre 1907/1908,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 12. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, Band 252 (Berlin: Sittenfeld,

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1909), 6498–6505, here 6504. For the lobby group, see also van Laak, Imperiale Infrastruktur, 121–123. 2. Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 67. 3. For a discussion of the flyer, see also ibid., 67–71. 4. In like vein, an author wrote in 1905 that “railway and porters will never be able to complement each other.” See H. Tomaschek, “Eisenbahn und Lastenträger,” Deutsche Kolonialzeitung (hereafter DKZ) (29 June 1905), 322. 5. “General Act of the Brussels Conference, 1880–1890,” printed in “Protocols and General Act of Slave Trade Conference at Brussels, 1889–1890, with annexed Declaration,” Command Papers, C. 6049, vol. 50, 175. For the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference, see Mulligan, “The Anti-Slave Trade Campaign in Europe, 1888–1890” as well as Allain, Law and Slavery, 101–120. 6. See Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 15–16; Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 58–72; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 300–301; van Laak, Imperiale Infrastruktur, 103–129; Grace, African Motors, 37–42; Huber, Channelling Mobilities, 3; Huber, “Multiple Mobilities.” 7. Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule, 36–39; Ehrlich, “Economic Developments,” 336–337. For the hesitant investment into the overseas empire, see Gann, “Economic Development in Germany’s African Empire”; Zurstrassen, Ein Stück deutscher Erde, 151–155. 8. For the history of railway extension in German East Africa, see Biermann, Tanganyika Railways; van Laak, Imperiale Infrastruktur, 137–143; Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 122–130. 9. Ford, Trypanosomiases; Giblin, “Trypanosomiasis Control.” 10. See Clarence-Smith, “The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World”; Pallaver, “Donkeys, Elephants and Oxen”; Gooding, “Tsetse Flies, ENSO, and Murder.” 11. Rockel, “Decentering Exploration,” 178. 12. For these numbers, see Koponen, People and Production, 111; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 3; Rockel, “Decentering Exploration,” 180; Beachey, “The East African Ivory Trade,” 273. 13. For colonial policymaking, see also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 142–143. 14. Case, Age of Questions, 3. 15. For the Arbeiterfrage, see Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany, 77–143; Conrad, “Education for Work”; Haschemi Yekani, Koloniale Arbeit; Sippel, “Wie erzieht man am besten.” Thaddeus Sunseri points to an additional question in the colonial economy, the Baumwollfrage or “cotton question.” See Sunseri, Vilimani, 1–25; and Sunseri, “The Baumwollfrage.”

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16. For a discussion of the problems associated with porterage, see also Pallaver, “Donkeys, Elephants and Oxen,” 292–295; and Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 58–67. 17. Pratt defines contact zones as “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, dash, and grapple with each other, […] the space of imperial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations.” Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 7–8. 18. Heintze, Afrikanische Pioniere, 178–179. 19. Essner, “Some Aspects German Travellers’ Accounts,” 200. 20. Holub, Von der Capstadt II, 23. All translations in this study are mine unless otherwise indicated. 21. Maercker, Schutztruppe, 133. 22. Schmidt, Geschichte des Araberaufstandes, 185. 23. Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BAB), N 2303/11, Franz Stuhlmann, “Professor Schweinfurth’s Kritik über afrikanische Eisenbahnen,” [c. 1900], 4; “Der Karawanen-Verkehr: Eine Gefahr für unsere Kolonie,” Deutsch-­Ostafrikanische Zeitung (hereafter DOAZ) (27 July 1901), 1. 24. Numbers for 1899 to 1903 are found in “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” 2961–2962. 25. Similar estimates are found in Sissons, “Economic Prosperity,” 188; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 342; Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 129–130. For a discussion of the numbers, see also Pawełczak, The State and the Stateless, 84–85; Koponen, People and Production, 112–113. 26. Pallaver, “Population Developments,” 324. See also Sunseri, Vilimani, 58. 27. Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 70. 28. Ibid., 21. 29. Kolonialpolitisches Aktionskomitee, Die Eisenbahnen Afrikas, 134. For similar arguments in German colonial discourse, see Weiss, “Die Eisenbahnfrage in Ostafrika,” DKZ (7 February 1891), 20–22; P. Fuchs, Wirtschaftliche Eisenbahn-Erkundungen; as well as Baltzer, Kolonialbahnen, 20–26. 30. For the concept of “mission civilisatrice,” see Conklin, A Mission to Civilize; Hall, Civilising Subjects; as well as the essays in Fischer-Tiné and M. Mann, Colonialism as Civilizing Mission. For German East Africa, see Bade, “Antisklavereibewegung in Deutschland,” as well as Haustein, “Strategic Tangles.” 31. Pallaver, “Donkeys, Elephants and Oxen,” 295. 32. See “Auszüge aus dem Vortrag des Plantagenbesitzers Mismahl,” DOAZ (28 April 1900), 6; “Über die Arbeiterfrage in Zukunft für die

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Nordbezirke und D.O.A.,” Usambara-Post (21 September 1907); “Erschließung unserer Kolonien,” DOAZ (19 November 1910), 1; Kolonialpolitisches Aktionskomitee, Die Eisenbahnen Afrikas, 150–152. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 300. 33. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, esp. 11–23. 34. H. Wagner, Handelsverhältnisse, 44. See also “Der Karawanen-Verkehr: Eine Gefahr für unsere Kolonie,” DOAZ (27 July 1901), 1. 35. See Chaps. 3 and 5 of this book. For the colonizers’ and missionaries’ hostility toward Islam, see Pesek, “Islam und Politik.” Sunseri likewise observes that porters were seen as “drifters.” See Sunseri, Vilimani, 59. 36. Tanzania National Archives (hereafter TNA), G1/35, Julius von Soden to Caprivi, Dar es Salaam, 6 February 1892, 2. 37. Oechelhäuser, speech of 2 March 1893, in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 8. Legislaturperiode 2. Session, 2. Band (Berlin: Norddeutsche Buchdruckerei, 1893), 1370. 38. von Caprivi, speech of 2 March 1893, in ibid., 1374. 39. Ibid. See also Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 66. 40. Schwarze, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 33. 41. Stoler and Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony,” 20. 42. B.  Berman and Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley; Lonsdale and B.  Berman, “Contradictions.” 43. Lonsdale and B. Berman, “Contradictions,” 490. See also the discussion in Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 129–130. 44. Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, 14–34. 45. Comaroff, “Colonialism, Culture, and the Law,” 312. 46. Young, African Colonial State, 130. 47. Herbst, States and Power, 80. For a critique of Young, see B.  Berman, “Perils of Bula Matari.” 48. For studies with an emphasis on weak capabilities and the contradictions of colonial statehood, see Lonsdale and B.  Berman, “Contradictions”; B.  Berman and Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley; Berry, “Hegemony on a Shoestring”; Hunt, A Nervous State. For German East Africa, see Pesek, “Colonial Conquest”; as well as Pesek, “Die Grenzen des kolonialen Staates.” For a conceptualization of colonial statehood, see Comaroff, “Reflections on the Colonial State”; Bhattacharya, The Colonial State, 1–42; Chatterjee, Nation and its Fragments, 14–34. For an overview, see Eckert, “Vom Segen der (Staats-)Gewalt,” 148–149; Wirz, “Körper, Kopf und Bauch.” 49. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft. For the consequences of low investment on the scene, see also Zurstrassen, Ein Stück deutscher Erde, 151–155. 50. Headrick, Tools of Empire.

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51. For a review of the recent literature, see van der Straeten and Hasenöhrl, “Connecting the Empire.” For the fragility of infrastructure, see also Edward and Hård, “Maintaining the Local Empire”; Decker, “Lines in the Sand.” 52. Hart, Ghana on the Go; Grace, African Motors. See also Reichart-­ Burikukiye, Gari la moshi; Gewald, Luning, and van Walraven (eds.), The Speed of Change; as well as Chikowero, “Subalternating Currents.” For an overview, see Callebert, “African Mobility and Labor.” 53. Mavhunga, “Which Mobility”; Mavhunga, “Firearms Diffusion”; Mavhunga, Mobile Workshop. 54. Mavhunga, Transient Workspaces. 55. Mavhunga, “What Do Science,” 2. 56. Masebo, “Epistemologische Leerstelle,” 558. My own translation. 57. Spear, Mountain Farmers; Giblin, Environmental Control; Sunseri, “Famine and Wild Pigs”; Sunseri, Vilimani, 76–112; Sunseri, “The Baumwollfrage.” 58. Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 109–140. 59. Ibid., 12. 60. Masebo, “Epistemologische Leerstelle,” 558. My own translation. 61. For this concept, see Lévi-Strauss, La Pensée sauvage. See also Comaroff, “Colonialism, Culture, and the Law,” 311. 62. Grace, African Motors, 10. 63. B. Berman and Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley, 5. 64. Neil Roberts defines agency, here with regards to slaves, as “(1) the capacity of slaves themselves individually and collectively to imagine their conception of freedom; and (2) the ability of slaves individually and collectively to enact their imagined ideal of freedom into practice.” Roberts, Freedom as Marronage, 42–43. See also the critical reflection of the concept of agency in Johnson, “On Agency.” 65. van Onselen, Chibaro; Atkins, The Moon is Dead; Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity; Cooper, Plantation Slavery; Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters. As an introduction to the broad field of colonial labor, see Eckert, “Arbeitergeschichte in Afrika”; Britwum and Dakhli, “Labour and the State.” For a literature review, see Cooper, “Labour Question.” 66. Glassman, Feasts and Riot. 67. For their research program, see Ranger, “The New Historiography in Dar es Salaam”; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 13–15. 68. Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule. For a critique, see Wright, “Local Roots of Policy in German East Africa.” 69. For studies dealing with state officials, see Eckert and Pesek, “Bürokratische Ordnung”; Mann, Mikono ya damu. For settlers, see Sippel and Aas, Koloniale Konflikte; Söldenwagner, Spaces of Negotiation; Natermann,

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Pursuing Whiteness. For missionaries, see Wright, German Missions; Becher, “Die deutsche evangelische Mission”; Hölzl, Gläubige Imperialisten, 155–271. 70. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries; Moyd, “All People were Barbarians.” 71. Sunseri, Vilimani, esp. xxiii, 157–159. 72. Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition, 3. 73. Ibid., 244. 74. For Steinmetz’s engagement with field theory, see Steinmetz, Devil’s Handwriting; and especially Steinmetz, “Colonial State as a Social Field.” For his theoretical approach, see Steinmetz, “Social Fields.” For a similar concept of colonial policymaking, see Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 129–130 and 142–143. 75. Steinmetz, Devil’s Handwriting, xix. 76. Tsebelis, Veto Players. 77. For the presence of insecurity and anxiety within the colonial apparatus, see the essay collections Reinkowski (ed.), Helpless Imperialists; and Fischer-­Tiné (ed.), Anxieties. 78. Cummings, “Human Porterage,” 226. See also Cummings, “A Note on the History of Caravan Porters”; Cummings, “Wage Labor.” 79. See the essays in Coquery-Vidrovitch and Lovejoy (eds.), Workers of African Trade. 80. For studies interested in the relations of European and African caravan travelers, see Rotberg (ed.), Africa and its Explorers; Bridges, “Europeans”; Essner, “Some Aspects of German Travellers’ Accounts”; Heintze, Pioniere; Heintze, “Forschungsreisende”; Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire”; Rempel, “Not a Cloth Giver”; Rempel, “No Better than a Slave or Outcast.” 81. Rockel, Carriers of Culture; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika”; Rockel, “A Nation of Porters”; Rockel, “Wage Labor”; Rockel, “Relocating Labor”; Rockel, “Enterprising Partners”; Rockel, “Between Pori, Pwani and Kisiwani”; Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns”; Rockel, “Slavery and Freedom.” 82. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, esp. 218–221. 83. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft; Pesek, “Der koloniale Körper.” 84. Pallaver, Lungo le piste; Pallaver, “Nyamwezi Participation”; Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar; Pallaver, “Triangle”; Pallaver, “Donkeys, Elephants and Oxen.” 85. Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 52–71. 86. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, esp. chapters 4 and 5; Koponen, People and Production, esp. chapters 4, 6, and 7. 87. Sunseri, Vilimani.

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88. As examples, see Campbell, “Madagascar”; Dikoumé, “Cameroun”; Samarin, “The State’s Bakongo Burden Bearers”; Mandala, Work and Control, 108–132; Akurang-Parry, “The Loads are Heavier.” 89. For an introduction to this concept, see Keck and Sakdapolrak, “Social Resilience.” 90. Scott, Seeing Like a State. 91. Mitchell, Colonising Egypt; Geschiere, “Epilogue”; as well as the essays in Crais (ed.), Culture of Power. 92. Quirk and Vigneswaran, “Mobility Makes States,” 20. 93. See Samarin, Black Man’s Burden; Samarin, “The State’s Bakongo Burden Bearers.” 94. For the global history of the German Empire, see Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany; Conrad and Osterhammel (eds.), Kaiserreich transnational; as well as Conrad, “Rethinking German Colonialism.” See also the essays in N. Berman, Mühlhahn, and Nganang (eds.), German Colonialism Revisited; and Naranch and Eley (eds.), German Colonialism in a Global Age. 95. Conrad, “Rethinking German Colonialism,” 550–553. For colonial knowledge and its form and content, see Ballantyne, “Colonial Knowledge.” 96. Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen; Lindner, “European Project.” Regarding German East Africa, recent literature has researched into the trans-colonial and global entanglements of specific aspects of colonial governance, such as the studies by Mari K. Webel and Manuela Bauche on disease control as well as by Minu Haschemi Yekani on labor policies. See Webel, The Politics of Disease Control; Bauche, Medizin und Herrschaft; Haschemi Yekani, Koloniale Arbeit. 97. For the caravan system and its traders, see Alpers, Ivory & Slaves; Alpers, “The Nineteenth Century”; Alpers, “The Coast”; McDow, Buying Time; Gray and Birmingham, “Some Economic and Political Consequences”; as well as Koponen, People and Production, 46–125. For the Zanzibari state, see Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory; Pawełczak, The State and the Stateless; Prestholdt, “The Island as Nexus”; Bennett, Arab State. For regional studies, see also Gooding, “Lake Tanganyika”; Wimmelbücker, Kilimanjaro; Hartwig, Art of Survival; as well as Tosh, “The Northern Interlacustrine Region.” 98. See, among others, Rockel, Carriers of Culture; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika”; Rockel, “A Nation of Porters.” 99. Kjekshus, Ecological Control, 122; Rockel,  “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 14. 100. For a detailed discussion of the route corridors, their formation, the question of provisioning, and the shifting of routes, see Rockel, “Caravan

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Porters of the Nyika,” 13–49. For the central route, see ibid., 16–43, 351–356; Bennett, Arab Versus European, 89–111. For the northern route, see in addition Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 68–71. For long-­ distance trade in the interlacustrine region, see St. John, “Kazembe”; Holmes, “Zanzibari Influence.” For the southern route, see Biginagwa and Mapunda, “The Kilwa-Nyasa Caravan Route”; F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 46–61; as well as Streit, “Beyond Borders,” 49–55. 101. Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 21–34. 102. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 152–153. For different groups that established market days, see Hartwig, Art of Survival, 96–97; Kimambo, “Environmental Control & Hunger,” 89–92; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 25–34; Roberts, “Nyamwezi Trade,” 57; Wimmelbücker, Kilimanjaro, 132–133. For an overview, see Koponen, People and Production, 117–121, 236–241. 103. For different caravan hubs, see Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns”; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 21–24; Pallaver, “Triangle”; Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 55–90; Becher, “Tabora.” For Bagamoyo, see Brown, “A Pre-Colonial History of Bagamoyo”; Brown, “Bagamoyo”; Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast. 104. Sunseri, “Copal Trade”; Pawełczak, The State and the Stateless, 97–103; Good, “Salt, Trade, and Disease.” 105. For the history of slavery and the slave trade in East Africa, see Campbell, “East African Slave Trade”; Vernet, “East Africa: Slave Migrations”; Médard and Doyle (eds.), Slavery; Cooper, Plantation Slavery; Suzuki, “Enslaved Population”; Sheriff, “Localisation and Social Composition”; Deutsch, “Notes on the Rise of Slavery.” 106. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 56–61. See also Gooding, “The Ivory Trade”; MacKenzie, Empire of Nature, 54–84; Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 35–66. 107. Rockel, “Decentering Exploration,” 172. 108. Pallaver, “Currencies of the Swahili World,” 450–452; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 8, 136, 197. For wages paid in cloth and beads, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 211–228. 109. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 1. 110. For the ivory trade in East Africa, see Gooding, “The Ivory Trade”; Beachey, “The East African Ivory Trade”; as well as Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 35–66. For the dhow trade, see Gilbert, Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar; and Sheriff, Dhow Culture. 111. Frederick, Twilight of an Industry, 89. 112. Rockel, “A Nation of Porters,” 175–179. 113. Ibid., 180.

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114. Ibid., 188. Rockel thus provides evidence against Abdul Sheriff’s earlier observation that by the early 1870s Nyamwezi traders had lost most of their significance. See Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 182. Karin Pallaver backs Rockel’s findings regarding caravans organized by elites and small traders. Based on missionary records, however, she also contends that at least after the late 1870s caravans from the coast outnumbered those from the interior. See Pallaver, “Nyamwezi Participation,” 518–520. 115. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 49–52. For Swahili culture, see also Middleton, World of the Swahili; and Mugane, Story of Swahili. 116. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 82–87. See also Machado, Ocean of Trade; Goswami, Call of the Sea. 117. McDow, Buying Time, 13. 118. Velten, ed., Sitten und Gebräuche, 287. See also McDow, Buying Time, 55–60. 119. McDow, Buying Time, 118. 120. See, for instance, Mwenye Chande, “Meine Reise,” 11. 121. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 108; Walji, “Ismaili Community,” 54; Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 24. 122. Walji, “Ismaili Community,” 56; Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 107–109; Matson, “Sewa Haji”; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 90–92. 123. Brahm, “Handel und Sklaverei”; Evers, “Das Hamburger Zanzibarhandelshaus”; and Schwidder, “Kolonialhandelshaus.” 124. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 121. 125. BAB, R 1001/639, Hansing, O’Swald, and Meyer to Gustav Michahelles, 19 July 1890, 33. 126. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 146. 127. Evers, “Das Hamburger Zanzibarhandelshaus,” 15–17. 128. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 113, 227. For loads, see ibid., 103–110. 129. See, above all, Rockel, Carriers of Culture; and Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika.” For porterage, in addition to his work, see also Cummings, “A Note on the History of Caravan Porters”; Cummings, “Human Porterage”; Lamden, “Some Aspects of Porterage”; Beidelman, “Organization and Maintenance of Caravans by the Church Missionary Society”; Pallaver, “Nyamwezi Participation”; and Heintze, Afrikanische Pioniere. 130. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 33–40; Zöller, “Crossing Multiple Borders”; F.  Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 55–61; McDow, Buying Time, 93; Page, “The Manyema Hordes.” 131. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 40–49; Rockel, “A Nation of Porters.” For the Wanyamwezi and their trade activities, see also Roberts, “Nyamwezi Trade”; Pallaver, “Nyamwezi Participation”; Abrahams, Greater Unyamwezi. 132. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 6. See also ibid., 231–236.

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133. Paul Reichard, “Die Wanjamuesi,” DKZ (20 September 1890), 241. Roberts, “Nyamwezi Trade,” 61–65; Rockel, “A Nation of Porters,” 177–178. 134. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 65–95. 135. Ibid., 74–86. 136. Lamden, “Some Aspects of Porterage,” 155; McDow, Buying Time, 95. 137. Rockel, “Slavery and Freedom”; Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 147–174; Prestholdt, “The Island as Nexus,” 334–336; Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 48–71. 138. Rockel, “Slavery and Freedom,” 97–102; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 17–18. 139. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 6. For “customs,” see ibid., esp. 97–130 and 197–228. For the notion of “crew cultures” and the comparison with sailors see ibid., 23–28; Rockel, “Between Pori, Pwani and Kisiwani.” 140. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 66. 141. Reichard, Vorschläge, 63. According to Reichard, this was the case with Nyamwezi porters. See also Rockel, “A Nation of Porters,” 179. 142. Rockel, “Between Pori, Pwani and Kisiwani,” 116; Rempel, “No Better than a Slave or Outcast,” 287–288. 143. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 66. 144. For this self-identification with the profession, see also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 66. Rempel remarks that name changes were also a means of gaining acceptance within the mobile community since less experienced porters were the workers most likely to change their names. See Rempel, “No Better than a Slave or Outcast,” 286–306. 145. As an introduction to this reading strategy, see Roque and K.  Wagner, “Introduction”; Barrett-Gaines, “Travel Writing.” 146. Stoler, Archival Grain; Stoler, “Colonial Archives.” 147. For the records held in Dar es Salaam, see Franz and Geissler, Deutsch-Ostafrika-Archiv. 148. For travel accounts as sources in East African history, see Bridges, “Travel Records”; Barrett-Gaines, “Travel Writing”; and Reid, “Violence and its Sources.” 149. See also Michelle R.  Moyd’s excellent discussion of colonial sources in Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 23–31. 150. In doing so, I follow Sebastian Conrad’s call to apply different scales of inquiry. As Conrad reminds us, “[h]istory must be understood as a multilayered process, in which the different layers follow, to some extent, each its own respective logic; […] Conclusions reached at one level do not simply transfer to the next.” Conrad, Global History, 137.

CHAPTER 2

Shouldering the State: Violence, Coercion, and Professionalism in State-Organized Transport

In late 1884, an expedition of German explorer Carl Peters roamed the interior of north-eastern Tanzania, claiming the first territorial possessions of what would become the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft (DOAG) or German East Africa Company. Around the same time but half a world apart, the Berlin Conference (1884/5) agreed upon the principles under which empires could colonize the African continent.1 The day after the conference ended, the DOAG received an official sanction to establish a protectorate in East Africa. The new chartered company soon established a handful of stations in the coastal hinterland which served as trading posts and sites for crop growing. Yet, neither of these two functions satisfied expectations; trials with tobacco failed while the dominant position of established merchants left little trade for the company.2 Given these failures, the company officials turned their eyes to more readily available sources of income. In a manner that is best described as what Dane Kennedy calls “imperial parasitism,” they hoped to profit from the existing long-distance caravan trade by safeguarding at least some of its revenues through export duties.3 Ambitious to supersede the Zanzibari state as the customs collector at the coastline, in 1888 the DOAG leased the right to administer and tax trade in the Swahili coastal towns from the Sultanate.4 The DOAG’s efforts to establish itself as the new ruler

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2_2

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immediately prompted the coastal population to revolt in August 1888. From the town of Pangani, the so-called Abushiri Uprising (1888/9), named after the principal rebel leader Bushiri bin Salim, spread along the coastline as far as Lindi and Mikindani in southern Tanzania.5 The rebellion caused the German Empire to involve itself more actively in the colonial project. To restore order, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck delegated the experienced explorer Herrmann Wissmann to East Africa. Supported by the German Navy, his force of Sudanese mercenaries was soon able to capture the rebellious coastal towns. In 1890, as a result of the Anglo-German Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty, the Sultan of Zanzibar had to surrender the remainder of his sphere of influence on the mainland. On 1 January 1891, the Empire took over official control from the DOAG and established German East Africa as a Schutzgebiet (Protectorate). Meanwhile, the newly formed colonial army, the Schutztruppe, proceeded upcountry along the caravan routes, waging concentrated war against the interior population to establish military security and political control. In this phase of colonial conquest, porterage was the essential means of mobility. But the human-powered supply train turned out to be a pivotal weak point of logistical operations. In January 1891, during a military campaign in northern Tanzania, Schutztruppe officer Theodor Bumiller admitted in his field journal that the porter question is more critical than ever in this expedition and the prospects for the future are anything but pleasant. There is no fighting to be expected in Usambara, the food provisions we issue to porters are excellent and beyond the Arab custom. Therefore, a reason [for the reluctance to join the expedition] can only be found in a general unwillingness or anxiety to work under military command and discipline.6

Shortages of transport labor, along with perpetual desertions, posed a major hindrance to the Germans’ different military forays into the Tanzanian interior. Immediately after the region’s official takeover by the German Empire in 1891, the “porter question,” understood as the question of how to organize and operate a transport labor force, not only demanded an answer for military campaigns but was also crucial with regard to the many logistical day-to-day operations of the new civil administration with its initially five district offices (Bezirksämter) on the Swahili coast and the growing network of stations in the interior.

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The preferred solution was, of course, to get rid of human transport. Railway construction began in the early 1890s but failed because of financial constraints. Instead, animal labor was hoped to replace human labor.7 Precolonial animal transport had existed in certain tsetse-free areas with Maasai, Wagogo, and Wanyamwezi using donkeys as pack animals in regional transport.8 In the decades leading to colonial occupation, different private European ventures had already invested themselves in the quest for a new transport animal. In 1876, the London Missionary Society made test drives with an ox-drawn cart between the Swahili coast and Mpwapwa, followed by similar experiments by the Church Missionary Society in 1877. Almost all employed animals, however, died of animal trypanosomiasis.9 Because none of the typical pack animals could stand this disease, known as sleeping sickness, official and non-state actors engaged in trials with alternative beasts of burden, including elephants, zebras, and camels. All these experiments failed because the animals were prone to disease, or proved too wayward to serve as an adequate alternative to the tens of thousands of transport workers.10 The ill-fated experiments of Gustav Adolf von Götzen, the later governor of German East Africa, were emblematic of this problem: in 1893, he employed several donkeys and Indian elephants in an expedition. As we learn from the travel report of von Götzen’s headman Abdallah bin Rashid, only at a few days-distance from the coast the animals bogged down. The elephants were sent back to Tanga and the German traded the donkeys with a local chief for 30 porters.11 The colonizers had to accept that, for the time being, they could not easily emancipate transport from porter caravans. Accordingly, state agents in the 1890s aimed at making the existing transport mode fit for official service. In light of the continued demand for porterage, the most pressing issue was how to guarantee the availability of porters in sufficient numbers. Bumiller thus continued his journal entry contemplating “whether it would be wise to recruit a permanent porter gang, which could be attached to the different stations.”12 This early call notwithstanding, it would take the Schutztruppe almost two decades and another major war until it finally established a porter corps.13 Other branches of the colonial state, by contrast, addressed the task of making porter recruitment calculable and administratively manageable immediately after the colonial takeover. Moreover, expedition leaders in all ventures sought to suppress the agency of transport workers and transform their travel parties into small-scale colonies.14

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In this chapter, I discuss how the German administration secured and contained transport labor for its own logistics. Focusing on the microcosm of expeditions, I briefly outline how the labor culture of caravan travel was renegotiated in the interplay of European explorers and their East African employees by the eve of colonialization. I then illuminate how military officials and state agents in the colonial period continued the efforts of earlier explorers to subject porter crews to a colonial labor regime and discuss the porters’ everyday experience on the road. On the macrolevel of the colonial state, I also examine the many colonial interventions into the labor market and investigate how different state authorities developed administrative tools which helped them to safeguard porters.

The Colonization of Transport In the imagination of European explorers, Michael Pesek observes, “the expedition was the first institution [Ort] to turn visions of Africa’s future into a reality. Before any imperial charter was granted, before any colonial administrative building had been constructed or any cotton plantation founded, it was here where Africans were to be disciplined and transformed into colonial subjects.”15 An analysis of the later colonial travel practices thus requires at least a brief outline of the inner workings of the many private and (semi-)official expeditions preceding colonial conquest. The discussion in this section is indebted to Stephen J. Rockel’s pioneering research on the working conditions and everyday experiences of expedition porters as well as to Michael Pesek’s and Ruth Rempel’s studies of expeditions at the advent of colonial rule.16 With published and unpublished source material, produced by travelers shortly before formal colonization, it seeks to substantiate their arguments of bargaining power and struggles over resources within expeditions. Circling back to the overarching theme of this book, it also seeks to demonstrate that already in the early interactions of colonizers and porters, the contradictions underlying the colonial utilization of porter labor were so critical that they conditioned European endeavors to transform porterage. In all expeditions, hired transport workers were by far the largest group. Henry Morton Stanley’s Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (1887 to 1889), for instance, consisted of 600 Zanzibari porters, 61 Sudanese soldiers, and 10 Europeans.17 In the same year, 1887, the two Austrian explorers, Ludwig von Höhnel and Sámuel Teleki, embarked on their journey with

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200 Zanzibari porters, 9 guards, and 9 headmen.18 Instead of accepting the labor culture of these hired porters, explorers in the 1880s and early 1890s felt powerful enough to suspend standardized procedures and practices. Previous research has unveiled the extent to which Europeans built their leadership on acts of violence, coercion, drill, and the racial divide between themselves and their crews.19 Flogging was a practice already known in trade caravans. A new dimension, however, had the number and severity of its infliction.20 The German Paul Reichard, who authored a handbook for greenhorn travelers based on his own travel experience, for instance, recommended up to 100 strokes with the whip for the offense of theft alone.21 In 1886, the later conqueror and governor of German East Africa, Hermann Wissmann, then on an expedition in the Congo in the service of King Leopold II, punished one of his porters with 80 strokes because he had opposed an order.22 As Rockel has argued extensively in his research, porters defined the limits of the colonization of caravan travel. By reading the available source material “against the grain,” he has highlighted the many strategies of individual and collective resistance, most importantly desertion, strikes, slowdowns, and what he calls “day-to-day forms of protest.”23 Von Höhnel and Teleki, for instance, were repeatedly confronted with strikes by their porters within a few days in February 1887, the latter demanding better treatment, more food, as well as a reduction in the average weight of loads.24 The Austrians commanded over enough firepower to subdue protests. They ended the strike by ordering the accompanying Somali guards to “fire into the crowd in case of noncompliance.”25 The two Austrian explorers were not the only ones who applied brute violence to defeat strikers. The German-Silesian explorer Eduard Schnitzer (or Emin Pasha), traveling the Congo with Henry Morton Stanley, witnessed a similar scene in 1889. He described in his field journal how Stanley broke up a strike by “threatening to instantly shoot everybody who would not obey. The rifle in his hand and kicking and punching to his left and right […] he ordered to flog the disarmed men one after another.”26 Scenes like this seem to provide evidence that around 1890 visions of mastery had indeed turned into a reality on the road. Violence and the infliction of punishment, however, could never be the universal response to the activities of porters. Even in those military-style campaigns in which explorers established a racialized and violent regime, draconian punishment could appear out of question, potentially worsening an already tense situation.27

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In coping with the autonomy of their workers, Europeans were confronted with what I call the tensions of transport: their ambition to exact obedience from their crews was subverted by their own dependence on this labor force. Accordingly, expedition leaders faced two limitations in their authoritarian approach. First, excessive violence could lead to amassed desertion, as Teleki and von Höhnel learned on the morning following the suppressed strike when 50 porters had decamped.28 Even Stanley, Ruth Rempel remarks, was aware that “the cost of effective discipline would be unacceptable levels of discontent and desertion.”29 Wissmann himself admitted that he still had to learn “how to suppress my ten years of experience in the Prussian army when judging the present situation.”30 Arguably, many explorers mistakenly understood flogging as a means to prevent people from bolting, rather than its cause. It was for this misjudgment that a German expedition leader noted in his field journal that “so far, two men have deserted although I punish all misconduct severely with the stick.”31 The second limitation, however, could not be easily overlooked or ignored: the physical health of porters. Corporal punishment, especially if inflicted on an entire group, meant explorers willfully reduced the availability of labor, as Rempel notes in the context of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition: “Since small injuries frequently turned into serious ulcerated sores amongst the ill-nourished porters, any injury stemming from the fight or from the subsequent flogging of the two men [a thief and his revengeful victim], ordered by the [expedition’s] rear column’s officers, might have had serious long-term consequences for their labor endowment.”32 European expedition leaders, it shows, faced a dilemma between maltreating their porters’ bodies and at the same time needing them healthy for the mission’s success. To solve this tense situation, explorers had to venture on a difficult balancing act between disciplining porters and, at the same time, caring for their health and trying to gain their compliance.33 How difficult it was for Europeans to find the right balance is best expressed in the sometimes contradictory advice given in the above-mentioned handbook by Paul Reichard. On one page, for instance, the author warns that “the most self-­ destructive manners are brutality and fury. They will make you look ridiculous and expose you to the danger of desertion.”34 Three pages later, by contrast, Reichard encourages future explorers to rule with an iron fist “because if the native ever succeeds to come out the winner of something, you will lose all your authority,”35 only to conclude another nine pages later that “in case of mass desertions, it is always the traveler’s own fault.”36

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The apparent contradictions and the anxiety of overstraining them opened up fissures which skilled workers could capitalize on. Rockel has established that professionals were able to transfer important aspects of the caravan economy into the daily routines of expeditions because they “identified with a labor culture that held up an alternative work ethic against Western norms and thus collectively defended the customs of their trade until the deskilling of the colonial period.”37 For male Nyamwezi workers, he illuminates, it was common to take their families on the journey or to enter temporary relationships with women who joined caravans during the march and relieved the porters from their personal baggage and household tasks.38 Rockel also shows that expedition porters successfully defended both the typical currencies (i.e., different types of cloth) and payment method of the commercial caravan sector, insisting upon an advance payment of several months’ worth of their wages.39 Evidence for his findings is provided by Reichard, whose handbook advises future explorers that “[t]here exist plenty of traditional rules and customs [Gewohnheiten]. At the very beginning, the traveler might think of them as childish and useless, but during the journey he will comprehend the importance of complying with them.”40 The handbook details the different standards of caravan travel that porters enforced in expeditions, such as the nature of loads, whose maximum weight Reichard described as 70 to 75 lbs.41 By 1890, bargaining was still a daily fare in all expeditions.42 Many expedition leaders had departed from the common method of provisioning porters in trade caravans, the kibaba system. In this system, it was the responsibility of the caravan entrepreneur or his representative to procure rations for the entire caravan. He purchased food from nearby villages. Once the food was obtained, rations were issued to each porter in a measuring cup called kibaba (ca. 0.8 liters). European travelers replaced it with the so-called mikono system. Its central principle was to hand out cloth to the porters as an allowance on a daily or weekly basis. From this posho, porters were expected to cater for themselves and buy their food in nearby settlements.43 Their crews, however, did not spend this daily or weekly allowance as economically as the Europeans anticipated. If we follow Wissmann’s field journals, they often spent it so fast that they were unable to obtain food on the subsequent days. The German, as much as other expedition leaders, thus regularly faced demands for additional posho. According to his journal, Wissmann often found himself conceding and paying additional

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allowances against his will in order to keep his porters fed, remarking on one occasion that “this journey is very expensive, but I cannot let these poor people starve and will do everything in my power to prevent it.”44 Similar to deserters, weak or sick porters could not carry loads, and this meant a loss of the expedition’s labor force. Because they relied on their porters’ physical power, expedition leaders still felt compelled to care for their employees, to feed them, and to treat injuries and illnesses.45 In spite of the disciplinary regime, it was the porters’ physical condition that defined the expedition’s progress.46 Seven to ten miles (equaling 11 to 16 kilometers) was what William Grant Stairs, who led an expedition to the Congo on behalf of the Belgian king in 1891, described as the maximum feasible distance if his expedition marched for seven days a week, although “I feel as if I could march twenty miles a day but me [sic] is kept back by the soft state the men are in.”47 He, like other expedition leaders around 1890, realized that porters were not easily disposable “tools of empire” but human beings with limited muscular strength and unavoidable physical fatigue, against which punishment could not help.

Military Porterage During German Conquest, 1889–1893 Their dependence on able-bodied workers set limits to the Europeans’ capacity to inflict corporal punishment, meaning that expedition leaders at the eve of colonial rule were never fully able to control the minutiae of expeditions. Walking a fine line between disciplining porters and ensuring their compliance, explorers had to accept that hired workers were willing to defend their labor culture. These spaces of negotiation, however, became narrower when the character of expeditions turned from war-like to actual warfare and when people without prior experience increasingly found themselves forced to carry loads for the new colonial regime. In August 1888, the coastal population of Tanzania revolted against the rule of the DOAG. Wissmann, returning to the continent not as an explorer but as a conqueror, and his Sudanese soldiers defeated the Abushiri Uprising in the coastal towns and, in December 1889, caught and executed its leader Bushiri bin Salim. Hanging Bushiri, however, did not mean an end to military intervention. What followed was a phase of violent conquest. In what John Iliffe calls the “struggle for the caravan routes,” the Germans expanded upcountry along the existing network of trade routes, fighting interior communities and challenging the authority of chiefs.48

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After capturing the coastal towns, Wissmann’s force of 800 soldiers first moved on to defeat Bushiri’s ally Bwana Heri, who had retreated to the hinterland of Saadani. An expeditionary corps of 1200 soldiers was then dispatched to southern Tanzania, where they engaged in a war with Machemba, the Yao ruler of Makonde.49 In northern Tanzania, expeditionary corps seized the strongholds of Kibosho and Moshi in 1891 and 1893, respectively.50 On the central caravan route, the Germans ran several attacks against Isike, the ruler of Unyanyembe, whom they defeated in early 1893. In south-central Tanzania, the Germans’ major enemy became the Wahehe and their leader Mkwawa. Over several years, Hehe troops successfully resisted German occupation.51 Because no pack animal existed, the colonial army’s supply train was made of human porters. In many campaigns, porter crews outnumbered the group of African soldiers, called Askaris. In 1894, for instance, the Schutztruppe expedition against the Wahehe consisted of 600 Askaris, 700 porters, and 33 German officers.52 Porters not only carried the equipment and personal belongings of soldiers and their officers but also ammunition, dismantled artillery, and food supplies. Recruitment drew on both the established structures of caravan trading and the coercive means of colonial power. The new authorities began searching for volunteers among skilled porters arriving in the major coastal towns with trade caravans.53 One such volunteer was Ingereza Ng’wana Sweya from Unyanyembe who had made six coastward journeys as an ivory porter in Omani caravans before joining the expedition against the Wahehe. “I carried a load to Uhehe because I wanted money,”54 Ng’wana Sweya later recalled his motivation. Volunteers like him, however, were not to be found in sufficient numbers. Instead, officers regularly drew on prisoners of war, requested chiefs to provide their subjects as auxiliary porters, or conscripted local men through force and intimidation.55 Emin Pasha, leading a German expeditionary force to Lake Victoria, for instance, abducted local women to make their husbands work as porters as a ransom.56 Wissmann’s officers demanded porters from chiefs and village headmen. Silimu bin Abakari, who had accompanied Theodor Bumiller on several expeditions in the early 1890s, later recounted that during Wissmann’s privately sponsored Lake Nyasa expedition,  Sangu chief Merere was summoned before Bumiller under the threat that “if he does not show up, I cannot guarantee for what will happen”57 and was ordered to provide his subjects as porters. When these people deserted a few days later, the German expedition returned to Merere’s capital Usangu and demanded new porters.58

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To keep pressed caravan personnel in line and prevent them from deserting during the march involved a high level of control and discipline. Military expeditions around 1890 built on the disciplinary framework that earlier explorers had weaved around transport.59 It was thus with good reason that the Empire had chosen Wissmann to lead the vanguard of German conquest. In organizing and managing Schutztruppe expeditions, he and other agents of the new colonial state could draw on the “colonial knowledge” produced in four decades of expeditionary travel. They transferred practices from previous expeditions into the military context.60 Like previous ventures, Schutztruppe expeditions were life-threatening ventures for African participants. First, there was warfare. The column of transport workers was the most vulnerable element of the expedition. Because they could only march in one single file on the narrow caravan routes, columns often stretched over several kilometers. Weeds and thornbush surrounded the footpaths, making it impossible for soldiers to march parallel to the crews and protect them against enemy forces.61 On 17 August 1891, Hehe troops seized on this weakness in the Battle of Lula-­ Rugaro near Iringa. Then, German lieutenant Emil von Zelewski was leading two companies of Sudanese soldiers against Chief Mkwawa. A force of up to 5000 Hehe warriors hid in the covered hills near the path on which the German army was marching. Upon a signal, they ambushed the expedition, killing 10 European officers, 290 soldiers, and 200 porters.62 There is no reliable information on the death toll of porters in other battles and wars. Still, heavy casualties among porter crews seem the rule rather than the exception in colonial warfare with historian Erick J. Mann estimating the number of killed and wounded porters in the phase of military conquest at 800 to 1100, almost equal to the number of losses among soldiers.63 To protect its supply train, the army soon introduced the so-­ called Knäuel formation, an infantry square, in which soldiers surrounded the porters and their loads, shooting volleys at their enemy.64 The high death rates, however, were not only a result of the defenselessness of porters in the face of the enemy but also of their ruthless deployment by German officers. Lieutenant Tom Prince, for instance, chained the forced workers of his expedition against the Wahehe, well aware that this meant they would stand no chance in the event of an assault.65 The low value that German military men ascribed to their porters’ lives also becomes evident from the Schutztruppe’s battle against chief Meli in Moshi at Mount Kilimanjaro. On 10 June 1892, armed forces

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under Albrecht Freiherr von Bülow suffered a crushing defeat when Meli’s warriors, armed with breechloaders, killed 22 soldiers and wounded another 13.66 During the battle, porters were sent into the line of fire to recover the precious cannon as well as the bodies of the fallen German officers. An officer, Barthel, described the scene in his official report as follows: Two times, the porters [of the corpse] were shot. […] Mister von Bülow was put into a hammock and carried off the battlefield. The porters dismantled the gun. The porters of the gun carriage were shot first. The carriage was left behind. […] Then, the porters of the barrel were killed. We threw the barrel into a deep trench. All loads were lost.67

Military expedition leaders, it shows, regarded their porters as an expendable workforce. For Barthel, it was the loads that they lost that was significant, not the people who had carried them. A similar view was shared by Prince, who wrote on one occasion that “two of our porters have died of thirst tonight. We didn’t bother about it and simply left two loads behind.”68 The second major threat to the porters’ lives was physical abuse off the battlefield. The brutality with which expedition leaders had already acted in the 1880s was amplified by the state of war. Nicknames, which Africans marching under their command invented for German officers, give an impression of their harsh treatment. Emil von Zelewski, for instance, became known as “Bwana Nyundo” (Mr. Hammer) or “Bwana Mikono wa Damu” (Mr. Hands of Blood), while Tom Prince was called “Bwana Sakkarani” (Mr. Crazy).69 To enforce discipline, these men felt authorized to decide the fate of their porters. During Wissmann’s Kilimanjaro campaign of 1891, for instance, his officer Wilhelm von Zitzewitz shot a porter for disobedience only a few days after the porter had been recruited through an allied chief.70 In April 1893, to give a further example, staff surgeon Julius Schwesinger encountered his porters pilfering a village during a march, and another officer, Josef Weinberger, later gave a vivid description of what followed: Without hesitation, Schw[esinger] ordered to fire 3 volleys at the porters who were near the tembe [house]. 6 laid dead on the ground, 4 were seized in the tembe. Without any interrogation, he ordered me to hang them. I refused to do so, explaining that the place was not suited for executions.

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Angrily, he ordered to instead shoot the 4 men immediately. A black corporal executed the command. During the shooting, Schw[esinger] sat in his tent, drinking a bottle of champagne with [medical sergeant] Jurock.71

In the previous year, shortly before the battle at Moshi, a Sudanese Askari, Fadalla Adam, had shot a locally recruited porter without discernible reason.72 At that time, Askaris were mostly of Sudanese origin, many of whom regarded Tanzanian porters as inferior.73 For porters in service of the Schutztruppe, violence was ubiquitous, emanating from the enemies of the new colonial army as well as from its own agents. Still, fissures in the disciplinary regime persisted. Enemy engagement almost always caused porters to throw down their loads and vanish into the bushes.74 Moreover, at least some of the recruited professional porters continued to shape the work environment with their own ideas. Evidence can be drawn from Emin Pasha’s expedition in service of the young German state. From 1890 to 1892, Pasha fought several battles in north-­ western Tanzania, commanding at times over an expeditionary force of 100 Askaris, 400 porters—many of them hired through the South Asian merchant Sewa Haji Paroo (see next section)—as well as 7 European officers.75 Marching with a detachment of these troops, one of the officers, Franz Stuhlmann, learned that the hired porters were dissatisfied with the chosen travel route. Remarkably, it was the headmen, called wanyampara, who brought the discontent to his attention and brokered between the different factions of the travel party.76 On 29 September 1891, Stuhlmann wrote in his field journal that at noon, the wanyampara come to us […]. For the past 9 days, they have heard many complaints about the food situation and heard that 15 men plan to desert together. There is nothing to eat in this country and there is no chance that the porters will move on. […] We contemplate forcing them to continue by shooting the ringleaders, but eventually agree that this would be useless and only increase the number of desertions. All efforts to persuade the people to march on in north-eastern direction are worthless, they insist on returning to the south. […] Hence, we decide to march back tomorrow.77

As intermediaries between the different ranks of the travel party, the headmen understood the feeling of the porters and communicated their grievances. At the same time, the wanyampara cautioned the Germans about

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the goings-on within the porter crew. Apparently, they sought to find a balance between the expedition leaders and their porters. Through this brokerage, the porters were able to compel their employers to march on the preferred route. At the same time, the headmen prevented the porters from bolting, thus resolving the conflict in a manner that was mutually beneficial. Stuhlmann’s journal entry underlines that crews, in this case consisting mostly of Zanzibari and Nyamwezi porters, could maintain a right of co-­ determination. Further aspects of the precolonial caravan economy persisted under the colonial regime: the Nyamwezi porters of the same expedition, for instance, continued the above-mentioned tradition of caravans and late precolonial expeditions and traveled together with their wives and children.78 Emin Pasha even allowed his porters to capture local women and abduct them, leading Stuhlmann to complain bitterly in his field journal that “slave raiding has just been bluntly approved.”79 The daily camp life, too, was not easily restructured in the early 1890s. Rockel has already highlighted the centrality of the camp as “the focus of social life and cultural life.”80 There, crews regularly enjoyed drugs and alcohol, while single porters were often visited by local women.81 Different Europeans tried to put an end to such activities.82 During his expeditions in the 1880s, Wissmann, for instance, had patrolled the campsite every night, to stop the “unbelievable whoring” and to chase female visitors away.83 Still, camps remained sites of festivity, in which porters subverted discipline and hierarchies on a daily basis. Based on his experience as an explorer and Schutztruppe commander, Wissmann later recommended in a manual for future officers in the colonial army that they exercise leniency with porters in the camp, advising them to “not prohibit the native from late-night racket, dancing, or singing because he is used to celebrate festivals, especially in moonlit nights, and would not understand an unreasoned prohibition.”84 Von Wissmann’s advice once more exhibits the difficulties in setting the right tone when seeking the collaboration of porter crews. It was for the same reason that during the early stages of a journey, when porters could easily return to the coastal towns, many Schutztruppe officers felt compelled to treat their crews without violence and to provide them with enough food and leisure time.85 I will return to questions of authority and autonomy in state-organized transport later in this chapter. In the following sections, I will first address the broader state-level and explore how the colonial state obtained its labor force.

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Early Interventions into the Labor Market The caravan season of 1891, the first under formal German rule, witnessed a peak in ivory trading. In Bagamoyo, the main terminus on the central caravan route, up to 20,000 porters were reported as having taken temporary residence while “simply dozens of caravans are leaving Bagamoyo for the interior now,”86 as the British explorer William Grant Stairs observed in July. He was making final preparations in the town before leaving for the Congo in the service of King Leopold II of Belgium. Official and semi-official expeditions were legion in this early colonial phase, not to mention the many missionary and scientific expeditions which crowded the caravan routes. If assembling a crew at the Swahili coast had always been an arduous task for European travelers, the booming ivory trade in combination with the increased colonial demand now caused serious porter shortages.87 What made the recruitment efforts of Stairs and other European expedition leaders particularly complicated was the presence of yet another expedition leader in Bagamoyo: Hermann von Wissmann. At that time, von Wissmann (in the meantime ennobled) presided over a private expedition of the German Anti-Slavery Committee with the purpose of transporting a 26-meter-long steamboat to Lake Victoria. There, the privately financed boat was supposed to fight slave traders. To reach the lake, the boat needed to be dismantled and burdened on the shoulders of thousands of human porters.88 To secure the required workforce at a time when demand was at its peak, von Wissmann signed a contract with the Bagamoyo-based travel agent Sewa Haji Paroo, who promised to deliver up to 4000 porters.89 By turning to the South Asian merchant, von Wissmann followed the recruitment patterns established in the 1870s. In the precolonial caravan economy, the availability of porters in the major towns of the Swahili coast and in Zanzibar had always been a matter of luck. In the sowing season, hiring porters was very difficult, while even during the caravan season, porters could be scarce if large caravans had just marched off.90 Even when porters were available and willing to engage in the planned expedition, the process of hiring them was often dominated by hour-long contract negotiations.91 Proto-colonial explorers yearned for relief from negotiating with experienced porters when mustering their crews. The first to identify the gap in the market were the established merchants, of whom some began to specialize in furnishing expeditions with porters. The most

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prominent of these travel agents was Sewa Haji Paroo whose firm had started in the 1860s with a money lending business and store in Bagamoyo. He soon included porter recruitment into his services, immediately attracting Stanley as one of his first international clients in 1871.92 What made Haji Paroo’s services so attractive to Europeans was the all-­ round worry-free package he offered. For a fixed price, he provided any trade and barter goods necessary, recruited the required number of transport workers, handled their payment, and even compensated for desertions.93 By promising to solve porter shortages and to prohibit bargaining by setting fixed terms, the South Asian merchant developed a unique selling point. Following his example, European trade firms started to operate their own businesses in recruitment, such as the British firm Smith, Mackenzie & Co. in Zanzibar.94 None of the European businesses, however, could obtain a labor force comparable to the large portions of porters over which Haji Paroo had command, who was said to have a monopoly in porter recruitment.95 Still, even for the experienced South Asian merchant, the numbers von Wissmann required were almost impossible to obtain given the trade boom. Looking for official support, von Wissmann turned to Rochus Schmidt, the head of the recently founded district office and thus the highest colonial authority in the town. On 9 June 1891, Schmidt enacted a temporary recruitment ban for all Bagamoyo merchants other than Haji Paroo, declaring that until the day the steamer expedition would leave, I prohibit any buying up [Aufkaufen] of porters and will punish all infringements severely. Recruiting porters for journeys to the [African Great] lakes is likewise prohibited until further notice. […] For official caravans to Lake Victoria […] recruitment is delegated to the Indian Sewa Haji.96

Porter (and, more generally, labor) recruitment in German East Africa was for the first time put under state control. Despite the state intervention, Haji Paroo’s recruitment efforts did not prove successful for von Wissmann’s expedition, which was dissolved and only later redeployed to Mozambique and Lake Nyasa, where the boat was launched in September 1893.97 For Bagamoyo’s business elite, the ban meant a serious interference in their commerce. Because recruitment became restricted to state officials and Haji Paroo, the other trade firms in the town faced porter shortages. Soon, the former chartered company Deutsch-Ostafrikanische

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Gesellschaft—degraded to a normal trade firm after the coastal rebellion— struggled to outfit caravans for its own trading ventures into the interior. Its agent Karl Ebenan complained to the German Foreign Office that “as a result of these measures during the two major months of trade, Bagamoyo’s trade stagnates completely; because sending commodities upcountry is prohibited, we cannot purchase any trade goods.”98 Remarkably, district officer Schmidt, despite enacting the ban, shared these concerns. He informed the central administration in Dar es Salaam that “I think [the ban] is questionable because it formally benefits a private individual, namely Sewa Haji.”99 Schmidt foresaw that the merchant might use the state’s intervention to squeeze his competitors even further out of the market. Haji Paroo indeed turned out to be the main profiteer of the recruitment ban. Subsequently, he could draw on his state-granted preemption right to sign any free porter which enabled him to expand his market power and dictate the prices of porter rental. Transactions were done in the new colonial currency, the German East African Rupee, minted by the DOAG with 1 Rupee equaling c. 1.5 Mark. According to Oscar Baumann, Haji Paroo usually demanded 15 to 20 Rupees per porter per month from European employers.100 For other German travelers, his prices ranged according to negotiation skills from 40 Rupees to 148 Rupees per porter for journeys to Lake Victoria.101 The German authorities paid up to 35 Rupees per porter per month, prices which allegedly were three to four times higher than if officials organized their caravans independently.102 Finding available unsigned porters without the assistance of the South Asian, however, had become nearly impossible in Bagamoyo.103 Many of the porters working for him likely had fallen into a debt trap while staying in the town and enjoying the coastal goods his shops advanced to them. Arguably, they were thus compelled to work in the expeditions to which the merchant hired them out to pay off their debts. Still, as Rockel emphasizes, they received wages for their engagement.104 Haji Paroo’s agents even reportedly waited on the caravan trails to put porters under contract before they had even entered the town.105 While it is impossible to verify such rumors, it seems evident that the government’s logistics had indeed become dependent on a non-German intermediary. To command the spirits they had called, the Germans intervened in the recruitment business a second time. In late 1893, Governor Friedrich von Schele enacted the Ordinance on the Recruitment of Porters (Verordnung betreffend die Anwerbung von Trägern). The new ordinance was geared up

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not only to emancipate recruitment from Haji Paroo but also to prevent any other trade firm from seizing a monopoly. It allowed state authorities across the colony to “negotiate and hire available porters regardless of already existing engagements of these people with private employers.”106 Although von Schele restricted this permission only to wartime, officials made at least some use of it when porters were urgently needed. In January of the following year, the Bagamoyo district office requisitioned 43 porters already under contract with the DOAG to make them carry official loads to the interior.107 When the company issued a formal complaint, the authorities appeased it by making the DOAG the new most-favored recruitment agent for official transport.108 This cooperation, however, only lasted for a short time. Like Haji Paroo, the DOAG daringly sought to build a monopoly on the basis of its government contracts. When the Bagamoyo district office asked the company to recruit 1500 porters on behalf of the state, DOAG agent Schuller refused to do so unless his company was granted the exclusive right to recruit porters in the town. Because it could not allow yet another monopoly to emerge, the district office adopted the same measures as in 1891: in November 1894, it forbade the DOAG and all other local firms from recruiting any porters until it had met its own demands.109 Underlying this third intervention into the labor market was the ambition to emancipate official transport from private travel agents. Instead, porter recruitment at the Swahili coast was henceforth managed by the district offices of the most important caravan hubs: Bagamoyo for all ventures to Tabora and Lake Victoria, Tanga in north-eastern Tanzania for caravans to Moshi, as well as Lindi for official traffic in southern Tanzania.110

A Bifurcated Recruitment System In 1895 the administration succeeded in recruiting the majority of its porters independently for the first time.111 In the same year, recruitment for official long-distance travel was taken away from the established centers of caravan trade and instead concentrated in the colonial capital Dar es Salaam, which colonial authorities hoped to develop into an urban and economic center (see Chap. 6). Porter recruitment was henceforth centralized under the auspices of one state agency, the Zentralmagazin or Central Depot (called Hauptmagazin or Main Depot until 1900).112 It became the sole large-scale colonial recruitment agency for all major government expeditions and caravans, coexisting with the postal authority

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whose mail carriers circulated twice per month between the coast and the interior stations.113 The Central Depot’s main function was to manage the day-to-day transportation of official parcels and supplies from the coast to the nine German stations that existed in the interior in 1895. The network would grow to over 20 administrative and military outposts of varying size until the turn of the century.114 Whenever new supplies for the personnel of these stations arrived via steamer, the Central Depot assembled the goods, packed them into portable loads, and assigned them to porters.115 Two porters per month were responsible for bringing food supplies to the specific stations. Officials were also provided with six porters for inward journeys to carry their personal belongings and an additional five to carry equipment.116 An additional task was the outfitting of scientific expeditions with porters and equipment. In the fiscal year 1897/8, porters transported a total of 5400 loads for the government.117 In its recruitment, the Central Depot drew on the skilled workforce of the long-distance caravan economy, filling its ranks with experienced caravan professionals. In 1895, two-thirds of them were recorded as being Swahili, the rest as being Wanyamwezi.118 As the typical workers of long-­ distance trade, the latter group, in particular, was of interest to the Germans. Their experience in caravan travel and familiarity with the Tanzanian interior also made Nyamwezi men the preferred soldiers for the Schutztruppe’s rank and file, as Michelle R. Moyd has shown in her study of the Askari soldiers.119 Porterage in service of the Central Depot was a permanent position. While many trade caravans only traveled during the dry season, the communication channels between the central administration in Dar es Salaam and its outposts had to be kept open all throughout the year. To guarantee a year-round fast dispatch of supply caravans, the Central Depot thus created a steady pool of porters. Ideally, individual porters made several journeys per year and returned to Dar es Salaam at the end of every trip inland. Although they were not offered permanent contracts, these men were induced to remain with the Central Depot through comparatively high wages (see below) and a daily allowance which they sometimes received while standing by.120 According to reports, a force of 2000 (1896), later 3000 (1899), porters worked only for the government and held itself ready in the colonial capital.121 The return of these porters to the coast after each journey was guaranteed by the payment system in which all wages were only due upon return.

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This made the typical one-way journeys back to the porters’ homelands impossible as they were common among seasonal wageworkers in the long-distance trade. Because they always needed to return to Dar es Salaam to receive their wages, the Central Depot’s porters inevitably had to join another caravan. They found themselves entrapped in the system, as Ujiji district officer Werner von Gravert observed critically, stating that “once in the hands of the Central Depot, they are virtually condemned to lifelong porterage.”122 In reaction to von Gravert’s complaint, the government discontinued this practice after February 1901.123 Around the same time, the state agency’s importance in porter recruitment decreased due to two developments. First, the administration revised its policy of granting porters for officials traveling to their upcountry posts. Instead of being provided with porters, these officials henceforth had to hire their own transport workers. Second, from 1898 on stations were required to send the necessary number of porters to Dar es Salaam when placing supply orders.124 Still, after 1900 porters in the service of the Central Depot continued to mediate extraordinary long-distance transport for expeditions of official, private, or scientific travelers.125 Expertise and professionalism remained common denominators. In 1906, German ethnologist Karl Weule traveled to southern Tanzania with a crew provided by the Central Depot.126 Taking these porters as an object of his ethnological studies, in one experiment Weule asked them to produce drawings. Some of these drawn ego-documents are of great value to the present study as they give evidence of the travel experience of their creators. Sabatele, according to Weule, was a porter born at the southern end of Lake Tanganyika. In Weule’s experiment, he drew a map of his previous journeys as a caravan porter. Covering a distance of at least 2300 kilometers (one way), they stretched from Dar es Salaam along the central caravan route to the west as far as Ujiji and Kasanga at Lake Tanganyika and Mwanza at Lake Victoria (Fig. 2.1).127 Porters with vast itineraries were also found in other expeditions outfitted by the Central Depot. Geographer Fritz Jaeger, for instance, whose 1906 expedition in northern Tanzania was part of the same research program as Weule’s, wrote of his crew member Pagazikubwa that he “did his 17th journey with a European. In addition, he has traveled 7 times on behalf of Indians.”128 For experienced porters, working for the state agency held several benefits. For one, it offered access to the colonial cash economy, a motivation Moyd also identified for those Wanyamwezi who joined the colonial

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Fig. 2.1  A map drawn by Sabatele, a porter of the Central Depot. It depicts the central route and the major caravan hubs, including Dar es Salaam (1), Mpwapwa (7), Tabora (13a), Ujiji (14), as well as Mwanza (15). Source: Weule, Native Life, 9

army.129 Working for the Central Depot was so lucrative that plantation workers occasionally deserted their employers and instead took up loads for the state agency.130 Of equal importance, perhaps, was that to carry for the state meant a partial continuation of previous caravan labor. These men were often attached to state agents or scientists traveling Eastern Africa for an indetermined period and in circuitous itineraries. Their job profile thus mirrored that of earlier expeditions and caravans roaming the interior in search of ivory. The name Pagazikubwa, translated as Big, Great, or Elder Porter, not only refers to the experience of its bearer but also gives evidence that a pagazi identity survived into the colonial period. The practice of choosing travel aliases, as known from earlier trade caravans, persisted within the ranks of the Central Depot. Pagazikubwa is only one example. Other porters of the Central Depot were known by the names Mtoto (i.e., Baby), Pesa Mbili (Two Cents), Mpenda Kula (He who loves eating), or Kazi Ulaya (He who works for Europeans).131 A second aspect of caravan life that porters transferred into the colonial work environment was the practice of taking their families on the road. As Moyd has shown, traveling together with female companions and children was typical for Askari soldiers.132 Apparently, it also remained so common among professional porters that when Jaeger showed up at the Central Depot to outfit his expedition in mid-1906 and explained that he would not allow his crew to

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travel with their families, he met with a lack of understanding on behalf of Schutztruppe officer Kurt von Schleinitz.133 Sustaining the practices of caravan travel also implied that porters retained autonomy over their labor and, under specific circumstances, were able to decline specific jobs. Evidence is given by the forest officer Otto Paul Eckert who needed about 150 porters in 1904. Despite 300 porters being in Dar es Salaam at that time, only a few of them were willing to sign up while the rest preferred “to hang around idly instead of finding an employment.”134 Upon request, the local authorities found themselves incapable of getting tougher on these people. The government planned to outfit a large caravan with cash money for the interior districts, for which it would soon require all available porters and did not want to provoke the people to leave the town too soon.135 Paradoxically, given these insights, working in colonial logistics after 1900 enabled full-time porters to retain aspects of their profession in an environment in which the caravan trade was in sharp decline and in which porterage became increasingly associated with untrained labor (see Chap. 4) and with labor coercion. The colonial practices of obtaining transport labor differed between the coast and the interior. They were “bifurcated,” to use Mahmood Mamdani’s term to describe the differences in the imposition of legal sets between urban and rural contexts.136 On the coast, the Central Depot helped experienced porters to cultivate their professional identity. In the interior, by contrast, station commanders adopted the practices of military commanders and based porter recruitment on strategies of coercion and violence. Forced porter recruitment existed in most colonial regimes in sub-Saharan Africa, being one branch of the systems of unfree labor that historian Eric Allina calls “slavery by any other name”: systems whose “practices had more than a passing resemblance to the exploitation of the now disavowed chattel slavery.”137 In the neighboring Congo Free State, for instance, officers regularly raided villages and pressed residents into porterage to carry ivory and rubber.138 The colonial situation, Kwabena Opare Akurang-Parry, observes, “enabled the colonial state to exploit forced labor while at the same time posing as a guardian against the exploitation of unfree labor.”139 In Tanzania, labor coercion first became an “official” mode of obtaining porters in the Schutztruppe campaigns of the early 1890s. But German officers not only applied this mode of labor extraction in the immediate combat zones. After 1890, many East African men who had no prior experience as porters found themselves forced to mediate the logistics of

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interior stations. Villagers, on the other hand, sometimes managed to evade their conscription by relocating their settlements off from the stations. From Marangu at the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, German officer Kurt Johannes reported in February 1893 that the people “have already retreated uphill for fear of the dreaded porter duty […] and will be scared farther away from the station up the slopes” in case he would continue to conscript them for services.140 The importance of unfree labor grew around the turn of the century when the central administration made it the stations’ task to send their own porters to the Central Depot in Dar es Salaam to pick up supply loads.141 The Kilimatinde station, for instance, alone recruited 1200 men as porters for coastward journeys in 1898 who were officially labeled as “volunteers.”142 How voluntary these people were must, of course, be doubted. For German East Africa’s railway workers, who were labeled in similar ways, Juhani Koponen observes that “the always evasive and euphemistic colonial German language reached truly Orwellian dimensions. A closer reading of the available evidence gives reason to suppose that few, if any, of the ‘volunteers’ had in fact gone to work without pressure and coercion.”143 Presumably, the porters recruited by the station in Kilimatinde and elsewhere consisted of a number of free residents actually volunteering, enchained penal workers, and a larger share of tributary workers.144 Labeled as Frondienst (corvée), local authorities conscripted these people from the vicinity of their stations for porter services. While Thaddeus Sunseri contends that corvée was unpaid, according to official records corvée workers were entitled to 8 Pesas per day, only about half as much as male day laborers could earn in the urban settlements.145 Free porters and those of the Central Depot, by contrast, earned about half a Rupee, equaling 32 Pesas, per marching day.146 To round up corvée workers was a task assigned to majumbe (chiefs), village headmen, and maakida, newly installed Kiswahili-speaking administrative agents.147 In the important trading hub of Tabora, for instance, the Germans made Nyaso the supreme political authority in 1893 and ordered her to provide Europeans with porters upon request.148 The inability or unwillingness to muster porters whenever requested was understood as proof of a chief’s weakness, often leading to punishment.149 In October 1901, to give one example, Chief Salema of Moshi at Mount Kilimanjaro was repeatedly arrested by the local military station because he had been unable to provide his subjects as porters for urgent official trips. Salema’s mother eventually asked the missionaries of the Leipzig

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Mission station for help who, according to their daybook, took the side of the chief and warned the officials against any future arrest.150 In 1899, a total of 6707 porters—some of them likely counted several times—were loaded at the Central Depot, and 7831  in the following year.151 The mobilization of unfree transport workers and their coordinated deployment notwithstanding, colonial mobility based on caravans remained limited in its capabilities given the small amount porters could carry. The limits of transport showed plainest during the recurring famines which struck Tanzania after the colonial takeover. Draught, along with locust swarms, destroyed the harvest, and the Rinderpest epizootic, introduced into Tanzania in 1891, killed up to 95 percent of cattle in some areas.152 In 1899, the Germans estimated that since 1894 famines had killed 750,000 people.153 Although they often occurred only in specific areas while crops were still growing in others, the administration watched these famines helpless. In 1899, the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung complained that the government had to import rice from India to relieve the dearth at the coast, while rice was plenty in specific interior regions but could not be brought to the coast on shoulders. Because no food was procurable in famine regions, supply caravans would have needed to carry their own foodstuffs as well, thus making any additional load impossible.154 Corvée persisted as the principal state-organized source of transport labor, even after the introduction of taxation. In 1898, Governor Eduard von Liebert established a so-called hut tax, an annual 3–12 Rupees to be paid by every house and hut owner in the colony.155 Taxes were collected either in Rupees or produce, and many farmers left their homesteads to find paid work on plantations or in commercial caravan transport (see Chap. 4). They also collected honey, beeswax, and wild rubber to sell them for cash. Others sold their livestock or paid their taxes in grain if officials accepted it.156 As Juhani Koponen remarks, tax collection was initially only enforced in those parts of the colony in which colonial rule had gained a permanent foothold and even there passive resistance hampered tax collection.157 Still, introduced during the worst famine of the colonial period (1898 to 1900), taxation further eroded chieftainships and patronclient relations.158 Moreover, it was decreed that tax defaulters could be compelled to work for the state authorities.159 Tax labor primarily meant road works, not porterage. As far as can be retrieved from the available sources, only a few upcountry officials made porterage an option for taxpayers, namely in the districts of Kasanga (Bismarckburg) and Bukoba.160

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The different modes of extracting porter labor by coercion continued under von Liebert’s successor, Gustav Adolf von Götzen. In March 1905, his administration issued a tax reform which increased the tax burden and made cash payments mandatory.161 The new edict reinforced the employment of tax debtors in public works, but explicitly spoke of road construction, not porterage. Still, coerced porter recruitment remained ubiquitous during von Götzen’s term in office. On the one hand, the pressure put on chiefs and maakida turned into pressure on the population itself as these intermediary agents again coerced their subjects into porterage.162 On the other hand, Schutztruppe officers or district officials sent their Askaris to nearby villages to conscript male residents whenever they were in need of porters.163 Based on the new tax regulations, they did not remunerate these people for porter services but instead waived their tax duties. These conscripts then had to carry loads to the borders of their district where they passed them to other forced workers.164 In the Langenburg district, historian Bernd Arnold remarks, these raids were so common that missionaries even felt compelled to issue letters of confirmation to their own servants to prevent them from being conscripted randomly on the street.165 In July 1905, the Maji Maji War broke out in the south-east of German East Africa. The rebellion had many causes: heavy taxation, labor coercion, the breakdown of patron-client relations, and a loss of control over the economy and environment through the imposition of cotton cultivation and wildlife ordinances all played a role.166 Until the war’s end in August 1907 and in its aftermath, an estimate of 75,000 to 300,000 Africans died either directly through warfare or through the severe famines resulting from the German scorched-earth policy.167 During and after the war, the colonial administration launched several investigations into what had caused the people to revolt. Road construction and forced agricultural schemes featured prominently in the compiled reports. But investigators paid almost no attention to involuntary transport labor.168 Porterage for the colonial state, in contrast to official observations, was indeed one source of grievance for Africans in the years before the Maji Maji War. Different from the German officials’ reports, Tanzanian voices testify to the severity of forced transport labor. The cruelty with which the male population was forced to act as porters becomes evident from the Maji Maji Research Project, a series of oral interviews collected in 1968 by historians Gilbert Gwassa and John Iliffe and their students at the University of Dar es Salaam. Mzee Kibilange Upunda, for instance, remembered the German labor regime most vividly: “If you had experienced it,

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you would have known how grave it was. To be chained, to be shot with bullets […], while in addition you carried loads as the great eye of heaven rose up! […] Better remove such sufferings; fight him off so that the loads are carried by the askari themselves.”169 Another witness, Mzee Andrea Mesegu from the Ukaguru Mountains near Morogoro, explained that I won’t forget the hardship we experienced from the German reign. There were no roads or motor cars as there are now. We carried all the loads on our heads from Kilosa to Songea or from Mpwapwa through Mamboya to Saadani and Bagamoyo. We also carried the Germans themselves who constantly beat us when we showed signs of tiredness. Those were difficult days indeed.170

A third interviewee, Mzee Selemani Msiwanda, pointed to the threat official safaris posed to the lives of pressured workers: “When we approached a town like Korogwe, several women came to meet us on the way. Some women were glad to see their husbands back but others mourned, for their husbands could not be seen while nobody could explain their whereabouts.”171 Recruitment through coercion and terror continued during and after the Maji Maji War. At the height of the war, Thaddeus Sunseri observes, recruiters began drafting forced laborers on the Swahili coast, conscripting plantation workers from the coastal hinterland as well as prisoners from the urban settlements as porters.172 In 1909, the colonial army established permanent structures for transportation, attaching units of 50 recruited porters to each of the 14 companies.173 Because these numbers could not suffice the demand of military campaigns, these men were considered the backbone of the supply train, for which additional porters still had to be drafted from the local population.174 As late as 1913, instances were still reported in which officers made use of the Ordinance on the Recruitment of Porters from 1893, sending their soldiers to trade firms to force their workers to carry supplies for the state.175

Making Transport Calculable Because porter recruitment at the Swahili coast and in the Tanzanian interior took very different shapes, coercion and wage labor coexisted in colonial logistics. Often, professionalism and forced labor were even found within the same caravan as additional porters were drafted during the

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journey. The differences between these types of labor relations blurred in the porters’ everyday experience on the road. Porters traveling under German command, whether employed or conscripted, worked in similar conditions. They also experienced similar treatment, as I show in the remainder of this chapter. Studying the inner life of official caravans from the mid-­1890s to c. 1910, I investigate the extent to which porter service was marked by violence and the enforcement of discipline. Carrying loads for the Germans, to begin on a different note, did not exclusively entail negative effects. Especially during the first years after the German conquest, it could offer a means of profit-making to porters who tried to flip the colonial system to serve their own ends. First, a scam tactic already known from earlier expeditions remained popular in the 1890s: people signed up as porters at the coast only to receive their wage advance and deserted during the first marching days.176 In 1895, Acting Governor Lothar von Trotha observed that “signed porters do not fulfill their obligation but throw their loads away and run. Often this happens immediately after they have left the initial place of departure.”177 So common was this form of desertion that von Trotha ordered the wage paid in advance to be reduced to a maximum 33 percent of the total wages. Second, porters in supply caravans, usually traveling under an African kirangozi (caravan leader) and a group of soldiers, engaged in raids of villages along the caravan routes. They capitalized on the firepower and symbolic capital of colonial rule.  Villagers defending themselves against belligerent porters, Rockel observes, could eventually face the wrath of the caravan leader and his entire crew.178 While raiding settlements and pilfering food was also a practice of many expeditions and trade caravans (see next chapter), the German administration realized in October 1895 that the ongoing devastation of the caravan routes “mainly stems from pillages and raids committed by soldiers and the government’s porters in particular.”179 The government thus instructed the upcountry stations to always send a European or at least a trusted headman with caravans.180 A third misdemeanor was theft from within the caravans. There is at least one recorded incident, in which a porter stole from an Askari whose belongings he had to carry.181 Far more common was theft from supply caravans transporting cash money upcountry or collected taxes to the coast.182 For people pressured into porterage, stealing from the caravans’ stocks was a way to at least profit somewhat from their engagement. By 1899, thefts from cash transports occurred so regularly that the administration had to issue instructions on how to safely coffer coins. Again, it was

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stipulated that these caravans should only march under the command of a European leader.183 These autonomous acts and the challenges they posed to the flow of colonial logistics demanded action. To subject all official caravans to European supervision, as suggested by the central administration, was only one step in the process of making transport reliable, flawless, and steady. More important was that these expedition leaders would successfully suppress the agency of caravan workers. Officials aspired to force porters into a colonial set of rules and transform them into submissive “tools of empire,” as I have already noted with regard to earlier expedition leaders. Indeed, the administration adopted many of the disciplinary practices tried and tested in earlier expeditions as well as in the Schutztruppe’s campaigns. To tighten the noose on their crews, German officials seized on both processes already underway in these ventures, including the rationalization of expeditionary travel and the disciplining of workers and their bodies. All porters engaged in official transport witnessed a standardization of caravan travel under the colonial grip. Rationalizing caravan mobility did not end with the patterns of recruitment. It also entailed state authorities tackled safari travel itself with regulatory vigor, their aim being to transform day-to-day logistics into manageable complexities. A maximum weight for loads in official caravans was fixed at 65 lbs. (later 60 lbs.)— remarkably because porters of heavier loads were more likely to desert, as the respective circular explained.184 Wages, too, were fixed. As of May 1894, the administration issued lists with prescribed wages for all major routes from Dar es Salaam inland, such as to Tabora or Mwanza.185 To the Germans, the introduction of wage lists helped to avoid time-consuming negotiations over individual remuneration while payment in the colonial currency (rather than in cloth) also promoted the use of cash in the interior. The lists were applicable to both the porters of the Central Depot and auxiliary porters hired at the place of departure or along the way, while corvée workers were entitled to a mere 8 Pesas per day.186 In the following years, the wage tables were revised on a regular basis and new routes were added. Wages were usually changed downwards (see Fig.  2.2). For the journey from Dar es Salaam to Mpwapwa, an important hub on the central route, for instance, porters were paid 18 Rupees in 1894, 14 in 1897, 11 in 1900, but only 9 Rupees in 1902.187 For the 19 days’ march they thus still received a wage which

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Fig. 2.2  Wage trends for specific routes starting in Dar es Salaam, 1894 to 1902. Sources: BAB, R 1001/786a, “Runderlass,” 19 May 1894, 16; BAB, R 1001/786c, “Runderlass,” 5 March 1897, 18; BAB, R 1001/786d, “Runderlass,” 8 October 1898, 135; BAB, R 1001/786d, “Runderlass,” 16 March 1899, 207; BAB, R 1001/786e, “Runderlass,” 6 April 1900, 136; BAB, R 1001/786e, “Runderlass,” 13 May 1902, 28

was not only higher than the wages paid in commercial caravans (see Chap. 4) but also similar to the average monthly wage paid on plantations in Dar es Salaam.188 After 1899, wage tables were supplemented with route lists. For each of the different routes, these lists contained a specific number of marching days as the maximum travel time allowed by the central administration. Officials were required to calculate their planned journeys according to the standard number of days.189 In 1903 and 1906, the route list was revised and complemented, then containing about 170 routes across the colony. Dar es Salaam–Ujiji, the entire stretch of the central route, for instance, was stated as 65 days.190 One day’s halt was permitted after six days’ march.191 If we take the numbers and compare them with a rough estimate of the distances, caravans were expected to march an average of 20 kilometers per day.192 One likely reason why route lists were introduced was that German officers spent too much time away from their stations. The regulations thus aimed at them rather than their crews. Still, if officials

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wanted to conform to the list, they had to make the caravan march in an appropriate mode, translating the decreed marching speed into everyday practices. As a result, porters in official transport saw themselves confronted with an increased intrusion into their work rhythms. Leaders of official travel parties subjected their crews to a European time regime with a reveille every morning before sunrise followed by a march of up to eight hours.193 After their arrival at the daily camp, porters were not allowed to relax. Different from commercial caravans, in which porters could usually enjoy themselves in the camp, porters in official caravans had to fulfill a number of tasks, such as grinding flour for the accompanying soldiers.194 Even the rest days were often spent with work for nearby stations and district offices, for instance, in road construction.195 Believed to be more accessible to colonial state agents than most other colonial subjects, porters and soldiers were also introduced to European ideas of hygiene in the camp. Their superiors tried to teach them the “correct” use of water, soap, and pit latrines.196 On the march, discipline was guaranteed by a strict marching order.197 A visual depiction of this marching order through African eyes is, again, provided by a member of Weule’s above-mentioned expedition (Fig. 2.3). Its creator, Barnabas, had previously attended a government school and worked for the post office in Lindi at the southern Swahili coast. The scene depicts a group traveling in 1906 under the command of the military surgeon of Lindi, who is the tall character with the pith helmet. In front marches an African non-commissioned officer, carrying the German flag, followed by a file of soldiers and a group of porters. One Askari marches in the rear.198 Soldiers flanking the group of porters, as in this illustration, served as a disciplinary force. They were expected to spur porters and to prevent them from strolling or falling behind, in this way guaranteeing the required fast pace.

Spaces of Violence As the whip depicted so prominently in Barnabas’ drawing indicates, authorities and expedition leaders regarded violence as the best practice to subject porters to a colonial rule set. In 1896, the German Chancellor, Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, had enacted the first thorough rules to control physical punishment in German East Africa as well as in the colonies of Togo and Cameroon. The ordinance defined a legal frame

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Fig. 2.3  Barnabas, “Caravan on the march.” The drawing depicts a German expedition in south-eastern German East Africa, 1906. Source: Weule, “Eingeborenen-Zeichnungen,” 41

for punishment, reserving its infliction for high-ranked officers. These regulations were not regarded as applicable to safari travel. From the decades of experience in expeditions, colonial policymakers firmly believed that porters required harsh treatment. Whereas the ordinance restricted the legal authority to sentence offenders to the governor or district officers, it was thus granted as an exception to leaders of official expeditions in case other authorities were too far away.199 As a result, violence was as ubiquitous in the government’s safaris as it had been in earlier expeditionary and military travel. For offenses, delinquents received 25 lashes with the kiboko, the hippo-hide whip, for which they were tied to the ground. The ritual was usually carried out in public to deter other caravan members from future misdemeanors.200 In addition, expedition leaders customarily whipped porters (or ordered Askaris to do so) in case they could not keep pace or tried to evade the disciplinary regime. This became already evident from the above-quoted oral testimonies collected in 1968. Mzee Kibilange Upunda further remembered that “if you did not carry them [Germans in hammocks] gently, even as you

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passed through stones and gravel or up or down hill, you were whipped profusely on your buttocks, back and legs and severely reviled.”201 Besides punishment by officials, “commonsensical” practices of physical punishments persisted. In her analysis of quotidian violence in Namibia under German rule, Marie Muschalek has recently observed that “the organization of state power was not merely a matter of claiming the monopoly of force and thus proscribing any excessive, disruptive, and nonofficial violence […] [but] colonial rule consisted in diffusing and regulating specific types of seemingly self-evident harm throughout society.”202 Accordingly, Europeans in German East Africa retained the right of “paternal chastisement” (väterliches Züchtigungsrecht). In line with the pervasive ideology of Erziehung zur Arbeit (“education for work”), it granted European employers the right to use corporal punishment in order to “discipline” and “educate” their workers.203 Encouraged by this right, private expedition leaders traveling with porters provided by state agencies time and again made use of the whip, punishing workers for disobedience, for unauthorized breaks, and for lagging behind.204 Fritz Jaeger, for instance, wrote on 18 July 1906 in his journal that “today, the men marched as disorganized as never before so that I eventually had to flog the stragglers. This decision ruined my lunch break. I always feared to suffer morally from beating—but still deemed it necessary for sustaining the order. Hopefully, it will have a lasting effect.”205 As in earlier years, their propensity for excessive violence still earned many German expedition leaders nicknames given by their porters and soldiers. Schutztruppe lieutenant Phillip Correck, for instance, became known as “Bwana Mota” (Mr. Fiery Temper), because of his frequent use of the kiboko.206 Other Germans were known as “Bwana Kinyonga” (Mr. Malicious) or “Mabale Gasagandi” (The Strong Hitter).207 For soldiers and porters, nicknaming was a means of voicing grievances. So was mockery, the second form of oblique criticism found in many expeditions. Crews revealed weaknesses or highlighted the misconduct of expedition leaders by mimicking their behavior. This was also understood by Schutztruppe officer Heinrich Fonck who warned in 1910 that parodies “are not helpful in improving the white men’s reputation” and thus advised German travelers “to never lose self-control and instead act in ways that do not give cause for amusement and mockery.”208 Violence, however, did emanate not just from German expedition leaders but from African agents of the colonial state, too. It thus also existed in supply caravans not under European command. In the internal

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hierarchy of official travel, porters were assigned an inferior rank to the Askari soldiers—even though by 1900 the colonial army consisted mostly of Sukuma, Manyema, and Nyamwezi recruits and thus of people who were not only of similar origin but had sometimes also worked as professional porters.209 While Askaris were outfitted with uniforms and insignia, porters marched in their normal cloth and bare feet and often had to work as carriers for the soldiers’ personal belongings.210 Soldiers drew on the power assigned to them by their German commanders.211 Being “[a]t once construed by their officers as racial inferiors, but also as superior to most other East Africans, askari bolstered their claims to big-man status through their everyday soldiering and policing activities,”212 as Moyd notes. This self-perception becomes evident from another interview conducted by the Maji Maji Research Project. In it, Mzee Mohamed Mbenju later remembered that “[t]here was every kind of suffering. The askari were a calamity. You carried a heavy load. He did not assess your strength to carry the load. If it were too heavy for you, you carried it until you died. […]. All people were barbarians to the askari. A small mistake would be punishable with twenty-five strokes.”213 What were the effects of institutionalized violence, abusive treatment, and the ongoing process of rationalization on the work rhythms of those employed in official service? First, it must be said that despite the excessive use of force, full control over the daily routines of porters could never be achieved. This was mainly for two reasons. On the one hand, as Pesek reminds us,  semi-skilled or unskilled workers coerced into porterage or recruited during the journey did not stay long enough with the expedition to let its labor regime “improve” their workflows.214 As a consequence, procedures which the Germans thought they had rationalized and speeded up still posed the same problems to expedition leaders as they had done in precolonial times. Assigning loads, for instance, took hours as new porters competed for the lightest loads and often would pick up bulky items only through the threat of violence.215 Desertions remained a regular response to these assaults, often causing the expedition to pause and find new workers.216 On the other hand, the monitoring regime never obtained any hermetic status, as the continuous occurrence of desertions underlines. Because caravans mostly traveled on narrow trails, the file of porters stretched over several kilometers. Vast sections of the column thus marched unmonitored and the rear often arrived in the day’s camp only hours after the front. This stretch made movement behind enemy lines potentially dangerous for porters in expeditions at war. But in everyday situations, it

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left room for the “hidden transcripts” (James C. Scott) of non-­submission: the long stretch allowed porters to walk at their own speed and take short breaks, even though Askaris would pass by them at some point and give them a start.217 These limitations must not hide the fact that the disciplinary regime indeed had visible effects on the work routines of porters, especially those in permanent service. Their training became most apparent in the daily marching distances, which increased enormously compared to what earlier caravans and expeditions could cover. Fonck reported of an average speed of up to five kilometers per hour and a daily average of twenty to twenty-­ five kilometers, thus being in line with what the route lists required, but also not excessively more than a trade caravan could achieve on a good day. The colonial army, however, could make its porters travel much farther. The Schutztruppe training handbook contained advice for drills of footslogs, in which columns marched 40 or even 60 kilometers on one single day.218 Field diaries give evidence that marching for such distances was indeed possible for experienced porters. Schutztruppe officer Georg von Prittwitz und Gaffron, for instance, regularly made his porters march for up to eight hours in the late 1890s, covering distances of between 38 and 45 kilometers in this time.219 The journal of Fritz Jaeger even recorded marches of up to 55 kilometers per day, albeit “on a good road,” as he remarked.220 Where they existed, improved road layouts were certainly a reason for the speeding-up of transport, but so was the disciplinary regime that colonial rule weaved around the porter column. Its effect, as von Prittwitz und Gaffron noted in his field journal, was that “through the many years of porterage, the men were trained in almost a military fashion.”221 Despite their training, the health condition of porters was precarious. They were threatened by malnutrition, exhaustion, attacks by animals, or warfare.222 Warfare persisted as the main principle of German occupation even after the turn of the century. The Maji Maji War was the most devastating war. But until 1910, the Schutztruppe engaged in over 230 military conflicts, ranging from skirmishes to large-scale campaigns and so-called Strafexpeditionen (“punitive expeditions”), brutal raids combined with the destruction of entire villages.223 As in previous Schutztruppe campaigns, supply trains were very vulnerable in combat situations. According to official figures, 66 porters of the German forces died during the Maji Maji War, a number only slightly lower than the body count of Askaris.224

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It is very likely that the actual number of victims was much higher, given that slow and weak porters were sometimes left behind to die.225 Moreover, with the frequent occurrence of famines in the colonial period, the risk of starvation accompanied all parties. When crossing regions declared to be inhabited by enemies, expeditions lived off the land and foraged fields.226 When traveling through “pacified” areas, porters received a posho from which they were expected to buy food. Neither of these two modes of food procurement, however, was geared to food shortages in the traveled areas. If famine regions had to be passed through, official caravans carried their own food supplies, leading to the problem that these additional loads increased the number of porters involved— who again had to be fed.227 To minimize the risk of starvation, the colonial authorities sometimes coordinated official traffic on the caravan routes and directed official caravans away from famine-struck routes.228 The enforced footslogs increased the risk of death. Von Prittwitz und Gaffron, for instance, described in early 1898 how a number of his porters succumbed to the exhausting conditions and the harsh climate: Everybody was shaking with cold so that they could barely keep moving. After 1 ½ hours, 7 of the 14 porters had become entirely incapable of walking. They staggered as if they were drunk. Then, suddenly they collapsed under their loads and lay on the ground stock-still. […] I ordered the Askaris and boys to carry the loads. The porters, as far as they were not entirely insensate, were pushed up the hill by the Askaris.229

In a similar vein, Schutztruppe officer Rudolf von Hirsch explained in a letter to his parents that during his campaign in the Maji Maji War, three porters drowned in a swamp after ten hours of marching because “at nightfall, they sat down dead tired and drowned while sleeping.”230 Both passages exhibit the Germans’ willingness to accept the loss of their porters’ lives for the progress of the expedition. Given this insight, we can conclude this chapter by observing that German state officials were more successful in controlling and exploiting porters than previous explorers had been. Being empowered by a colonial regime, they ruthlessly utilized porter labor in military campaigns, supply caravans, or expeditions. New recruitment patterns and the process of standardizing loads, wages, and distances give evidence that, from the German perception, porterage was a mode of transport that could be subjected to a set of fixed parameters. These colonial standards, however, did

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not entirely overwrite precolonial ones. The average load, for instance, was more or less in line with the standards of earlier trade caravans. While in the “bifurcated” recruitment system a large percentage of workers were coerced into porterage at regional or district level, state-organized transport also enabled a group of long-distance caravan workers to preserve a professional identity. Porters working for the Central Depot shared several characteristics with the full-time professionals of the caravan economy and transferred specific aspects of its labor culture into state service. But what about those long-distance porters not employed in official service? The practices of forcing transport workers into a colonial ruleset discussed in this chapter affected only a fraction of all caravan porters. Even at the turn of the century, the porters carrying the 6700 to 7800 loads of the Central Depot to and from the coast represented only the smallest portion of the 100,000 porters who traveled regularly to the Swahili coast. The next two chapters tackle the question of how colonial authorities on different levels dealt with their profession, routines, and the business they worked in: the long-distance caravan economy. The chapters explore the impact of colonial rule and the economical shifts it engendered on transport workers and trade agents, but they also reveal how these different non-European actors in turn preserved their autonomy and shaped colonial legislation in the caravan sector.

Notes 1. For the conference, see Craven, “Between Law and History”; Castryck, “Bounds of Berlin’s Africa.” 2. For the company’s activities, see Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 177–198; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 68–84; Kurtze, Deutsch-­ Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft; Bückendorf, Schwarz-weiß-rot über Ostafrika, 158–337; as well as Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 168–185. For Peters, see Perras, Carl Peters, 31–130. 3. Kennedy, “Imperial Parasitism.” 4. For the Zanzibari customs system, see Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 119–128; and Pawełczak, The State and the Stateless, 300–317. 5. For the rebellion, see Glassman, Feasts and Riots, esp. 199–248; Fabian, “Locating the Local”; Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 88–98; Jackson, “Resistance to the German Invasion”; Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 35–38; Gwassa, “German Intervention.”

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6. Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim (hereafter REM), Bumiller, “Expedition nach dem Kilima Ndscharo Januar–Februar 1891,” entry of 20 January 1891, 17. 7. Among the rich literature on animals in colonial history, see Belcourt, “Animal Bodies”; Kete, “Introduction.” For German East Africa, see also Gissibl, “Das kolonisierte Tier.” 8. Koponen, People and Production, 251; Roberts, “Nyamwezi Trade,” 58; Clarence-Smith, “The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World.” 9. Price and Mullens, “A New Route”; Pallaver, “Donkeys, Elephants and Oxen”; Gooding, “Tsetse Flies, ENSO, and Murder.” 10. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 453–460; Gissibl, “Das kolonisierte Tier,” 11–15. For zebras, see ibid.; as well as Greiner, “Bio-­ Engineering.” For experiments with elephant taming, see BAB, R 1001/8541. For camels, see BAB, R 1001/8533, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 21 January 1901, 4. For a review of different pack animals, see BAB, R 1001/8533, “Reisen und Fahrten durch Ost Afrika,” [undated], 22–109. 11. Rashid, “Meine Reise,” 198, 206. See also Götzen, Durch Afrika, 69. 12. REM, Bumiller, “Expedition nach dem Kilima Ndscharo Januar–Februar 1891,” entry of 20 January 1891, 17. 13. For the planned porter corps, see Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 316–317. 14. Ibid., 233. 15. Ibid., 116. See also Michels, Schwarze deutsche Kolonialsoldaten, 30. 16. See Rockel, Carriers of Culture; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft; Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire.” 17. Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 233. 18. Höhnel, Zum Rudolph-See, 20. 19. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, esp. 164–179; Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 166–178; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 117–125. Mentions of violence are found in almost every travel account. For more detailed descriptions, see Höhnel, Zum Rudolph-See, 59; and Weule “Eingeborenen-Zeichnungen,” 118. For missionaries, see also Beidelman, “Organization and Maintenance of Caravans by the Church Missionary Society,” 606–607. 20. Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 280. 21. Reichard, Vorschläge, 70–71. For Reichard’s handbook, see also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, esp. 111–113. 22. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren (hereafter RMCA), 59.77, 5, Wissmann, Journal August 1886–January 1887, entry of 10 December. 23. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, esp. 179–195. See also Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 279–292.

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24. Höhnel, Zum Rudolph-See, 52. For strikes, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 187–191. For examples, see RMCA, 59.77, 1, Wissmann, Journal January–October 1881, entry of 28 January; Wissmann, Unter deutscher Flagge, 19, 63, 73; Holub, Von der Capstadt II, 110–112, 159. 25. Höhnel, Zum Rudolph-See, 53. 26. Staatsarchiv Hamburg (herafter  StAHH), 622-2/16 A VI b, Pasha, Journal February–December 1889, 7 March. See also RMCA, 59.77, 1, Wissmann, Journal January–October 1881, entry of 8 June. 27. For explorers’ different opinions on the severity and frequency of punishment, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 168–173. 28. Höhnel, Zum Rudolph-See, 54. For desertion as a strategy of resistance, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 179–187. 29. Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 205. See also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 119. 30. Wissmann, Unter deutscher Flagge, 105. 31. BAB, R 1001/258, “Tagebücher des Baron Fischer von Nagy-Szalatnya,” 1892, 14. See also Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 220. 32. Rempel, “Not a Cloth Giver,” 38. See also Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 222. 33. Rockel has argued that, broadly speaking, there existed two types of explorers: “paternalists,” who consulted with their crews and were comparatively lenient in the infliction of punishment, and “authoritarians,” who sought to transform porters into docile subjects and to undermine their bargaining power through harsh discipline. However, if we recenter our view around the outlined tensions, instead of a clear divide we find more evidence for what Rockel also observes: that “many Europeans straddled both camps.” See Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 165. 34. Reichard, Vorschläge, 65. 35. Ibid., 68. 36. Ibid., 77. See also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 82. 37. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 180. 38. Ibid., 117–130; Rockel, “Enterprising Partners”; Höhnel, Zum Rudolph-­ See, 37; Reichard, Vorschläge, 68; Reichard, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 301, 304. 39. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 211–228. According to Rockel, a two- to three-month advance payment was typical. See ibid., 214. For evidence of higher rates, see Reichard, Vorschläge, 59; RMCA, 95.48, Stairs, Journals 1891–1892, entry of 19 June 1891. 40. Reichard, Vorschläge, 71. See also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 112. 41. Reichard, Vorschläge, 51. 42. For the recurrence of disputes over posho and food rations, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 188–189. For examples, see StAHH, 622-2/16 A VII, Emin Pasha, Journal April 1890–December 1891, entry of 3 May

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1890; Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 11; Baumann, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 41; TNA, G1/14, the testimony of Sewa Haji, Dar es Salaam, 28 January 1892, 34–35. 43. For both systems, see Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 187–194; Rockel, “Decentering Exploration,” 179; Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 238; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 115; Baumann, Massailand, 11; Schweinitz, “Trägerpersonal,” 20. 44. RMCA, 59.77, Wissmann, 5, Journal August 1886–January 1887, entry of 25 January. See also the entries of 12, 25 June, 12 July 1881, 23 September 1891; RMCA, HA.01.0028, Reichard, Journal April–June 1881, entries of 5, 7, and 11 March 1881. 45. Wissmann, Afrika, 31. For the problem of provisioning crews, see Rempel, “Not a Cloth Giver.” See also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 115–116. 46. According to Rockel, porters sometimes actively utilized their bodies by increasing or decreasing their marching speed. See Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 188–193. For examples, see Holub, Von der Capstadt II, 41; Weiß, Meine Reise, 5–6; Fitzgerald, Coastlands, 155. 47. RMCA, 95.48, Stairs, Journals 1891–1892, entry of 20 July 1891. 48. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 98–116;  Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 48–86. 49. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 86. 50. Ibid., 111, 114. 51. Ibid., 135–154. For the Schutztruppe and its wars, see also Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, esp. 211–235. 52. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 50, 138. 53. TNA, G1/18, Soden to Peters, Dar es Salaam, 15 December 1892, 84. 54. Rounce, “Ingereza Ng’wana Sweya,” 211. See also Sunseri, Vilimani, 171. 55. REM, Bumiller, “Tagebuch für die Expedition nach Mpwapwa,” 7–8; Rashid, “Meine Reise,” 207, 216; Wolfrum, Briefe, 136; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 241. 56. StAHH, 622-2/16 A VIII, Pasha, Journal January–October 1892, entry of 1 August. For the expedition, see Itandala, “African Response,” 3–7. 57. Abakari, “Meine Reise,” 91. 58. Ibid., 99. For Merere’s utilization of German military power, see also Wright, “Merere.”  For Silimu bin Abakari’s career, see Diebold, “Alternative Weltläufigkeit.” 59. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 122. 60. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 34; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 103; Stenzler, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 59; Wissmann, Afrika, 29–30. 61. Maercker, Schutztruppe, 196.

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62. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 136. For the Hehe Wars, see Morlang, “Wahehe”; Pizzo, “Mkwawa.” 63. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 90. 64. Nigmann, Schutztruppe, 11; Maercker, Schutztruppe, 198; Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 88; Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 238. 65. Prince, Gegen Araber, 153, 159. 66. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 113–114. 67. Wolfrum, Briefe, 169. 68. Prince, Gegen Araber, 99. 69. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 231. 70. REM, Bumiller, “Expedition nach dem Kilima Ndscharo Januar–Februar 1891,” entry of 23 January 1891, 35. 71. Weinberger, Tagebücher, 1893, 38, cited after Hubach (ed.), “Weinberger.” 72. See Ekemode, “German Rule,” 136. 73. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 125. See also Morlang, Askari, 72–92. 74. BAB, R 1001/279, report by von Tettenborn, Dar es Salaam, 20 September 1891, 158; “Koloniale Rundschau: Ostafrika,” DKZ (7 February 1891), 2; Prince, Gegen Araber, 34; Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 187. 75. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 159; Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 6. 76. For the role of wanyampara in caravan and expeditionary travel, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 72–73; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 113–114; Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 61. 77. StAHH, 622-2/63 BII 2, Stuhlmann, Journal August–October 1891, entry of 29 September. 78. Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 17. For women and children in early Schutztruppe expeditions, see also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 241; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 127–128. 79. StAHH, 622-2/63 BII 3, Stuhlmann, Journal October 1891–January 1892, entry of 5 November. 80. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 144. 81. Ibid., 141–148. For evidence, see RMCA, 59.77, 1, Wissmann, Journal January–October 1881, entries of 19 June and 15 July; Wissmann, Unter deutscher Flagge, 24, 55, 72, 107, 135; Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 575; Höhnel, Rudolph-See, 223; Prager, Dampfer-Expedition, 272; StAHH, 622-2/63 BII 4, Stuhlmann, Journal January–May 1892, entry of 22 January; StAHH, 622-2/16 A VIII, Pasha, Journal January– October 1892, entry of 23 January. 82. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 243. 83. RMCA, 59.77, II, Wissmann, Journal November 1881–July 1882, entry of 11 December.

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84. Wissmann, Afrika, 38. 85. Maercker, Schutztruppe, 136; Weinberger, Tagebücher, 1891, 6 & 1893, 42, cited after Hubach (ed.), “Weinberger”; A.  Becker, Drangperiode, 57; Schynse, Mit Stanley, 82–83; RMCA, 95.48, Stairs, Journals 1891–1892, entry of 10 June 1891.  See also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 181. 86. RMCA, 95.48, Stairs, Journals 1891–1892, entry of 2 July 1891. For the number of porters, see BAB, R 1001/7242, “Das ostafrikanische Schutzgebiet,” 1892, 6 [after folio 136 in the file]. 87. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 89. Parallel to Stairs, the famous American traveler Mary French Sheldon set off from Zanzibar for Mount Kilimanjaro. Simultaneously, missionaries of the White Fathers were seeking to recruit 400 porters and another Belgian expedition 500 porters. See RMCA, 95.48, Stairs, Journals 1891–1892, entries of 3–15 June 1891. 88. Prager, Dampfer-Expedition, 5–9. 89. TNA, G6/21, contract between Wissmann and Sewa Haji, Bagamoyo, 18 April 1891, 8–9. 90. See Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 88–89. 91. Ibid., 212; Reichard, Vorschläge, 62–63. As Rockel points out, labor relations in expeditions became increasingly formalized as explorers fixed the negotiated agreements with porters in written contracts, in this way hoping to give the agreements more authority. See Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 215–218. For the reluctance to join European caravans, see also Heintze, Afrikanische Pioniere, 178–179. 92. Brown, “A Pre-Colonial History of Bagamoyo,” 185–199; Matson, “Sewa Haji”; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 90–92; Chrétien, “Premiers voyageurs étrangers,” 44. 93. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 91; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 110–111; Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 59. Evidence of Haji Paroo’s guarantees is given by a contract between him and Hans Meyer. See Baumann, DeutschOstafrika, 218–219; Baumann, Massailand, 3. 94. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 93. For the company, see also S. Jones, Two Centuries, 111–138. Most prominently, Henry Morton Stanley recruited the porters of his Emin Pasha Relief Expedition through the company. See Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 89. 95. Whether this monopoly did in fact exist, remains doubtful. See Brown, “A Pre-Colonial History of Bagamoyo,” 189; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 91. 96. BAB, R 1001/831, “Bekanntmachung,” Bagamoyo, 9 June 1891, 6. 97. For the expedition, see Prager, Dampfer-Expedition.

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98. BAB, R 1001/831, Ebenan to Foreign Office, Zanzibar, 19 July 1891, 5. TNA, G6/21, Ebenan to Government, Zanzibar, 8 September 1891, 37. 99. TNA, G6/21, Schmidt to Soden, Bagamoyo, 12 May 1891, 36. 100. Baumann, Massailand, 3. See also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 91; Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 68. 101. Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (hereafter GStA), VI. HA Nl Schloifer, “Zum Victoria-Nyansa,” 1895, 16. Schloifer listed the prices in Maria Theresa dollars. 102. Schweinitz, “Trägerpersonal,” 19; BAB, R 1001/765, Peters, “Vorschläge zur Veränderung in der Verwaltung,” 1892, 12. 103. GStA, VI. HA Nl Schloifer, “Zum Victoria-Nyansa,” 1895, 8. 104. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 91; Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition, 71; Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 60; Baumann, Massailand, 3. Thaddeus Sunseri and Jan-Georg Deutsch speculate that Haji Paroo’s porters were in fact slaves. See Sunseri, Vilimani, 32; Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition, 71. 105. BAB, R 1001/118, “Runderlass,” 20 November 1893, 6–7. 106. BAB, R 1001/118, “Verordnung betreffend die Anwerbung von Trägern,” 20 November 1893, 7–8. On the other hand, Haji Paroo managed to increase his influence among the German officials by cultivating a network and behaving as patron and philanthropist. See Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 133–137. 107. BAB, R 1001/118, DOAG to Government, Zanzibar, 6 February 1894, 12–13; BAB, R 1001/118, Wrochem to DOAG, Dar es Salaam, 14 February 1894, 13–15. 108. Meinecke, Suaheli, 87. 109. BAB, R 1001/365, Broschell to Government, Bagamoyo, 29 November 1894, 61–62. 110. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1894/5,” 888. 111. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1895/6,” 2980. 112. BAB, R 1001/118, “Runderlass,” 13 January 1895, 21; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1895/6,” 2980; BAB, R 1001/644a, “Runderlass,” 2 July 1897, 71. 113. In the British East Africa Protectorate, the Transport Department fulfilled similar functions. By 1894, Mumias in the far west of the British colony additionally served as a logistical hub for all official loads to ­ Uganda. See B.  Berman and Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley, 53. Stephen J. Rockel also mentions the existence of an official recruitment agency in Zanzibar. See Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 93.

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114. See Fitzner, Kolonial-Handbuch, 272–348. 115. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1897/8,” 221. 116. “Vorschriften über die Verpflegung des europäischen Civil- und Militärpersonals,” 16 January 1896, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung II, 219–225. 117. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1897/8,” 222. 118. BAB, R 1001/6467, “Jahres-Bericht [1895/6],” 102. 119. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 61–87. See also Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 129–134. 120. BAB, R 1001/118, Stuhlmann to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 31 March 1903, 145; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1894/5,” 888; TNA, G35/1, Central Depot to Government, Dar es Salaam, 31 March 1903, 40. 121. “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2883; Közle, Wegzeiger, 55. 122. TNA, G1/35, Gravert to Government, Ujiji, 6 December 1900, 201. 123. TNA, G1/35, Müller, memo on Gravert’s letter, Dar es Salaam, 19 February 1901, 201. 124. Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 114; “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2883. 125. The East Africa tour of Colonial Secretary Bernhard Dernburg (1907), for instance, was mediated by 150 porters of the Central Depot. 126. See Zimmerman, “What Do You Really Want,” 448. 127. See also the map drawn by Weule’s headman Pesa Mbili: Weule, Native Life, 373–375; Weule, “Kartographie”; A.  Jones and Voigt, “Sketchy Makeshift;” Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 79. 128. Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig (hereafter IFL), 848-3/351, Jaeger, Journal September–December 1906, entry of 9 November. 129. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 67. 130. BAB, R 1001/118, Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft to Bülow, Berlin, 27 June 1901, 98–99. 131. Weule, Native Life, 279; Woltag, Eine Sommerfahrt in den Tropenwinter, 48; Lippe, In den Jagdgründen Deutsch-Ostafrikas, 118. For nicknames, see also Rockel, “Between Pori, Pwani and Kisiwani,” 116. As Sunseri shows, plantation workers adopted this practice. See Sunseri, Vilimani, 144. 132. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 127–128. 133. IFL, 848-2/350, Jaeger, Journal May–August 1906, entry of 18 June; IFL, 246/3, Prittwitz, Journal May 1900–November 1901, entries of 10 and 15 July 1901. 134. TNA, G35/1, Weiß to Eckert, Dar es Salaam, 3 November 1904, 41. 135. Ibid.

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136. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. 137. Allina, Slavery by Any Other Name, 10. 138. Northrup, Beyond the Bend in the River, 37–71. 139. Akurang-Parry, “Colonial Forced Labor,” 10. 140. TNA, G1/18, Johannes to Government, Marangu, 7 February 1893, 101. For this reason, a few weeks later Johannes enlisted the service of Fundi (or Shundi), a Swahili trader active in the region since the 1880s, as an intermediary agent. See Ekemode, “German Rule,” 101, 138; Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 84–85. 141. “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2883; “Runderlass betreffend das Trägerwesen,” 12 May 1900, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung V, 80–81. 142. BAB, R 1001/6468, “Denkschrift [draft],” 1898, 289. 143. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 410. 144. For chain gangs as porters, see Winkler and Zimmer, Eine akademische Studienfahrt nach Ostafrika, 40. 145. Sunseri, Vilimani, 66; BAB, R 1001/1053, “Runderlass,” 20 June 1901, 275; BAB, R 1001/118, “Zusammenstellung der an der Küste üblichen Lohnsätze,” 1903, 146. 146. “Anlagen zur Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” 458. 147. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 118–129, 344–345; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 241. 148. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 95; Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 126. 149. Kimambo, Penetration and Protest in Tanzania, 53. For examples, see Kootz-Kretschmer, Safwa, 229; Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren, 168–169; BAB, 10.03 FC 1150, Resident of Urundi to Government, Bujumbura, 28 April 1910; BAB, R 1001/831, Kirsch to Government, Tabora, 5 December 1913, 28. 150. British Library, London (hereafter BL), EAP099/3/7, Moshi Station daybook 1900–1902, entry of 20 October 1901. 151. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1897/8,” 222; BAB, R 1001/6475, “Jahres-Bericht 1900/1,” 235. 152. Sunseri, “Entangled History of Sadoka”; Giblin, Environmental Control, 124–127; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 585–599. 153. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 591; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 67. 154. “Ohne G’leis kein Preis,” DOAZ (8 July 1899), 1; Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 117. 155. BAB, R 1001/1053, “Verordnung betreffend die Erhebung einer Häuser- und Hüttensteuer,” 1 November 1897, 48–50. 156. For the hut tax, see Aas, Koloniale Entwicklung, 164–177; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 215–223; and Bursian, Hüttensteuer.

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157. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 217, 385. For a case study of resistance, see Tambila, “A History of the Rukwa Region,” 158–160. 158. Giblin, Environmental Control, 90–92. 159. “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2878. 160. “Runderlass betreffend das Trägerwesen,” 12 May 1900, in Kolonial-­ Gesetzgebung V, 80–81; “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2911; BAB, R 1001/1053, Liebert to Foreign Office, 24 January 1899, 73; IFL, 246/1, Prittwitz und Gaffron, Journal January–September 1899, entry of 7 July. See also Sunseri, Vilimani, 65. 161. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 382–389; “Verordnung betreffend die Erhebung einer Häuser- und Hüttensteuer,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (1 April 1905), 1–3; “Verordnung betreffend die Heranziehung der Eingeborenen zu öffentlichen Arbeiten,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (1 April 1905), 7. 162. See Beez, Geschosse, 63. For a description of such an incident, see BAB, R 1001/831, Kirsch to Government, Tabora, 5 December 1913, 28. 163. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 178. 164. Maji Maji Research Project, 7/68/2/1, Libaba, “The Maji Maji Rising in the Lindi District,” 6. 165. B.  Arnold, Steuer und Lohnarbeit im Südwesten von Deutsch-Ostafrika, 167–168. 166. Sunseri, “Statist Narratives and Maji Maji Ellipses.” 569. See also Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, Chapter 6; Sunseri, “Famine and Wild Pigs,” Monson, “Relocating Maji Maji”; F. Becker, “Traders, Big Men and Prophets”; F.  Becker and Beez, (eds.), Maji-Maji-Krieg; Wright, “Maji Maji”; Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 109–140; as well as the essays in Giblin and Monson (eds.), Maji Maji. 167. For the war’s genocidal aspects and subsequent famines, see Wimmelbücker, “Verbrannte Erde.” 168. See the different reports in BAB, R 1001/726. See also Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 128. 169. Interview with Kibilange Upunda, in Gwassa and Iliffe, Records of the Maji Maji Rising, 8. 170. Maji Maji Research Project, 2/68/2/3/11, interview with Andrea Mesegu. See also ibid., 3/68/1/3/2, interview with Melicho Mbamila; and ibid., 7/68/1/1, A.K.  Kalembo, “An Account of the Maji Maji Rising in the Lukulidi Valley.” 171. Maji Maji Research Project, 2/68/2/3/11, interview with Selemani Msiwanda. 172. Sunseri, Vilimani, 99–100; Götzen, Deutsch-Ostafrika im Aufstand, 79, 203; BAB 1001/523, Lindi Handels- & Pflanzungsgesellschaft to Dernburg, Koblenz, 15 September 1906, 9.

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173. BAB, R 1001/6484, “Jahresbericht 1909,” 13. See also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 316. 174. See the different sections for each region in N.N., Orientierungsheft. 175. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 178; “Arbeiter- und Trägermangel,” DOAZ (3 December 1904), 1–2; “Wie man rasch Träger bekommt,” DOAZ (15 February 1911), 3; TNA, G8/171, Wirtschaftlicher Landesverband to Government, Tanga, 25 October 1912; BL, EAP099/1/2/15/1, transcript of an Askari’s testimony, Arusha, 7 March 1913, 5. 176. Reichard, Vorschläge, 58–59. See also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 194. 177. BAB, R 1001/118, “Gouvernementsbefehl,” 6 July 1895, 23. 178. Rockel,  “Forgotten Caravan Towns,” 19. See  TNA, G1/35, report by Beringe, Mpwapwa, 20 June 1895, 69. BAB, R 1001/280, instructions by Rüdiger, Dar es Salaam, 20 February 1892, 93; IFL, 245/1, Prittwitz, Journal July 1897–August 1898, entries of 29 July 1897 and 27 January 1898; Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 83; TNA, G1/36, “Ausschreitung der Karawane Lt. Richters,” Pangani, 26 May 1898, 60. 179. BAB, R 1001/784, “Gouvernementsbefehl,” 16 October 1895, 5. 180. Ibid. 181. IFL, 848-3/351, Jaeger, Journal September–December 1906, entry of 6 September. 182. BAB, R 1001/786d, “Runderlass,” 13 February 1899, 177. 183. Ibid. For thefts in expeditions, see also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 195. 184. The circular explicitly mentions lbs., not German Pfund. See “Runderlass betreffend das Gewicht der Lasten,” 9 May 1899, in Landes-Gesetzgebung 1902, 478. See also BAB, R 1001/831, testimony of Sergeant Faupel, Dar es Salaam, 12 March 1910, 12; “Menschen als Lasttiere,” Kilimandjaro- und Meru-Zeitung (7 June 1913), 62. 185. BAB, R 1001/786a, “Runderlass,” 19 May 1894, 16. 186. BAB, R 1001/118, “Gouvernementsbefehl,” 6 July 1895, 23. 187. TNA, G1/188, “Runderlass,” 5 April 1897, 53; BAB, R 1001/786e, “Runderlass,” 6 April 1900, 136; BAB, R 1001/786e, “Runderlass,” 13 May 1902, 28. 188. BAB, R 1001/118, “Zusammenstellung der an der Küste üblichen Lohnsätze,” 1903, 146. See also Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 158. 189. “Runderlass betreffend die Routenlisten,” 14 July 1899, in Kolonial-­ Gesetzgebung V, 106–107. 190. “Anlagen zur Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” 458; Kaiserliches Gouvernement, Taschenbuch, 43–46. 191. Foreign Office, Diplomatic Reports, 20.

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192. “Anlagen zur Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” 457. 193. For time regimes, see Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 104; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 243. 194. Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 86–87; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 125; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 243. 195. IFL, 245/1, Prittwitz, Journal July 1897–August 1898, entries of 11 November & 13 December 1897. 196. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 104, 164. TNA, G5/17, “Abortanlagen für Eingeborene,” Dar es Salaam, 24 June 1914, 115; BAB, R 155/8960, Institut für Seuchenbekämpfung, “Merkblätter zur Erkennung, Verhütung und Bekämpfung von Volksseuchen und übertragbaren Krankheiten in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” 1914, 38. 197. Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 237–238; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 234. 198. Weule, “Eingeborenen-Zeichnungen,” 121. For a discussion of this drawing, see also Zimmerman, “What Do You Really Want,” 451–452. According to Zimmerman, the German was drawn larger in order to represent his power. 199. “Verfügung des Reichskanzler wegen Ausübung der Strafgerichtsbarkeit und der Disziplinargewalt,” 22 April 1896, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung II, 215–218. For German East Africa, Acting Governor Rudolf von Bennigsen circulated supplementary specifications. See BAB, R 1001/784, “Verfügung,” 1 June 1896, 120–122. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 363–364; Schröder, Prügelstrafe und Züchtigungsrecht, 38–42; Weckner, Strafrecht, 210–215; and Trotha, “One for the Kaiser.” 200. Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 70; Weule, “Eingeborenen-­ Zeichnungen,” 118. 201. Interview with Kibilange Upunda, in Gwassa, “Outbreak and Development,” 382. See also Maji Maji Research Project, 2/68/2/3/11, interview with Selemani Msiwanda. 202. Muschalek, Violence as Usual, 9. 203. Schröder, Prügelstrafe und Züchtigungsrecht, 101–120; Söldenwagner, Spaces of Negotiation, 196–198;  Weckner, Strafrecht, 234; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 365. 204. IFL, 188/14, Uhlig, Journal July–August 1904, entry of 16 July; IFL, 849-1/2, Jaeger, Journal 1904, entry of 15 July; IFL, 848-4/352, Jaeger, Journal December 1906–March 1907, entry of 13 February; IFL, 848-5/353, Jaeger, Journal 1906–1907, entries of 10 & 22 April 1907; Weule, Native Life, 122. 205. IFL, 848-2/350, Jaeger, Journal May–August 1906, entry of 18 July.

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206. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 91. 207. For a list of nicknames, see Cory, “Buhaya,” 27. 208. Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 87. See also Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 121. 209. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 227–228; Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 136; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 68. 210. For uniforms, see Michels, Schwarze deutsche Kolonialsoldaten, 24–25; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 20, 106. 211. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 125; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 317–318. 212. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 43. 213. Interview with Mohamed Mbenju, in Gwassa and Iliffe, Records of the Maji Maji Rising, 8. See also Moyd, “All People were Barbarians.” 214. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 235. 215. IFL, 245/1, Prittwitz, Journal July 1897–August 1898, entry of 1 August 1897; IFL, 245/2, Prittwitz, Journal August–October 1898, entry of 2 September; IFL, 248/6, Prittwitz, Journal April 1898–March 1899, entry of 27 August. For the competition over loads, see also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 112. 216. “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2883; IFL, 245/2, Prittwitz, Journal August– October 1898, entries of 5 & 6 September 1898; IFL, 248/6, Prittwitz, Journal April 1898–March 1899, entry of 6 September; IFL, 180/45, H.  Meyer, Journal October–November 1911, 15; Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-­ Afrika, 119–120. See also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 242; Sunseri, Vilimani, 59; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 195. 217. IFL, 188/14, Uhlig, Journal July–August 1904, entry of 25 July; IFL, 188/15, Uhlig, Journal August 1904, entry of 22 August. With the term “hidden transcripts,” Scott referred to noncoordinated, spontaneous acts of resistance which often remained unrecognized. See Scott, Weapons of the Weak. For “lagging” as a form of resistance in expeditions, see also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 192–193. 218. Nigmann, Felddienstübungen, 33–34; Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 83. 219. IFL, 245/1, Prittwitz, Journal July 1897–August 1898, entry of 9 July 1897; IFL, 245/2, Prittwitz, Journal August–October 1898, entry of 2 September; IFL, 246/1, Prittwitz, Journal January–September 1899, entry of 2 June. 220. IFL, 849-1/2, Jaeger, Journal 1904, entry of 3 December. 221. IFL, 246/3, Prittwitz, Journal May 1900–November 1901, entry of 1 July 1901. See also IFL, 245/2, Prittwitz, Journal August–October 1898, entry of 2 September.

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222. See, for instance, Prince, Gegen Araber, 110; IFL, 848-2/350, Jaeger, Journal May–August 1906, entry of 3 August; IFL, 848-5/353, Jaeger, Journal 1906–1907, entry of 10 April 1907; Götzen, Deutsch-Ostafrika im Aufstand, 170. 223. Morlang, “Wahehe,” 80; Nigmann, Schutztruppe, 149–157. 224. “Zusammenstellung der Verluste,” Deutsches Kolonialblatt (hereafter DKB) (15 April 1907), 333. 225. See Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, IV, NL Hirsch, 9, Journal October 1905–March 1906, entries of 9, 12 & 15 March, cited after Menger, “Colonial Violence.” 226. See, for instance, Abakari, “Meine Reise,” 95. 227. IFL, 245/1, Prittwitz, Journal July 1897–August 1898, entries of 29 July 1897 & 27 January 1898; IFL, 246/2, Prittwitz, Journal September– December 1899, entry of 6 November; Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 92, 156, 163. For the persistence of this problem during the First World War, see also Hodges, Kariakor, 47–51. 228. TNA, G36/5, Styx to Government, Mpwapwa, 25 September 1906, 1. 229. IFL, 245/1, Prittwitz, Journal July 1897–August 1898, entry of 12 January. 230. Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, IV, NL Hirsch, 10, Hirsch to his father, 3 July 1906, cited after Morlang, “Ich habe die Sache satt hier,” 512.

CHAPTER 3

Facing an Established Business: The Self-­ Limitation of Colonial Rule

In August 1888, the outbreak of the Abushiri Uprising brought trade at the coast to an immediate standstill.1 Resistance fighters attacked the vulnerable lines of commerce into the hinterland and, early on in the war, blocked the route into the most important trading hub, Bagamoyo.2 When Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sent Herrmann von Wissmann to suppress the uprising, he thus instructed him that, as soon as the coastal towns were captured, his troops should “prepare the accessibility and safety of the caravan routes.”3 Two aspects made the routes a primary target of the German forces. First, the colonizers used the existing infrastructural arrangements of long-distance trade to advance upcountry. Second, they considered the arteries of commerce to be of utmost importance for the colonial project’s finances. To jump-start their new colonial economy, the Germans tapped existing trade structures. As Karin Pallaver points out, “it became the colonizers’ main aim to ensure that export goods, primarily ivory and hides, found their way to the coast via Arab and African trade networks. […] In fact, it was more convenient to leave the structures of precolonial caravan trade intact, and to let them deliver the export goods to the Germans on the coast, than it was to control the entire trade chain.”4

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2_3

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Leaving the existing long-distance caravan system intact, however, implied that the colonial state apparatus had to venture on a careful balancing act, as this chapter will illuminate. It studies the German policies towards the caravan trade in the first decade of colonial occupation. Shifting the scale from the microcosm of official travel parties to the broader colonial system, the chapter explores two interrelated aspects of German caravan legislation. First, focusing on the regulations enacted to control the conditions and practices of caravan and expeditionary travel through space, it discusses the legal tools by which the new colonial regime sought to subject traffic on the caravan routes to a regulatory framework. The second focus is on the question of why and how this policy was formulated and implemented. In the German Empire, legislative power over the colonies lay in the hands of the different central administrations and the governors presiding over them. Being subject only to Emperor and Chancellor, governors could enact laws and ordinances according to their will.5 De facto, however, the central administrations could seldom draw on this constitutional power when passing orders and regulations. Rather, in formulating policies, administrators were tied into complex negotiations. Following George Steinmetz’s conception of the colonial state as a social field, a political arena that was constituted by numerous competing forces, the following analysis illuminates which actors and factors shaped the governance of caravan mobility in the early 1890s. It focuses on the group of South Asian merchants, the established financers of long-distance trade. The overall aim of this chapter is to illuminate that the importance of the caravan business did not end with the onset of colonial rule. On the contrary, it was reinforced to such an extent that its established agents came to hold a decisive position in the policymaking process of the young colonial state.

State-Making and the Ambiguity of Caravan Transport, c. 1890 Ivory tusks were the most important export product of the young colonial project.6 Bernhard Gissibl, whose research illuminates the outstanding role of ivory and hunting in the establishment of colonial rule, argues that through looting and tribute payments in ivory tusks, “the agents of the colonial state themselves evolved into the single most important traders in ivory. Tusks served as an almost universal currency in the making of the

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colonial state.”7 The inland military expeditions allowed the Germans to loot the ivory stores of conquered settlements, such as in Tabora or Iringa. Later, Gissibl shows, the Germans tapped the hunting business by claiming a “ground tusk” from African ivory hunters for every elephant they shot and by issuing hunting licenses.8 Of immediate significance in the late 1880s were the previously established commercial patterns: the colonizers expected the existing ivory business to generate much-needed custom revenues, since “for now, export duties are the only available and reliable resource that the Empire can expect,” as von Wissmann, serving as Imperial Commissioner, reported to Berlin in 1890.9 Following the suppression of the coastal rebellion, his administration focused on reviving long-distance trading activities through both military and administrative measures.10 As part of the ongoing conquest, the troops disempowered communities and rulers living along the caravan routes, in this way ensuring their collaboration with caravan traders. In Tabora, for instance, mtemi (chief) Isike had hampered the activities of Omani traders by repeatedly blocking the central caravan route in the 1880s and 1892 and issuing porter recruitment bans. The coastal traders active in the town eventually sided with the Germans, who defeated Isike in 1893 and made Nyaso the new mtemi.11 In addition to these political interventions, the new administrators established themselves as a monopolist retailer of muzzle-­ loaders and powder at the coast, providing caravans traveling upcountry with enough firepower—remarkably only shortly after the German Empire had urged the other empires to take common action against arms importation at the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference of 1889–1890.12 As an additional measure to revive caravan traffic, the Germans intervened in the established caravan economy and prohibited chiefs from collecting hongo, the road toll.13 Many chiefs and village headmen, especially along the central route, demanded hongo from trade caravans in return for food, water, auxiliary porters, or simply for permission to pass.14 Although von Wissmann’s troops were only powerful enough to enforce this ban in the immediate coastal hinterland, the different colonial interventions into the existing economy and the military victories helped to stimulate the caravan sector.15 After the coastal rebellion, many trade caravans resumed their business. Ivory tusks amounting to a total of 204 tons in 1890 and 208 tons in 1891 were brought to the coast.16 From August 1890 to August 1891, the first fiscal year of the new German administration, the overall value of

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all registered export products shipped from German East Africa amounted to 7,482,429 Marks (compared to 5,037,429 Marks in the previous year). Of this sum, the ivory trade alone generated 2,689,433 Marks of which the state collected 742,276.5 Marks as export duties.17 These revenues supplemented the tight budget of only 2.5 million Marks which the parliament granted to the colonial project in East Africa.18 Given the colonial treasury’s financial constraints, it shows that caravans were a transport mode worth promoting and that preserving long-distance trade flows was a priority for colonial policymaking. However, as much as the colonial economy depended on caravan transport, colonial circles in both the metropole and the colony regarded porterage as highly suspicious. As outlined in the introduction of this study, they deemed it a dangerous and damnable business, allegedly promoting slave trading and vagrancy, being slow and uneconomical, and divesting colonial entrepreneurs of their potential labor force. It was another issue, however, that made the “porter question” an immediate threat to public order in the years following the Abushiri Uprising. German administrators soon registered that many sections of the hitherto populated routes had become mere wastelands, especially in the central route corridor. Residents evacuated their proximity and resettled in the inaccessible bush. For them, living with the caravan traffic had become too dangerous because passing travel parties regularly raided and pillaged villages.19 In the precolonial caravan economy, systems of conventions had regulated interactions between travelers and residents.20 Procuring food for the entire caravan was the key responsibility of the caravan leader, and many interactions revolved around this issue.21 In his study of early colonial East Africa, Michael Pesek points to the fact that coastal traders were often unfamiliar with the interior and therefore depended on the cooperation of local chiefs and residents, and, for the mutual benefit of both groups, they established what he describes as a “moral economy.”22 As Rockel has shown, Nyamwezi travelers also entertained joking relations, called utani, with a number of groups living along the main caravan routes. These relations implied hospitality and mutual aid between caravanners and host communities.23 Traders and political elites additionally engaged in blood brotherhood and entertained kinship relations which, they hoped, would guarantee them exclusive access to trade goods and local infrastructures.24 Interactions between residents and caravans, however, were seldom solely harmonic. When chiefs and travelers could not agree upon a sum to

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be paid as hongo, an armed conflict was the result. Villages or ruga ruga war bands also specialized in ambushing and raiding caravans, causing smaller travel parties to pool forces and form larger caravans.25 The central route repeatedly saw violent outbursts in the 1870s, when Mirambo, the chief of Urambo in the greater region of Unyamwezi, sought to dominate the route between Tabora and Ujiji by blocking it and engaging in warfare.26 At the same time, conflicts were sparked by caravans, too. Trade caravans traveling upcountry from the coast profited from the flood of firearms. Historian Felix Brahm estimates that 20,000 to 30,000 per annum were imported in the 1880s with a peak of 60,000 rifles in 1888/1889.27 Arms and powder provided protection against thievish settlements. More than that, as Rockel demonstrates, caravans used their firepower as leverage to defy demands for hongo or to raid the stocks of villages.28 With the massive importation of firearms, especially in the hands of European-led expeditions and coastal caravans, often involving hundreds of porters, warfare became an increasingly large part of the caravan economy in the decade before formal colonization.29 Through the German presence, travelers on the central route ultimately gained the upper hand over residents. Rockel observes that “in the late 1880s and 1890s, the balance of power that had formerly favoured local communities in their relationships with passing caravans was shifting in favour of the colonial invaders and their porters.”30 Where colonial conquest struck the caravan trails, it eroded the precolonial caravan economy and destroyed the systems of conventions.31 Worse still, colonial violence ruined the residents’ ability to defend themselves. Disarmed and subdued, they were unable to beat off aggressors, as officer August Leue later observed in his Tabora district: “if caravans had previously been raided by villages seeking to extort hongo, today the opposite is true.”32 In contrast to the proclaimed German “pacification” of Tanzania, colonial conquest led “to lawlessness along caravan routes,”33 as Jennifer Kopf clearly puts it. This causality, as Kopf further observes, was simply ignored in German colonial discourse. Instead, cause and effect were inverted: “Rather than blaming the removal of social controls for plunder along the routes, German discourse used current conditions to argue that the caravan system was essentially evil, and that it hindered cultural development.”34 To protect the supposedly defenseless interior population was, of course, above all a legitimation strategy of colonial statehood. Still, the inability to meet the widely propagated claim that colonial rule would

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uplift and protect its subjects (reflected in terms such as Schutzgebiet or Schutztruppe) and would provide law and order had deeper implications for the legitimacy of the colonial state. As Kopf notes, groups who evaded the caravan routes evaded the colonizers’ grip: retreat and resettlement in inaccessible areas, such as forests or mountain sides, made it very difficult for German officials to access these people as colonial subjects, a labor force, and future taxpayers.35 Given the ongoing devastation of the interior, von Wissmann’s young colonial administration thus faced a second pressing issue, largely contradicting the question of how the Germans could encourage caravan trading activities: how could they suppress the existing caravan system, or at least contain its negative effects? The German colonizers were confronted with a difficult choice regarding their future political actions towards the caravan business: who was to be protected against whom? Trade caravans against the interior population or the residents of the caravan routes against travelers? To which extent this dilemma shaped policies in the colonial state’s formative years becomes most overt when analyzing the trajectories of policymaking under the two first heads of the administration, Hermann von Wissmann (until March 1891 as Imperial Commissioner) and Julius von Soden (after April 1891 as Governor). In the next section, a close examination of their administrative activities regarding the caravan sector will give evidence of the German attempts of dealing with the very ambivalence the “porter question” entailed for the colonial state.

Colonial Rule and the Balance of Interests Von Wissmann’s policy of forcing the caravan routes open in the coastal hinterland was initially successful in encouraging traders to bring their goods to the port towns. The ivory boom continued in 1891, in which the trading hub Tabora saw the second largest trade volume of the past ten years.36 On the central route, caravan trading under colonial rule proceeded in the same manner as it had done for several decades. Caravans were mostly operated by employers of Nyamwezi, Omani, or Swahili origin. Coast-based caravan entrepreneurs were financially backed by a portion of the 1200 South Asians who then lived in Tanzania.37 The most prominent members of the latter group were the merchants Sewa Haji Paroo and Allidina Visram. The outstanding role of Haji Paroo as a porter recruitment agent has already become clear in the preceding chapter. But he also operated a far-stretching trade empire. By the early

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1890s, Haji Paroo commanded over a network of agents in all major coastal ports and along the central route as far as Tabora, Ujiji, and Mwanza. There, his agents opened retail stores, so-called maduka (sg. duka), in which they bought ivory and other products of the interior and sold imported commodities to the upcountry population as well as to caravan workers.38 The second trade empire was that of Allidina Visram. He had worked as an assistant in Haji Paroo’s store in Bagamoyo before opening his own caravan business. From Bagamoyo, he later commanded over a network of 30 maduka, stretching as far as the Congo and Uganda.39 Visram’s and Haji Paroo’s trade firms were only two out of several dozens of South Asian businesses of varying size at the Tanzanian coast.40 As early as 1890, colonial circles began to voice warnings that the colony risked losing the established merchants and caravan entrepreneurs, and with them all trade flows and revenues. In many regions of Tanzania, the phase of military conquest continued after the Abushiri Uprising. Especially Ngoni and Hehe warriors repeatedly raided settlements along the routes.41 Warfare and resulting roadblocks or insecurity were thought to be capable of further unsettling the coast-based South Asian merchants and Omani caravan traders, whose confidence in conducting business in Tanzania had already been destabilized through the colonial occupation and the fighting it had brought to the commercial centers. In late December 1890, von Wissmann thus addressed German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi, von Bismarck’s successor, warning him that prevailing violence could provoke traders and caravan entrepreneurs to shift their activities out of the German territory.42 Underlying this warning was the assumption that the merchants of South Asian and Omani origin were not home to the Tanzanian coast but diasporic groups that were prepared to move away without hesitation if their transactions became too risky or profits tailed off. Arguably, this assessment was not justified. As Steven Fabian has recently illuminated in his micro-study of Bagamoyo, many South Asians took root on the Swahili coast. This is suggested by investments in permanent stone-built houses for their homes and businesses as well as in infrastructure for the urban communities.43 Haji Paroo, who was born in Zanzibar, later even donated a school and a hospital to the townspeople of Bagamoyo.44 Still, the warning contained some truth as German East Africa’s trade routes competed with those in the neighboring territories. In Kenya, then a territory administered by the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC), the British made efforts to drag German East

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Africa’s trade flows across the border. As von Wissmann explained to the chancellor, the IBEAC had protected the important caravan route from Lake Victoria to Mombasa with seven military posts to attract trade.45 In light of the British efforts, as much as those of the other neighboring regimes, he warned that the number of caravans traveling through the German territory would constantly decrease in the near future, if trade in the Lake Victoria region will be transferred to the English territory; if trade at Lake Tanganyika and Manyema [in the Kigoma region] will be redirected down the Congo river because of the insecurity of the [Tanzanian] caravan routes; if the routes between the coast and Lake Nyasa will not be reopened; and if we do not tackle smuggling between the Portuguese territory and our hinterland.46

Von Wissmann thus called on the Empire to take preventive measures against losing the caravan traffic, urging the Chancellor to protect caravans and to foster their activities. Less than three weeks after his letter, a group of German trade firms active in East Africa, including the Hamburg-­ based houses Woermann and Hansing, substantiated his warnings in their own petition to Chancellor von Caprivi. Prophesying a collapse of German East Africa’s caravan trade, they wrote that “in view of the massive efforts made by the British in northern East Africa, in Southern Africa, as well as by the Congo Free State to absorb this trade, it is urgent that the Imperial Government makes efforts to preserve this important commerce for our East African colony.”47 To the petitioners, the continuous arrival of caravans at the coast was vital. It was seldom that the German overseas traders outfitted their own caravans to procure ivory in the interior. Only a few individual Europeans ventured beyond the coastal belt. The Swiss trader Philippe Broyon and the Irish missionary-turned-trader Charles Stokes were able to organize large-scale ivory caravans by adopting Nyamwezi practices.48 The only German firm that had tried to establish its own interior trade posts, Heinr. Ad. Meyer, by contrast, surrendered in 1886 after its agent Hermann Giesecke was killed in Tabora.49 Instead of traveling upcountry, the economical outsiders usually partnered with established South Asian businesses and bought up the products of caravans coming from the East African interior.50 South Asian intermediaries were also important to the foreign trade houses because they knew which import manufactures sold well among

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the Swahili and interior population.51 Different types of cloth were only accepted as a currency or barter good if they appealed to the tastes of their consumers, with historian Jeremy Prestholdt arguing that East African consumers’ changing demands even affected cloth production in Bombay and Massachusetts.52 The same was true for the second major import good with which European companies fed the East African market, namely firearms. Wm. O’Swald & Co. alone imported 21,600 rifles and 100 tons of powder in 1887.53 The majority being sold during the trade season, these arms catered to the needs of caravan travelers.54 To successfully distribute their imported goods on the East African market and, in return, to export local products to the world market, the cooperation of the South Asian merchant class was thus indispensable for European trade firms. As a result, the entire colonial economy of the early 1890s was structurally dependent on the established caravan economy. Accordingly, the petitioners saw their own profits at risk with the imminent emigration of merchants and caravan traders. To secure the continuation of long-distance trading, they urged von Caprivi to protect the trade routes by expanding the colonial presence upcountry through military outposts.55 This expansion was already underway by the time of the petition. Until November 1891, the Germans built eight military stations inland, of which von Wissmann had established the first in Mpwapwa at the central route in October 1889. These stations, in the words of historian Erick J. Mann, “were designed both for purposes of defense, but also with the intent of demonstrating that colonial rule was ‘permanent’ and a durable reality with which locals had to come to terms.”56 Their primary function was to subject the many groups and chiefdoms in the interior to German rule. Von Wissmann’s letter to von Caprivi, along with their location at commercial nodal points, also suggests a second function of the first military stations: to protect trade interests.57 To subdue local attacks on caravans, station officers henceforth waged concentrated small-scale wars when they were asked for help by caravanners and, if deemed necessary, flattened belligerent villages.58 However, given that caravans and expeditions threatened the interior population, colonial policymaking could hardly exist solely in protecting the caravan business. In its attempt to cope with the contradiction, the German administration sought to balance the conflicting interests of traders with those of the main routes’ residents, for which the military stations appeared as the ideal means: located strategically at the intersections of important caravan trails,

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they were also equipped to exert control over the caravan traffic itself. A closer look at the first military outpost in Mpwapwa, which replaced an abandoned DOAG station, illuminates this dual purpose of protecting caravans and inhabitants alike. On the occasion of its inauguration, Schutztruppe officer Theodor Bumiller recorded von Wissmann’s instructions in his field journal: “It is the station’s purpose to keep the caravan route open and safe, to protect the local missionary station [of the Church Missionary Society, founded in 1878], and to protect those natives who are friendly to the Germans. […] Wahehe attacks are to be countered; the natives are to be protected against all raids by caravans.”59 Through the shift of power in favor of aggressive travel parties, trade caravans had for the first time become a target of colonial policing. Von Wissmann’s activities aligned well with the simultaneous metropolitan efforts to contain the alleged evils of caravan mobility. Parallel to his campaign in East Africa, the delegates of 17 states convened at the Brussels Conference to discuss measures against the illicit slave and arms trade. When they signed the Brussels Act on 2 July 1890, the delegates had devoted an entire chapter to the future control of trade caravans, imagining a network of stations to monitor traffic.60 However, whereas the Brussels Act regarded caravans as suspicious because they potentially involved slaves, von Wissmann apparently had realized that, to a greater degree, it was their disruptive effects that made controls necessary.61 Controls, however, had to be implemented carefully. Given the caravan trade’s importance for the colonial state’s revenues and economy, the Germans contemplated administrative measures that were capable of containing violent outbursts while, at the same time, being modest enough to guarantee that trade flows proceeded. Von Wissmann’s instructions, according to Bumiller’s field journal, thus continued: Whenever an Arab or any other caravan arrives, a patrol is sent out to inquire into the following: whereto; wherefrom; how many Arabs, Europeans, or natives; how many ivory tusks, slaves, or cattle etc. The patrol must announce that any theft from the natives will be punished severely. […] Caravans leaving for the coast are required to obtain a travel permit [Passierschein] in Mpwapwa which they have to produce at the coastal stations.62

In stark contrast to the problems the colonizers’ presence had actually caused along the routes, the journal entry suggests that the Imperial Commissioner imagined the role of colonial officials as that of a highway

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patrol. To demonstrate the presence of the new colonial power, to check caravans passing the stations, and to make their movement traceable through travel permits were considered suitable means to forestall aggressive acts by caravans and to prosecute violators in case they caused damage. In mid-1891, the Dar es Salaam district office portrayed the travel permit system as an already common practice, reporting that it is well-established that caravan leaders do not set off without a sheti [i.e. shiti, Kiswahili for sheet] as well as a German flag because both count as a sort of legitimization in the interior, showing that the caravan is friends with the Germans. […] The interior stations keep a record of all arriving and departing caravans and check [revidieren] these groups. In this way, offenders can often be punished in case caravans conduct assaults or, vice versa, are assaulted by villages on the caravan routes.63

This report entailed three aspects concerning the German governance of caravan mobility. First, it suggested that the German Empire had superseded Zanzibar as the protective power of trade: the black-white-red banner replaced the red flag of Zanzibar that trade caravans after the mid-nineteenth century had flown on their marches to seize on the Sultan’s authority.64 Secondly, the report suggested that travel permits allowed the authorities to keep a close eye on the hitherto illegible transport system, in this way enabling station commanders to fulfill their double function of protecting caravans and residents alike. Thirdly, it suggested that the system worked. Given the “thin white line” (Anthony Kirk-Greene) of German officials and the few scattered stations, this report should be taken with a pinch of salt.65 Arguably, the colonial administration was too understaffed to effectively implement the described system. Only two German officials, for instance, were responsible for the entire Tabora district.66 Even by 1900, only 415 German state agents governed the colony.67 Almost everywhere in the Tanzanian interior the power instead came to rest on what John Iliffe termed “local compromises”: alliances and collaborations with existing loyal or newly appointed African chiefs.68 A second limitation was that von Wissmann’s system was only implemented on the central route. For the time being, travelers in the two other major trade corridors in the north and in the south, as well as on the countless branch routes, remained completely unaffected by the new control mechanism.69 Moreover, even on the central route the system was

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extremely patchy. At odds with the official narrative is a testimony given by the missionary August Wilhelm Schynse. In 1890, he observed that since the station had been established, “Arab caravans avoid Mpwapwa. They prefer marching on waterless mountain paths for two days rather than following the more convenient path.”70 Schynse’s observation pointed to the shortcoming inherent to the new monitoring system: although the colonizers established checkpoints in specific caravan hubs, they left the space in-between uncontrolled, enabling caravans to simply circumnavigate the stations. Michael Pesek’s observation that the inland stations were mere “islands of colonial rule” (“Inseln von Herrschaft”), therefore, holds true for their control function.71 Although the travel permit system was immature, it still testifies to the political principles of von Wissmann’s administration regarding the caravan economy. In spite of the pressing issue of devastation and depopulation of interior settlements, it permitted traffic to continue mostly unrestrained from colonial intervention. While the German authorities continued military campaigns against non-compliant groups in the interior, with regards to caravan mobility they restricted themselves to the more passive role of a watchman; they collected information on travel groups and established control structures, holding themselves ready to intervene whenever they saw a danger to public order arising at the trade routes. The passive stance towards caravans was the result of two constraints. On the one hand, the administrative staff was too small to enact more thorough measures. On the other hand, colonial policymaking ventured on a balancing act, seeking to conciliate the contradictory interests of different groups within the political arena. With the manifestation of the first colonial structures in German East Africa, European trade firms and the non-European agents of long-distance trade emerged as important actors in the policymaking process. For the time being, the latter were not actively involved in political debates. Still, their likely behavior, meaning the possibility of moving their businesses outside of the German sphere, had a conditioning effect on the modes of caravan governance. This fact will become particularly evident in the following pages from an analysis of caravan legislation under von Wissmann’s successor Julius von Soden.

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The Codification of Caravan Mobility Julius von Soden assumed the newly created office of colonial governor in early 1891. Immediately beginning to reform and extend the state apparatus, his primary task was to transform the military administration into a civil one.72 Regarding the state’s purse, the governor departed from the policy of his predecessor: being eager to tap new sources of income through tax and customs collection, he increased the state’s grip on the caravan business. Eight customs offices were established in the major coastal towns, where arriving trade caravans had to register their ivory.73 To further increase the state’s revenues, in June 1891 the government enacted a Verordnung betreffend die Einführung einer Handelssteuer und Schutzgebühr (Ordinance on the Introduction of a Trade Tax and Protective Tariffs), which stipulated that the sales of all businesses in German East Africa should be taxed with 15 percent.74 This ordinance was to be combined with the proclamation of two additional decrees regarding the caravan sector, both drafted in July: one provided for a head tax to be paid for every porter by caravan leaders and the other was meant to expand von Wissmann’s monitoring system.75 The planned Verordnung betr. Einführung von Registern für an- und ausgehende Karawanen (Ordinance on the Registration of In- and Outbound Caravans) required all coast-based caravans to obtain travel permits before their departure upcountry, which should specify the number of people involved in each caravan and the number of loads and rifles carried along.76 The planned ordinance followed the existing control measures and merely lifted them to a colony-wide scale so that travelers on the major routes in the north and south of the colony would also have to obtain permits. Still, when von Soden approached the officials of the five newly created district offices in the major coastal towns, asking for their opinion on the draft, he received exclusively negative feedback. While the two officers situated at the central route deemed the existing permit system to be sufficient, their three colleagues in the northern and southern trade corridors strongly discouraged the governor from enacting any such ordinance.77 Residing in worrying proximity to the neighboring British East Africa Protectorate and Portuguese Mozambique, they argued that a tightening of controls could cause a disruption of trade in the German territory.78 The district officer of Kilwa, Erst Albrecht von Eberstein, cautioned the new governor in his reply letter that “the coastal caravan traders are already suspicious of the changing situation on the coast. The proposed

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regulation would bring a lot of disturbance to them, and they might easily feel compelled to move their businesses to other colonies, much to the damage of our own export trade.”79 This opinion is instructive in that it revealed the limits von Soden’s administration faced in its efforts to control caravans. Instead of further tightening controls, von Eberstein strongly recommended to “inquire into possible supportive measures for the caravan trade through which we can prevent the competition from English companies […] as well as the channeling [of trade] through the Congo to Western Africa.”80 The plausibility of his warning is evidenced by a petition, submitted to the government in English language by the South Asian merchant community of Bagamoyo and signed by many of its representatives.81 With it, the affected coastal traders actively involved themselves in the debate on how to handle caravan trading, protesting against the new Ordinance on the Introduction of a Trade Tax and Protective Tariffs. This ordinance had introduced multiple taxations of goods: each time when an item changed hands. Because the typical trade chain in the caravan economy involved retailers and itinerant traders and thus often five or six resellers, however, products were taxed so often that their sale eventually became unprofitable and thus pointless. In their petition, the merchants thus warned that if this grievance continued, “the sales of goods will be stopped and the trade will be paralysed.”82 Their petition did not yield an immediate impact on policymaking, nor was it capable to alter the said ordinance. Still, the merchants actively intervened in the policy process. The anxiety to discourage traders, which had informed von Wissmann’s agenda, initially appeared less formative for policymaking under his successor. In light of the negative feedback from both the inside and the outside of the colonial state, however, von Soden dropped most aspects of his planned intervention into the caravan business. With regards to the planned porter head tax, he informed Chancellor Leo von Caprivi a few days after having received the petition that “there should be further inquiries whether such regulations might be capable of prompting caravans from the southern and northern parts of our Protectorate into the neighboring territories where they can evade taxation.”83 The governor finally put this plan as well as the planned Ordinance on the Registration of Inand Outbound Caravans ad acta when the Colonial Bureau in Berlin concurred in the opinion that these measures were only capable of further discouraging caravan trading.84

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Tax burden and strict controls were not politically viable given the importance of trade revenues for the colonial treasury. Still, the ongoing violent acts of travelers made immediate intervention necessary, particularly, that of European-led expeditions. Being aware of the shifting power relations, as mentioned in the previous chapter, many porters in official caravans capitalized on the material and symbolic power of the new colonial state. The same was true for porters in private expeditions. The British explorer William Grant Stairs documented this in his field journal, writing that “[t]hey steal, hide for days among the natives, and go to chiefs of villages saying the white man sent them for [provisions] for himself.”85 While these acts can be understood as proof of the expedition leaders’ inability to keep crews under control, Europeans sometimes also encouraged or accepted raids.86 Besides many others, the different ventures of the non-official German Anti-Slavery Lottery, which roamed German East Africa since 1891, were reported as having taken what they wanted with force, raiding villages, and demanding hongo from chiefs.87 The Austrian explorer Oscar Baumann, one of the infamous Anti-Slavery Lottery members, for instance, reported from his expedition that “when the caravan’s vanguard arrived at the Gombelo market on 16 January [1892], the market women grabbed their foodstuff and ran away.”88 In reaction, his porters chased these women and plundered the market. Although acknowledging the misconduct of his party, in his defense Baumann pointed to the problem of provisioning, writing that “I would like to draw attention to the current state of panic in the Digo area which renders it almost impossible to provision a 250 men-strong caravan without foraging.”89 Through the destabilization of routes, the caravan economy had become trapped in a vicious cycle: because residents who lived near the routes stopped trading and abandoned the marketplaces as soon as they received news of approaching caravans, travel parties ran into serious nutrition problems, leaving raids the only way of obtaining food.90 The official reaction to the misconduct of Baumann’s porters gives evidence of the administration’s ambition to balance the conflicting interests of travelers and route dwellers. As a first reaction, the district officer of Tanga requested the expedition’s outfitter, the DOAG, to compensate the villagers for the damage.91 At the same time, the governor understood that “mitigating circumstances must be considered in defense of the porters.”92 Colonial conquest coincided with (and often accelerated) a number of draught periods and famines as well as the Rinderpest epizootic.93 In light

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of these crises, von Soden declared that neither the residents nor the porters were to be blamed for the situation which he described as “à la guerre comme à la guerre.”94 Baumann’s market incident highlighted the need for immediate action to take the violence and harmfulness away from caravan travel. Von Soden’s administration continued von Wissmann’s balancing act. On 10 April 1892, the governor circulated instructions to all inland stations, reminding them of their dual role as protectors. In light of the many acts of misconduct of the Anti-Slavery Lottery expeditions, he instructed all station commanders to halt European-led travel parties and to exhort them not to take the law into their own hands so that “looting and extortion by their assistants and porters are prevented; otherwise they and their expeditions, or their parent company, will be held responsible for any damage.”95 At the same time, the officials were asked to tour their districts and oblige the residents to provide travelers with food in return for adequate remuneration. Moreover, chiefs and village headmen were to be cautioned that hongo was officially abolished.96 These instructions continued the aspiration of the colonial state to function as a watchman of caravan traffic. At the same time, they were expected to guarantee unhampered mobility and trade flows. An important aspect of this program was the legal codification of caravan travel. The allegedly prevailing lawlessness was to be overwritten with colonial law. On 29 April 1892, the government formulated a first framework of law and order for caravan traffic, the Verordnung betreffend die Haftbarkeit und Sicherheitsleistung von Karawanen innerhalb des deutschen Schutzgebiets (Ordinance on Caravan Liability and Guarantees within the German Protectorate).97 Its main purpose was to make caravans and expeditions accountable for the havoc they wrought. In case any crew member caused damage during the journey, the leader or employer could be held liable and sentenced to pay compensation. To ensure that possible compensation claims could be enforced, the regulations required “non-native” employers and non-residents of the colony (if they were not of German nationality) to place a deposit of up to 20 Rupees (c. 30 Marks) per porter before the initial departure of the caravan.98 Only half a year after the colonial administration had enacted these regulations, however, it was partly rebuked by the Colonial Bureau in Berlin. Legally, non-African travelers and companies were subject not to colonial law but to the civil code of the German metropole, which is why the ordinance did not possess the legal power to demand bails from them.99 On 30 September 1892, the administration thus circulated a

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complementary ordinance, containing revisions regarding non-African caravan leaders and employers. To circumvent the legal constraints, these people were henceforth asked to “voluntarily” enter a contract which included the quasi-mandatory placement of a deposit.100 In addition, the new regulations enacted three paragraphs which ultimately provided a legal framework for colony-wide caravan controls: § 1.  Any travel of caravans through the protectorate without prior request for official permission is prohibited. § 2. Permissions are granted by the district office resp. the station from which the caravan begins its march. […] § 9.  The caravan entrepreneur or his representative receives a travel permit to attest to the permission. Those entrepreneurs who send their caravans into or across the protectorate without such a permit [Erlaubnisschein], will be punished with a fine of up to 5,000 Rupees or up to three months imprisonment.101

The two 1892 ordinances were conceptualized as crucial steps towards legal security and stability along the caravan routes. Although only “non-­ natives” had to place a deposit, exclusively African travel parties, such as ivory caravans from Unyamwezi, too, had to obtain travel permits before departure.102 As their name suggests, Erlaubnisscheine made movement through space subject to official affirmation and provided a legal tool to contain potential transgressors. Regardless of whether they began their journey in the coastal towns or in the interior, travel parties had to present themselves at an administrative office before departure and at every German station they touched. The permits recorded the planned travel route, the number of loads and rifles, as well as the number of people involved.103 While it is more than likely that travel on a regional level (with itineraries touching not more than one German station) and off the main routes remained hidden from the gaze of the authorities, different sources indicate that travel permits were henceforth controlled in important spots on the main routes.104 For the South Asian merchant class and the Omani traders active in caravan trading, the new legal framework meant more disturbance to their business. The category of “non-native” not only comprised Europeans but also these two groups, who were subjects of either the British (or in the case of Goanese: the Portuguese) crown or the Sultan of Zanzibar.105 As a consequence, a large share of all trade caravans was compelled to

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place deposits before they could embark on their trading venture. According to Karin Pallaver, “the ordinance targeted the caravans of coast-­ based Indian, Arab, and Swahili traders […]. Above all, it aimed at gaining better control of their business operations.”106 This ambition, however, did not remain uncontested within imperial circles, who regarded both ordinances as a threat to German East Africa’s volatile caravan trade. In December 1892, the metropolitan newspaper Magdeburgische Zeitung published a lengthy article, reporting that Omani caravan entrepreneurs now had to place huge sums as deposits which would be paid back only after several years. Because the caravan trade was financed through credits, this obligation made the organizers of caravans even more dependent on their creditors, the newspaper reported. It thus warned that the group of Arab traders will perceive the new ordinance as a fatal harm to its own activities. This discontent will, of course, not erupt into a rebellion. Still, the Arab will contemplate whether his business will be better off elsewhere, outside of our territory.107

Where these traders would channel their trade flows seemed obvious. South Asian and Omani actors of long-distance trade were suspected of pulling the entire trade over to the neighboring colonies in case regulations would become too strict. The fact that this newspaper article was cut out and filed for reference by the Foreign Office in Berlin attests to the officials’ attentiveness to criticism. Still, as much as the administrators in Dar es Salaam were prepared to make concessions to the interests of traders, intensified controls and a legal codification of caravan travel ultimately appeared inevitable to the government to stop excesses along the routes.108 Legal codes would remain unchanged until 1906.109 Being highly conscious of the potential dangers they entailed for the state’s revenues, in the time following the proclamation of the two ordinances, von Soden and his successors did what they could to preserve the precarious balance, as the following section illuminates.

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Challenges from the Inside and Outside Throughout its 14 years of existence, the legislation on caravan mobility was a compromise the German administration had to defend against opposition from within its own ranks. In the historiography of European imperialism, emphasis has often been laid on the “men on the spot,” colonial actors who could act according to their own agendas owing to their deployment in remote places.110 From the perspective of the metropole, the governor in Dar es Salaam was clearly the man on the spot.111 And yet, within the colony he saw himself confronted by different men on the spot: the officials in the interior, “les vrai chefs de l’empire” (Robert Delavignette).112 In their sphere of influence, station officers acted as small governors on their own. Wilhelm Methner, who served as a district officer in Moshi after the turn of the century, later described this practice in his memoirs: because notes between the districts and the capital were exchanged by mail carriers, who needed up to 24 days for the round trip, “there was a timespan of three to four weeks after mailing the report during which we could, and had to, autonomously implement the measures detailed in the report.”113 The officers in the Tanzanian interior thus utilized the slow communication channels to pass their own regulations without consulting with the central administration in advance.114 Underlying this behavior was what historian Tanja Bührer calls a “civilian-military dualism,” the slow and conflict-laden transition from a military to a civil administration that had begun in 1891 but remained incomplete. Whereas the military stations on the coastline were converted into civilianadministered district offices under von Soden, the interior stations were not readily handed over to civilians. As late as 1906, only half of them had been put into the hands of civil bureaucrats.115 As Andreas Eckert and Michael Pesek observe, “the officers followed their own conceptions of colonial rule, which often did not conform with those of the colonial officials [Beamte].”116 This was certainly the case with the central administration’s policy regarding the caravan sector. In the eyes of a number of military officials stationed in the interior, the state’s self-limitation to the role of a watchman alone was not satisfactory to solve the violence endemic in many of their districts. Throughout the 1890s, different officers approached von Soden and his successors, championing an intensification of caravan legislation; or they adapted the legislation according to their own agendas.

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In 1892, after the Ordinance on Caravan Liability had been enacted, the commander of the military station in Tabora, Alfred Sigl, tightened the new rules in his district. He had previously introduced a fee to be paid by Nyamwezi chiefs in return for the protection of their settlements. Because many chiefs operated their own ivory caravans to the coast, Sigl tried to enforce his rule by making the issuance of travel permits for these caravans conditional on a due payment. This measure, however, required him to adjust the control regime, obliging all coastbound caravans from the Tabora region to obtain a travel permit only at his station.117 Informed of Sigl’s activities, Governor von Soden immediately advised the officials in Bagamoyo to ignore his orders and not to punish arriving caravan leaders if they could not produce a permit from Tabora, as long as they were in possession of a valid travel permit from any other station. Explaining this decision, the governor wrote that although in general I would agree that it is desirable to channel all caravans from Unyanyembe through Tabora, at the moment our priority is to attract any caravan to come the coast at all. Therefore, I strongly disagree with putting even more pressure on them through additional police interventions.118

Von Soden’s order shows that the government was concerned about the compliance not only of “non-native” caravan entrepreneurs but also of those from the Tanzanian interior. According to Rockel, Nyamwezi and Sukuma caravans still traveled regularly on the central route as “Nyamwezi elite and smaller traders continued to operate their own caravans well into the 1890s, and provided employment at the same time that many young Nyamwezi men were working for coastal traders and Europeans.”119 Likewise, as Felicitas Becker establishes, the largest caravans arriving in the south-eastern town of Lindi were still those of Yao “big man” Mataka.120 Only by the late 1890s did the businesses of African (but also those of Omani) traders gradually diminish under the influence of colonial capitalism.121 Sigl’s unauthorized rule enforcement was not an isolated case but characteristic of the mindset of a number of men on the spot. In 1895, his successor in the Tabora station, August Leue, proposed a radical reorganization of caravan transport, arguing that the government should “[e]ither shut its eyes to what is going on and favor the ongoing trade or it begins to exert a more thorough control on caravan transport.”122 Championing

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the latter, he recommended prohibiting all non-trade caravan activities and subjecting the then-remaining caravans to a strict regime.123 In other instances, officials on the spot, most likely including Leue, did not wait for the central administration to adjust its policy. Perceiving the intensity and severity of the enacted measures as too slack, they adapted the system according to their own agendas. In 1895, the commander of the colonial army and acting governor, Lothar von Trotha, learned that the officers in the interior stations had repeatedly confiscated the firearms and gunpowder supplies of caravans from the coast, even though these items had been listed on the travel permits and were thus approved by the coastal authorities. The interior officials reportedly overruled their colleagues’ decisions because they were wary of an alarming influx of arms into their districts.124 When he was informed of these illegal actions, von Trotha called his subalterns to order, arguing that “as long as danger is not at hand, it is unacceptable that single stations act on their own authority […]. If they still do so, the consequence is that two branches of the administration contradict each other, resulting in a legal uncertainty which might have disastrous outcomes for trade in our colony.”125 After the Brussels Conference, the Germans had established the colonial state as a monopolist retailer of muzzle-loading guns at the Swahili coast.126 Von Trotha thus reminded the officials that in the past the authorities had rather generously permitted caravans to carry firearms; first, because the government profited from selling guns to these travel parties, and second, because otherwise “ivory trading, which mainly draws on this barter good, would have dwindled even more than is already the case.”127 Similar to von Soden, the Schutztruppe commander thus warned that trade caravans were to be handled with kid gloves. Subordinate officials could indeed act with an iron fist towards the established merchants. In the same year, 1895, authorities in Kilwa mobilized against the local South Asian merchant class. After it came to light that some of the merchants had supported a rebellion in the district, officials confiscated their properties, imposed heavy fines, and sentenced them to imprisonment.128 Even before these events, the local district office had championed tougher sanctions against the South Asian population of German East Africa. In January 1895, officer Ernst Albrecht von Eberstein urged the government to collect penalty taxes from all South Asian residents of the colony.129 While accepting the immediate actions against the conspirators, von Trotha advised against the proposed additional

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measures, proclaiming that “I am indeed aware that the Indian does harm to this country. Still, I believe that he is currently indispensable. If the Indians would disappear overnight, an immediate stagnation would strike the country.”130 The outlined cases give evidence of how men on the spot followed their own script rather than superior directives, in this way jeopardizing the government’s careful balancing act between trade interest and protection of the interior population. They also document the efforts made by von Soden and von Trotha to outbalance these unauthorized activities for the sake of trade interest. Even though travel permits were a light means of controlling traffic, fears persisted within the central administration that the balance might easily tip and that trade flows might trickle away if the caravan trade was treated too harshly. It was for this reason that the government appealed to the officials on the spot not to carry their authority to excess. What impact did the legal codification have on caravans and the persons leading them, most often African or Omani traders or their representatives? Although the sources do not reveal much information about how caravan leaders and transport workers reacted to the legal codes imposed on their business, scattered evidence is found in the case of Schutztruppe officer Sigl and his ambition to channel traffic through Tabora. In July 1892, the Bagamoyo district office noticed that caravans arriving from Sigl’s district often lacked such a Tabora permit. To avoid his station, they had swung off the main route, circumnavigated Tabora, and obtained their travel permit only in Mpwapwa, some 400 kilometers to the east.131 Sigl’s administrative behavior thus had caused caravans to resort to unmonitored caravan tracks, making it impossible to prevent potential raids. This reaction, which mirrored Schynse’s observation from Mpwapwa (see above), appears to have been common among many trade caravans. In 1900, official Karl Ewerbeck informed the government that on the route from Kilimatinde to Mpwapwa, “hundreds of porters are seen every day within reach of the two towns. Two days’ marches away, however, the barabara [road] is empty.”132 As Ewerbeck’s description suggests, many caravans returned in sight when touring close to a station in order to obtain permits to ensure that they did not get into trouble with the authorities when arriving at the coast. As soon as they left the stations, however, caravans became invisible to the gaze of the German authorities and their allies. While caravan monitoring frequently met with opposition

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from within the ranks of the colonizers, who either perceived control mechanisms as too slack or too severe, on the microlevel of colonial everyday life it was the daily practices of transport workers and their headmen that set tight limits to the modes of control. By evading controls, caravanners rendered the legal framework useless. The limitations of the travel permit system also become apparent in the continued existence of slave trading. Large slave caravans, as European travelers had described them in the precolonial era, could not travel undetected to the coast anymore. Instead, Catholic missionaries repeatedly reported in the 1890s that slave traders disguised slaves as free porters and registered them on the permits.133 While it is impossible to tell whether these reports, voiced by actors with an abolitionist agenda, contained any truth, they apparently alarmed the state apparatus: at the instigation of the Foreign Office, officials were cautioned to search for slaves in caravan parties when issuing and checking the permits.134 By 1895 state agents in Mikindani, a coastal town near the border to Mozambique, still estimated that 10–20 percent of caravan travelers arriving at the coast were in fact slaves who were sold in nearby settlements.135 However, as the central administration wrote in a (later deleted) passage in the draft version of its annual report, more restrictive measures were not politically viable: “Hindering caravans from bringing any slaves to the coast at all, would be the same as destroying the entire trade in this district because then all caravans would migrate to the Portuguese territory.”136 This statement, like the other examples, confirms what Felicitas Becker observes for Lindi, namely that “the administration tolerated covert slave trading.”137 Bernhard Gissibl likewise suggests that the colonial authorities at Lake Tanganyika even cooperated with known slave traders to safeguard trade flows.138 The result of the state’s self-limitation was that pilfering and looting continued along all major routes, with the government’s own caravans being a major perpetrator.139 In 1902, ten years after the Ordinance on Caravan Liability had been introduced, the district officer of Kilwa, von Eberstein, still saw the caravan route through his district suffering from constant raids. Yet, “it is impossible to control the caravans because as soon as they have raided and plundered, they use by-ways to escape their prosecution through maakida and majumbe.”140 At the same time, attacks on caravans continued and even increased in some regions in the time before the Maji Maji War.141 Neither the introduction of mandatory bails and legal liability forestalled violence along the caravan routes nor were

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travel permits an adequate means of tracking offenders down and arresting them.

Trade Slump and Outmigration After 1900 German legislation and rule enforcement turned out too weak to prevent violent outbursts along the caravan routes. But more than that, the caravan ordinances also proved incapable of redeeming their second promise, that is, to preserve trade within the German territory. The German colonial era saw the collapse of the most profitable branch of the long-distance caravan economy, the ivory trade. According to official statistics, ivory exports from the Swahili coast to the world market decreased to 35 tons in 1902 and further to only 19 tons in 1906 (see Fig. 3.1), although we must assume that the actual volume was at least a bit bigger, given smuggling via dhow vessels.142 The decline was partly a result of trade politics in the Congo Free State, where a huge portion of ivory was collected. There, the Belgian authorities levied heavy export duties to stop caravans from leaving their colony in direction of the Indian Ocean coast.143 Within German East Africa, as Bernhard Gissibl  argues extensively, new game ordinances and wildlife reserves additionally affected African hunters, while the decreasing average weight of sold tusks indicated that the

Fig. 3.1  Ivory exports from German East Africa, 1888 to 1912. Source: Schnee, Kolonial-Lexikon I, 558–559

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hunters often killed female and young elephants, potentially accelerating the gradual extinction of the animal population and leading to a retreat of the remaining herds into inaccessible areas, as Gissibl further suggests.144 The caravan trade as a whole shifted direction after 1900. Not only ivory tusks but also copal, rubber, and tobacco were now increasingly brought by caravans from north-western Tanzania across the border to the East Africa Protectorate. Underlying this shift was the construction and gradual opening of the Uganda Railway in the British colony after 1896. With its completion in 1901, the 940 kilometers-long railway line connected Mombasa at the Indian Ocean with Lake Victoria. Because it reduced travel time from the interior to the coast from several weeks to a few days and thus mitigated both the costs and the risk involved, the railway attracted a huge portion of trade that would else have found its way to the established coastal caravan hubs on human shoulders.145 The result of faster and more reliable railway transport in the British colony was that merchants in Bagamoyo and the other Tanzanian ports could not keep up with their competitors in Mombasa. Thirty-six German East Africa–based South Asian and Zanzibari merchants swiftly went bankrupt in the wake of the Uganda Railway’s inauguration.146 Other merchants relocated their businesses from German East Africa to the East Africa Protectorate. In its Annual Report of 1901, the government admitted that “some of the prosperous Indian businesses have moved from the German coast to Mombasa because caravans cannot stand the competition of the railway.”147 As a consequence of emigration, the government not only lost a huge share of its business tax revenues—which decreased by 20,000 Marks in 1900 and 1901, respectively—but the dissolution of established long-distance trade patterns also left a big hole in the colony’s purse before cash crops could eventually compensate the loss.148 Total exports fell from c. 7.5 million Marks (1891) to under 4 million before they leveled off at 5.2 million Marks after 1902.149 The fear that the German administration might lose non-European trade flows to its colonial neighbors had been expressed by von Wissmann as early as 1890. It eventually proved true a decade later; however, not because German policymakers treated the volatile business too harshly. Rather, the snail-pace process with which railway infrastructure was extended in German East Africa (in 1902, 84 kilometers of railway tracks existed) led to a locational disadvantage in the Anglo-German competition over established merchants, who turned out very receptive to the new technology. While the German government was very eager not to raise any

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trade barriers, with its passivity it was unable to promote trade in the long run. The slump in ivory and the decline of the established long-distance caravan commerce engendered deep socio-economic changes for German East Africa’s South Asian population, which numbered about 3500  in 1902.150 With the consolidation of colonial power in certain areas in the interior, German East Africa had become an important business field for smaller South Asian shopkeepers. While the established business empires thus vanished, retail shops (maduka) sprung up in many regions along the trade routes, in which shopkeepers sold goods originally imported by German trade houses from Europe and North America. For German overseas traders, these entrepreneurs still functioned as intermediaries between the world market and the African end client, and they often operated on credits granted by O’Swald or Hansing.151 Overall, however, the importance of South Asian businesses for the German colonial state ceased. Previous research has pointed to the growing hostility towards South Asians in German East Africa.152 The commercial agents among this group lost their key position in the political discourse when some of the larger merchant houses left the colony and when German planter and settler interest grew after 1900. The settlers regarded South Asian residents as a threat to the colony, denouncing both their alleged unfair business practices and the increased immigration into Tanzania. As a consequence, the government’s attitude towards the South Asian population changed after the turn of the century. When Governor Eduard von Liebert (1897–1901) introduced local self-government in the form of Communal Councils in several districts, South Asians as well as Africans could initially become council members. Most prominently, Allidina Visram became a member of the Bagamoyo council.153 Under Gustav Adolf von Götzen (1901–1906), however, resentments aggravated. Besides expelling non-European groups from these councils, his administration introduced a compulsion to buy and sell agricultural products only at officially designated market halls, in which trade was controlled and taxed.154 The goal of this Markthallenzwang was not only to enforce the usage of the colonial currency (instead of cloth which was still used for most transactions in maduka) but also, as Benjamin Brühwiler observes, to eliminate the allegedly unfair business practices of South Asian shopkeepers.155 To the same end, in 1906 the government planned an ordinance according to which South Asian merchants would have to do

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compulsory bookkeeping in Latin script and either German or Kiswahili language.156 While the central administration ventured on an anti-Indian course, the merchant community still had some advocates within the state apparatus. The authorities in Bagamoyo, still being home to important elements of the South Asian merchant elite, warned the governor against harsh measures. The district office cautioned von Götzen that compulsory bookkeeping would be “a severe blow for our Indian as well as for our own collective trade,”157 being only capable of increasing the outmigration of South Asian businesses and eventually causing the ultimate loss of trade to the British sphere. The merchants themselves, too, actively intervened in the debate. In 1906, the merchant community of Bagamoyo sent another letter to the governor, explaining that “our interests lie here, and our ties to the old country [India] have loosened.”158 Different from the administration’s view, South Asians possessed many ties in Tanzania and were not necessarily prepared to simply leave the colony.159 Still, in light of the ongoing campaign against them and the government’s efforts to replace Bagamoyo with Dar es Salaam as the main trade center (see Chap. 6), outmigration continued in the first years of the twentieth century. The most prominent merchant to move was Allidina Visram. After he had taken over the firm of Sewa Haji Paroo in 1897, Visram had already gradually shifted the focus of his business to the British sphere. In 1905 or 1906, he moved his headquarters permanently from Bagamoyo to Mombasa.160 The situation of those South Asians remaining in German East Africa improved when Albrecht von Rechenberg (1906–1912) succeeded von Götzen in the governor’s office after the Maji Maji War.161 He put the planned ordinance on bookkeeping ad acta. If we follow historian Detlef Bald, von Rechenberg was driven by the ambition “to establish a new balance between the different groups and their interests within the colonial population.”162 Even at a time when old caravan trade patterns increasingly vanished, the principle of balancing interests, which had prevailed in the early 1890s, thus continued to inform policymaking—if only in the highest rank in the government: before long, von Rechenberg became an enemy of the German settler community, which regarded his policies as too friendly towards the non-European population, and was replaced by Heinrich Schnee (1912–1918).163 In conclusion, this chapter has demonstrated that the legal codification of the caravan sector in the 1890s was the result of interactions,

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negotiations, and struggles between different actors and groups within the colonial sphere. Fundamental to policymaking was the ambivalent role caravan trading played for the German regime, which aimed at exploiting the colony’s resources while, at the same time, protecting its inhabitants. In an attempt to cope with these contradictions, the authorities shied away from subjecting caravans to strict controls. The previous analysis has revealed the opposition this policy of balancing interests faced within the colonial administration. Interior officials observed the ongoing devastation of settlements and championed or enforced more vigorous action while the governor and his staff remained reluctant to tighten the implemented measures. Caravan entrepreneurs and financers were “veto players” in the colonial project. Jan-Georg Deutsch makes a similar observation in his analysis of slavery under German rule. As he remarks, “[r]ather than outlawing slavery, the colonial authorities embarked on a policy of obfuscation and legal subterfuge that left core issues deliberately undecided,”164 in order not to deter the slave-owning elite (often “Arabs” and Swahili) that served as an intermediary group to the German colonial state. The influence that slaveholders exerted on colonial policymaking, Deutsch argues, did not lie so much in their direct involvement in decision-making. Rather, in both cases, slaveholders and caravan entrepreneurs, the permanent preoccupation with how these intermediary elites might respond to regulations and colonial measures became a decisive factor in the policy process. It was their likely behavior that preemptively set the limits to stricter laws. The following chapter continues the study of commercial caravans during the German era, investigating shifts in the caravan sector and the profession of porterage at the turn of the century. As a focus on the inner life and labor conditions of caravans will reveal, it was the very same prioritization of trade interest that initially frustrated efforts to codify porterage in German East Africa. By concentrating attention on the agency and everyday practices of transport workers, however, the chapter will also illuminate that porters, being another actor group in the social field, continued to shape the terms of their work in a changing environment.

Notes 1. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 183. 2. BAB, R 1001/693, Michaelis to Bismarck, Zanzibar, 22 October 1888, 19.

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3. BAB, R 1001/735, instructions to Wissmann, Berlin, 12 February 1889, 42–43. 4. Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 132. 5. See Sippel, “Verwaltung und Recht in Deutsch-Ostafrika”; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 269–273; Weckner, Strafrecht, 80; Roemmer, Das Gouvernement von Deutsch-Ostafrika. 6. Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 67–73. 7. Ibid., 73. 8. Ibid., 71, 83–86, 95. See also Sunseri, “War of the Hunters.” For the precolonial practice, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 60; Gooding, “The Ivory Trade,” 258. 9. BAB, R 1001/1106, Wissmann to Caprivi, Zanzibar, 31 December 1890, 73. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 180; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 36–37. 10. For a discussion of the different measures, see Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 180–183. 11. Rockel, “Isike”; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 94; Pallaver, “Triangle”; Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 122–126. 12. Brahm, “Banning the Sale of Modern Firearms,” 446; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 183; Schwidder, “Kolonialhandelshaus,” 13. 13. “Koloniale Rundschau: Afrika,” DKZ (4 April 1891), 49–50; Pasha to Wissmann, Ririndi, 5 July 1890, printed in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 8. Legislaturperiode 1. Session, 3. Anlageband (Berlin: Sittenfeld, 1891), 1819. See also Aas, Koloniale Entwicklung, 73. 14. Sissons, “Economic Prosperity,” 71–127; Pawełczak, The State and the Stateless, 219–221; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 31–32; Pallaver, “Nyamwezi Participation,” 522. 15. For the persistence of road tolls beyond the coastal belt, see Mwenye Chande, “Meine Reise,” 15, 52. 16. Schnee, Kolonial-Lexikon I, 558–559; Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 69. 17. “Berichte der Behörden über die handelspolitische Entwickelung der ostund südafrikanischen Gebiete seit 1890,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages. 10. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, 6. Anlageband, Berlin 1900, 4370–4372. See also Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 72. 18. “Reichshaushalts-Etat: Etastsjahr 1891/92,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 8. Legislaturperiode 1. Session, Besonderer Anlageband (Berlin: Sittenfeld, 1891), 26. 19. Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns,” 18–21; Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 61. For an example, see RMCA, 95.48, Stairs, Journals 1891–1892, entry of 15 July 1891. 20. See Rockel, Carriers of Culture, Chapter 7.

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21. Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 25. 22. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 77–87. 23. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 199–208. 24. McDow, Buying Time, 117–144. 25. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 140, 152–155; Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns,” 17–20; Reid, War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa, 123–124; and Page, “The Manyema Hordes.” 26. For Mirambo’s wars, see Reid, War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa; Bennett, Mirambo of Tanzania. 27. Brahm, “Globalisiertes Handelsobjekt,” 31. For a short outline of the precolonial arms trade, see also Brahm, “Banning the Sale of Modern Firearms,” 437–439; Beachey, “The Arms Trade.” 28. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 153–154; Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns,” 18–19; Evers, “Das Hamburger Zanzibarhandelshaus,” 94. 29. Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition, 37; Reid, War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa, 108–110. See also Reid, “Violence and its Sources.” 30. Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns,” 18. 31. Ibid., 18–21; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 284; Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 61–67. 32. TNA, G1/35, Leue to Government, Tabora, 25 October 1895, 86. See also Rockel,  “Forgotten Caravan Towns,” 18;  “Koloniale Rundschau: Afrika,” DKZ (4 April 1891), 50; “Vom Kilima-Ndscharo,” Gott will es 13 (1892), 394. 33. Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 51. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 64. For evasion as a resistance strategy, see also von Trotha, Koloniale Herrschaft, 416–420. 36. “Bericht des Stationschefs von Tabora, Lieutenant Sigl, über den Handelsverkehr von Tabora,” DKB (15 March 1892), 164–166. See also Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 69. 37. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 152; Rockel, “A Nation of Porters,” 191. 38. Brown, “A Pre-Colonial History of Bagamoyo,” 185–199; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 90–92; Matson, “Sewa Haji.” For the duka system, see also Brühwiler, “Moralities of Owing and Lending,” 164–175. 39. L.  Jones, “District Town,” 54; Walji, “Ismaili Community,” 62–63; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 158. 40. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 61–75; Clarence-Smith, “Indian and Arab Entrepreneurs.” 41. F. Becker, “Traders, Big Men and Prophets,” 7. 42. BAB, R 1001/1106, Wissmann to Caprivi, Zanzibar, 31 December 1890, 73–75.

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43. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 61–71. 44. Matson, “Sewa Haji”; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 92. 45. BAB, R 1001/1106, Wissmann to Caprivi, Zanzibar, 31 December 1890, 73. 46. Ibid., 75. 47. BAB, R 1001/639, Woermann et al. to Caprivi, Hamburg, 18 January 1891, 98a. 48. Bennett, “Philippe Broyon”; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 71–72. 49. Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 77–78; Baumann, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 202. 50. See Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 150–153. 51. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 67–69. 52. Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, 59–87. 53. Schwidder, “Kolonialhandelshaus,” 12. 54. Evers, “Das Hamburger Zanzibarhandelshaus,” 94–96. 55. BAB, R 1001/639, Woermann et al. to Caprivi, Hamburg, 18 January 1891, 100. 56. Mann, Mikono ya damu, 203. 57. Erick J.  Mann contends, by contrast, that “of the 62 permanent Schutztruppe bomas or ‘forts’ constructed between 1889 and 1904, only 15 were built for the purpose of securing commercial interests associated with the caravan route.” See Mann, Mikono ya damu, 65. 58. Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns,” 19; Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 164. For examples, see TNA, G1/15, Neuhaus to Government, Pangani, 4 April 1894; TNA, G1/35, Soden to Caprivi, Dar es Salaam, 6 February 1892, 4. 59. REM, Bumiller, “Tagebuch für die Expedition nach Mpwapwa, geführt von Dr Bumiller Adjutant des Kaiserlichen Reichscommissars für Ostafrika,” transcript of 18 October 1889, 184–186. See also BAB, R 1001/280, Rüdiger to Varnbühler, Dar es Salaam, 20 February 1892, 92–97. 60. “General Act of the Brussels Conference, 1880–1890,” printed in “Protocols and General Act of Slave Trade Conference at Brussels, 1889–1890, with annexed Declaration,” Command Papers, C.6049, vol. 50, 178. For the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference, see Mulligan, “Anti-­ Slave Trade Campaign”; as well as Allain, Law and Slavery, 101–120. 61. Jan-Georg Deutsch, by contrast, relates travel permits to the issue of slave trading. However, he overlooks von Wissmann’s system and misdates their introduction to 1895, referring to the debate on slaves in caravans in southern Tanzania as discussed below in this chapter. See Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition, 171. 62. REM, Bumiller, “Tagebuch für die Expedition nach Mpwapwa, geführt von Dr Bumiller Adjutant des Kaiserlichen Reichscommissars für Ostafrika,” transcript of 18 October 1889, 184–186.

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63. TNA, G3/51, Dar es Salaam District Office to Government, Dar es Salaam, 13 July 1891, 11. 64. For an example of a caravan flying the German flag, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 87–88. For the Zanzibari flag, see Beidelman, “Organization and Maintenance of Caravans by the Church Missionary Society,” 618. 65. Kirk-Greene, “Thin White Line.” 66. Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 127. 67. Conrad, Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte, 45. See also Pesek, “Die Grenzen des kolonialen Staates,” 122. 68. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 119; Spear, “Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of Invention”; Ranger, “European Attitudes and African Realities.” 69. The district offices of Tanga, Kilwa, and Lindi were unaware of the existence of this system in 1891. See TNA, G3/51, Krenzler to Government, Tanga, 4 August 1891, 9; TNA, G3/51, Leue to Government, Lindi, 22 July 1891, 16; as well as TNA, G3/51, Eberstein to Government, Kilwa, 22 July 1891, 14. 70. Schynse, Mit Stanley, 83. For a very similar observation, see Richelmann, Meine Erlebnisse, 63. 71. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 190. 72. For this transition, see Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 161–171;  Bückendorf, Schwarz-weiß-rot über Ostafrika, 442–453; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 94–117; and Pesek, “Die Grenzen des kolonialen Staates.” 73. BAB, R 1001/776, “Gouvernements-Befehl Nr. 39,” 14 November 1891, 54; BAB, R 1001/1111, “Anweisung zur Ausführung des Governementsbefehls Nr. 39,” 11 December 1892, 22. 74. BAB, R 1001/776, “Verordnung betreffend die Einführung einer Handelssteuer und Schutzgebühr,” 12 June 1891, 24–25. 75. TNA, G3/51, “Bericht zum Entwurf einer Verordnung betr. Einführung von Registern für an- und ausgehenden Karawanen,” Dar es Salaam, 9 August 1891, 2. 76. TNA, G3/51, “Circular-Erlass,” 7 July 1891, 7. 77. TNA, G3/51, Krenzler to Government, Tanga, 4 August 1891, 9; TNA, G3/51, Leue to Government, Lindi, 22 July 1891, 16. TNA, G3/51, Eberstein to Government, Kilwa, 22 July 1891, 14. 78. See also F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 58. 79. TNA, G3/51, Eberstein to Government, Kilwa, 22 July 1891, 14. 80. Ibid., 15. 81. TNA, G3/51, Kanji Hansraj et al. to Government, Bagamoyo, 12 July 1891, 1–4. 82. Ibid., 2. See also Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 225.

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83. TNA, G3/51, Soden to Caprivi, Dar es Salaam 27 July 1891, 1. 84. TNA, G3/51, Foreign Office to Government, Berlin, 21 September 1891, 31. 85. RMCA, 95.48, Stairs, Journals 1891–1892, entry of 1 January 1892. 86. See Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 240. 87. BAB, R 1001/785, Soden to the interior stations, Dar es Salaam, 10 April 1892, 28–30; BAB, R 1001/979, Soden to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 14 August 1892, 29–30; BAB, R 1001/979, Deutsche Antisklaverei-­Lotterie, “Der Fortgang der von Schweinitz’schen (früher Bortchert’schen) Expedition,” Koblenz, 15 September 1892, 90–93; BAB, R 1001/980, Schele to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 27 July 1893, 101–103. 88. BAB, R 1001/259, Baumann to Government, Daluni, 20 January 1892, 28. 89. Ibid., 29. 90. See Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 61–62; Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns,” 18–19. 91. BAB, R 1001/258, Krenzler to Government, Tanga, 25 January 1892, 23. 92. TNA, G1/35, Soden to Caprivi, Dar es Salaam, 6 February 1892, 4. 93. See Sunseri, “Entangled History of Sadoka”; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 592–595; Giblin, Environmental Control, 83–132. 94. TNA, G1/35, Soden to Caprivi, Dar es Salaam, 6 February 1892, 5. See also Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 164. 95. BAB, R 1001/785, Soden to the interior stations, Dar es Salaam, 10 April 1892, 29. 96. Ibid. See also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 287–289. 97. BAB, R 1001/785, “Verordnung betreffend die Haftbarkeit und Sicherheitsleistung von Karawanen innerhalb des Deutschen Schutzgebiets,” 29 April 1892, 37–38. See also Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 118–119. 98. Ibid. See also the instructions attached to the circular: BAB, R 1001/785, Soden to District Offices, Dar es Salaam, 29 April 1892, 35–36; TNA, G1/35, “Circular-Erlass,” 29 April 1892, 22. See also Kopf, “Spaces of Hegemony and Resistance,” 62; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 288. 99. BAB, R 1001/776, Foreign Office to Government, Berlin, 2 July 1892, 107–108. For the division of competencies between Berlin and Dar es Salaam, see Sippel, “Quellen des deutschen Kolonialrechts.” 100. BAB, R 1001/779, “Verordnung,” 30 September 1892, printed in “Allgemeine Verfügungen des Kaiserlichen Gouverneurs von Deutsch-­ Ostafrika,” 1892, 16–19. Officials were encouraged to refuse travel permits in case caravan leaders were unwilling to pay. 101. Ibid.

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102. TNA, G1/35, District Office Bagamoyo to Soden, Bagamoyo, 23 July 1892, 10; TNA, G1/35, Soden to District Office Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, 10 August 1892, 7. 103. BAB, R 1001/1003, Soden to Government, Dar es Salaam, 25 May 1894, 216. 104. BAB, R 1001/644a, “Runderlass,” 14 July 1895, 54–55; “Zur Regelung des Trägerwesens,” DKB (15 August 1896), 537; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee im Jahre 1906/7,” 3714; TNA, G1/35, Leue to Government, Bagamoyo, 7 February 1899, 132; TNA, G1/35, “Polizeiverordnung für Bagamoyo,” Bagamoyo, 15 November 1900, 205; Oberländer, Eine Jagdfahrt nach Ostafrika, 191. 105. Nagl, Grenzfälle, 86. For the persistence of the categories “native” and “non-native” through the colonial era, see Brennan, Taifa, Chapter 1. 106. Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 119. 107. “Beeinträchtigung des Handels in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” Magdeburgische Zeitung (17 December 1892), 120. 108. See TNA, G1/35, Julius von Soden to Caprivi, Dar es Salaam, 6 February 1892, 2. 109. See Chap. 5. 110. For the role of African and European “men on the spot,” see Willis, “Men on the Spot”; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft 274–277; Zurstrassen, Ein Stück deutscher Erde; Trotha, Koloniale Herrschaft, 161–172. 111. Koponen, Development for Exploitation 96–102; Weckner, Strafrecht, 82–83. 112. Delavignette, Les vrais chefs de l’empire. 113. Methner, Unter drei Gouverneuren, 222. For the slow communication channels between German East Africa and Europe and the opportunities arising from them, see Greiner, “Bio-Engineering across Empires.” 114. Pesek, “Die Grenzen des kolonialen Staates,” 137; Pesek, “Colonial Conquest,” 169–170. 115. Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 161–171, 182. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 114–115, 281–287; Bald, Deutsch-­ Ostafrika, 76–77. 116. Eckert and Pesek, “Bürokratische Ordnung,” 101. 117. TNA, G1/35, District Office Bagamoyo to Soden, Bagamoyo, 23 July 1892, 10; TNA, G1/35, Soden to District Office Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, 10 August 1892, 7. 118. TNA, G1/35, Soden to District Office Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, 10 August 1892, 7. 119. Rockel, “A Nation of Porters,” 191. 120. F. Becker, “Traders, Big Men and Prophets,” 9.

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121. Ibid.; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 221, 235–236; Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 138. 122. TNA, G1/35, Leue to Government, Tabora, 25 October 1895, 87. 123. Ibid. See also TNA, G1/35, Kannenberg to Government, Mpwapwa, 29 December 1898, 120–121. 124. BAB, R 1001/644a, “Runderlass,” 14 July 1895, 54–55. 125. Ibid., 54. 126. Brahm, “Banning the Sale of Modern Firearms,” 446. 127. BAB, R 1001/644a, “Runderlass,” 14 July 1895, 55. 128. For the events, see F.  Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 63–67. 129. BAB, R 1001/27, Eberstein to Government, Kilwa, 5 January 1895, 9. 130. BAB, R 1001/27, Trotha to Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Dar es Salaam, 22 June 1895, 7. 131. TNA, G1/35, District Office Bagamoyo to Soden, Bagamoyo, 23 July 1892, 10. 132. TNA, G1/35, Ewerbeck to Government, Lindi, 22 January 1900, 223. 133. BAB, R 1001/1004, Foreign Office to Wissmann, Berlin, 2 November 1895, 9. 134. BAB, R 1001/1004, “Runderlass,” 17 December 1895, 23. See also F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 76. 135. BAB, R 1001/6467, “Jahresbericht,” [1895/6], 184. 136. Ibid. 137. F.  Becker, “Traders, Big Men and Prophets,” 12; F.  Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 76. 138. Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 70. 139. See the reports from different district offices and stations in TNA, G1/35, 68–83; Fonck, “Bericht über meinen Marsch,” 293; BAB, R 1001/784, “Gouvernementsbefehl,” 16 October 1895, 5. 140. TNA, G1/36, Eberstein to Government, Kilwa, 15 January 1902, 94. 141. Mann Mikono ya damu, 206–208; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 962; Sunseri, “War of the Hunters,” 142; BAB, R 1001/640, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 31 July 1905, 224–228. 142. For the slump in ivory, see Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 201; Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 68–73. For smuggling, see Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 164–171. 143. In addition to the literature in the previous endnote, see Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 135; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 72. 144. Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 72, 121, 127–132. 145. Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 81–82. For the Uganda Railway, see Kapila, Race, Rail & Society.

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146. Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 82; Reichart-­ Burikukiye, Gari la moshi, 36. 147. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee im Jahre 1900/1,” 2921. 148. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee im Jahre 1901/2,” 5271. 149. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 214. 150. Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 162. 151. Brühwiler, “Moralities of Owing and Lending,” 167–168. 152. For the anti-Indian campaign, see Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 156–164; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 293–297; Bald, “Die Reformpolitik von Gouverneur Rechenberg,” 247–249; Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen, 435–446. For examples, see the following articles in the DOAZ: “Die gelbe Gefahr für Deutsch-Ostafrika,” DOAZ (9 August 1902), 1; “Die Inder-Überschwemmung DeutschOstafrikas,” DOAZ (6 May 1904), 1; “Britisch-Ostafrika unter indischer Ausbeutung,” DOAZ (30 July 1904), 2–3; “Die Indergefahr in DeutschOstafrika,” DOAZ (2 July 1907), 1. 153. Walji, “Ismaili Community,” 117. 154. Bald, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 48–49. 155. Brühwiler, “Moralities of Owing and Lending,” 206–215. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 186. 156. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 294. 157. TNA, G1/29, Bagamoyo Toll Inspector to Government, Bagamoyo, 22 April 1906, 152, cited after Walji, “Ismaili Community,” 138. 158. TNA, G9/58, Indian Community of Bagamoyo to Rechenberg, Bagamoyo, 12 June 1906, cited after Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 70. 159. See Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 61–71. 160. Walji, “Ismaili Community,” 128. 161. For this phase, see especially Iliffe, Tanganyika; Bald, Deutsch-Ostafrika; Bald, “Die Reformpolitik von Gouverneur Rechenberg”; Pierard, “Dernburg Reform Policy.” 162. Bald, “Die Reformpolitik von Gouverneur Rechenberg,” 254. 163. Ibid.; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 271–277. 164. Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition, 244.

CHAPTER 4

Carrying On: Caravan Labor and Legislation in the Colonial Era

The heydays of long-distance trade ended within the first decade after the colonial takeover. As a result, traffic to and from the established ivory trade centers on the Indian Ocean coast was visibly shrinking. According to official records, the number of porters leaving Bagamoyo for upcountry destinations shrank from 46,800  in 1899 to a minimum of 28,298  in 1902 and climbed again to 35,337 in 1903. In neighboring Saadani, the number of arriving porters dropped from 12,825 (1896) to 3874 (1903).1 Even if we remain skeptical of the validity of colonial statistics and bear in mind that data was only collected for long-distance travel, it appears that by the turn of the century, the days of large ivory caravans were finally gone. While ivory lost most of its relevance to the colonial economy, other goods took its place in the export market. After 1900, plantation products, peanuts, beeswax, and other products cultivated by African petty farmers, as well as hides and livestock all superseded ivory in value. The colony’s main export good became rubber. Being increasingly required for car tire manufacturing in Europe and North America, its export revenues first superseded those of ivory in 1898. By 1905, rubber exports accounted for an annual value of 2,256,900 Marks, compared to a mere 485,814 Marks in ivory exports.2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2_4

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Even though the new trade good could not fully compensate for the loss of precolonial trade patterns, its boom generated new job opportunities for East Africans working in transportation.3 Initially, the majority of natural rubber grew wild in the southern parts of the colony and was gathered by rural dwellers. As Felicitas Becker observes, “rubber was different from other high-value trade goods. It could be collected by anyone with a knife in a forest, a stark contrast to elephant tusks or slaves. Concomitantly, rubber was often bought by small itinerant traders.”4 Rubber loads were then brought to the coast on human shoulders.5 Consequently, the decrease in traded ivory did not lead to a general decline in porterage, as the caravan statistics of Kilwa in south-eastern Tanzania demonstrate: from 1900 to 1903, the number of porters arriving in and leaving the town rose from 11,601 to 23,531.6 The southern Swahili coast came off as a beneficiary of the economic shifts.7 Not only there but in many parts of the colony, caravan transport still boomed around 1900. With 100,000 and more people working in transport, porterage was not only the most important mode of transportation but also the most common wage-earning profession in German East Africa’s economy.8 In this chapter, I study the trajectories of transport labor in the commercial caravan sector from the late 1890s to the early 1910s, tracing the changes which colonial capitalism brought to the profession. Adding to the study of labor under German rule and of colonial wage labor more generally, my analysis focuses on two interrelated aspects. First, the job profile of porter labor in the colonial era and the labor conditions of those engaged. A second focus is on the legal codification of caravan labor under German rule. As I demonstrate, the government was very reluctant to introduce labor laws for porterage. Continuing the analysis of Chap. 3, I explore the tensions between planter pressure, economic interest, and African workers that shaped this policy. Studying their labor conditions, I also draw attention to exploitative structures within the caravan sector while at the same time assessing the extent to which porters managed to retain leverage over their workplace in this changing economic and political climate. My overall aim is to demonstrate that porterage, as a wage-­ earning profession transferred from a precolonial economy, retained an exceptional status within the colonial economy throughout the German era, on both the legal level and in the daily routines of workers.

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Colonial Capitalism and Porter Labor Around the turn of the century, caravan transport was increasingly absorbed by the colonial economy. Then, German trade firms became important caravan entrepreneurs on their own and the breakdown of precolonial business relations engendered a reorientation of trade flows. In north-western German East Africa, Mwanza and Bukoba at Lake Victoria emerged as important trading hubs in the wake of the opening of the Uganda Railway in the neighboring British territory.9 The increase in export customs revenues gives evidence of the many caravans that brought beeswax, hides, and rubber to the lakeshore. In Bukoba, revenues rose from a mere 5 Rupees in 1900 to 86,164 Rupees by 1905; in Mwanza, they rose from 120 Rupees to 182,561 Rupees in the same period.10 In the town, a branch of the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft, a Greek merchant, and an Italian merchant coexisted with 20 South Asian, 15 “Arab,” and 5 Swahili merchant houses.11 The gradual establishment of European and South Asian traders upcountry gives evidence of the structural changes the trading business underwent after the initial years of colonial rule. In 1894, observers had still estimated the quota of porters in European service at only 2 to 4 percent.12 This percentage changed drastically in the years that followed. In Kilwa, as Felicitas Becker has illuminated, German authorities wrested trade from the hands of South Asian merchants in 1895/1896. Then, military forces subdued caravan raider Hassan bin Omari and his followers, who had threatened the caravan trails in the coastal hinterland for five years. When it came to light that bin Omari had financial supporters among the town’s South Asian merchant class, the authorities inflicted heavy fines against its most important representatives and sent them to prison.13 As a consequence of this volent transition, the German firms Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft and Hansing & Co. came to dominate Kilwa’s trade in wild rubber. Assuming a more active role as caravan employers, they outfitted caravans in the town and sent them as far into the interior as the Nyasa-Tanganyika plateau.14 Mwaya at Lake Nyasa emerged as an important entrepôt for wild rubber collected at either shore of the lake.15 In Mahenge, in central Tanzania, annually 500 caravans were soon arriving from Kilwa, trading consumer items for rubber, and carrying the loads to the coast.16 By 1897, according to reports, German trade firms dominated commercial activities in Lindi, another terminus of the southern caravan route.17

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Although German overseas traders became important caravan entrepreneurs themselves and opened branches in the interior, South Asian businesses retained an important role as middlemen. While the largest merchant houses and money-lending businesses lost their importance through the decline of ivory trading after c. 1900, smaller South Asian shops and businesses prospered.18 In Kilwa, the number of South Asian merchants amounted to 199 in 1903, of whom many worked as subcontractors and retailers for German trade houses. In Bagamoyo, the German trade firm Wm. O’Swald & Co. cooperated with more than 25 South Asians, using their networks to attract rubber caravans from different regions into the town.19 Even where German traders opened branches in the interior, such as in Bukoba or Tabora, they were outnumbered by South Asian merchants and shopkeepers who increasingly moved beyond the coastal belt and also drove “Arab” traders out of the market.20 “After the boma [German station],” Juhani Koponen writes, “the building next in time and importance in a locality was commonly the Indian duka (shop).”21 Porters were in high demand for all commercial transactions. On the routes to new and old trade centers, most products—besides rubber also hides, skins, rice, and other goods—were mediated by caravans. Upcountry, they supplied local markets, trading posts, missionary stations, as well as South Asian shops. Textiles, imported by sea and packed to bales, were carried across the colony and were either offered in shops or used as a medium of exchange in the interior.22 The labor force consumed by this particular commodity was already substantial. In Bagamoyo, the German trade firm O’Swald alone imported an annual 200,000 pieces of one particular kind of textiles, kaniki. With 80 pieces being packed to one porter load, the firm’s trade in this product alone required about 2500 porters.23 Tens of thousands of loads with textiles and other commodities were also sent from the Swahili coast to Lake Tanganyika and on to the Congo Basin, the largest company employing an annual labor force of 18,000 porters on the trans-border routes in 1906.24 Where professional porter labor had been common in the established caravan economy, its “traditional” agents continued to play important roles. In Lindi, for instance, Yao porters were seen regularly. The district office observed in 1899 that “these people [Ngoni and Yao], who all come from the interior, pursue porterage as a profession and are well versed in the choice and value of textiles [as a remuneration].”25 Professionalism likewise continued to exist on the central caravan route. Porters from

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central Tanzania—labeled as Wanyamwezi, but including Wasukuma, Wasumbwa, and other people from the region—remained the most sought-after workers on the central route. Source-based evidence suggests that workers from different regions seized on the reputation of Wanyamwezi as reliable workers and pretended to belong to their ethnic group in order to increase their chances of being hired.26 Trade firms active in the central caravan corridor, however, were experiencing porter shortages. In 1904, for instance, O’Swald struggled to find enough porters to transport beeswax from the Tabora district, the home region of the Wanyamwezi, to the coast.27 Labor shortages were partially the result of the typical work cycles of many Nyamwezi porters. As an O’Swald representative explained to his parent company in Hamburg, for many of these people porterage was still a seasonal occupation: “They till their fields in January and February so that they can immediately cultivate them once the rainy season sets in. After they have done so, these people go as porters to the coast, which is why the main caravan season is from April to July.”28 As a transitional form of wage labor, as Stephen J. Rockel calls it, porterage was one among several opportunities to make a living.29 But the established seasonal alternations of porterage and agricultural labor were eroding in the region of Unyamwezi after 1900, as Thaddeus Sunseri observes: “Patterns of seasonal labor migration, whereby migrants returned home in order to participate alongside families in agricultural production, appeared to be breaking down, leaving women and the elderly to maintain rural production.”30 Many Nyamwezi men left their home region permanently to find employment on the coast or at the British and German railway construction sites. The availability of Nyamwezi porters was further reduced through state-run cash crop schemes, which encouraged thousands of Wanyamwezi to engage as cotton farmers in their home region, while many others harvested wax.31 To many other Nyamwezi workers, porterage was still the prime wage-earning occupation, but they refrained from coastward seasonal migration. New commercial patterns emerging in the wake of the Uganda Railway shifted a huge portion of traffic towards Lake Victoria. A labor force of c. 13,000 porters worked on the route between Tabora and Mwanza. Wanyamwezi who had experience as porters also migrated to the neighboring British East Africa Protectorate (see below).32 Because less people from Unyamwezi traveled with caravans to the coast, Bagamoyo, too, suffered porter shortages for transport in direction of the interior.33

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The Casualization of Transport Labor, c. 1900 When people from central Tanzania increasingly stayed at home, worked in alternative industries, or migrated, who replaced this “traditional” group of porters on German East Africa’s main artery of commerce? Trade firms in Bagamoyo and Tabora filled the gap in labor by drawing on workers without prior experience or without a traditional affiliation to porterage. The O’Swald representatives in Bagamoyo made the inexperience of these new porters, recruited from among the coastal population, very clear, writing that “the pool of porters is of such low quality that most caravans take more than 2 ½ months for the journey of 45 days [from Bagamoyo to Tabora].”34 Remarkably, 45 days was the allowed travel time for state-run caravans according to the route list issued by the government in 1903 (see Chap. 2). In Tabora, the Omani and South Asian business partners proved equally unable to recruit experienced porters for coastward journeys, which is why “caravans from there take twice as many days as usual because the quality of those people willing to work as porters is very poor [minderwertig].”35 Similar to the central route, in the southern trade corridor it was also the local population that became involved in transportation. For the 10,000 loads to be carried upcountry from Kilwa, traders depended on people hired from among the urban residents, as the local district office observed: “Partly, they are dependents of wealthy natives, but for the most part they are individuals without any other occupation, who prefer the lazy life of the caravan to any other activity. Obviously, they are the worst elements of the populace.”36 What German traders perceived as porter shortages is thus better described as what Rockel calls the “gradual deskilling of the caravan workforce,”37 a shortage of skilled porters. The decline of both full-time and seasonal professionalism accelerated the expansion of porter labor beyond the established professionals of long-­ distance trade. It gave way to a more casual, less skilled type of wage-­ earning porter. In 1906, a German official observed in south-western Tanzania that “the non-professional [nichtberufsmäßige] porters outnumber the professionals by the hundreds and thousands, and the number of professionals is not growing but constantly declining.”38 The demand for transport workers on routes that had not been traditional arteries of trading further accelerated this process. Historian Bernd Arnold observes that young men of the Nyakyusa people from the northern end of Lake Nyasa

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increasingly began to leave their homestead to work as porters between the lake and the missionary stations in its hinterland, a group that previously had been reluctant towards porterage because of the low social reputation associated with it.39 Protestant and Catholic missionary societies across German East Africa became important employers of caravan workers. Around 1900, ten different societies were active in the colony, operating 78 stations in all regions.40 They hired residents of the surrounding settlements as porters of foodstuff, commodities, and mail between different missionary stations or, later, to the railway stops, as well as for long-­ distance transport to and from the Swahili coast.41 The White Father missionary station in Karema at Lake Tanganyika, for instance, alone received 800 to 1000 loads of cloth per annum.42 In north-western German East Africa, to give another example, porterage as a wage-earning occupation grew in popularity by 1910. Under the influence of the Uganda Railway, Kigali had become an important entrepôt for Congolese ivory and rubber as well as for hides and skins from Rwanda, from where they were carried to Lake Victoria. People from Kisaka in eastern Rwanda became the most common group on the region’s caravan trails, being employed by European, Omani, and South Asian entrepreneurs, as well as by King Musinga of Rwanda for his own skin-trading ventures. In 1910, according to official statistics, 13,519 porters carried loads to Bukoba. Their number grew to 37,562 by 1913.43 The limited source material leaves us with only an incomplete picture of the work cycles of the new type of porters. More evidence is needed to assess how their labor culture differed from that of skilled long-distance professionals. Still, at least a trend can be observed regarding their work rhythms. In the established caravan economy, seasonal porters often stayed in the coastal caravan termini until they found an engagement back to their home region, while full-time professionals were hired by the month rather than for a specific distance and often joined caravans and expeditions for an indefinite period. With the casualization of porterage, it appears, a growing percentage of porters functioned as mere delivery men.44 This was observed by German geographer Hans Meyer, who reported from a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro in 1898 that on the entire journey his expedition saw but one large ivory caravan, led by a Greek merchant. All other travel parties they met “were smaller parties of 6–10 porters who brought chests, suitcases, and other European loads from Mount Kilimanjaro to the stations in Tanga or Pangani. Or they

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marched—and this was the majority—without any load, having delivered supplies for the German station or the Greek and Indian merchants at Mount Kilimanjaro.”45 Because the amount of loads that caravans carried in either direction was not identical, many porters had to embark on one leg of the journey without an assigned load.46 In 1903, for instance, the vast majority of porters arrived in Pangani without a load. Presumably, these people came from nearby settlements to the coastal town to earn money and found an employment as dayworkers on shorter distances: the 5558 porters leaving the town carried 4401 loads into the hinterland, where they supplied plantations.47 Likewise, they officially recorded that the 29,395 caravanners who passed the Mpwapwa station on the central route in 1903  in the direction of the interior carried a total of 21,162 loads. The 24,382 travelers in reverse direction, by contrast, carried only 8001 loads according to colonial statistics.48 Casual workers, it shows, delivered loads to a specific place in the interior or at the coast and immediately returned to their place of departure.49 Through the changed job profile, the profession became more accessible to people without prior experience. To them, caravan labor posed an additional opportunity to earn wages. It must remain open which portion of their “working life” these people devoted to porterage and how frequently this occupation alternated with plantation labor, work at railway construction sites, but also with non-capitalist economic activities, especially agriculture.50 In his study Vilimani (2002), Thaddeus Sunseri identifies three motivations for individuals to turn to porter labor: “to pay taxes, buy commodities, and avoid plantations.”51 All three aspects demand further inspection. The immediate effects of taxation, which had been introduced in 1898, on amplifying the transport labor force should not be overestimated. From the source material at hand, it appears that in areas in which white settlement was strong, taxation could indeed prompt a drive to wage labor.52 The missionaries of the Leipzig Mission station at Machame near Mount Kilimanjaro, for instance, remarked in their daybook in September 1900 that, although they paid low wages of only 3 to 6 Rupees per month to their workers and porters, “official taxation pushes crowds of people to us.”53 Still, as mentioned in Chap. 2, the collection of taxes was initially reduced to the coastline and the few larger settlements in the interior. Moreover, under Governor von Liebert people were allowed to pay their taxes in either cash or agricultural products. Workers who engaged in the caravan sector, however, often were paid neither of the two.

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Until after the turn of the century, porters were usually not paid cash but in kind. In September 1898, the administration addressed all stations and district offices in a circular, commanding them to put pressure on traders to pay cash wages.54 Monetizing the caravan business was part of the larger German efforts to create a money economy that would replace the established commodity currencies.55 Coins, in particular the Maria Theresa dollar and the Indian Rupee, had been used in precolonial transactions along sections of the major trade routes, which is why the DOAG as the monetary authority aligned its newly introduced colonial currency with the latter in 1890.56 Monetizing interior communities, however, was a difficult undertaking. Cash remuneration for highly mobile transport workers was not only a way of distributing coinage across the territory but was also believed to affect rural dwellers, given the many interactions and transactions they had with porters.57 Under the pressure of the colonial authorities, South Asian and European entrepreneurs reluctantly began to remunerate their porters in cash, but the majority of transactions around 1900 was still done in cloth.58 As Rockel contends, this was done at the porters’ request, who knew that cloth had a higher value upcountry and thus exchanged their cloth-based wages, which they had received at the coast, with profit in the interior.59 The Mwanza district office stated in its tax report of 1900/1901 that “we have received only little cash money, what is mostly a result of the practice of trade firms to pay the posho [here: wages] of their porters in cloth.”60 According to John Iliffe, after 1900 cash payment became common for transactions in many regions.61 In 1905, it was ordered that future taxes had to be paid in Rupees. Instead of giving their livestock or harvest as compensation, people were now forced to engage in rubber and beeswax collection, to migrate and find a paid employment elsewhere, or to carry loads. After the tax reform, the government reinforced its efforts to enforce cash wages on the caravan routes.62 At least Nyamwezi porters soon reportedly demanded cash payment, presumably to pay their taxes.63 Consumption and the appeal of commodities appear as additional stimuli to work in transportation. Caravan labor offered an on-hand opportunity to accumulate some wealth, not only through wages (which were low; see next section) but also in commodities bought in South Asian shops (maduka) along the way. Studying the motivation of porters on the Kigali–Bukoba route, historian Bernard Lugan argues that it was often Christian converts who hired their labor power out to Omani or South Asian traders because they were used to both foreign employers and the

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allure of imported commodities, owing to their previous contact with the missionaries of the White Fathers.64 For the Nyakyusa, Bernd Arnold observes that it was prospective bridegrooms who often engaged in wage labor to pay the bride wealth.65 Participation in the caravan economy to acquire the means of social advancement, as in this case, was already known as an important motivation for long-distance trade in earlier decades.66 For young men among the Wanyamwezi, as Rockel observes, “a prime aim was to earn sufficient wages to pay bride price.”67 In addition, taking up the profession of porter was a chance to emancipate themselves from their home society and gain independence elsewhere. Transport labor held the promise of autonomy and access to consumption goods.68 Umbrellas, for instance, are evidenced for caravan porters since at least the 1870s.69 They exhibited the owners’ identification with the Swahili culture and helped them to bridge social distances.70 Umbrellas, but also textiles, wire, and other goods continued to be in high demand in the colonial period (Fig. 4.1). The German trade firm Hansing thus offered umbrellas as a bonus payment to newly enlisted workers in 1906, in this way attracting enough volunteers for their

Fig. 4.1  Porters with umbrellas, undated. Source: Image Collection of the German Colonial Society, Frankfurt am Main University Library, 012-1256-08

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caravans.71 While the job profile changed under the influence of colonial capitalism, it shows that access to foreign commodities remained an important asset of porter labor.

An Economy Not Fully Colonized The second asset of porter labor was the comparatively weak colonial penetration of the workplace. If we want to understand the appeal of caravan transport compared to work in other sectors of the colonial economy, we must understand what labor looked like in these sectors. Workers in the plantation industry were either hired on a contract or coerced by state officials. In several regions, the authorities cooperated with planters, providing them with a cheap labor force made of tax defaulters but also Africans who had not (yet) been absorbed by the colonial economy.72 On plantations, the ideology of Erziehung zur Arbeit (“education for work”) dominated work regimes. In the center of this concept stood the development of reliable workers, controlled by a strict time regime, overseers, and physical violence.73 In an interview conducted by members of the Maji Maji Research Project, Mzee Nduli Njimbwi later remembered the constant supervision: During the cultivation there was much suffering. We, the labour conscripts, stayed in the front line cultivating. Then behind us was an overseer whose work it was to whip us. Behind the overseer there was a jumbe [here: headman], and every jumbe stood behind his fifty men. Behind the line of jumbes stood Bwana Kinoo himself [Steinhagen, the plantation owner]. […] And that Selemani, the overseer, had a whip, and he was extremely cruel. […] And on the other side Bwana Kinoo had a bamboo stick.74

It is important to note with Thaddeus Sunseri that, similar to porters, plantation workers often successfully subverted this regime in their everyday activities and, in light of labor shortages, were powerful enough to demand better wages and improved conditions.75 Still, work on plantations, where physical abuse and racial segregation dominated everyday life, appears as the least desired. Working for a German employer in the transport sector could mean preventing conscription into the plantation industry.76 But more than that, caravan labor entailed the promise of worker autonomy.

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Workers in commercial transport enjoyed a liberty which the racialized regime of European plantations and state-organized transport denied them. The freedoms of life on the road had already been an important pull factor for young men joining the precolonial caravan economy. That caravan labor continued to offer a certain autonomy under colonial rule was a partial result of the passivity of German lawmakers. The self-limitation of colonial policymaking, which I have outlined in Chap. 3, resonated within the governance of porter-employer relations. While they had tentatively begun to codify labor conditions in German East Africa, officials were reluctant to interfere in the caravan sector. From 1896 to 1899, the first labor code regulated the rights and duties of African industrial and agricultural workers in European service. Introducing legally binding and enforceable contracts and severe punishment for breaches, the code, and more so an amendment of 1897, also included mechanisms to protect workers—one reason why the statute was revoked in 1899.77 The labor code left a crucial portion of colonial labor untouched. Both porters and Gesinde (servants) were explicitly exempted from the regulations. Gesindewesen (serfdom) had been an institution in the German states throughout the nineteenth century, describing a personal relation between masters and servants, particularly on farmsteads. According to Sunseri, in the colony, Gesinde was the German form of adapting East African slavery to the colonial plantation economy in which planters deployed ransomed slaves as a cheap labor force.78 Within the wide spectrum of colonial labor, Germans ascribed an exceptional role to the treatment of porters. With the mutual exclusion of porterage (a profession) and serfdom (a legal status), the lawmakers related porters to a master-servant relation instead of wage labor, although they evidently were aware that porterage was practiced mostly by free men.79 For all workers carrying rubber and other products for trade firms, as well as for those employed by European travelers, regulating the inside of travel parties could have meant dictating to employers how to treat their personnel and setting standards in terms of wages or maximum loads. However, caravan personnel were denied the rights and duties of colonial workers introduced in 1896. State authorities left the inner life of caravans a legal black hole. Before discussing the negative implications of denied worker rights for everyday life on the caravan routes, I first illuminate the opportunities arising from the absence of regulations. While wage labor along with many other parts of social and economic life was increasingly subjected to labor regimes, transport workers in

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commercial caravans retained partial control over their work rhythm. Most porters working for German traders embarked on safari under an indigenous headman. But more than this fact, the decision of state-makers to leave transport widely unregulated allowed workers to fill this vacuum with their own ideas and practices. In one of the rare African testimonies, a retired Nyamwezi porter who had been in service of both the Schutztruppe and Hansing compared these two employments, explaining to Catholic missionaries that “military portage was particularly unpopular because porters had to move in disciplined formations, while commercial caravans were allowed to march at their own pace.”80 The validity of this testimony is backed by observations made by colonial officials on everyday life in commercial caravans. In 1906, government official Chrapkowski toured the borderlands between German East Africa and what is today Malawi, where he observed that the life on the caravan route still resembled that of precolonial days. In the British colony, the African Lakes Company operated a workforce of 8000 to 10,000 porters, mostly Yao men. Their engagement, Chrapkowski explained in a report to the administration in Dar es Salaam, was the result of the company’s mild and undemanding policy. The African Lakes Company, he observed, “abstains from making any orders on the porter’s lifestyle, the length of his daily march, his speed, the time of departure, or the time of arrival.”81 The apparent liberties of caravan life were also identified by later Governor von Rechenberg as one of the main reasons why Africans avoided plantations and instead joined commercial caravans. He explained to plantation shareholders that “caravan porters march off at 6 o’clock and arrive at 12 or 1 p.m. at the camping site. Where is this site? Normally close to a waterhole and a market. There, porters can buy whatever they want, prepare their meal and relax.”82 The colonial caravan economy did not intrude into their day-to-day activities in the same manner that other occupations in the colonial economy did. On the downside, the lawmakers’ decision to leave the caravan sector an unregulated business fueled unsafe and exhausting working conditions. In March 1905, Acting Governor Franz Stuhlmann issued an alerting circular, observing that “among the porters arriving with caravans from the interior a great number is in bad condition as a result of sickness and physical deficits.”83 While this observation should be taken with a large pinch of salt, given the contemporary discursive representation of caravans as a hindrance to progress, labor conditions arguably were so bad that they seriously affected the lives and wellbeing of many porters. Most of them

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marched barefoot, which made them highly susceptible to injuries and illness, especially pneumonia and foot injuries through jiggers.84 Famines throughout the 1890s and after the Maji Maji War added to the precarity while simultaneously the Rinderpest disease wiped out cattle in many areas.85 Added to these factors, exploitation was a daily fare in caravans under contract with European trade agents or their South Asian subcontractors. Rockel, albeit focusing on the precolonial era in his study, observes that “[f]rom the European perspective, porterage became equated with ‘coolie’ labor”86 in the colonial period. The available sources back this observation, showing that transport workers were particularly prone to exploitation. Porter wages, which according to Rockel’s calculation had constantly increased in the precolonial period, fell considerably with the gradual deskilling of the occupation.87 Similar to official transport, hired porters usually received a fixed sum for a specific journey. But while the standard wage list (see Chap. 2) was only relevant to state-run caravans, wages in the commercial caravan sector were subject to the law of supply and demand.88 This is most evident in north-eastern Tanzania, where wages fell under the influence of the Uganda Railway. In Bagamoyo, porters were paid cloth worth an average of 15 Rupees for a journey to Tabora in 1901, a decrease of 50 percent since 1899.89 Assuming that caravans actually needed ten weeks for this journey, as stated by the O’Swald representatives (see above), these crews received a monthly wage of 6 Rupees, compared to a plantation worker’s wage of 8–14 Rupees per month in Dar es Salaam and to 24 Rupees paid by the Central Depot for a similar journey in 1901.90 Wages on different routes were screwed down by employers, being far beyond what the administration paid to the porters of the Central Depot. For a journey between Iringa and Dar es Salaam, for instance, one European entrepreneur paid only 12 Rupees in 1899, compared to 21 Rupees paid by the administration.91 For the journey from Kilwa to Songea, for which the authorities paid 17 Rupees in 1899, so-called local (presumably South Asian, Omani, or Swahili) traders paid only 10, and DOAG as well as Hansing even only 7–8 Rupees.92 Given the marching distance of c. 500 kilometers between the two towns and assuming a maximum distance of 20 kilometers covered per day with one rest day per week, this was one month’s wage at best. Moreover, caravan employers sometimes retained their porters’ daily allowance during the journey or refused to pay any agreed wage upon arrival.93 The decrease in wages

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indicates that professionals were replaced by workers whose bargaining power appears weaker than that of experienced porters.94 As much as they underpaid their porters, traders overburdened them. As seen, the Central Depot burdened porters in state-run caravans with a maximum weight of 65 resp. 60 lbs. In commercial caravans, by contrast, a minimum of 70 lbs., in addition to the porters’ own equipment, was considered as average and loads of 85 lbs. and more were occasionally reported.95 Such loads, with which many porters reportedly struggled, had not been uncommon in long-distance trade, but it was experienced workers who had carried them, having developed physical strength and special techniques. Arguably, temporary and untrained workers lacked this expertise and stamina.96 A third issue was violence. Many porters working for German trade firms traveled under an African headman, but many others were employed by European hunters, cattle traders, missionaries, tourists, settlers, or individual traders. For them, the work environment remained marked by the same racial hierarchy and physical punishment that had informed earlier expeditionary travel. Illustrative is the case of Takamasi, a porter in service of the Greek merchant Zographakis. On a journey in 1905, he incurred his employer’s wrath because he “followed the caravan only very slowly. When I told him to hurry up, he did not react but continued to march even slower,”97 as Zographakis later put on record. After the Greek had put Takamasi in chains, the porter deserted but was eventually caught, beaten severely, and likely died from his injuries. The merchant was arrested and convicted of aggravated battery by the district court in Dar es Salaam.98 While criminal prosecution thus existed, only the most severe cases of physical abuse were prosecuted by the authorities.99 In contrast, the vast majority of instances of violence, maltreatment, or exploitation was never reported or investigated; nor was such action particularly illegal, as the district court clarified, acknowledging that in general “a white caravan leader might be put in the position to flog a porter if the authorities are far away, and the maintenance of order demands it.”100

Old and New Forms of Worker Resistance Porters were disenfranchised by legislation. This, however, does not mean that they were entirely defenseless. The most obvious strategy for coping with exploitative labor structures was to avoid and evade them. As stated, Tanzanians alternated wage-earning occupations with engagement in

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alternative economies. Except for coerced porterage for state bodies, the decision on when to work for wages remained theirs. Evidence of such a decision is recorded by missionary Robert Fassmann of the Leipzig Mission station in Machame. When he tried to recruit porters to carry his sick missionary brother Arno Krause and his possessions to another station, he summoned one of the local parishioners. According to Fassmann’s notes, the man refused, declaring that “I stay here and cultivate my fields.” “Look,” I [Fassmann] said, “I have a favor to ask you; please carry a load for Brother K[rause] to Mamba.” “No, I cannot do that!” “Well,” I remarked, “it would not make too much of a difference if you would leave your field work for one or two days. […].” “No, it’s impossible!” The young man made excuses. “Sir [Herr],” I said, “it grieves me to hear that you refuse to do a favor in return for pay. Enough said, I am going to remember this.”101

When they decided to join caravans, the people sometimes applied strategies known from the precolonial caravan economy. Although a new generation of workers had entered East Africa’s caravan trails, evidence suggests that many of them were able to draw on the vocabulary of individual and collective actions established in earlier decades. The above-­ mentioned Takamasi, for instance, who walked at his own pace and even slowed down when he was ordered to hurry up, apparently sought to retain control over his work rhythm. That he was beaten severely by his employer underlines Rockel’s observation that porters were “gradually losing the struggle over control of crucial aspects of caravan work, […] and were increasingly subject to foreign ideas about work and justice.”102 Still, as Rockel also observes, there were certain strategies which had been effective in earlier decades and remained effective under colonial rule, although they occurred less frequently.103 The minimal wages paid by caravan employers on specific routes, for instance, gave continued reason for strikes. In Kisaki, on the central caravan route, passing porters of different commercial caravans were reported to lay down their loads regularly and demand higher wages. In reaction, the local district office occasionally persuaded caravan leaders to increase wages by 2 Rupees to prompt the porters to march on.104 In addition to strikes, desertions among caravan personnel remained a common phenomenon, being observed in every larger caravan in the Kilwa district.105 Across the colony, transport workers felt unbound and regularly left their engagements if they were not content with the working conditions.

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Of the caravan of Zographakis, ten men decamped because they did not receive adequate wages.106 In late 1899, to give a second example, 179 porters of a Hansing caravan, carrying rubber to the coast on the southern routes, left their caravan leader within two days. First, 17 porters threw their loads away and deserted. The next morning, the entire remainder collectively decamped near Songea, presumably because of their exploitative wages and the overpacked loads: as an investigation by District Officer Ewerbeck of Lindi revealed, the 17 loads first thrown away were the heaviest.107 To counteract exploitation, porters not only transferred established strategies into the colonial era but also made productive use of the colonial state and its institutions. German East Africa’s courts, as Werner Biermann rightly remarks, were an instrument of the state to enforce its labor regime: of the 64,600 Africans who were sentenced to corporal punishment between 1901 and 1913, the vast majority was found guilty of labor-­ related offenses.108 Still, at least some porters could use colonial jurisdiction for their own purposes, as the archival documentation of one particular court case gives evidence of, filed as “Khalfani and fellows v. Antwerpensche Ostafrikanische Handels-Maatschappij.”109 The case took place around the turn of the century in Tanga. From the port town, the Belgian Handels-Maatschappij had sent off a caravan to central Tanzania, where the company planned to procure cattle.110 Several months later, the caravan had bought over 250 cows and was already on its way back to the coast when a group of “Wambulu” (today known as Iraqw people) attacked its camp. The warriors killed 40 porters and captured almost the entire livestock.111 The surviving porters and caravan leader Tarte Bos, the Handels-Maatschappij’s representative, escaped and headed for the next German station in Kondoa-Irangi, where they reported the assault. The station commander, Julius Braumüller, provided the caravan with equipment and provisions and sent them off to Tanga. Upon departure, however, as Braumüller put on record, the “Askaris [here: guards] and porters voiced accusations against Tarte Bos for not paying wages. I have referred the group to the district office in Tanga.”112 As soon as the party arrived in Tanga in March 1900, a group of 76 porters and their headman Khalfani called on the district court to request the unpaid wages. After the porters had established their claims, the court assessed the sum as 6172 Rupees.113 As an attorney of the Belgian company, the local lawyer Paul Schmidt began to dispute the claims, suggesting that the court had fallen for fraud. However, the court believed the

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porters’ testimonies and insisted on their remuneration.114 Meanwhile, the military station in Kondoa-Irangi launched a punitive expedition against the “Wambulu” and their settlement to recapture the Handels-­ Maatschappij’s property. While the troops could not locate the stolen cattle, they seized the pastoralists’ own livestock in reprisal and brought it to Mpwapwa. These cattle, estimated at a value of 3000 Rupees, would become the amount in litigation at the Tanga district court.115 While the case was pending, the government had already remunerated the claimants with partial payment of the livestock reparation.116 In late 1901, a lawsuit against the Belgian company was issued. Governor von Götzen himself instructed the district officials in Tanga to trace the claimants and help them to appoint an official as procurator to conduct their case.117 On 30 December 1903, almost four years after the incident, the representatives of both parties, lawyer Schmidt and government official Weber (on behalf of the porter crew), finally arranged an out-of-court settlement. The Handels-Maatschappij accepted the claims and agreed to compensate the active debt. The district office, on the other hand, agreed to transfer the proceeds of the punitive expedition against the Wambulu to the company from which the latter was to clear the debts.118 The group of 76 porters and their headman had expanded the colonial law beyond its intended use. The case under scrutiny might have been exceptional, especially in the paper trail it left, but it was not unique to the period. Around 1900, a tiny number of similar cases is recorded, in which porters accused their European employers of breaking engagements.119 The main reason these lawsuits were filed was the agency of the affected porters. Although being disenfranchised by colonial legislation, they understood how to capitalize on the new legal bodies established by the state.120 Far from powerless, these workers utilized colonial jurisdiction to serve their own ends, in this way making the district court a place for dispute over the labor relations in commercial caravan travel.121

Labor Migration and Policymaking in a Trans-colonial Sphere Cross-border migration became another strategy to cope with exploitative work regimes. In African history writing, colonial borders have been described as paradoxical institutions.122 On the one hand, the process of border drawing and its policing by state agents and their auxiliaries often disrupted established patterns of mobility and trade. Border crossers, on

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the other hand, could exploit this partition of regions into colonial territories, as has been described for various contexts across colonial Africa.123 In these instances, migration was a form of revolt, as Anthony I. Asiwaju has famously established for the case of the Ivory Coast, rendering it as a means of tax evasion or escape from forced labor.124 To East African long-distance migrants, borders did not pose a hindrance. By contrast, as a mobile labor force, they were receptive to the opportunities offered by the colonial territorialization of East Africa. They compared and, by crossing borders, maneuvered between different practices of colonialism. Until 1907, 15,000 people from Unyamwezi reportedly left the German sphere in direction of the East Africa Protectorate.125 Evidence for these people’s active decision to evade the lack of worker protection in German East Africa through migration to the British colony is drawn from interviews conducted by German officials. In Nairobi, official Ludwig Meyer interrogated a number of Wanyamwezi and Wasukuma in 1906, who explained that they had migrated because physical abuse was less ubiquitous in the British sphere than on German plantations.126 Similar motivations were later encountered by the German consul in Mombasa, to whom migrant workers explained that “they are loath to return to German East Africa because there they were beaten severely (‘fimbo nyingi’, many strokes […]).”127 Exploitation and maltreatment, in particular on plantations, were push factors for many Nyamwezi and Sukuma wage-earners. Young men from central Tanzania who migrated to the East Africa Protectorate often worked in the caravan sector. Around 1906, many of the 1000 German colonial subjects in Mombasa worked as porters, either for the colonial state or in local transport at the waterfront and the railway station. Others worked in European trade caravans.128 In Nairobi, a German settler estimated the average number of German subjects working in transportation in the town at 500 while at the same time many others worked in expeditionary travel. They found engagement in the growing Kenyan safari tourism industry that saw the arrival of more than 2500 sportsmen and women between the turn of the century and the World War.129 Although the sources do not reveal why exactly these men chose to become porters in the British colony, a potential pull factor for the East Africa Protectorate was that they could pursue their careers within a legal framework provided by the colonial state. As early as October 1894, British legislators had proclaimed a 22 paragraph–long legal code for porterage, applying to the Zanzibar archipelago and the Sultanate’s ten-mile strip at the main coast.130 According to the

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code, caravan leaders were required to carry medicine, to provide every porter with equipment (at least a blanket), and to provide food during the journey. A maximum weight of loads was fixed at 75 lbs, and a catalog for punishment was enacted. Contracts were to be signed individually with every porter in Zanzibar and had to contain information on the agreed wage and posho. At the same time, the code enacted a catalog for punishment.131 There is much doubt whether these regulations really applied on the caravan routes. Being legally binding only on the coastal strip, the code was neither enforced nor observed upcountry in Kenya, which was under the rule of a chartered company until 1895, or the recently obtained colony Uganda. In their assessment of the regulations, historians Anthony Clayton and Donald C. Savage point to caravans being badly prepared and meeting famine and sickness in the interior despite the leaders’ responsibility to provide food and medicine.132 It is hard to tell what caused the British government to amend the two-­ year-­old regulations in May 1896: whether it was these incidents, the fact that in the meantime the Kenyan mainland had officially become a British protectorate, or labor shortages in Mombasa which had led to a breakdown of colonial logistics in 1895.133 All three aspects likely had an impact on the new regulations, which were extended beyond Zanzibar to the East Africa Protectorate. Another revision in 1899 reduced the maximum weight from 75 lbs. to 65 lbs.134 In 1900 resp. 1902, the administrations of Uganda and the East Africa Protectorate replaced the code with the new Native Porters and Labour Regulations, which adopted most of the protective measures but also raised the maximum weight to 70 lbs. These new regulations expanded the legal framework to all wage-earners.135 At the heart of the regulations was not the welfare of porters but the British colonial state’s concern with controlling its mobile labor force. Historian David M. Anderson rightly remarks that they were meant “to protect the contractual interests of the employer rather than the employee, and the penal sanctions imposed were designed to act as a strong deterrent against workers who were thought to be largely ignorant of the burden of contract law.”136 Moreover, the codification of porterage does not imply that violence and corporal punishment were absent from caravans in the British sphere; nor did forced transport labor cease as, similar to the German colonial state, the British authorities coerced colonial subjects into porterage.137 The labor codes, therefore, were not necessarily conceived as a means of worker protection.

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Still, to the German neighbors and their emphasis on unhampered trade flows, British lawmaking appeared self-destructive. In October 1896, Acting Governor Rudolf von Bennigsen evaluated the regulations as “a bureaucratic masterpiece which will require endless paperwork and manpower.”138 Six years later, when the new British code was enacted in April 1902, the colonial weekly Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung compared the regulations in the British territory with those in German East Africa, concluding that “apparently, the principle of British legislation is to ensure that porters are not cheated.”139 The German legislation, by contrast, “is much more liberal towards caravan employers than the British.”140 Leaving the caravan sector unregulated, the German lawmakers protected caravan entrepreneurs, not their workers. The dismissal of British conceptions ended in 1905 under Governor Gustav Adolf von Götzen when coastward mobility dwindled in German East Africa. As I will illuminate in the remainder of this chapter, the activities of Nyamwezi porters and other labor migrants reverberated within the colonial state apparatus. Their free choice of when to pursue a profession, as well as where to pursue it, triggered reactions on behalf of the legislative bodies. Von Götzen’s term was marked by what Sunseri calls a “plantation imperative,” an eagerness to support and encourage planter interest and white settlement.141 After the turn of the century, the European-led plantation sector had grown into a promising business and the coastal planters’ demand for more workers was ever-growing. By 1905, 120 plantations existed at the Swahili coast, cultivating about 10,200 hectares of coffee, cotton, and sisal.142 Predicting a constant growth, the planters estimated the number of required workers to reach 18,000 by 1907 and 53,000 by 1910 in the Tanga district alone, compared to an available pool of only 5000 workers in the district.143 The ever-present colonial “labor question” and the “porter question” were tightly connected. Blame for the lack of sufficient workers was first assigned to the caravan sector which, according to colonial lobbyists, kept people from seeking employment on plantations. Constitutive of this vision was the assumption that those wage-­ earners who were employed as porters would volunteer to work on plantations once they had been freed from this labor by the “blessing” of the railway lines yet to be built.144 The relation of plantation workers and porters, however, was far more ambivalent than the agitation suggested. It was porterage which brought the majority of workers to the coast. Where coastal residents and redeemed

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slaves did not suffice to meet the ever-growing demand for plantation workers, planters drew on the migrant schemes established by the long-­ distance trade, hiring porters as temporary workers after their arrival. Wanyamwezi in particular were in high demand for plantation work, as they were regarded as reliable and industrious workers. Porters in Pangani, Dar es Salaam, and especially Bagamoyo were regularly reported to sign with plantations.145 In the latter town, the district office even established a state-run recruitment agency to supply the plantations in the Usambara Mountains with porters turned workers.146 The reasons why this labor supply chain disintegrated were diverse. As explained above, the migration of able-bodied men to the East Africa Protectorate was only one among several factors, and it was a partial reaction to the disciplinary regime on plantations as Meyer’s report of 1906 would later evidence. Still, in 1905, von Götzen’s administration came to hold the working conditions within caravans responsible for the Wanyamwezi’s reluctance to come to the coast.147 Because coastward migration was built on established labor patterns, state officials believed that regulating porter-employer relations could serve as a remedy to revive migration flows. In September 1905, the government brought together the Governmental Council in Dar es Salaam. This council had been established in late 1903 in order to align the governor’s politics more with the interests of the German community. It consisted of three official members, recruited from within the bureaucratic staff, and four private members, selected by the governor from the white population for a period of two years.148 Although the assembly’s advice did not have a binding character, the council reflected the opinion of the most relevant German actor groups in the colony and could thus wield influence on the governor’s decisions. Therefore, the administrators were eager to present the assembly with the plans for an extensive labor code for the profession of porterage, “following the example of the neighboring British protectorates.”149 The proposed code was a direct reaction to the Nyamwezi workers’ absenteeism from the coastline. In the council’s debate of 11 September 1905 on the “necessity and feasibility of an official supervision of porterage,”150 government assistant Eduard Haber stressed this fact, explaining that the administration “fears that the natives from the interior might abstain from engaging as porters if their wages are cut further as a result of competition with the Uganda Railway or if loads continue to be packed too heavy. From this, the labor supply of plantations would suffer.”151 He

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argued that if it was really the prospect of maltreatment that kept people from joining coastward caravans, the administration had to intervene to support planter interest. Haber thus urged the council to approve the regulation of a maximum load, the exclusion of teenagers and sick porters, the payment of a fixed posho, as well as legally binding contracts for porters.152 Considerations of their wellbeing and social plight, it shows, were not geared towards the welfare of porters. They came only into consideration when it was beneficial for the plantation sector. Still, through their behavior and decisions, this proposed change in policy suggests, migrant workers exerted influence on official agenda setting, if only from the margins. However, when evaluating the influence of colonized actors on colonial policies, one should not forget that they were only one among several groups within the social field that constituted the colonial state—and by far not the most powerful one. Only a closer look at the sum of actors driving legislative change as well as their interplay can explain why von Götzen and his administrators not only initiated these reforms regarding porterage, but also why they eventually failed to implement them. In the question of porter protection, the interests of planters, supported by the government, clashed with those of German overseas traders. The dispute over caravan labor was one subfield in the broader debate vibrant at that time whether German East Africa should be designated as a settler colony or a trading colony.153 But it also revolved around the particular question of how to utilize African labor. Through the employment of Nyamwezi porters as workers, plantations had entered into competition with European trade firms. Even though the groups sometimes intersected, as especially the DOAG operated both caravans and plantations, merchants looked suspiciously at the efforts of increasing the workforce on plantations, warning that they caused porter shortages and thus hampered their own businesses.154 The most crucial factor why German traders could not permit the government to regulate labor relations was, of course, their own profit margin which was based on oversized loads and low wages. Trade interest prevailed. Within the Governmental Council, the traders held a strong position, allowing them to impede political change. The assembly’s official composition for the term of 1904–1905 was two planters, two merchants, and one artisan (a brewer), thus reflecting the different German interest groups. At the meeting of September 1905, however, due to absences, three of the four delegates were merchants, the fourth

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being the brewer. Given this constellation, government official Haber made it clear from the meeting’s start that “for the time being, the government does not intend to pursue a welfare policy towards native porters and workers.”155 His concession notwithstanding, all non-governmental council members strongly opposed any state intervention into the caravan business. A potential maximum weight especially bothered the traders. If the government wanted to enforce a weight reduction for loads, they argued, porterage would become too expensive and unprofitable.156 The assembly thus rejected the motion, and the governor followed its advice. No legislation was enacted. All the government did was to instruct interior stations in a follow-up circular in October to keep their eyes open and intervene in the most blatant injustices.157 It was only the forceful eruption of the Maji Maji War in July 1905 that eventually engendered policy change. In Berlin, the new Colonial Secretary, Bernhard Dernburg, proclaimed reform and economic development as new guiding principles. In German East Africa, the war caused different high-ranked officials to change their opinion on the severity of their own labor system compared to that of their neighbors.158 Albrecht von Rechenberg, the new governor, thus initiated a reform program, arguing that the state should begin to ponder “how to fight the desire to migrate.”159 Three ordinances were passed relating to the legal position of African workers between July 1907 and February 1909 (as well as a revised version in 1913).160 While a new labor code was drafted, the question of porter welfare remained vibrant. In 1907, Eduard Haber co-authored a memorandum which recommended regulations specified for porterage, such as a maximum weight, a sufficient daily allowance, as well as fixed contracts, again “following the example of the neighboring British colony.”161 Porters were finally included in the new labor code of 1909, which was “applicable to work contracts between non-native employers and native workers,” but not “to contracts for services of a superior nature, nor to contracts with servants.”162 In an earlier draft, the word “porters” had been manually added to this exemption, but was deleted again from the final text.163 This back-and-forth editing evidences how difficult lawmakers still found it to align porterage with other types of colonial labor. As a result, they left it at a mere mention but did not include any regulations catered to the profession of porterage specifically. A second reason for this ignorance might have been that coastbound porterage gradually lost its significance for the plantation sector. In many

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parts of German East Africa, caravans remained an important transport means even by the 1910s (see Chap. 6). But at the coast, the influx of plantation workers did no longer depend on the arrival of porters. In the years after the Maji Maji War, as Thaddeus Sunseri shows, tens of thousands of people from Unyamwezi, Ufipa, and other regions left their homesteads permanently to seek paid employment at the coast or at one of the railway construction sites.164 With these migrant flows and the establishment of worker recruiters in the interior, planters emancipated themselves from the old porter currents so that the protection of porters—understood as a means of encouraging their movement to the coast—dropped out of the colonial agenda again.165 After the mid-1890s, to sum up this chapter’s findings, the profession of porterage expanded as a result of the collapse of old trade patterns, the growing importance of German caravan entrepreneurs, and the ongoing expansion of consumption patterns from the coast into the interior. While a new generation of wageworkers participated in the colonial economy by carrying loads, caravan transport remained a profession not fully incorporated into the colonial system. Because state regulation did not specify rules for porterage, the intrusion of colonial rule into the day-to-day activities of commercial caravans remained modest compared to plantation labor. On the one hand, the non-regulation of their business implied that porters were vulnerable to exploitation. On the other hand, it also enabled crews to transfer many elements of the labor culture known from precolonial caravans into these ventures. The existence of court records and the ongoing labor migration provide evidence that some porters were able to develop adaption strategies and found answers to the challenges of the new workplace. Throughout the period of German rule, porterage thus remained an economy in which porters could shape the terms of their work. It was this freedom that made caravan labor particularly attractive as a wage-earning profession.

Notes 1. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” 2961; “Bagamoyo als Handelsplatz,” DOAZ (26 August 1899), 1. 2. N.N., Außenhandel im Kalenderjahr 1905, 2. For the rubber trade, see Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, esp. 150–162; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 123–130; and Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 201–212, 432–437.

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3. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 330–331. 4. F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 73. 5. Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 148. 6. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” 2962. See also F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 73; Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 152–154. 7. For changing patterns in the southern trade corridors, see F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 63–91; Streit, “Beyond Borders,” 79–91; Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 135–162. 8. Pallaver, “Population Developments,” 324; Sunseri, Vilimani, 58. 9. For the rise of Mwanza, see L. Jones, “District Town,” 53–75. 10. Kolonialpolitisches Aktionskomitee, Die Eisenbahnen Afrikas, 172. 11. Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 159. 12. Schweinitz, “Trägerpersonal,” 20. 13. F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 65–67; Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 139–142. 14. Ibid. 15. Mihanjo and Masebo, “Maji Maji War,” 62. 16. BAB, R1001/8108, Government to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaaam, 23 November 1899, 82–83. See also Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 154. 17. F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 72. 18. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 152–153. 19. BAB, R 155F/81411, “Denkschrift über die Ursachen des Darniederlegens des Handels und etwa zu ergreifender Massregeln zu einer Gesundung desselben,” c. 1903. 20. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 140–141; Pallaver, Un’altra Zanzibar, 137; Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 115; Becher, “Tabora,” 134. 21. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 152. 22. Brühwiler, “Interweaving Threads,” 478. 23. Schwidder, “Hamburger Kolonialhandelshaus,” 65. For O’Swald’s trade in textiles, see ibid., 402–548. 24. BAB, R 1001/119, report by Meyer, Tabora, 11 May 1906, 73; Schwarze, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 18. 25. TNA, G1/35, District Office Lindi to Government, Lindi, 20 December 1899, 179. Translation taken from F.  Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 69. 26. BAB, R 1001/119, report by Meyer, Tabora, 3 July 1906, 97; Pesek, “Ruga-Ruga,” 85–86; Bennett, East African History, 81. 27. StAHH, 621-1/147, 16/1, Meyer to O’Swald, Bagamoyo, 2 October 1904; “Eine Klage über den augenblicklichen Stand der Arbeiter- und Trägerfrage aus Tabora,” DOAZ (11 March 1905), 6.

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28. StAHH, 621-1/147, 16/1, Meyer to O’Swald, Bagamoyo, 8 January 1903. See also StAHH, 621-1/147, 16/1, Oehlerking to O’Swald, Zanzibar, 15 September 1904. 29. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 3. 30. Sunseri, Vilimani, 166. 31. Ibid., 67, 138–139, 168; “Eine Klage über den augenblicklichen Stand der Arbeiter- und Trägerfrage aus Tabora,” DOAZ (11 March 1905), 6; Sunseri, Vilimani, 168. 32. Becher, “Tabora,” 132; Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 161–162. 33. StAHH, 621-1/147, 16/1, Meyer to O’Swald, Bagamoyo, 19 January 1904. See also Velten, ed., Sitten und Gebräuche, 293–294. 34. StAHH, 621-1/147, 16/1, Meyer to O’Swald, Bagamoyo, 2 October 1904. 35. StAHH, 621-1/147, 16/1, Meyer to O’Swald, Bagamoyo, 13 November 1904. 36. TNA, G1/35, District Office to Government, Kilwa, 19 November 1899, 169. Translation partially taken from F. Becker, “Traders, Big Men and Prophets,” 8. 37. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 221. See also Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 343. 38. “Eine Reise vom Tanganika zum Nyassa-See,” DOAZ (18 August 1906), 5. 39. B.  Arnold, Steuer und Lohnarbeit im Südwesten von Deutsch-Ostafrika, 154–155. See also Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 161. 40. Fitzner, Kolonial-Handbuch, 264–265. 41. BL, EAP099, 3, 1, Machame station daybook 1896–1897, entries of 20 January, 25 January, 9 February, 23 October 1896; BL, EAP099, 3, 6, Moshi station daybook 1896–1897 II, entry of November 1897; BL, EAP099, 3, 3, Machame station daybook 1900–1901, entry of 30 August 1900. 42. Tambila, “A History of the Rukwa Region,” 79. 43. Lugan, “Le commerce de traite au Rwanda,” 249, 259. 44. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 236. 45. H. Meyer, Kilimandjaro, 68. 46. Rockel mentions that porters in the precolonial caravan economy also sometimes traveled without a load, especially when they travel to the coast to find an employment there. See Rockel, “A Nation of Porters,” 181–182. 47. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” 2961. 48. Ibid., 2962.

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49. See also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 236; L.  Jones, “District Town,” 116–118. 50. According to Andreas Eckert, full-time wage labor was an exception all across sub-Saharan Africa in this period. Instead, people usually combined different modes of labor. See Eckert, “Wage Labour,” 22–23. 51. Sunseri, Vilimani, 58. 52. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 347. 53. BL, EAP099, 3, 3, Machame station daybook 1900–1901, entry of 5 September 1900. 54. BAB, R 1001/786d, “Runderlass betreffend die Löhnung der Träger,” 19 September 1898, 128. For payment methods in the precolonial economy, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 33, 67–68, 220–222. 55. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 132; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 184–185. 56. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 184–185; Brühwiler, “Moralities of Owing and Lending,” 161. 57. Pallaver, “Paying in Cents.” 58. For wages received in textiles, see TNA, G1/35, Leue, briefing, 11 February 1899, 127; TNA, G 1/35, TNA, G1/35, District Office Kilwa to Government, Kilwa, 16 March 1899; TNA, G1/35, Endert to Government, Saadani, 21 March 1899. 59. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 222. 60. BAB, R 1001/1053, District Office Mpwapwa to Government, Mpwapwa, 13 January 1901, 232. 61. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 132. According to the central administration, by 1900 cash wages were paid in 14 out of 19 districts, often coexisting with wages paid in cloth. See TNA, G1/35, report by Götzen, 11 June 1900, 186. According to reports, South Asian merchants often continued to pay wages in kind. See “Klagen unserer europäischen Kaufleute im Innern der Kolonie,” DOAZ (16 April 1904), 1. 62. Sunseri, Vilimani, 65–66; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 219; Frederick, Twilight of an Industry, 182–185. 63. “Poscho an Träger in baar,” DOAZ (18 March 1905), 2; “Neue Bahnen!” DOAZ (5 May 1906), 2. 64. Lugan, “Le commerce de traite au Rwanda,” 249. 65. B. Arnold, Steuer und Lohnarbeit im Südwesten von Deutsch-Ostafrika, 13. 66. For the motives, see Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 66–68. 67. Ibid., 68. 68. Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 135–138; Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 63; Reif, Generationalität, 271–273. 69. See, for instance, Cameron, Across Africa, 151, 422–423.

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70. See F.  Becker, Becoming Muslim, 25. Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 157; Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, 88–116. 71. BAB, R 1001/119, report by Meyer, Tabora, 3 July 1906, 91. 72. Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 193–212; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 339–343, 406–410; Utermark, “Schwarzer Untertan versus schwarzer Bruder,” 65. 73. For plantations, see Sabea, “Pioneers of Empire,” 124; Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 158–159. For the concept, see Conrad, “Education for Work”; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 323–330; Sippel, “Wie erzieht man am besten.” 74. Interview with Nduli Njimbwi, in Gwassa and Iliffe, Records of the Maji Maji Rising, 5. 75. Sunseri, Vilimani, 70–71, 151–159. See also Cooper, Plantation Slavery, 200–212; Sabea, “Pioneers of Empire,” 125. 76. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 158; BAB, R 1001/119, report by Meyer, Tabora, 11 May 1906, 79–80. 77. BAB, R 1001/118, “Verordnung betreffend die Abschliessung von Arbeitsverträgen mit Farbigen,” 27 December 1896, 62; “Verordnung betreffend die Abschließung von Arbeitsverträgen mit Farbigen,” 12 November 1897, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung III, 8–10. For a more thorough analysis of the labor codes in the different German colonies, see Utermark, “Schwarzer Untertan versus schwarzer Bruder,” 73–98; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 364–366; Sippel, “Wie erzieht man am besten,” 323–324. 78. Sunseri, Vilimani, 32–36. For slave ransoming, see ibid., 32–40.  Jan-­ Georg Deutsch, by contrast, argues that Gesindewesen has played only a minor role in German slavery policies. See Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition, 111–112. 79. See BAB, R 1001/7382, “Berichte der einzelnen Verwaltungsstellen in Deutsch-Ostafrika über die Sklaverei,” [1899], 43. 80. Leipzig Mission Central Archives, Ndala Mission, Section XIV, vol. 97, 11 September 1896, cited after Mann, Mikono ya damu, 205. 81. BAB, R 1001/973, “Bericht des Regierungsrats Chrapkowski über die Verkehrsstrasse von Chinde zum Nyassa-See,” 1906, 31. 82. BAB, R 1001/120, “Protokoll der Sitzung des Verbandes Deutsch Ostafrikanischer Pflanzungen,” Berlin, 20 November 1907, 49. 83. BAB, R 1001/831, “Runderlass,” 22 March 1905, 7. 84. Medizinal-Berichte über die deutschen Schutzgebiete für das Jahr 1903/04, 74, 79. 85. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 591–599. 86. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 7. 87. Ibid., 221–224.

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88. See Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 343. 89. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee im Jahre 1901/2,” 5271. 90. BAB, R 1001/118, “Zusammenstellung der an der Küste üblichen Lohnsätze,” 1903, 146; BAB, R 1001/786e, “Runderlass,” 6 April 1900, 136. 91. TNA, G21/5, District Court Dar es Salaam, “Sühne-Sache,” Dar es Salaam, 24 October 1899, file A30/99. See also TNA, G1/35, Grewert to Government, Kisaki, 11 June 1895, 53. 92. TNA, G1/35, Kleist to Government, Songea, 24 January 1899, 133; TNA, G1/8, Ewerbek, “Grenzreisebericht,” Lumbila, 22 December 1899, 43. 93. TNA, G21/7, District Court Dar es Salaam, “Sühnesache,” Dar es Salaam, 28 May 1901; TNA, G1/26, Gansser to Government, Tabora, 20 September 1900, 96. 94. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 221. 95. “Eine Klage über den augenblicklichen Stand der Arbeiter- und Trägerfrage aus Tabora,” DOAZ (11 March 1905), 6; “Bericht über die Arbeit des Kolonial-Wirtschaftlichen Komitees im Jahre 1904/05,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 11. Legislaturperiode, 2. Session, 4. Anlageband (Berlin: Sittenfeld, 1906), 3015; “Bericht des Regierungsrates Chrapkowski über seine Reise vom Tanganyika- zum Nyassassee unter Benutzung der Stevenson Road,” DOAZ (18 August 1906), 5; BAB, R 1001/812, “Gouvernementsrat zu Daressalam, 4. Sitzung,” 11 September 1905, 77. 96. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 79, 85. I am much obliged to Stephen J. Rockel for pointing me to this circumstance. 97. TNA, G21/124, testimony by Georgius Zographakis, Dar es Salaam, 6 December 1905, 49. 98. TNA, G21/124, “Öffentliche Sitzung des Kaiserlichen Bezirksgerichts,” Dar es Salaam, 2 February 1906, 66–72. 99. BAB, R 1001/831, Beckler to Government, Lushoto, 20 November 1909, 10–11; BAB, R 1001/831, testimony of Sergeant Faupel, Dar es Salaam, 12 March 1910, 12; TNA, G21/124, “Strafsache gegen den Elefantenjäger Wolfson wegen fahrlässiger Tötung,” Tabora, 9 February 1910; “Aus der Hauptverhandlung des Totschlag-Prozesses Düttmann vor dem Obergericht,” DOAZ (7 July 1910), 2; TNA, G21/71, “Strafsache gegen den Schlossermeister und Wagenfabrikanten Andreas Haller,” Tabora, 9 August 1913. For the prosecution of European violence, see also Söldenwagner, Spaces of Negotiation, 198–201; Sippel and Aas, Koloniale Konflikte.

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100. TNA, G21/124, “Öffentliche Sitzung des Kaiserlichen Bezirksgerichts,” Dar es Salaam, 2 February 1906, 72. 101. Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionswerk Leipzig, Halle/Saale (hereafter ELM), II.32.135, Moshi station daybook 1902–1908, “Aus Moschi: Allerlei Mitteilungen von Missionar Fassmann,” [c. 1906]. 102. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 219. 103. Ibid., 195. For strategies of resistance in expeditions, see ibid., 179–195. 104. TNA, G1/35, Grawert to Government, Kisaki, 11 June 1895, 52. For another example of a strike, see BAB, R 1001/260, Kandt to Government, Kwa Kaissukka, 20 October 1900, 134. See also TNA, G1/26, Gansser to Government, Tabora, 20 September 1900, 95–97. 105. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 195;  Sunseri, Vilimani, 59–60.  See  TNA, G1/35, District Office Kilwa to Government, Kilwa, 19 November 1899, 170. See also TNA, G1/8, Ewerbeck, “Grenzbericht,” Lumbira, 31 December 1899, 43; as well as “Die Karawane des Herrn Löther,” DOAZ (24 June 1899), 5. 106. TNA, G21/124, “Öffentliche Sitzung des Kaiserlichen Bezirksgerichts,” Dar es Salaam, 2 February 1906, 71. 107. TNA, G1/8, Ewerbek, “Grenzreisebericht,” Lumbila, 22 December 1899, 43. 108. Biermann, Tanganyika Railways, 12. 109. Historians of colonial Africa have repeatedly pointed to the problematic value of court documents, whose narrative was shaped by agents of the state. Lorena Rizzo summarizes that “[n]arratives constructed by colonial courts are considered particularly distorted and the value of court documents for the reconstruction of the past, let alone for the “recovering” of subaltern voices and actions, is […] questionable.” See Rizzo, “Elephant Shooting.” See also Dickermann, “Court Records.” 110. For another account of the trading venture, discussing the violent acts and crimes of the hide traders, see Sunseri, “Hide Trade.” 111. See the different witness reports in TNA, G1/26, “Verhandlungen betreffend des Überfalls der Karawane des Engländers Tarte Bos,” Kondoa-­ Irangi, 23 May 1900, 70–81. 112. TNA, G1/26, testimony of Braumüller, Kondoa-Irangi, 24 July 1900, 75. 113. TNA, G1/26, District Office to Government, Tanga, 30 March 1901, 111; TNA, G1/26, District Office to Government, Tanga, 2 September 1901, 130. 114. TNA, G1/26, Schmidt to District Court Tanga, Tanga, 7 July 1901, 124. 115. TNA, G1/26, Military Station to District Court Tanga, Mpwapwa, 14 November 1900, 107; TNA, G1/26, Imperial District Judge to Government, Tanga, 19 August 1901, 129.

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116. TNA, G1/26, Government to Military Station Mwanza, Dar es Salaam, 7 January 1902, 141. 117. Ibid., 145. 118. TNA, G1/26, public hearing, Tanga, 30 December 1903, 210–211. 119. TNA, G21/5, District Court Dar es Salaam, “Sühnesache,” Dar es Salaam, 24 October 1899; TNA, G1/26, Gansser to Government, Tabora, 20 September 1900, 95–97; TNA, G1/26, Government to District Judge, Dar es Salaam, 1 March 1901, 118; TNA, G21/7, District Court Dar es Salaam, “Sühnesache,” Dar es Salaam, 28 May 1901; TNA, G1/26, report by Müller, Dar es Salaam, 22 June 1901, 125; TNA, G21/8, Military Station Bismarckburg, “Sühnesache,” Kasanga, 9 November 1901; “Bekanntmachung,” Anzeigen für Tanga (24 October 1903), 2. 120. See also Schaper, Koloniale Verhandlungen, 30. 121. A similar case is observed by Stefanie Michels for Cameroon. There, a group of porters filed a petition to the German consul in Monrovia because explorer Eugen Zintgraff had broken the contract. See Michels, Schwarze deutsche Kolonialsoldaten, 64–65. 122. Andrew Zimmerman, for instance, observes for German East Africa’s border to Mozambique that it “presented both threats and opportunities for political and economical development in the south.” Zimmerman, “What Do You Really Want,” 439. 123. Nugent and Asiwaju, “The Paradox of African Boundaries”; Asiwaju, “The Conceptual Framework”; Nugent, Boundaries, Communities and State-Making; Vaughan, “Violence and Regulation.” For a theoretical conception of borderlands, see Baud and van Schendel, “Borderlands.” For examples of border crossing as a means of evasion in colonial East Africa, see Isaacman, Cotton is the Mother of Poverty, 210–213; Isaacman and Isaacman, The Tradition of Resistance in Mozambique, 105. 124. Asiwaju, “Migrations as Revolt.” 125. “Über die Arbeiterfrage in Zukunft für die Nordbezirke und DOA,” Usambara-Post (21 September 1907); BAB, R 1001/118, A. Fonck to Government, Moshi, 7 March 1905, 210; BAB, R 1001/118, Bock to Government, Arusha, 22 February 1905, 211; BAB, R 1001/118, Stuemer to Government, Bukoba, 15 March 1905, 214; BAB, R 1001/118, Stuhlmann to Government, Dar es Salaam, 13 January 1905, 215. 126. BAB, R 1001/119, report by Meyer, Port Florence, 14 March 1906, 63. According to oral evidence collected by members of the Maji Maji Research Project, everyday violence in the German system was so ubiquitous that in southern Tanzania, all interviewees stressed its occurrence: “Beating was the most notorious characteristic of German rule in the

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Lindi District. All the informants stressed this factor. It was the single source of discontent known everywhere.” See Maji Maji Research Project, 7/68/2/1, Libaba, “The Maji Maji Rising in the Lindi District,” 5. 127. BAB, R 1001/127, Brode to Bülow, Mombasa, 9 May 1908, 47. 128. BAB, R 1001/119, report by Meyer, Port Florence, 14 March 1906, 61; BAB, R 1001/127, Götzen to Foreign Office, 28 September 1905, 35–36. 129. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 162; BAB, R 1001/119, report by Meyer, Port Florence, 14 March 1906, 60–61; For the safari tourism industry, see Simmons, “Selling the African Wilds”; Steinhart, Black Poachers, White Hunters, 111–146; as well as MacKenzie, Empire of Nature, 148–166. 130. See also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 218–219. 131. “Regulations to be observed by Caravan Leaders and others in the Engagement and Treatment of Porters,” The Gazette (17 October 1894), 9–10. 132. Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 5. 133. Mungeam, British Rule in Kenya, 19. 134. Zanzibar National Archives, Stone Town (hereafter ZNA), AL 2/76, “Regulations for the Registration and Protection of Porters,” 13 May 1896; National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew (hereafter KEW), FO 881/7176, “Registration and Protection of Porters,” [1898]; KEW, FO 403/589, “Employment of Porters,” 1899, 725; KEW, FO 881/7204, “Porters from East Africa,” 1899. 135. KEW, FO 403/589, “Native Labour Regulations,” 30 November 1900, 137–140; KEW, FO 881/7678, “Native Porters and Labour Regulations,” 17 February 1902. For an outline of the regulations, see Clayton and Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya, 9–10. 136. D.  Anderson, “Master and Servant in Colonial Kenya,” 461. See also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 218. 137. Okia, Communal Labor in Colonial Kenya, 9–36. 138. TNA, G1/35, Bennigsen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 1 October 1896, 93. 139. “Karawanen-Verordnungen bei uns und unseren britischen Nachbarn,” DOAZ (5 April 1902), 1. 140. Ibid. 141. Sunseri, Vilimani, 11–14. For Götzen’s support of white settlement, see also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 251–258. 142. Sunseri, Vilimani, 53; Bald, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 145. 143. Kolonialpolitisches Aktionskomitee, Die Eisenbahnen Afrikas, 134. 144. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 612; Sunseri, Vilimani, 59; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 65. See, for instance, “Auszüge aus dem Vortrag, gehalten vom Plantagenbesitzer Mismahl,”

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DOAZ (28 April 1900), 6; Kolonialpolitisches Aktionskomitee, Die Eisenbahnen Afrikas, 150–152; “Über die Arbeiterfrage in Zukunft für die Nordbezirke und DOA,” Usambara-Post (21 September 1907), n.p.; Dix, Verkehrspolitik, 74; “Denkschrift betreffend die Weiterführung der Eisenbahn Daressalam–Morogoro bis Tabora,” 23. 145. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 949; TNA, G4/46, Götzen to Spalding, Dar es Salaam, 24 September 1901, 5. 146. See Sunseri, Vilimani, 56; and Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 377. 147. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 367. 148. For this council, see Bald, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 97–99; Weckner, Strafrecht, 81–82; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 257; Iliffe, Tanganyika, 85–88. 149. BAB, R 1001/812, “Gouvernementsrat zu Daressalam, 4. Sitzung,” 11 September 1905, 76. 150. Ibid., 75. 151. Ibid., 76. 152. Ibid. 153. This question is discussed, among others, in Perrot, Die Zukunft Deutsch-Ostafrikas. 154. “Eine Klage über den augenblicklichen Stand der Arbeiter- und Trägerfrage aus Tabora,” DOAZ (11 March 1905), 6; “Die Wanyamwezis sollen Träger bleiben!” DOAZ (18 March 1905), 1; “Aus Tabora,” DOAZ (10 June 1905), 2; “Verkehrserleichterung,” DOAZ (26 January 1907), 3; “Beschwerden über Trägermangel,” DOAZ (16 February 1907), 2. 155. BAB, R 1001/812, “Gouvernementsrat zu Daressalam, 4. Sitzung,” 11 September 1905, 75. 156. Ibid., 77–78. 157. BAB, R 1001/118, “Runderlass,” 25 October 1905, 216. 158. BAB, R 1001/120, Herrmann to Government, Tabora, 15 June 1907, 113; BAB, R 1001/120, Dernburg to Voith, Berlin, 31 December 1907, 10–17; BAB, R 1001/119, “Denkschrift über die Versorgung der europäischen Pflanzungen in den Nordbezirken von Deutsch-Ost-Afrika mit eingeborenen Arbeitern,” 1907, 193. 159. BAB, R 1001/127, Rechenberg to District Office Mwanza, Dar es Salaam, 29 July 1907, 41; BAB, R 1001/121, Rechenberg to Imperial Colonial Office, Dar es Salaam 16 December 1908, 119–120. 160. BAB, R 1001/5379, “Verfügung betreffend die Anwendung körperlicher Züchtigung als Strafmittel gegen Eingeborene der afrikanischen Schutzgebiete,” Berlin, 12 July 1907, 90–91. “Verordnung betreffend

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die Anwerbung von Eingeborenen in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (28 February 1909), 1–3; “Verordnung betreffend die Rechtsverhältnisse eingeborener Arbeiter,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (28 February 1909), 3–6. For a detailed analysis of the new ordinances, see Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 370–376; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 233–249; Utermark, “Schwarzer Untertan versus schwarzer Bruder,” 231–232. 161. BAB, R 1001/119, “Denkschrift über die Versorgung der europäischen Pflanzungen in den Nordbezirken von Deutsch-Ost-Afrika mit eingeborenen Arbeitern,” 1907, 196. 162. “Verordnung betreffend die Rechtsverhältnisse eingeborener Arbeiter,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (28 February 1909), 3. 163. BAB, R 1001/121, Dernburg to Rechenberg, Berlin, 30 January 1909, 68. 164. Sunseri, Vilimani, 165–192. 165. For “wild” recruitment in the interior, see ibid., 138–148.

CHAPTER 5

Managing Mobility: The Colonial State as a Gatekeeper of Caravan Travel

Throughout the two and a half decades of German rule, the colonial authorities shied away from fully colonizing caravan mobility. As I have demonstrated in Chaps. 3 and 4, administrators carefully dosed their efforts to regulate and rationalize the dynamic system, hoping to safeguard its lucrative trade flows and the compliance of businessmen and caravan workers. As a result, the problems inherent to caravan transport remained unsolved and travel parties continued raiding their way into the interior. Adding to these evils, after the turn of the century state officials came to regard uncontrolled African mobility as a health threat when plague and sleeping sickness epidemics ravaged East Africa. These continual hazards to public order demanded an answer from the German policymakers. Beyond what Governor von Götzen described as a “laissez aller, laissez faire”1 attitude towards the caravan sector, colonizers were constrained to conceive administrative practices which allowed them to manage caravan mobility, while simultaneously ensuring that they did not overstrain their grip on this volatile business. The present chapter studies this process. Continuing and partially concluding the thread of the two preceding chapters regarding the governance of transport, its central argument is that state agents chose channeling mobility over preventing it. The argument thus follows Valeska Huber’s observation, made in the context of the Suez Canal region, that © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2_5

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the period around 1900 was “characterised by the channelling of mobility, or to be more precise, the differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of different kinds of movement.”2 In like vein, Darshan Vigneswaran and Joel Quirk propose “the term channeling to capture the irregular and intermittent way in which states seek to determine the speed, rhythm, routes, and meaning of mobility.”3 In response to the different problems associated with caravan travel, asI will show, state officials aimed at establishing the German East African state as a “gatekeeper” of mobility. Frederick Cooper has proposed the term “gatekeeper state” to explain the mode of governance of different regimes in sub-Saharan Africa.4 While colonial states (as well as their postcolonial epigones) turned out to be too weak to enforce direct rule over their territories, Cooper observes that “[w]hat they could do was to sit astride the interface between a territory and the rest of the world, collecting and distributing resources that derived from the gate itself.”5 Refining Cooper’s observation, recent scholarship in African history has pointed out that gatekeeping was one administrative practice besides others: regimes exerted control over the population through violence and coercion while at the same time keeping the gates.6 The German Empire was not the first power to act as a gatekeeper in East Africa. In the decades before colonization, the Sultanate of Zanzibar, a “commercial empire” (Abdul Sheriff), had played a similar role.7 As Marek Pawełczak argues: “Zanzibar was rightly perceived as the gate-­ keeper and policeman of the coast. He who ruled the caravan terminals largely determined the terms on which participants of long-distance trade were admitted to the profits.”8 Pawełczak, whose research provides deep insights into Zanzibar’s political system, observes that the Sultanate was not a territorial state on the East African mainland but one that claimed power through personal allegiances. Farther away from the coast, the Sultan’s power was limited. What the Sultanate could do to exert control over the trade routes, however, was to control their nodal points at the coast: the Zanzibar state channeled trade and mobility between the interior and the Indian Ocean, controlling the influx of goods and people to and the outflux of commodities from the mainland.9 After the founding of German East Africa, the new colonial state tried to assume Zanzibar’s role. Different branches of the administration developed mechanisms to channel the movement of travelers both to the inside of the colonial territory and across its borders: first in the suppression of violent acts and vagrancy along the routes, later for the purpose of

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collecting customs revenues and preserving the African labor force, and later still in the struggle against epidemic diseases. In the following analysis, I explore the administrative and spatial tools with which colonial rule attempted to intervene in its mobile population (which was to be controlled and channeled) and its area (which was to be transformed into a bordered territory). The emergence of the colonial gatekeeper state, as I will illuminate in this chapter, was neither a streamlined process nor unopposed. Investigating how caravan travelers adapted to and subverted the ongoing intrusion into their everyday routines, throughout this chapter, I discuss the fissures and weak capabilities of the tools used to control their mobility.

Legal and Spatial Tools of Gatekeeping, 1889–1906 In the founding years of the colony, under Imperial Commissioner Hermann von Wissmann and Governor Julius von Soden, the colonial administration cautiously began to regulate caravan mobility. With the introduction of travel permits in 1889 and 1892, state officials equipped themselves with the tools to authorize and prohibit caravan travel. As discussed in Chap. 3, the travel permit system was closely connected to the measures implemented to repopulate the ravaged caravan routes. As demonstrated, this system existed only on paper. Off the colonial centers, inspection and surveillance were impossible, given the non-compliance of caravan travelers. At least in the major coastal towns, however, German officials could monitor the activities of arriving and departing caravans. By 1892, the administration had established six district offices in trade centers at the Swahili coast. In these towns, officials monitored caravan arrivals and departures, guarding the virtual gates between the interior and the world market. The coastal gateways to the networks of long-distance caravan trade became gates on their own.10 There, not only the export of commodities was regulated but also the mobility of travelers in either direction of the gates. As a gatekeeping practice, travel permits allowed for an inspection of caravans before their departure. By collecting information on the travel parties and their equipment, German authorities ensured that caravans did not carry an excessive number of firearms but instead that they were in possession of enough cash, barter goods, or provisions to complete the journey without having to raid.11 Later, when the administration became more interested in the porters’ welfare, officials were also instructed to check if hired porters were fit and in good health.12

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Within the gateway towns, the central administration also created micro-level gates to control the towns’ in- and outflux. These so-called caravanserais became a tool of mobility management immediately after the Abushiri Uprising, being a part of the German campaign to stop the violence endemic on the caravan routes. As much as the Germans felt the need to protect the residents of the routes in the Tanzanian interior against thievish porters, they were concerned about the safety of urban dwellers at the routes’ coastal endpoints.13 The situation in Bagamoyo demanded particular attention around 1890. The trading hub continued to enjoy great popularity among trade caravans after the colonial takeover. In June and July 1890, the town was inhabited by at least 12,000 porters.14 In the precolonial and early colonial caravan economy, porters from the interior often stayed for periods of up to six months before returning to their home regions.15 After their arrival, they usually pitched their tents, accommodated themselves in the warehouses of South Asian merchants, or built huts all over the town’s streets. While staying in Bagamoyo, many porters regularly got drunk or got into fights.16 This unruly behavior became a source of trouble for the Deutsch-­ Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft during its interregnum in the 1880s. In May 1886, for instance, a DOAG agent informed the German consulate in Zanzibar that “on occasion of a dance night, a brawl sparked during which shots with light weapons caused several wounds.”17 The responsible porters bolted inland with another caravan before the company could detain them.18 Owing to these experiences with porters, in the view of the German colonizers the town’s seasonal over-crowding bore serious safety and health concerns for Bagamoyo’s permanent residents.19 Historian Steven Fabian contends that the colonizers felt the need “to control and organize the sprawling, rowdy nature of the porter encampments which were spread across the town.”20 In addition to criminal acts, state officials saw the danger of blackwater fever, smallpox, and other epidemics entering the town with caravans. Cholera pandemics had struck East Africa in 1859 and 1869, the latter carrying off 1500 people in Bagamoyo within only five weeks.21 By 1890, the poor health of arriving porters together with their unregulated influx into the coastal town still led to a high mortality rate in Bagamoyo—a German observer estimated that up to ten porters died of dysentery every day—and posed a risk of contagion for its residents.22 In early 1890, Imperial Commissioner Hermann von Wissmann encouraged the DOAG to build a new porter encampment: the Bagamoyo

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Caravanserai.23 In his article “East Africa’s Gorée,” Steven Fabian has already addressed the history of this building. However, while he has pointed to the colonizers’ desire to bring order into the urban chaos (see above), he did not investigate the caravanserai’s role and meaning for colonial governance further, instead concluding that it served as “a hostel for free upcountry porters.”24 In the following, I will expand and complicate Fabian’s observations, highlighting the importance of caravanserais for the colonial gatekeeper state. Caravanserais in East Africa were a colonial reinvention. Along perilous routes, travel parties in the long-distance trade had sometimes constructed enclosed camps with thorn fences to protect themselves against thievish settlements, structures which were usually repaired and reused by following caravans.25 But the caravanserais built by the Germans bore a crucial difference to these camps. Whereas it was the aim of the former buildings to provide secure accommodation for travelers, the fortification of the new caravanserais was not so much turned outward but in reverse was to protect the outer world from those involved in caravan transport. This expectation was expressed in von Wissmann’s agreement with the DOAG, according to which “in the different coastal centers, accommodating caravans arriving from the interior in designated spaces outside the towns and creating appropriate storage rooms for the products they carry [will] facilitate a supervision and policing of traffic.”26 This is what made the planned Bagamoyo Caravanserai specifically “colonial.” To counteract the outlined dangers, the new colonial administration aimed at eliminating the uncontrolled circulation of the thousands of seasonal workers in the town. At von Wissmann’s instigation, in 1890 the DOAG swiftly erected the complex on a plot allocated by the colonial authorities. Its structure consisted of a central courtyard, in the center of which stood a two-story stone building (Fig. 5.1). Around it, 10 sheds were arranged in a circle, each of them with the capacity to accommodate 500 porters. The entire plot was enclosed by barbed wire fences.27 The Bagamoyo Caravanserai was only the first step in a wider network of control infrastructure. In 1892, von Soden encouraged station commanders at the inland stopovers of caravans to construct similar facilities for the purpose of sanitation and control.28 While his advice did not yield immediate reaction from the officials, by 1900, caravanserais existed in Mwanza, as well as the coastal caravan hubs of Pangani, Saadani, and Dar es Salaam. Later, caravanserais were also constructed in Tabora (1908) and Tanga (1913).29

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Fig. 5.1  Bagamoyo Caravanserai, 1897. Source: Frankfurt University Library, Image Collection of the German Colonial Society, 012-1135-01

While there is almost no information on the other caravanserais, the few available sources on the facilities in Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam suggest that these spatial arrangements must be considered an important part of the larger ensemble of tools and practices of gatekeeping and mobility management. As such, they served a dual purpose. First, they were gates between the caravan routes and the settlements at their end points and junctures. The police force of Bagamoyo intercepted arriving caravans, confiscated their weapons, and escorted them to the district office, which controlled their travel permits and registered all trade goods. The porters were then channeled to the caravanserai.30 In this way, officials ensured that porters were disarmed and trade goods registered at the customs offices. The second purpose was to separate caravanners from the urban population. The location of both caravanserais reflected both functions. In Bagamoyo as well as Dar es Salaam, they were constructed on the outskirts of the towns. Located off the city limits, the facilities were supposed to prevent the caravan workers from engaging with the local population upon arrival and ensured that leaving caravans would not cross the town on decampment. Transport workers, however, were not simply pushed to the town limits. Rather, their concentration inside the caravanserai was

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supposed to regulate their mobility and conduct. With this function, the caravanserais corresponded to other camps emerging across colonial Africa in the late nineteenth century: “As technologies designed to discipline unruly populations, camps controlled the movement of refugees, wanderers, and those deemed ‘out of place.’ […] At their core, camps changed the relationship between populations and space: they relocated mobile bodies to fixed and observable sites,” Aidan Forth recently observed.31 The Bagamoyo Caravanserai’s layout provides evidence of this purpose. The sheds were arranged in a radial pattern around a central building thus bearing a similarity to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon from 1791, the model prison famously described by Michel Foucault, which was planned in a way that prisoners must expect to be under constant surveillance.32 Very similar to Bentham’s conception, on paper, the caravanserai architecture organized a space in which porters were subject to continual observation. The DOAG thus assured the German officials when presenting the Bagamoyo Caravanserai’s construction plans in January 1890 that “the radial pattern allows […] a facilitated surveillance.”33 To this end, the district office operated a permanent police post inside the caravanserai’s central building.34 A similar structure was found in the Dar es Salaam Caravanserai, in which fences and gates forced any person to pass a control post when trying to leave or enter the complex. Its purpose was to “facilitate control and prevent any threat to temperance [Sittlichkeit].”35 Concentrating porters within the caravanserai’s walls also allowed the authorities to subject them to a medical examination. To prevent epidemics prevalent in the East African interior, in particular the sleeping sickness (see below), after 1903 checks were run on all arriving porters.36 Caravanserais were the spatial manifestation of colonial attempts to regulate African mobility in the nodal points of the major caravan routes. Still, despite their physical enclosure, people staying inside were hardly isolated from their neighborhoods. First of all, it was only in 1905 that an ordinance declared the Bagamoyo Caravanserai the only legitimate spaces for porters to overnight in the town.37 Before that, the caravanserai coexisted with established modes of housing such as temporary huts built by porters across the town. That it took the authorities over a decade to come to this decision was a result of conflicts between the DOAG and the central administration over the complex’s operational costs. Only then did von Götzen acknowledge “that it appears practical, at present, to agglomerate porters in caravanserais for the purpose of policing.”38

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But even in Dar es Salaam, where an ordinance making it illegal for porters to camp anywhere else but inside the caravanserai was issued earlier, caravan workers retained relations with the surrounding community.39 In 1903, the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung still observed “unbearable conditions” in the nearby streets, where “thousands of Wanyamwezi porters have built their grass huts around the caravanserai.”40 Although the authorities arranged the architecture in a way that discouraged porters from leaving the site, they could not prevent it: the newspaper reported that “besides the official entrance the enclosure displays several breaches in the fence, being much-frequented as the well-trodden footpaths show.”41 Because encamped porters did not conform to the spatial barriers, caravanserais never obtained any hermetic status. Still, their construction and operation testify to the colonial efforts to establish the administration as a gatekeeper of caravan mobility. In terms of legislation, the colonial state continued to pursue this role after the turn of the century, but it shifted its modes of granting or denying access. By 1905, the practicability of the travel permit system, originally introduced by von Wissmann, was more and more called into question in the government offices of Dar es Salaam. This was not for its apparent weakness but because the obligation to obtain a permit for every single journey appeared too bureaucratic to the settler-friendly administration under von Götzen. Labor shortages at the coastal plantations gave his administration serious cause for concern. To stimulate the migration of Wanyamwezi to the coast, as described in the previous chapter, state officials pondered over the protection of porters, leading to a heated debate in the Governmental Council. During the same meeting in September 1905, the council also debated a revision of the existing mobility regime.42 The council members deemed the existing system obsolete because they regarded vast parts of the colony, especially the major settler areas, as administratively developed and “pacified” so that there was no more need for travel permits. On the other hand, the German administrators acknowledged that experience has taught us that outside of the effective spheres of influence of the local bodies of governance, the existing caravan legislation had turned out to be improper to maintain law and order in the face of violent elements. […] [Therefore], a legal basis for controlling caravan travels of non-natives in remote areas has to be implemented.43

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These “violent elements” were not African but European travelers. With the intrusion of settlers and the promise of easy riches waiting in the colony, German East Africa had increasingly become a playground for European fortune hunters, sportsmen, and swashbucklers. Pretending to act in the name of the government, some of these troublemakers tried to seize labor and supplies from the local population.44 In addition, as Thaddeus Sunseri has illuminated, cattle rustling became a frequent occurrence in different regions. At the turn of the century, cattle hides and skins (a rarity after the Rinderpest epizootic) were among the most profitable export goods and attracted many shady Europeans.45 Besides these excesses, closing specific routes became also necessary because of regional famines and outbursts of warfare, especially in south-eastern Tanzania.46 To regulate travel into insecure or endangered regions, in April 1906 the government enacted the Verordnung betreffend den öffentlichen Verkehr im deutsch-ostafrikanischen Schutzgebiet (Ordinance on the Public Traffic in the German East African Protectorate) which replaced the 1892 regulations.47 Instead of the previous territory-wide regulations, more localized and tailor-made measures were expected to prevent travelers from entering those areas that lacked an adequate official presence. As a general rule, freedom of movement was made the new principle.48 But the ordinance also authorized the central administration to declare certain areas or roads as closed for a specific time span, if “it appears that the native population of such areas is not sufficiently advanced to allow unlimited public traffic.”49 For closed areas, any “non-native” as well as non-resident African travelers were banished unless explicitly permitted via a travel permit similar to the existing ones. When the ordinance was enacted, nine out of 22 districts were immediately closed to the public, including Usumbura (i.e., Rwanda and Urundi) and Bukoba, which were transformed into so-called Residencies in the same year.50 Although it was enacted with the intent of keeping European transgressors in check, the ordinance applied to all “non-natives” and thus also to South Asian and Omani caravan entrepreneurs. Its rationale, as historian Bernard Lugan observes for Rwanda, was that “on the one hand, the authorities recognized the need for an economic development in Rwanda which necessarily involved the settlement of Arabs, Swahili, and Indians. On the other hand, these same authorities wanted to have a certain control over these foreigners and exercise a right to monitor their activities.”51 Implicitly, the ordinance was also equipped to govern the mobility of Africans. Even when not traveling through closed areas, it obliged parties

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with more than five participants, no matter under whose leadership, to provide detailed information when requested by the local police authorities. More than that, von Götzen instructed the stations to control always those caravans without a European command and hence recommended as best practice to continue with routinely issuing travel permits, not only within the areas under special protection but on a colony-wide scale.52 The new features of mobility management were thus added to the existing permission scheme rather than replacing it.

Policing Trans-border Mobility While monitoring and managing the mobility of caravans within German East Africa appeared necessary to protect the residents of the caravan routes from violent travelers, caravans crossing the colonial borders to and from foreign territories posed additional challenges to the authorities from the earliest years of occupation onwards. As much as the ordinance of 1892 and the new caravanserais were meant to channel mobility to the inside of the German territory, to the outside, border controls fulfilled similar functions. Caravans traversing colonial borders became a matter of both inter-imperial cooperation and competition. In her study of trans-­ colonial entanglements between the African colonies of Germany and Britain, Ulrike Lindner points to the complex interactions of their administrators.53 German authorities, she has shown, engaged with the concepts and regulations of their British neighbors—a fact that also became apparent in my analysis of labor codes in the previous chapter. In the remainder of this chapter, I pick up Lindner’s observation that cooperation and competition went hand in hand in the interactions of colonial powers in Eastern Africa. As I explain, the coexistence of these two modes was particularly evident in the responses to the different challenges that African trans-border caravan mobility entailed for colonial statehood. Trade, to begin with, meant competition in the 1890s. Ivory trading was a main source of income not only for the young colonial regime of German East Africa but also for those in the Congo Free State and the East Africa Protectorate. Precolonial trade corridors, however, cut across the newly drawn borders of these colonies. Trade activities thus evaded their extraction by single colonial economies. The General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1884/1885 had originally conceptualized the Congo Basin and its neighboring regions in East Africa as a free trade zone.54 Still, competition between the different empires active in the world

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region arose over the collection of customs revenues. The officials in the Congo Free State and the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC), the chartered company governing Kenya, could not simply permit the ivory collected in their colonies to follow the call of Zanzibar and be brought onto the route network of the German territory.55 To preserve ivory flows within their respective colonies, British and Belgian officials created trade barriers. As mentioned earlier, the IBEAC sought to attract caravans to Mombasa by fortifying the major caravan route of Kenya. But it also applied more protectionist means. By September 1891 the British, as much as the Belgians, had begun levying tariffs on the export of ivory.56 While the IBEAC demanded an export tariff of 15 percent, the Belgian authorities in the Congo had the ambition to smash the ivory trade on the established route from the eastern Congo via Lake Tanganyika to the Indian Ocean coast. As a consequence of heavy export tariffs, by the mid-1890s most ivory from the Congo Basin was redirected towards the Atlantic Ocean.57 In reaction to these trade disputes on both borders, the German administration introduced export tariffs to prevent ivory collected in Tanzania from going westward or northward, 15 percent for exports to the East Africa Protectorate and 10 percent to the Congo.58 Customs regulations were later harmonized for all land borders, including those to Mozambique, fixing the tariffs on ivory exports at 15 percent.59 As Bernhard Gissibl argues, after this competition over resources, “the second half of the 1890s developed into a period of intense cooperation between German and British authorities”60 as both administrations began to cooperate with regards to wildlife conservation and the suppression of ivory smuggling.61 Policing cross-border trade, however, faced the same obstacles as policing mobility within Tanzania, both suffering from the understaffed administration and thus being catered to caravans traveling on the major routes alone. Instead of establishing a border guard, the central administration burdened a number of existing stations with the task to police the 3800 kilometers of land borders: Ujiji, Bujumbura, and Kasanga (Bismarckburg) for Lake Tanganyika; Mwaja, Lumbila (Langenburg), Manda (Wiedhafen), Songea, as well as a post in Unjika, south of Lake Rukwa, for the southern borderlands and Lake Nyasa; Mwanza, Shirati, and Bukoba for Lake Victoria; and Lushoto (Wilhelmstal), as well as Moshi and its sub-post Marangu for the north of Tanzania. These stations were hardly capable of controlling the vibrant caravan traffic, a task that was added to their other administrative duties.62 Even by the 1910s, the entire state apparatus still

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comprised only 401 German officials in the civil administration and an additional 195 in the Schutztruppe.63 As a result, the colonial gates existed only on paper; only seldom did they materialize in space. Historian Patrick Krajewski observes for shipping on the Swahili coast that, in spite of the eight customs offices and eighteen subordinate stations, the German authorities estimated 20–50 percent of the vessels to be involved in smuggling activities.64 For the land borders, no contemporary estimate could be retrieved from the archives. Still, as late as 1906 the official Trade Report still admitted that “it is without doubt that along our long land borders, as well as on the lakes, a lot [of trade] escapes the eye of the customs authorities and their poorly organized controls.”65 Similar processes of inter-imperial competition and reinforced but deficient border regimes also shaped German gatekeeping practices regarding a second precious resource, whose uncontrolled export could not be allowed: labor. In Chap. 2, I discussed the porter recruitment ban enacted in Bagamoyo in mid-1891 to enable Hermann von Wissmann to outfit an expedition. Later the same year, the British Empire enacted a labor export ban for the Zanzibar archipelago, over which it had taken command in 1890. On 11 September 1891, the British Consul-General, Gerald Portal, decreed that “all recruitment or enlistment of soldiers, coolies, and porters for service beyond His Highness’ dominions is and remains prohibited.”66 The export ban was a direct reaction to the continued depletion of able-­ bodied workers from Zanzibar to the mainland, where they were employed as porters.67 Similar to the trade flows, African cross-border mobility henceforth became a matter of competition between the European empires engaged in the world region. In 1896, the German administration decreed a labor export ban, making it illegal to hire workers in German East Africa for employment in other colonies.68 These regulations, however, were easy to circumvent as they were not catered to the trans-border movement of caravans. Porters crossed borders either as employees in caravans or to hire themselves out in the neighboring territories. Neither of these two modes was prohibited by the 1896 regulations: they allowed employers to hire porters for caravan journeys into foreign territories, from where their return was often uncertain, and at the same time they did not stop free wageworkers from crossing the border and seeking employment there.69 Four years later, the regulations were refined, again under the impression of policymaking in the neighboring colony. In April 1900, the British

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authorities in the East Africa Protectorate had begun to require all Africans to provide a passport when traveling from the East Africa Protectorate to German East Africa.70 They subsequently restrained African residents of German East Africa from returning to their homes because these people did not possess such documents.71 In June 1900, a complementary German ordinance thus made it mandatory for all Africans to procure a passport before crossing the border between today’s Tanzania and Kenya as well as Uganda. For people traveling in caravans, the leader had to obtain a travel permit, listing the names and home regions of every caravan member. German offices as well as the German-appointed maakida and loyal chiefs were authorized to issue such passports and entrusted with policing the border.72 Although controls were reinforced, borders remained permeable. On the main routes to Uganda and Kenya, the responsible district offices established border posts and staffed them with two Askari guards.73 Despite these posts, uncontrolled African movement across borders was a daily fare. In the Kilimanjaro region, for instance, labor migrants crossed the border in the direction of the Kenyan town of Taveta on a caravan path that was unknown to colonial authorities.74 The responsible station in Moshi was a six-hour walk from the border. Here, as along most parts of the borderlines, the material significance of territoriality was almost nonexistent, marked only by a border stone.75

Health Regimes in the Borderlands At the turn of the century, the permeability of German East Africa’s borders became a serious concern not only for customs collectors and labor recruiters but also for the German health authorities. Then, a plague epidemic ravaged East Africa. Facing a double threat of disease importation from Uganda and Zanzibar, the medical authorities immediately established measures to prevent the entry of infected persons into German East Africa. Quarantine regulations were first introduced in the port cities on the Indian Ocean to forestall a spread from Zanzibar.76 Along the land borders to British Uganda, disease prevention was linked to a reinforcement of mobility management.77 Colonial medical discourse had always been concerned about African mobility, especially that of transport workers.78 Colonial administrations classified porters as an unsanitary group, believing that the nature of their profession and their itineraries covering thousands of kilometers made

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them potential super-spreaders of transmittable diseases.79 Caravan routes, in this view, became highways of the plague, where “during these epidemics unburied corpses of their victims lie around at the waterholes and campsites in large numbers,”80 as a German critic of the caravan system wrote in 1899. Consequently, caravan mobility became a major target of the new medical border regime fortified against the plague. Beginning in 1902, medical officers were attached to the border post Kifumbiro on the western littoral of Lake Victoria, which had existed since 1896 as a sub-post of the military station at Bukoba. This location, where caravans usually crossed the Kagera River, allowed the authorities to examine porters entering the German colony on the popular caravan route from Uganda.81 From Kifumbiro, caravans were ordered to march on to Bukoba where a quarantine station had been established in 1899 in which travelers were demobilized for a period of 11 days if deemed necessary.82 Applying the same administrative tools as towards violent caravans, the government aimed at channeling mobility into the Tanzanian interior through the existing travel permit system in order to mitigate the risk of contagion.83 Underlying this ambition was the idea that when caravans continued their journey, the next stations were informed in advance about suspicious caravans “so that the caravans can be subjected to medical examination immediately and, if necessary, be put back on quarantine.”84 The inadequacy of these efforts to channel caravans after their entry from infested areas into the German territory, however, had already become apparent before caravans even traveled beyond the border region. In Bukoba, the district office instructed allied chiefs to control the travel permits and hinder caravans from leaving the main route in order to direct movement to this station.85 Still, these allies and the staff of the Kifumbiro post turned out to be incapable of monitoring the movement of travelers and residents on smaller routes. “While the constant monitoring of caravan traffic is guaranteed in this way,” thus wrote medical officer Karl Lott in April 1902, “the station does not possess the means to prevent natives from traveling to and from Uganda anywhere else along the land border or by ship.”86 The official concerns over illegitimate trans-border traffic in north-­ western Tanzania intensified when a second epidemic began to spread across Lake Victoria: human trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness. Transmitted by the bite of infected tsetse flies, sleeping sickness spread rapidly in the African Great Lakes region. During its major outbreak in the decade between 1896 and 1906, the disease took the lives of

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an estimated 750,000 Africans.87 But even after its peak, the disease would occupy the attention of all colonial administrations in East and Central Africa until well after the First World War.88 To counter the epidemic, all empires active in the region mounted anti-­ sleeping sickness campaigns. Strategies of medical intervention differed between the colonial regimes. Michael Worboys sums up the different approaches in control policy as “entomological in Uganda, epidemiological in the Congo, and microbiological in GEA.”89 Still, as previous research by Kirk A. Hoppe and others has pointed out, “all colonial powers implemented a combination of targeting trypanosomes, tsetse, and people.”90 More than that, they all revolved around one central issue: at the core of health measures, unhampered African mobility was considered a chief cause of the spread of the disease.91 In German East Africa, the first cases of human trypanosomiasis were registered in 1902, and it was Robert Koch who subsequently came to spearhead disease prevention.92 Between 1906 and 1907, the German pioneer of microbiology and Nobel laureate led an expedition to German East Africa and British Uganda to learn more about sleeping sickness and the treatment of patients. The findings of this expedition set the framework for the German anti-sleeping sickness campaign, which ran until the outbreak of the World War.93 In her detailed examination of the sleeping sickness campaign in three regions within German East Africa, Mari K. Webel recently discussed the broad array of measures implemented to control the disease’s spread. These ranged “from the forced depopulation of the lakeshores to the local eradication of crocodiles to experimental chemotherapies to the deforestation of fly habitats to the internment of the sick in isolation camps.”94 At least for some years, the control of porter mobility was one aspect of this broad set of measures, as the remainder of this chapter outlines.95 Disease prevention became again linked to the policing of the colonial territory, especially in the north-western borderlands of German East Africa, the Residencies of Bukoba and Urundi. To isolate and treat all possible infected people, medical officials established five isolation camps in the major danger areas near the British and Belgian borders.96 Besides other measures, Koch championed a closing of the borders to these colonies.97 As Webel points out, underlying the German efforts in the kingdom of Kiziba, located at the north-western edge of the German territory, was the “scientists’ confidence that the tsetse fly vector was absent from areas hit hardest by the disease in Bukoba district […]. They believed that

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Kiziba and [the neighboring kingdom of] Bugabu were not themselves ‘sources’ or foci of the infection.”98 Instead, similar to the plague, German medical officers thought of the sleeping sickness disease as an import from neighboring territories.99 While sleeping sickness could not be transmitted from human to human directly, tsetse flies functioned as vectors between infected and sane persons. To prevent infection chains from reaching the German colony, therefore, human disease carriers had to be identified and stopped at the borders.100 The ultimate way to manage trans-colonial mobility was to prohibit traffic, as Koch had championed.101 A border closure, however, was impossible to enforce with the limited resources over which the colonial regime commanded. Rubber collectors, fishermen, and many other people with social or commercial relations in the neighboring colonies regularly crisscrossed borderlines.102 Regarding more organized commercial ventures, trade caravans in particular, the German authorities were also aware that a strict closure of the border would have been economically destructive.103 Again, more tailor-made measures were required to preserve trading operations in the greater region while simultaneously allowing the medical officers to detect infected border crossers. Following Koch’s expedition, different medical officials thus recommended controlling the caravan traffic at Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika instead of closing the borders.104 While inter-imperial competition over policing the borders continued to exist in respect of trade and labor migration, all colonial powers were well aware that it was only through cooperation and coordinated action in the interlacustrine borderlands that the spread of sleeping sickness could be contained effectively. In 1907, the delegates of all empires active in Central and East Africa conferred in London. Because neither this conference nor a subsequent meeting in spring 1908 could bring about an agreement, the powers signed bilateral treaties.105 To monitor cross-border mobility between German East Africa and Uganda, an Anglo-German agreement stipulated in 1908 that sick travelers should be prevented from traveling into each other’s territories.106 Health officials subsequently sought to channel caravan movement, as Mari K. Webel observes for Lake Tanganyika: “Sleeping sickness control regulations on both caravans and dhows attempted to limit their arrival and departure to specific locations and their movements to specific routes, focusing on large groups of people and capital-intensive caravans and ships.”107 Loyal chiefs were ordered to detain border crossers and present

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them to medical officers.108 So-called gland-feelers (Drüsenfühler) were also posted to the main sea and land routes to Uganda where they monitored the ship and caravan traffic.109 As Webel illuminates, these medical auxiliaries were an important part of the sleeping sickness campaign in Kiziba. The health authorities relied on the cooperation of these local intermediaries, who roamed from village to village and checked the local population for visible glands in the neck, which were an indication of the disease.110 In 1910, Governor von Rechenberg declared all but two land routes to Uganda closed in an effort to channel cross-border traffic through the medical checkpoint in Kifumbiro.111 At Lake Tanganyika, medical inspection points were established in 1911 in Bujumbura, Ujiji, and Kasanga to monitor traffic to and from the Congo Basin. The official plan was to confine caravanners traveling into a foreign territory to newly erected caravanserais at one of these checkpoints. There, they had to undergo medical screening and, if they passed the checks, were allowed to travel.112 Medical passports or Reisescheine, as they were called in German East Africa, constituted the trans-colonial surveillance regime in the interlacustrine borderlands. They had originally been introduced in April 1910 by the Belgian authorities for travels within the Congo, with those African travelers who had undergone medical examinations being issued passports.113 Cross-border mobility, however, had not been monitored thoroughly by the Belgian doctors, as German military surgeon Otto Wittrock learned in early January 1911.114 If we follow Webel, this incident “induced German authorities to try to enlist Belgian assistance with surveillance of travelers.”115 Two months later, German and Belgian medical officials discussed the introduction of medical passports for trans-border traffic.116 The new travel documents, issued in German and French, included information on the name, sex, age, and “tribe” of the holder as well as their physical characteristics. To provide indisputable proof of identity, the left thumbprint was taken for passport-holders.117 Less than half a year after the introduction of medical passports, the office of the German anti-sleeping sickness campaign enacted new regulations to govern the traffic in the border region.118 In August 1911, it introduced a new method to prove that a traveler was disease-free, which was praised as less work-intensive and safer than taking fingerprints.119 Henceforth, upon medical examination travelers were marked with a seal and a black-white-red wristband.120 Administrative practices were revised because African travelers had found ways to subvert to issuance of

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individualized passports. This was explained by a government official who pointed to “the typical deceit of exchanging the papers.”121 Likewise, the director of the German anti-sleeping sickness campaign admitted that “experience has shown that the natives misuse these passports.”122 Similar subversive acts were also found in the Congo Free State. There, as historian Maryinez Lyons observes, infected persons often went to a medical office to obtain a passport immediately after having received medical treatment from another office. “If an African had recently undergone a series of trypanocidal injections,” Lyons explains, “the parasites would probably not appear in an ordinary cervical examination, with the result that the African would get a passport.”123 In addition, African clerks in the Belgian service reportedly issued passports in return for bribes. The Belgian authorities adopted the German wristband system later in the same year.124 Despite the refined system, the capabilities of the German health authorities to channel caravan mobility via medical gateways remained as low as at the turn of the century. As we learn from an internal memorandum authored by Ujiji district officer Kurt Paschen in October 1911, this was mainly due to two reasons. First, according to Paschen, control measures targeted the wrong group. From his observation, the transmission of trypanosomiasis through transport workers appeared marginal. Estimating that only one out of 500 porters in the town of Ujiji was infected, Paschen urged the directors of the anti-sleeping sickness campaign to refrain from targeting porters and instead focus all manpower on detecting infections among the local population as well as controlling the boat traffic on Lake Tanganyika.125 Although Paschen might have understated the number of disease carriers, a low percentage of infections among caravan parties was also registered in the Congo. There, health authorities reported 3.4 percent of the examined porters as infected.126 A second reason why the health regime at German East Africa’s borders remained permeable was that many porters opposed being examined. Since mandatory sealing had been introduced in Ujiji in mid-1911, Paschen reported, several hundreds of porters had thrown their loads away and deserted the caravans, preferring to leave their wages rather than to be checked.127 Moreover, his report continued, it had become a common practice among caravanners to evade medical checks by simply accessing and leaving the town at night-time, and “since it is impossible to cordon the town off with guards, the people would always contrive ways and means to evade restrictions.”128 We can only speculate why porters sought

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to evade medical examinations. Presumably, it was for the same reasons why inhabitants of the border regions fled from gland-feelers. As research by Webel underlines, these people were very aware that a positive diagnosis could lead to months of detention in camps and enforced injection with the drug Atoxyl, which could cause severe illness.129 The permeability that Paschen described for Ujiji’s city limits pertained to German East Africa’s north-western border region as a whole. It became particularly evident in mid-1913, when medical border regimes were reinforced again. Then, Governor Heinrich Schnee prohibited any deployment of porters from the German colony on Belgian soil. To him, it was “of the highest importance for successful disease control that our professional porters do not get infected.”130 Again, however, the scarce German personnel resources obstructed any ability to effectively banish travel. Early in the following year, the medical service doctor Oskar Feldmann still reported that caravans evaded the medical checkpoint in Bujumbura by crossing the German border to the Congo on the Ruzizi, the river connecting Lake Tanganyika and Lake Kivu: I can hardly exclude the possibility that, as has been reported, every day large porter caravans march to the Congo. As long as we do not rigorously close the border in the Ruzizi valley, this unofficial traffic will grow further every time, the health authorities in Usumbura [Bujumbura] tighten their controls.131

Caravans adapted their spatial practices to the control regime. Similar to the travel permits introduced for traffic within the colony, a huge part of caravan traffic remained hidden from the gaze of the 24 German medical officials deployed in the region.132 Only those caravans traveling close to a checkpoint could be detected, as Webel concludes: “checks on everyday mobility were limited by the reach of the German campaign—what could be managed from each camp.”133 In summary, the analysis in this chapter has revealed two features consistent in the German governance of caravan mobility from the 1890s to the 1910s. First, over the course of two and a half decades administrators increasingly sought to gate the colony’s interior and to regulate access for caravan travelers. While legislation deliberately remained blind with respect to the welfare of porters and the relations within caravans, the administration understood channeling mobility as the best possible way to get a hold on transport while at the same time complying with the self-chosen

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lenience towards the business. Acting as gatekeepers, state agents sought to let only those travelers enter specific regions or places whom they deemed peaceful and trustworthy. To the territory’s outside, the administration expected caravan monitoring to facilitate the collection of customs revenues and to govern the outmigration of laborers. This function was also important in the north-western border region, where unmonitored caravan travel became stigmatized as infectious. The second feature is the inadequacy of these measures. The colonial state did not succeed in establishing itself as a gatekeeper. The restriction described by Oskar Feldmann in 1913 has run like a common thread through all gatekeeping practices discussed in this chapter. Their thorough implementation was constrained by the weak capabilities of the state apparatus and the subversive activities of caravan leaders, transport workers, and their employers. What the missionary August Wilhelm Schynse had already exposed in the first control patterns under von Wissmann, namely that caravans made detours to avoid controls, thus remained the key problem for reincarnations of the mobility regime well into the twentieth century: given the sketchy administrative apparatus, supervision was inevitably reduced to the scattered control infrastructure. Off these posts, the virtual gates to the colony’s inside and outside remained wide-open.

Notes 1. BAB, R 1001/640, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 31 July 1905, 226. 2. Huber, Channelling Mobilities, 3. 3. Quirk and Vigneswaran, “Mobility Makes States,” 19. 4. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 156–190. 5. Ibid., 157. 6. See the essays in Third World Thematics, 3:3 (2018). For Cooper’s own adaption of the concept, see Cooper, “Gatekeeping Practices.” 7. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 1. 8. Pawełczak, The State and the Stateless, 359. 9. Ibid., 325–359; Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory, 119–128. For the channeling of European explorers, see also Kennedy, “Imperial Parasitism.” 10. For the notion of Bagamoyo as a gateway, see Fabian, “East Africa’s Gorée,” 107. 11. BAB, R 1001/785, “Circular-Erlass No. 14,” April 1892, 36; BAB, R 1001/644a, “Runderlass,” 14 July 1895, 54–55; TNA, G1/35, Leue to Government, Bagamoyo, 7 February 1899, 132; TNA, G1/35,

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“Polizeiverordnung für Bagamoyo,” Bagamoyo, 15 November 1900, 205. 12. BAB, R 1001/831, “Runderlass,” 22 March 1905, 7. 13. The following paragraphs are based on a broader analysis of the East African caravanserais, published in Greiner, “Revisiting a Colonial Landmark.” For a detailed study of the Bagamoyo Caravanserai, see Chami et  al., Historical Archaeology of Bagamoyo. See also Rhodes, Building Colonialism, 50–54; Fabian, “East Africa’s Gorée.” For the notion of Bagamoyo as a gateway, see ibid., 107. 14. Schmidt to Caprivi, Zanzibar, 1 July 1890, printed in “Aufstand in Ostafrika (Aktenstück 165),” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 8. Legislaturperiode 1. Session, 2. Anlageband. Berlin: Sittenfeld, 1891, 1197. See also Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 57. 15. Velten, ed., Sitten und Gebräuche, 297; Brown, “Bagamoyo,” 79; Glassman, Feast and Riot, 60. 16. Leue, “Bagamoyo,” 15, 26; Rockel, Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 235; Rockel, “Between Pori, Pwani and Kisiwani,” 112; Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 55–57; Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 60. 17. ZNA, AL 2/107, Lucas to Arendt, Zanzibar, 25 May 1886, 32. 18. ZNA, AL 2/107, Lucas to Arendt, Zanzibar, 4 June 1886, 28. 19. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 57. 20. Fabian, “East Africa’s Gorée,” 105. 21. Brown, “Bagamoyo,” 75; Vaughan, Curing their Ills, 45; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 453–460, 472; Walther, Sex and Control, 79. 22. Steudel, “Die ansteckenden Krankheiten der Karawanen,” 180. 23. The date of its construction has been subject to historical debate. Archaeologist Felix Chami and his colleagues at the University of Dar es Salaam concluded in their excavation report that the earliest caravanserai could have been built in the 1870s. While it is not unlikely that the site had been used as a camping ground in the 1870s, the building itself was only constructed two decades later. First mentions of the colonial origin of the caravanserai were made by Rainer Tetzlaff, Juhani Koponen, and Thaddeus Sunseri. Steven Fabian has studied the construction of the Bagamoyo Caravanserai in some detail. See Chami et  al., Historical Archaeology of Bagamoyo, 57; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 165; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 350; Sunseri, Vilimani, 60; and Fabian, “East Africa’s Gorée,” 104. 24. Fabian, “East Africa’s Gorée,” 106. 25. In the late 1850s, for instance, Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke came across these maboma at almost every day’s march distance. See R. Burton, Lake Regions I, 55–56, 63, 125, 129, 245 among other text passages. See also Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 141–142.

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26. BAB, R 1001/365, “Abkommen [draft],” Bagamoyo, 22 January 1890, 103. 27. TNA, G3/46, Gärtner to Government, Bagamoyo, 26 July 1899, 47; BAB, R 1001/365, Saint Paul-Illaire to DOAG office Berlin, Zanzibar, 28 January 1890, 109; TNA, G3/46, Langheld to Government, Bagamoyo, 5 October 1899, 63–64. 28. BAB, R 1001/785, Soden to the interior stations, Dar es Salaam, 10 April 1892, 28. 29. BAB, R 1001/6472, “Jahresbericht des Bezirksamtes Pangani 1899/1900,” 327; Becher, “Tabora,” 137; L. Jones, “District Town,” 88; BAB, R 1001/5750, Greisert “Beschreibung der Station Tanga,” 1912, 5. 30. TNA, G3/46, Gärtner to Government, Bagamoyo, 26 July 1899, 47. 31. Forth, Barbed-Wire Imperialism, 7. As an introduction to the South African compound system, see also van Onselen, Chibaro, 128–194; as well as Crush, “Scripting the Compound.” 32. Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 201–206. 33. BAB, R 1001/365, Saint Paul-Illaire to DOAG office Berlin, Zanzibar, 28 January 1890, 109. 34. Ibid.; TNA, G3/46, Gärtner to Government, Bagamoyo, 26 July 1899, 47. 35. “Die Karawanserei in Daressalam,” DOAZ (10 May 1902), 2. 36. TNA, G5/25, “Verfügung,” 9 December 1903, 1. 37. “Polizeiverordnung betreffend die Karawanserei in Bagamoyo,” 22 September 1905, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung IX, 251–252. 38. BAB, R 1001/365, Götzen to DOAG, Dar es Salaam, 14 May 1904, 45. 39. “Polizeiverordnung betreffend die Karawanserei in Daressalam,” 13 June 1901, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung VI, 344. 40. “Aus Daressalam und Umgebung,” DOAZ (20 June 1903), 3. 41. “Die Karawanserei in Daressalam,” DOAZ (10 May 1902), 2. 42. BAB, R 1001/812, “Gouvernementsrat zu Daressalam, 4. Sitzung,” 11 September 1905, 68–74; as well as “4. Sitzung des Gouvernmentsrats von Deutsch-Ostafrika,” DOAZ (16 September 1905), 6. 43. BAB, R 1001/812, “Gouvernementsrat zu Daressalam, 4. Sitzung,” 11 September 1905, 69. 44. BAB, R 1001/640, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 31 July 1905, 225. For quarrels with European travelers and companies, see the example of the Kilimanjaro Handels- und Landwirtschaftsgesellschaft mbH, described in Greiner, “Bio-Engineering across Empires.” See also Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 286–290. 45. Sunseri, “Hide Trade,” 384–390.

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46. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee im Jahre 1906/7,” 3690. 47. “Verordnung betreffend den öffentlichen Verkehr im deutsch-­ Ostafrikanischen Schutzgebiet,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (10 March 1906), 1–3. 48. See Sunseri, Vilimani, 136. 49. “Verordnung betreffend den öffentlichen Verkehr im deutsch-­ Ostafrikanischen Schutzgebiet,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (10 March 1906), 1. 50. “Bekanntmachung,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (10 March 1906), 3. 51. Lugan, “Le commerce de traite au Rwanda,” 252. 52. “Bekanntmachung,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (24 March 1906), 1. Evidence that officials on the spot insisted on controls is given in BAB, R 1001/814, Rechenberg to watch post Liwale, Dar es Salaam, 23 January 1909, 181. 53. Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen; Lindner, “European Project.” 54. Craven, “Between Law and History”; Castryck, “Berlin’s Africa.” 55. Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 236. 56. BAB, R 1001/1123, “Extract from General Circular No 3/6,” Mombasa, 7 April 1891, 25; BAB, R 1001/1123, Soden to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 5 September 1891, 27. 57. Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 235–236; BAB, R 1001/644a, Schele to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 25 September 1893, 26; BAB, R 1001/644a, report, Dar es Salaam, 1 January 1894, 31–32; BAB, R 1001/644a, Wrochem to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 30 November 1894, 28. 58. BAB, R 1001/1123, a treaty between Carl Peters and Latrobe Bateman, Moshi, 10 September 1891, 33–34. 59. “Zollordnung für die Binnengrenze in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” 1 August 1898, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung III, 116–117. 60. Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 236. 61. Ibid., 235–245. 62. BAB, R 1001/1125, “Zusammenstellung der Zollbehörden,” 1906, 45. 63. Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee 1910/11, 5. 64. Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 165–170. 65. N.N., “Ein- und Ausfuhrmarkt 1906,” 440. 66. ZNA, AL 2/33.2, “Notice,” Zanzibar, 11 September 1891, 277. 67. For his motives, see Bodleian Library, Commonwealth and African Manuscripts, Oxford (hereafter BDL), MSS.Afr.s.105, Portal to Jopp, Zanzibar, 19 November 1891, 48. 68. BAB, R 1001/786b, “Verordnung betreffend das Verbot der Anwerbung von Arbeitern zum Zwecke der Ausfuhr derselben nach fremden Gebieten,” 26 March 1896, 103.

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69. Utermark, “Schwarzer Untertan versus schwarzer Bruder,” 70; “[untitled],” DOAZ (16 March 1899), 1. 70. For the British regulations, see KEW, FO 403/573, “Native Passes Regulations,” 9 April 1900, 204–205. 71. BAB, R 1001/127, Liebert to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 17 July 1900, 10. 72. BAB, R 1001/127, “Verordnung betreffend den Grenzverkehr der Eingeborenen von der deutsch-ostafrikanischen Nordgrenze,” 17 July 1900, 21–22; “Bekanntmachung betreffend den Verkehr mit Uganda,” 1 May 1900, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung V, 72. 73. BAB, R 1001/127, “Ausführungs-Anweisung,” 17 July 1900, 20–21. 74. BAB, R 1001/118, German vice-consul to Foreign Office, Mombasa, 3 January 1905, 206. 75. H. Fuchs, “Wakamba,” 394. See also Streit, “Beyond Borders,” 112–117; Zimmerman, “What Do You Really Want,” 439. 76. See Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 205–215. BAB, R 1001/786b, “Runderlass,” 23 March 1899, 206. 77. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 492. For the plague outbreak and indigenous responses, see also Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 126–138. Alison Bashford argued that disease management was, and still is, often linked to spatial measures of prevention, in which maritime and land borders function as regulated bulwarks against transmissions. See Bashford, Imperial Hygiene. 78. For the conception of Africans in colonial medical discourse and practice, see Vaughan, Curing their Ills. As an introduction to colonial medicine, see also D.  Arnold, Colonizing the Body; Neill, Networks in Tropical Medicine. For the German Empire, see in addition Beck, Medicine and Society; Eckart, Medizin und Kolonialimperialismus; Walther, Sex and Control; and Bauche, Medizin und Herrschaft. 79. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 472–473. See, for instance, Steudel, “Die ansteckenden Krankheiten der Karawanen”; “Denkschrift betreffend das ostafrikanische Schutzgebiet im Jahre 1893/4,” 403–404; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1897/8,” 210; and BAB, R 1001/5750, “Jahres-Medizinalbericht 1912/3,” 100. For the validity of the Medical Reports, see Bauche, “Doing Research with Colonial Sources.” 80. A. Becker, “Über Bahnbau in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” DKB (15 November 1899), 761. 81. For the location of the post and its position in inter-regional route networks, see Webel, “Borderlands of Research,” 75–76. 82. BAB, R 1001/5936, Eggel to Government, Bukoba, 12 August 1899, 43.

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83. BAB, R 1001/5936, Franz Stuhlmann to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 17 January 1905, 182–183. 84. “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2867. 85. BAB, R 1001/5936, Stuemer, “Pestbericht,” Bukoba, 12 May 1902, 33; BAB, R 1001/5936, Beringe to Government, Bukoba, 12 August 1899, 43–44; BAB, R 1001/5936, Eggel to Government, Dar es Salaam 18 April 1901, 37. 86. BAB, R 1001/5936, Lott, “Bericht über die Pest am Victoria-Nyanza,” 15 April 1902, 30. 87. Lyons, “African Sleeping Sickness,” 20; Webel, “Borderlands of Research,” 5. 88. For sleeping sickness in East Africa, see Lyons, “African Sleeping Sickness”; Ford, Trypanosomiases; Giblin, “Trypanosomiasis Control.” 89. Worboys, “Comparative History,” 98. See also Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 33–34. 90. Hoppe, Lords of the Fly, 12. There is copious historiography on control policies in the different East African colonies, connecting the medical measures to an extension of colonial rule and intrusion into everyday lives. For studies with a trans-imperial approach, see Ehlers, Europa und die Schlafkrankheit; Lachenal, “Médecine, comparaisons et échanges”; Neill, Networks in Tropical Medicine; as well as Neill, “Paul Ehrlich.” For German East Africa, see Webel, The Politics of Disease Control; Webel, “Medical Auxiliaries”; Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft. For the Congo, see Lyons, Colonial Disease. For the British sphere, see Hoppe, Lords of the Fly; Soff, “Sleeping Sickness.” For the different French colonies, see also Bado, “La maladie du sommeil”; Bado, Médecine coloniale. 91. Ehlers, Europa und die Schlafkrankheit, 210; Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 200; Lyons, Colonial Disease, 40, 98. Neill, Networks in Tropical Medicine, 121. 92. For the first cases, see Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 37. 93. For Koch’s sleeping sickness expedition, see Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 73–107; as well as Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 37–69. 94. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 5. 95. Webel briefly discusses caravan controls. See Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 202–206. See also Hoppe, Lords of the Fly, 14. 96. Neill, Networks in Tropical Medicine, 127. 97. Webel, “Medical Auxiliaries,” 398; Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 71–91; GStA, Rep. 76 VIII B/4119, “Aufzeichnung über die Sitzung des Reichs-Gesundheitsrats,” 10 December 1907, 89–109. 98. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 143. 99. Ibid.; Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 138.

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100. For the centrality of trans-border mobility in the campaign, see Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, esp. 195–206. 101. Webel, “Medical Auxiliaries,” 398; Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 63. 102. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 196, 202; Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 141–142. 103. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 202; Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 139; Lyons, Colonial Disease, 80. 104. According to Webel, with regard to boat traffic, policymakers and doctors “understood travel as key to the disease’s ongoing spread, but acknowledged that they could not monitor the entire 150-mile coastline, nor interfere with all individual travelers, nor meaningfully restrict all travel.” Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 202. See also GStA, 76 VIII B/4119, Kudicke “Bericht über das Schlafkrankenlager Kigarama,” Kigarama, 1 October 1907, 18; BAB, R 1001/5898, “Petition zur Bekämpfung der Schlafkrankheit am Tanganika,” Nyanza, 20 May 1906, 14. 105. Isobe, Medizin und Kolonialgesellschaft, 26–32. 106. KEW, FO 93/36/61, “Agreement Sleeping Sickness in British + German Possessions in East Africa,” London, 27 October 1908. 107. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 202. 108. “Berichte über die Schlafkrankheit in Deutsch-Ostafrika: Residentur Bukoba vom 8. Oktober 1909,” Koloniale Rundschau, 2 (1910), 88. 109. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 165. 110. Ibid., 111–175; Webel, “Medical Auxiliaries.” 111. “Verordnung, betreffend Kontrolle des Grenzverkehrs der Farbigen im Bezirk Bukoba,” 12 August l910, in Landes-Gesetzgebung 1911, 461–462. 112. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 202; BAB, R 155/8960, “Bestimmungen über die Verkehrsüberwachung am Tanganyka [draft],” 2 August 1911. 113. Lyons, Colonial Disease, 126–129, 200–203. 114. BAB, R 1001/5906, Wittrock, “Bericht über die Fortschritte der Schlafkrankheitsbekämpfung vom 1. Oktober bis 31 Dezember 1910,” Rumonge 3 January 1911, 78. See also Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 203. 115. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 203–204. 116. BAB, R 1001/5906, agreement, Bujumbura, 18 March 1911, 207–208. 117. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 205. For samples, see Lyons, Colonial Disease, 244; as well as the passports in BAB, R 155/8960. 118. BAB, R 155/8960, “Bestimmungen über die Verkehrsüberwachung am Tanganyka [draft],” 2 August 1911. 119. BAB, R 155/8960, [Taite] to Government, Nyanza, 2 August 1911.

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120. BAB, R 155/8960, Langenn-Steinkeller to Colonial Government, Usumbura, 6 May 1912; BAB, R 155/8960, Director of the anti-­sleeping sickness campaign to Imperial Office, Nyanza, 4 June 1912. See also Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 203. 121. BAB, R 155/8960, Langenn-Steinkeller to Colonial Government, Usumbura, 6 May 1912. 122. BAB, R 155/8960, Director of the anti-sleeping sickness campaign to Imperial Office, Nyanza, 4 June 1912. 123. Lyons, Colonial Disease, 201. 124. Ibid., 200–203. 125. BAB, R 155/8960, Paschen to director of the anti-sleeping sickness campaign, Ujiji, 25 October 1911. 126. Lyons, Colonial Disease, 118. 127. BAB, R 155/8960, Paschen to director of the anti-sleeping sickness campaign, Ujiji, 25 October 1911. 128. Ibid. See also Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 203. 129. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 164–175. 130. BAB, R 155/8960, Schnee to Nassor bin Salim, Dar es Salaam, 30 July 1913. 131. BAB, R 155/8960, Feldmann to Colonial Government, Gitega, 15 January 1914. See also BAB, R 155/8960, Beck to Colonial Government, Usumbara, 4 April 1913. See also Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 205. 132. Medizinal-Berichte über die deutschen Schutzgebiete für das Jahr 1910/11, 2. 133. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control, 203.

CHAPTER 6

Challenging Spatial Relations: The Colonial Quest for New Infrastructures

The introduction of this book set out with a flyer, published by the lobby group Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee in 1908: “Karawane und Eisenbahn.” Its illustration depicts a caravan, a railway, and the allegedly unbridgeable differences between these two means of transport. Railway construction, as should be clear by now, did not stand at the beginning of colonial occupation but followed a decade-long process of contending with the existing mode of mobility. The previous chapters have explored the rationales and practices that shaped colonial efforts to govern caravan transport. This final chapter adds to the previous findings by focusing on the spatial manifestation of different forms of mobility through which the colonial authorities sought to break the predominance of existing networks of circulation and commerce. Engaging road and railway development over the course of the entire German period, it draws attention to the continuing process of spatial transformation. Two themes are central to the following analysis. First, demonstrating that colonial infrastructure was embedded into preexisting systems of mobility, it investigates how German colonizers engaged with these existing structures and by which means they attempted to utilize but also to disrupt established networks. The second theme concerns the challenges these colonial interventions into space faced in return. Overall, this chapter argues that the history of infrastructure development in colonial © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2_6

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Tanzania must be understood as a history of conflict-laden interaction between established and enforced patterns of mobility, investigating both their contestation and coexistence.

Infrastructure in Transition, c. 1890 In 1888, upon return from East Africa, the Scottish traveler Henry Drummond reported that “[p]robably no country in the world, civilized or uncivilized, is better supplied with paths than this unmapped continent. Every village is connected with some other village, every tribe with the next tribe, every state with its neighbour, and therefore with all the rest.”1 In the world of nineteenth-century long-distance trade, this network of routes was structured by human mobility, as Drummond continued to explain: “[t]hey are veritable footpaths, never over a foot in breadth, beaten as hard as adamant, and rutted beneath the level of the forest bed by centuries of native traffic.”2 Because carts or pack animals almost never traveled along the network, it was the movement of transport workers and other travelers that produced and remade its infrastructural manifestations in the precolonial period, as witnessed by many European travelers.3 According to Gerald Portal, the British Special Commissioner to East Africa, for instance, it is well known that an African road consists simply of a footpath some ten inches wide worn in the grass by the constantly-passing naked feet of native villagers and caravan-porters. If, for any reason, such a path falls into disuse for a few months, especially during the rainy season, it is quickly obliterated by the rank grass, thorns, and creepers.4

Not only were the footpaths marked out and maintained by the feet of those marching on them, but the routes themselves were the product of negotiations between travelers and the interior population.5 After the mid-­ century, different leaders or their groups engaged in processes of spatial transformation by attracting caravans to their own sphere of influence, in particular through the provision of infrastructure. To have a share in the profits of precolonial long-distance trade, they provided auxiliary transport workers, dug wells, or provided safe accommodation. Most importantly, many groups established marketplaces for caravan provisioning, complementing the existing exchange of surplus food or locally produced goods with their neighboring communities.6 These precolonial exchange

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dynamics were often shaped by ruthless profit-seeking and outright violence, and conflict over resources in the decades before formal colonization was as much a decisive factor in the establishment of long-distance structures as was the provision of local goods and services.7 Caravans responded to both threats and incentives by traveling on the routes which suited them best, as Stephen J. Rockel observes, writing that caravan leaders could often choose between different paths running in similar directions. Upon consultation with their guides, they made their porters march on the most accessible and safest track, by-passing geographical obstacles, avoiding war zones, famine regions, or excessive road tolls, and following supply points as well as good commercial prospects.8 The possibility to choose also implied that caravan routes could shift their shape if existing structures did not meet these requirements. Rockel has illustrated this process for the central trade corridor, in which the trails of the central route running from the coastal town of Mbwamaji along the Ruaha river in south-central Tanzania and via Ukimbu towards Tabora lost their importance during the 1840s, when the inhabitants could no longer supply enough food for travelers. Instead, a branch of the central route running through the region of Ugogo became the preferred travel route in the second half of the nineteenth century, not least because the local population was able to offer an agricultural surplus.9 In cases where many caravans avoided specific areas, untraveled paths fell into disuse and vanished under grass, as described by Portal. The precolonial history of the caravan routes, Rockel thus concludes, “revolves around the most basic and prosaic human requirements of food and water, as much as commercial and political considerations.”10 When the German Empire occupied the region, the long-distance routes became both the pathways of colonial conquest and, paradoxically, a hindrance to it. In the absence of navigable waterways, the new colonial regime had to make extensive use of them. Wissmann’s troops founded their first military outposts along the precolonial infrastructure. Later, the administrative stations in every district were located at already developed caravan hubs.11 However, it soon became apparent to the Germans that the existing footpaths were insufficient to exert rule over Tanzania’s vast interior. The fragility of this critical infrastructure and its annual breakdown after the rainy seasons, when paths became washed-out, brought the state’s logistics to a standstill. Moreover, even during the dry season movement on these narrow paths was potentially dangerous for state agents. This became blatantly visible in August 1891, when a Schutztruppe

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company under Emil von Zelewski was ambushed during its march to Iringa and could not defend itself on the path (see Chap. 2). To forestall such destructive events for the future, the colonial authorities had to make the existing route network usable for colonial purpose, as one of the few survivors of von Zelewski’s company demanded, declaring “that we will only fully be able to protect ourselves against such raids by upgrading the most important routes to broad roads.”12 Very similar to the porters marching on them, the paths themselves were perceived as highly problematic.13 On the eve of colonial occupation, different European companies had already begun to invest themselves in replacing existing infrastructure with paved roads for the purpose of what they dubbed as “civilization,” and more so for the purpose of commerce. Most prominently, the Imperial British East Africa Company had completed the first kilometers of the “Mackinnon Road” in 1877, a road construction intended to allow for wheeled traffic between Dar es Salaam and Lake Nyasa. The project, however, was suspended four years later.14 As Karin Pallaver has demonstrated based on the company’s archival records, one reason why this project was abandoned in 1880 was that the local population was reluctant to construct and maintain the road.15 Around the same time, the Church Missionary Society had engaged in road building for vehicle traffic between the coast and its new station in Mpwapwa.16 Another major project was the “Stevenson Road” in today’s Zambia, planned by a Scottish businessman and the London Missionary Society to link Lake Nyasa with Lake Tanganyika, which was canceled after a few kilometers. By the 1890s, these different roads had entirely vanished again, their tracks overgrown with vegetation.17 In 1893/1894 the German administration made infrastructure extension an official task.18 Building on both earlier European initiatives and existing caravan trails, the major impetus of public works was to make the existing routes less dangerous to use. With the meager sum of 120,000 Marks, granted by the Reichstag, officials began to rework the existing paths on the busiest routes. To obtain a labor force in the interior districts, they pressed chiefs to supply corvée workers.19 In the coastal districts, the colonizers took advantage of a locust plague that ravaged the area in 1893 by offering famine relief in exchange for labor. In this way, the district offices were able to enlist the required number of workers for their projects.20 Colonial engineering followed precolonial structures but it aimed at reworking them according to a European ideal type of road design.21 The

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ideal highway in German East Africa was an impressive three or more meters wide, had drainage channels on either side, and was paved.22 These planned all-weather highways—the Germans called them by the Kiswahili word barabara—were not only built to allow for animal transport and wheeled traffic but likely also expected to incite awe among the African population and to display the alleged superiority of colonial rule.23 Building efforts initially centered around two highways: one in Tanga and one in Dar es Salaam, where a force of 300 workers with hand tools reworked the first segment of the old “Mackinnon Road” and broadened it to six meters.24 In addition to this major road project, station commanders in the interior ordered local dwellers to rework existing footpaths to make them more accessible, for instance, through bridge construction and bush clearing.25 Neat highways, however, were but an object of colonial fantasy. Work on the barabara out of Dar es Salaam was halted after a few kilometers as a result of budget deficits.26 Although the parliament raised investment to 230,000 Marks in the ensuing fiscal year 1894/1895, the allocated sum continued to allow for only piecemeal construction. In the absence of a coordinated, colony-wide plan all that the Germans achieved was a highly fragmented patchwork of scattered surfaced roads of fifteen kilometers maximum in-between the old footpaths, rendering the new road segments useless.27 Spatial transformation turned out an ephemeral and haphazard affair, with insufficient funding but one reason for the lack of power to transform space according to the colonial agenda. To make matters worse, all existing efforts were subverted by the environment and the noncompliance of the routes’ residents. Nature, a historical actor in its own right, was not easy to defeat. Especially during the main rainy season, roads became impassable and vanished again.28 The force of nature was boosted by the incapacities of the officials in charge as, in the absence of professional engineers, district officers were responsible for road design and planning. Many of them simply lacked any knowledge of engineering and so design errors led to the needless construction of roads, which were reported as being too steep or, even worse, as being scratched into the ground and thus lying beneath the turf, exposing the road to floods. The rainy season, together with the low investment in roads and dilettantism, destroyed the year’s efforts and meant district officials would start over again after the rains.29 Those roads that survived into the dry season were often hardly distinguishable from the surrounding environment, being covered by thick

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thorn bush and grass. To clear the bush at least two times per year was expected as part of the local population’s corvée (Tributarbeit). However, as Michael Pesek has demonstrated, shortages of resources and manpower caused the exercise of colonial power to restrict itself to the few inland stations and their immediate surroundings.30 Away from these administrative and military outposts, it was very difficult for officials to check whether the villages really had sent corvée workers to carry out road works, allowing groups along the routes to ignore their duties.31 In January 1896, all road construction in the colony was suspended for a lack of financial means and engineers.32

A Growing State Apparatus When Eduard von Liebert became the new governor of German East Africa in 1897, he made road construction a primary task of the colonial administration and initiated a number of roadbuilding projects.33 While some of them reworked precolonial structures, others implied a departure from existing spatial links. In southern Tanzania, for instance, road building commenced in 1897 from Kilwa and Lindi to the interior. Meanwhile, new roads were planned between Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika as well as between Tabora and Mwanza at Lake Victoria while work on the road out of Dar es Salaam continued with the prospect of wheeled traffic. Building efforts in central Tanzania focused on the central route from the coast to Tabora, which was to be transformed into a highway traversing the colony from east to west.34 Because lack of expertise had previously frustrated many road projects, von Liebert’s administration aimed at concentrating on building knowledge and authority in Dar es Salaam, gradually depriving the officials on the spot of their power. In July 1897, the government circulated a short brochure, containing “Principles of Road Construction in German East Africa” that defined common standards for the construction of highways.35 It was hoped that this booklet would bring order into the chaos by standardizing and monopolizing building practices. Engineers as well as construction equipment, such as steamrollers, were henceforth delegated from Dar es Salaam to district offices on request.36 In addition to works on the road surfaces, under von Liebert the elimination of porterage gained in importance and was pursued more systematically. Works on the Usambara Railway in northern Tanzania, which had been halted after forty kilometers, were slowly continued after the

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metropolitan government had bought up the railway line in 1899.37 Meanwhile, the colonial government engaged in experiments with animals as new means of transport. Previous experiments with elephants or zebras notwithstanding, official preference was given to animals that had a reputation as beasts of burden in sub-Saharan Africa.38 From 1897 on, several stations began to copy the selective breeding methods of Swahili and Omani caravan entrepreneurs and crossbred domestic donkeys with so-­ called Muscat donkeys, which had originally been imported from the Persian Gulf by Zanzibari merchants.39 In the following years, the newly bred donkeys were used as riding animals for officials, albeit mostly on a local level, as Juhani Koponen remarks.40 Ox-wagons, on the other hand, were expected to serve in transport over longer distances. The government sponsored several test-drives, and in 1900 the first regular ox-wagon service between Dar es Salaam and Kilosa was planned by the settler Alfred Pfüller.41 The expansion of infrastructure required labor and funding. While expertise was transferred to the top, the central administration relegated building costs to the bottom. Between 1898 and 1901, local self-­ government (Selbstverwaltung) in the form of Communal Councils was established in the coastal districts as well as in those inland districts in which settler communities existed. To finance road construction, these councils were allotted 50 percent of their district’s tax revenues.42 The tax itself was imposed on the African population in form of a hut tax of between 3 and 12 Rupees. Work in road construction was the punishment for those who were unable to pay the tax.43 As in many other colonial regimes, Tanzania’s infrastructure was expanded through the mobilization of forced labor.44 The task to clear nearby roads was still expected as a tribute from local residents. In addition, construction of new roads was henceforth performed by tax defaulters—even if these people had already been employed as corvée workers.45 A system applied by police commander Eugen Styx on the road between Lindi and Masasi proved particularly “efficient.” There, Styx introduced a shift system in which 100 tax workers per day were employed and replaced by the 100 workers of the next village as soon as they had worked off the village’s debts and received their tax slips. In this way, Styx involved one-­ third of all debtors, a system other district officials planned to adopt.46 Even Styx’s labor regime, however, could not prevent the non-­ compliance of those pressured into road works. In eastern central Tanzania, the population of Kisaki opposed his command, reportedly proclaiming:

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“are we the slaves or debtors of Europeans? Each day taxes and public works, why oh why?”47 Different groups across the colony defied the pressure to work for the state. P.M.  Libaba, a member of the Maji Maji Research Project of 1968, contends that their aversion to road work stemmed from the purpose of colonial infrastructure. Based on interviews, he suggests that “they thought that clearing roads was meant to facilitate the movements of tax collectors whom they hated much. Generally the clearance of roads was understood to make German government effective—more chainings, more beatings, more porterage and everything hateful. So that they hated clearing roads.”48 Hatred often turned into open resistance. In the Tabora district, for instance, a group of villagers refused to engage in local road construction so that the station outfitted a punitive expedition in May 1899.49 In the same and the following year, the Moshi district witnessed unrest, too, causing the Leipzig Mission to close one of its stations.50 As the source of grievances, the missionaries identified the simultaneity of corvée and tax burden: The main reason for the people’s distaste was the way in which the natives were enlisted for corvée regardless of their financial needs. Without doubt, the maintenance of roads, bridges, etc. cannot be accomplished without their labor. Still, the question remains whether it is justified to demand these works from those who have already paid their hut taxes. […] In the natives’ eyes, their enlistment without compensation strikingly resembles slavery.51

If we follow the missionaries’ report, these people identified their service as a form of “slavery by another name,” to refer to Eric Allina’s description of labor regimes in colonial Mozambique.52 But while the state apparatus responded to such open revolt with violence, for instance, through a military campaign against the inhabitants of Kisaki in spring 1901, its representatives could not prevent the mere ignoring of their orders.53 Even by the turn of the century pressure to work on the state’s construction sites was still inevitably reduced to the areas close to the coastal centers, the seats of loyal chiefs, as well as the interior stations. The nomadic presence of colonial officials and their allies allowed many actors along the routes to avoid or ignore their maintenance duties.54 Evidence can be drawn from the field journal of Georg von Prittwitz und Gaffron, who served in the colonial army and traveled from Mohoro in the coastal hinterland to the Iringa region in 1898. On one of

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his first marching days, he observed that “on the roadway the grass was cut on a width of two meters. This had been done at the behest of the Wali [the deputy officer] of Kilwa.”55 Six days later, farther inland, von Prittwitz und Gaffron learned that the maintained road stopped “because the Wali’s influence does not extend beyond the village of Kungulio.”56 In reaction, it became a common practice of von Prittwitz und Gaffron and other state officials traveling in expeditions to either outfit their own porters with hoes and axes or to spontaneously recruit residents to march ahead and clear the roads.57 Once the officials were gone again, however, this enthusiasm tailed off immediately, as even the government acknowledged, speculating that rural dwellers “will, of course, vow obedience but think at the very same moment […] that the district official is far away and so they will neglect their assigned duties.”58 The consequence of this negligence was that even after the turn of the century colonial spatial infiltration remained limited and patchy. Of the planned highway out of Dar es Salaam, for instance, only the first seven kilometers were navigable with vehicles.59 While there are no statistics on the total number of vehicle-ready kilometers around 1900, there is no doubt that the few existing segments of colonial roads represented only the smallest fraction of German East Africa’s vast route network, which continued to be made of footpaths. Moreover, even the prestigious segments regularly broke down under bad weather conditions, displaying the same shortcomings as the roads built a decade earlier.60 The ox-cart service between Dar es Salaam and Kilosa, inaugurated in 1900, was suspended after one year as it turned out “that traffic with a light, well-harnessed cart was possible on a good surface. Heavy loads, however, caused the cart to get stuck at the first obstacle and the loads had to be carried on by porters.”61 After this failure, transport with carts was only attempted at a local and regional level by a few shopkeepers.62 The failed test-drives offer confirmation that even after the turn of the century the development of colonial roads remained a cumbersome process. The refusal of colonial subjects to engage in road works was an important factor in slowing down colonial infrastructure expansion. A second reason for the German incapacity to keep roads permanently accessible was the infrequency with which they were used. Although the sources do not reveal much information, scattered evidence suggests that caravan headmen and their crews avoided the new roads whenever necessary. This was partially because many of the German building efforts broke with vernacular spatial patterns. Even where colonial infrastructure works built

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on established pathways, the planners corrected road courses to meet the requirements of future vehicle traffic. While caravan trails often ignored slopes and climbed hills straight, for instance, engineers laid out hairpin bends. The opposite was done on many routes running through plains: colonial highways were often planned as straight-lined thoroughfares. District official Karl Charisius, for instance, reported that road works in Tabora “generally followed the shortest path according to compass reading […]. We did not take [the avoidance of] difficult terrain into consideration.”63 Although Charisius insisted that the district authorities had laid out the roads in a way that “they touch populated areas at intervals to ensure supply for caravans,”64 not all planners did pay attention to established structures and safari practices. Instead they often ignored wayside markets and nutrition points for the sake of shortened distances and thus rendered the new roads unsuitable for caravans.65 Hence, the German official Karl Ewerbeck observed in 1900 that in south-eastern and central Tanzania many porters “are not grateful for the new barabara [pl.] because in many cases these roads ignore waterholes and supply of provisions and run through pori [wilderness] simply to shorten distances.”66 How did the affected porters respond to these spatial interventions? Colonial road building complemented vernacular infrastructure, but it did not fully replace it. With a plethora of footpaths still running to every destination, the new infrastructure system had to contend with alternative arrangements running either parallel to or branching off from the new roads. Ewerbeck’s report thus continued that on the route from Kilimatinde to Mpwapwa, “hundreds of porters are seen every day within reach of the two towns. Two days’ marches away, however, the barabara is empty. Instead, caravans prefer two alternative routes running parallel to the barabara.”67 Although calling at the district offices to present their travel permits, when out of sight, caravan crews and other African travelers insisted on alternative roads, their itineraries still being marked by the availability of food and water.68 The result of the outlined disuse of colonial infrastructure by African travelers was that the scattered highways remained prone to collapse. Echoing Gerald Portal’s above-cited description of vernacular paths, Georg von Prittwitz und Gaffron observed in 1902 that an important road in south-eastern Tanzania, in theory connecting Kilwa with Songea, had vanished again due to insufficient traffic: “the old barabara from Songea to Barikiwa is completely overgrown because it is only used very

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rarely.”69 Even where caravans marched on the highways, the movement of these travel parties posed an obstacle to the permanence of colonial infrastructure. From European reports we learn that porters were not easily “disciplined” to use them in a manner considered appropriate.70 Where colonial road builders had applied hairpin bends to manage the steep slopes of mountain roads, for instance, caravans were reported to “prefer climbing the hills on [straight] trodden paths instead of following the many hairpin bends of artificially created roads.”71 In a similar fashion, the colony’s annual report of 1897 complained with regards to the Tabora district that “[e]ven though the station as well a number of Sultans [chiefs] have laid out broad roads, the natives do not see any advantage in them and instead march on these roads in one single file.”72 Caravan travelers walked on the broadened roadways in the same manner they usually marched on smaller trails. Because the maintenance of colonial roads depended on movement on them, this behavior had immediate effects on colonial infrastructure:  whereas broad roads vanished, only the paths could withstand the forces of nature because the constant trampling of feet kept them free of vegetation. This was observed by von Prittwitz und Gaffron in the following year. Traveling with his expedition in the said Tabora district, he remarked in October 1898 that the “barabara Tabora–Ujiji [is] a native path, only slightly better trodden than the others.”73 Through their interaction with colonial infrastructure, non-European road users shaped or utilized space in ways unpredictable to the state authorities. Further evidence of the insistence on known patterns of movement and its effects on colonial roads is provided by geographer Fritz Jaeger, who noted in his field journal that between Moshi and Korogwe “the barabara consists of a roadway carved out on six meters in width, in whose center runs a winding footpath on which the porters march in one single file.”74 Again,  on this highway, as on others, only the described footpath was durable because it was used frequently while the rest of the roadway often vanished again under grass (see Fig.  6.1).75 Soon, complaints were voiced that any efforts to broaden and maintain the highways were thwarted by porters not complying with the physical movement they were supposed to execute. Different state officials recommended methods to actively involve porters in infrastructure maintenance, such as forcing them to march on a broad front or equipping them with axes and hoes. These ideas, however, were discarded as infeasible before long and the problems remained.76

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Fig. 6.1  Hans Meyer, “On the trail,” undated. Source: Saxon State and University Library, 71792075

The active involvement of the state in processes of spatial transformation after the mid-1890s had introduced a significant difference to previous route patterns: the new roads depended on political decisions on where and how to invest rather than on caravan travelers voting with their feet. Yet, footwork remained a crucial aspect of Tanzania’s infrastructural arrangements. Because villagers and tax defaulters often defied their assigned duties to clear the roadways, these thrifty improvements were maintained by the people’s circulation, without which they could not persist. Infrastructural arrangements, it shows, did not possess any power in themselves, nor did they offer any incentives to non-European travelers. Since no regulatory power, apart from the scattered German stations, could enforce “proper” use of the converted roads, many porters and caravan leaders insisted on the known patterns of mobility. Partially acknowledging the predominance of human-powered transport and its demands on infrastructure, von Liebert’s administration

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attempted to reattach the new highways to the needs of caravan travel. To ensure the availability of food and water along those sections of the roads, which were depopulated either owing to the decades of raids or to newly laid courses, the government established artificial marketplaces open to all travel parties, where caravan workers could buy provisions and replenish water supplies against cash.77 Additional rest houses were constructed to relieve European travelers from having to pitch their tents.78 The focus of these measures lay on the central route but also on routes in south-eastern Tanzania, which had repeatedly seen emigration since at least the 1870s, owing to raids and recurring drought periods.79 To populate the roadsides, district officials forced entire groups or urged retired Askaris to resettle and either to sell their own grain or products provided by the stations.80 In the Lindi district, for instance, a loyal jumbe was contracted in 1900 to found six villages along the main road junctures. In the same year, the local authorities forced 150 amnestied war captives to settle along a road “in a manner resembling deportations,”81 as the district commander acknowledged. The new supply facilities did not last long. They fell into a sorry state of neglect when groups reportedly stopped selling their products at these marketplaces.82 Evidence shows that porters and Askaris did not make much use of these sites anyway but, whenever possible, preferred to buy foodstuffs in villages off the road because of the lower prices.83 Europeans, on the other hand, soon avoided rest houses. Because African caravans appropriated these facilities, illegally, by overnighting in them when no Europeans were on the march, they had come under suspicion of being haunts of relapsing fever.84 Given the racist stereotype of Africans as unclean and as carriers of diseases, European travelers preferred to stay in tents. By 1905, the construction and maintenance of rest houses was ultimately abandoned, and some of the facilities were burned down by the medical authorities.85 Frustrated by the different setbacks and, generally, “the nuisance of porterage [Trägerunwesen], which is more and more degenerating into a form of vagrancy,” in May 1900 von Liebert planned to properly involve caravans in road construction and to demand a maintenance fee of ½–1 Rupee per porter.86 This plan, however, was never implemented because it provoked dissent within the governing body. In Chap. 3, I demonstrated that the government under Julius von Soden was very receptive to the opinions of its men on the spot regarding the proposed control and taxing of caravans. The same was true for von Liebert, who, like his predecessor,

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pre-circulated a draft of the planned regulations among the district officials and station commanders. Their feedback echoed the responses to von Soden’s plan a decade earlier. The Dar es Salaam district office stressed the importance of not deterring porters because trade and colonial logistics depended on them: “We should create alternative means of transport instead of imposing taxes on the only one we have.”87 This opinion was also voiced by other district officers, who remarked in addition that the wages of caravan porters were already so low that the government could hardly put any additional burden on them.88 Given this feedback, von Liebert’s successor, Gustav Adolf von Götzen, suspended the plan in 1901 because “one objection runs like a common thread through all reports, namely that porter transport should not be hampered or made more expensive as long as there is no chance to replace it with something better.”89

Investment and Divestment in Roads When von Götzen succeeded von Liebert in April 1901, he brought new concepts of how “something better” could be developed. During his term in office, the colonial apparatus was granted financial resources and metropolitan investment on an unprecedented scale, enabling the government to embark on a program of large-scale spatial intervention. It was in 1904 that the Reichstag, having twice declined to provide funding, finally granted a concession to build and run a railway line between Dar es Salaam and Morogoro, 180 kilometers inland, to a consortium headed by Deutsche Bank.90 While preliminary works on the so-called Central Railway began, the focus of infrastructure policies under von Götzen remained on road construction. Around the same time when the Reichstag agreed on building the first segment of the new railway, the governor authored a short memorandum to the members of parliament in which he proposed a grand-scale extension of highways. Requesting the massive sum of 10,800,000 Marks (compared to the colony’s overall budget of 6 million Marks per annum) to be invested over a period of 18 years, von Götzen presented a master plan for state-sponsored road construction. Nineteen state roads in all parts of the colony were to be prepared for year-round traffic with carts and potentially automobiles.91 The planned highways included the central route, which was to be reworked, as well as a new road connecting Dar es Salaam with Bagamoyo.

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This road along the coastline was part of a greater transition, as Daniel T.  Rhodes states, observing that “[f]ormerly, the dominant modes of transport had consisted of north-south, shore-parallel maritime transport and east-west terrestrial caravan transport.”92 For the infrastructurally underdeveloped southern regions, von Götzen proposed three main roads: one from Kilwa to the rubber reservoirs in its hinterland, one from Lindi to the Ruvuma River, and a third road interlinking Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika. Focus on the north was laid on the European settlements in the Usambara Mountains and at Mount Kilimanjaro. These were to be connected with Mombo, the upcoming railhead of the Usambara Railway. Two roads were also planned to connect Lake Victoria with Lake Tanganyika and Tabora, respectively.93 Labor for the mammoth project was to be drawn from tax defaulters. In March 1905, the Germans increased the tax burden dramatically, introducing a new tax of three Rupees required from every male colonial subject.94 To extract more labor power from the population, it was simultaneously decreed that any man could be forced to work in road construction for free.95 Although the corresponding instructions made clear that compulsion to work applied only to tax defaulters, different district officers were reported as conscripting even those Tanzanians who had paid their taxes.96 In April 1905, the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung warned that in the Kilwa district frustration grew among the Ngindo people: “Quite apart from the unpaid cleaning of the barabara—a practice common to all districts—the new construction of large, public thoroughfares seems a risky step that may serve to embitter the Wangindo because it conflicts with their rubber collection and field preparation [activities].”97 In late July the Maji Maji War broke out. It remains a matter of debate to what extent the compulsion to work in road construction was responsible for the conflict. Different officials, especially those championing a reform of colonial policies, saw the chief cause of the uprising in the many regulations enacted under von Götzen, including forced labor. They identified unpaid engagement in road works as well as the forced resettlement of people along the highways as one source of grievance.98 Evidence for the plausibility of this suspicion can be drawn from the Lindi and Kilwa districts, where the uprising first broke out. As the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung had predicted, Ngindo communities were among the first to rebel against German oppression.99 During the war, they would fight not only the state’s representatives but also its physical landscape as they reportedly

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sabotaged the kilometer marker stones along the Kilwa–Liwale road, which previously they had been forced to build.100 Remarkably, the gradual suppression of the war until 1907 facilitated labor recruitment and helped to promote the extension of highways. As Katie V. Streit has shown, state authorities now built infrastructure in the hitherto neglected southern parts of the colony by drawing on a cheap force of penal workers.101 Ethnologist Karl Weule thus observed in late 1906 that the best roads were found in the recaptured centers of the uprising.102 Defeated warriors and their alleged supporters were also dispatched to construction sites in other parts of the colony. In 1906, for instance, about 200 penal workers were sent to the Usambara Mountains to work on the planned mountain road to Lushoto (Wilhelmstal). Within two months, Koponen observes, more than half of them were reported as having either escaped or died due to hard physical punishment and insufficient medical treatment.103 With the dismissal of von Götzen as a consequence of the war, his grand scheme was discontinued. Under his successor, Albrecht von Rechenberg, investment in road construction was reduced to those highways which could serve as feeder roads to the railway lines. Little of the ambitious program had been achieved. Of the planned state-sponsored roads, a total of 2000 kilometers, only about 250 kilometers were completed or had at least been begun.104 These roads remained unpopular with African travelers, whose preference for vernacular infrastructure systems was witnessed by German officials and travelers in different parts of the colony. Geographer Fritz Jaeger, for instance, noted during his 1906 expedition in northern Tanzania that the barabara between Moshi and Arusha was empty while another route running in the same direction was much used.105 As late as 1913, Mombo district commissar Max Siegel still observed that “the natives in the [Usambara] Mountains are far from following the European-style roads because they deem their shenzi [i.e. ‘wild’] paths sufficient and shorter, and favor them over designed roads.”106 While the grand scheme’s manifestation in space turned out marginal, von Götzen’s administration envisioned centralized planning and the massive investment in specific roads to engender longer-lasting processes of spatial alteration in Tanzania. Connection and isolation were no longer to be defined by social interactions and trade relations but according to colonial demands. Ambitious to finally emancipate German East Africa from precolonial patterns of mobility, the governor sought to give trade as well as movement through space new directions by cutting off specific places

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from the new network while centering it around others. This becomes evident from the case of Bagamoyo, the major terminus of the central route. Efforts to emancipate colonial trade from Bagamoyo had existed since the founding of the colony. In 1891 the Germans had decided to make Dar es Salaam the colonial capital, resuming the work originally begun by Zanzibari Sultan Majid. As early as 1866, Majid had attempted to redirect coastward caravan mobility: away from Bagamoyo to the small town of Dar es Salaam, which had not seen much caravan traffic. As Steven Fabian observes, the Sultan’s decision to move away from Bagamoyo was motivated by “his lack of authority over land rights, the longstanding socioeconomic bonds forged between interior trader and coastal merchant, and the reputation Bagamoyo enjoyed as a town of pleasure and fortune.”107 Bagamoyo’s South Asian trading elite followed its own interest and tried to evade direct Zanzibari control. Therefore, “Majid chose Dar es Salaam as his new administrative headquarter because, if he was to capture a greater share of the coastal trade, he would have to undermine the longer standing socioeconomic relations of Bagamoyo and the interior by building his own.”108 To develop the town into a new major caravan terminus, the Sultan invested in its infrastructure. However, when Majid died in 1870, his successor, Sultan Barghash, decided to abandon the building project. Two years later a hurricane dislodged the harbor.109 The colonial state continued the work begun by the Zanzibari state. According to Fabian, who has carried out extensive research on urban life and development in Bagamoyo, underlying the German efforts to develop Dar es Salaam was a similar attempt to undermine the business relations of Bagamoyo’s South Asian merchant elite.110 This relocation was also expected to rectify German East Africa’s maritime trade links: because Bagamoyo could accommodate only dhow traffic, and thus inevitably mediated only the trade to Zanzibar’s market, the portion of direct imports from the German motherland to its own colonial territory had remained low. Choosing Dar es Salaam, where European steamers were to weigh anchor, over Bagamoyo was thus envisaged as a re-routing in both directions, on land and by sea.111 Re-routing trade, however, was difficult. By 1902, Zanzibar was still the main import-export market for German East Africa, with a share of 57 percent in German East Africa’s imports and 67 percent in exports.112 Previous research, in particular by Steven Fabian and Patrick Krajewski, has already hinted at the series of measures with which the authorities

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sought to direct commercial activities to Dar es Salaam.113 If we focus on the wider processes of spatial transformation, we can identify an additional layer to the conflict over the two towns: the government considered land-­ based infrastructure planning and investment a tool to channel movement and divert trade flows. Already under von Liebert, investment in Dar es Salaam’s connection with the interior trade centers was fostered. From Kilosa, one of the places in which the central route branched into paths in direction of either Bagamoyo or Dar es Salaam, road extensions and bridge construction in 1897 eased travel to the coast. While works were also undertaken on Bagamoyo’s branch route, the administration explained in its Annual Report that “special attention” was given to the road leading to the colonial capital, on which a long-needed solid wooden bridge was erected. From this investment, “it can be expected that these improvements will drag the caravan trade more and more from Bagamoyo to Dar es Salaam and the import and export will be diverted from Zanzibar to our coast.”114 This process was accelerated under von Götzen, whose administration not only promoted the colonial capital but also made use of divestment in infrastructure to complicate caravan journeys to Bagamoyo. Despite being the most established trade center, Bagamoyo was mostly excluded from the grand scheme of state roads. Because the plans did no longer consider the town as a starting point for any highway to the interior, investment in its roads was kept to a minimum. In the Governmental Council meeting of April 1904, von Götzen explained to a DOAG representative who suggested to include Bagamoyo’s caravan route in the list of state roads and to make it a vehicle-ready highway: the governor remarks that only those roads will be extended which are important and serve the wider national interest […]. To Mr. Schuller, who argues that the caravan route from Bagamoyo inland is an equally important road to national interest […] it is answered that this caravan route cannot be considered yet [for national funding].115

With the section of the central caravan route being reduced to a road of allegedly only local importance in official planning, the government did not consider itself responsible for any road running westward in the Bagamoyo district. The only road to be extended with national funds was the newly planned highway from Bagamoyo to the new center of Dar es Salaam.

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It was understood that if infrastructure fashioned circulation, its absence or decay was likewise capable of doing so. Deliberate non-investment brought all infrastructure extensions in the Bagamoyo district to a standstill.116 The district office’s request for an additional 50,000 Rupees of government funding to invest in other projects was refused; likewise the appeal for the small amount of 1200 Rupees to re-construct a bridge that had been destroyed by floods on the route to Kilosa, that is, on Bagamoyo’s artery to inland trade.117 The government’s short answer from October 1905 that “financial assistance cannot be granted”118 embodied its infrastructure policy in a nutshell: the more the road to Bagamoyo decayed and the harder it became to pass for human traffic, the more trade activity would be drawn to Dar es Salaam, which simultaneously was promoted as the terminus of both a major highway and the new railway line. Still, the impact of infrastructural exclusion on Bagamoyo remained low during von Götzen’s tenure. As much as individual caravans avoided highways, established trade relations proved resilient and the caravan sector did not easily follow the reorientation, as Fabian observes: “In Bagamoyo there was more freedom to conduct business much the same way as had been done prior to the German takeover.”119 In the fiscal year 1905/1906, the authorities still counted the arrival of 1689 caravans with over 22,000 porters from the interior, compared to 1211 caravans in the previous year.120 By 1907, economic activities in Bagamoyo had decreased as a result of a harbor closure for vessels from Zanzibar, but the caravan hub still ran close to Dar es Salaam, their export revenues amounting to 1,507,788 Marks resp. 1,709,508 Marks (Dar es Salaam).121 Before long, it became apparent that, as a German observer remarked, “the roads […] ease journeys but cannot suffice to change the proportions of trade.”122 This power was ascribed only to the railway, whose time had finally come in the aftermath of the Maji Maji War.123

Caravan and Railway In the German metropole, the Maj Maji War, and more so the Herero and Nama genocide in German South West Africa (1904–1907), caused a legitimation crisis to the colonial project. As a consequence, the Empire restructured the administration of its overseas possessions in the new Reichskolonialamt (Imperial Colonial Office) in Berlin. With the pro-­ colonial factions gaining a majority in the federal election of 1907, the new Colonial Secretary, Bernhard Dernburg, enjoyed parliamentary

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support for his planned large-scale investment in railways.124 The Reichstag consented to finance the Central Railway with public funds and approved extending it from Morogoro (the first section opened in October 1907) first to Tabora, an additional 700 kilometers completed in 1912, and then to Kigoma at Lake Tanganyika where the railhead arrived in February 1914. Connecting the lake regions with Tabora, the center of trade, and the Indian Ocean coast, this railway line followed the established trade flows of the long-distance caravan economy. Simultaneously, the Usambara Railway was extended to Moshi at Mount Kilimanjaro.125 At the Swahili coast, mechanized transport continued the process of spatial alteration begun with the systematic planning of highways under von Götzen. While, as Fabian observes, the government refused another request to construct a vehicle-ready road between Bagamoyo and its hinterland in 1908, the railway planners took action against the town’s trade with the extension of the Central Railway out of Dar es Salaam.126 The effects on the old trade center were devastating.127 As soon as the railway started operating on its first section, the town faced a steady demise, its export revenue declining to 645,387 Marks in 1910 and down to 315,024 Marks by 1912. Simultaneously, the capital could attract ever more trade, registering 5,384,717 Marks of export revenues in 1912.128 A Swahili poem, published in the government-owned newspaper Kiongozi, documented this process. Under the title Kupotea kwa Bagamoyo (“The Loss of Bagamoyo”), the author wrote that “Bagamoyo burns down; […] years ago, visitors came to us; […] Now there are no more houses, no people. […] There are no more shops, for many go their way.”129 With the railhead reaching Tabora in 1912, the numbers of porters in Bagamoyo dropped to an all-time low with only 851 porters counted as arriving and 193 as leaving.130 While it is likely that the actual numbers were higher, given unregistered traffic and smuggling, the overall trends were obvious.131 Summarizing these economic developments, the official Trade Report of 1912 proclaimed that “the caravan traffic, which had formerly fueled Bagamoyo’s trade, has entirely stopped; the Tanganyika Railway collects the products in the interior and carries them to Dar es Salaam.”132 Not only on the coastline, but also in its hinterland the new railways promised to transform long-established patterns of commerce and circulation. Dernburg’s speeches and reports to the Reichstag echoed the countless pamphlets and debates which had championed the construction of a central railway line since the early 1890s. Pointing to civilizing and

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commercial aspects alike, he underlined that a fast expansion was going to restructure Tanzania’s economic system and to eliminate porterage by surpassing it in efficiency and cost.133 Evidence to what extent railways functioned as a stimulus to commercial activities was drawn from the north-western parts of German East Africa. There, a big portion of the interlacustrine trade as well as the trade of the Kilimanjaro area was increasingly redirected to the East Africa Protectorate, where the Uganda Railway had been inaugurated in 1902.134 Beeswax, for instance, of which, by 1904, 4095 loads were still carried to Bagamoyo and only 524 to Mwanza, was soon shifted towards the northern route. By 1909, only 269 loads were sent from Tabora to Bagamoyo, while 3368 passed Mwanza in direction of the nearest railway stop.135 A similar shift of commercial corridors was also expected from the Central Railway and Usambara Railway. Their tracks followed the established trade flows. But all commerce was to be drawn away from the paths to the newly laid tracks. This transformation, or rather how the Germans imagined it, was captured in two maps, which were juxtaposed in the draft of the Annual Report of 1911/1912 but apparently never published.136 They depict the trade flows across the colony before and after the colonizers had begun applying their tools of spatial intervention. Depicting the early 1890s, Fig. 6.2 illustrates how different trade routes crisscrossed the colony in the absence of railways. While entire regions are labeled as unzugänglich (“impassable”), in others multiple arrows indicate circulation on the various routes in the direction of Tabora or the coast. There, Tanga, Pangani, Saadani, and Bagamoyo were the coastal termini in the north, while Kilwa and Lindi attracted caravans from all over the south. The second map (Fig. 6.3) was meant to illustrate how this commercial mayhem was structured under German occupation. As the arrows illustrate, trade flows were now absorbed by the nearest station of the two German lines and the Uganda Railway, respectively. Apart from the colonial south, which had been neglected in railway planning, little or no trade apart from the railway and its feeder roads existed—so the map suggested. The map blurs the fact that railways did not possess a monopoly in transportation in Tanzania. Even by the 1910s, logistical operation across the colony still depended on human porters. One reason was that the two railway lines could not attract the expected interest of colonial businesses. At the moment when alternative means of transport became available, it turned out that German traders did not want to dispense with porterage.

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Fig. 6.2  “Trade routes before the inauguration of railways, c. 1890,” 1912. Source: Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1001/6568, 19

Chapter 4 highlighted how the German trading houses made wide use of caravans. O’Swald had also experimented with handcarts, pulled by three workers, at the turn of the century. But these and other test-drives with carts drawn by humans or oxen were discontinued before long.137 How the colonial transport revolution failed is illustrated perfectly by the mountain road from Lushoto (Wilhelmstal) to the railway station in Mombo. This road in the Usambara Mountains was one of the very few roads furnished to withstand motor traffic. The colony’s first automobile had been introduced in 1907 by Paul Graetz. His motorized trans-Africa journey, however, was unlucky as the vehicle could not stand the terrain

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Fig. 6.3  “Trade routes 1912,” 1912. Source: Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1001/6568, 18

and had to be carried by porters for most of its journey.138 Three years later, in 1910, the colony’s first regular motor transport was inaugurated with a truck climbing the road to Lushoto in three hours, moving cargo to and from the railway station. But less than a year after its inauguration, the operator Ludwig Illich complained that nearly no orders were placed by settlers and plantation owners. His service, he wrote to the local officials, could attract only urgent cargo while “all other commerce is still brought uphill by porters of which hundreds can be seen on the road every day.”139 Because the German settlers in Lushoto apparently preferred porterage over his service, Illich suspended it in August 1911.140 In

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the same year, traders in central Tanzania reportedly still outfitted caravans to the coast, rather than to the closest railway stop. They shied away from the new mode of transport, perceiving its fees as too high compared to caravan transport.141 By contrast, it was merely South Asian shopkeepers who still employed animal transport at the local level in the 1910s and embraced the new technology of automobility.142 A second reason for the persistence of the caravan business was that off the railway corridors, porterage remained the only available means to bring products to trade centers and local markets. Although many of the large long-distance caravans had vanished, evidence that countless caravans kept on using roads and caravan paths on a regional and inter-regional scale can be drawn from the sales figures of market halls in areas distant from railways. In 1911, in the market of Muheza, in the southwest of Tanga, 96 tons of cassava, 42 tons of bananas, and 10.9 tons of fish were sold. At the same time, in the small town of Kahama on the Tabora– Mwanza caravan route, 54 tons of millet, 36 tons of peanuts, and 42 tons of flour were sold.143 These products made it to the markets on human shoulders.144 Despite nearly three decades of colonial efforts to minimize the business, domestic caravan trade remained an important link in the economy and its workers the only available means of transport across large parts of Tanzania. Even in the vicinity of the railway tracks, it shows that imperial infrastructure systems did not simply replace old modes of transport. By 1913, the German authorities still estimated the number of professional caravan porters permanently employed by European businesses at 5000 and by Omani and South Asian businesses at 15,000 people, 10 percent of the total number of male wageworkers in the colony.145 Rather than replacing porters, the railway lines re-aligned their orientation and even stimulated the caravan business. In 1912/1913, for instance, when Bagamoyo was registering almost no more caravan arrivals, between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria (and thus to and from the Uganda Railway) some 56,300 loads were still conveyed by porters.146 The chief function of caravans, if we follow historian  Christiane Reichart-Burikukiye, became that of connecting the outlying districts with the new transport system: railways, she writes, “were integrated into the itineraries of traders and travellers and thus linked to existing transport routes.”147 Indeed, the arrows directed at the railway in Fig. 6.3 indicate nothing other than human caravans. Railheads and stations became the new starting points for caravan assembly, from where supply lines reached

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several hundred kilometers inland. To that end, caravan employers and expedition leaders sometimes brought their porters along on the trains, using the open wagons of the third class (Fig. 6.4).148 Free workers also moved to the railway stops to hire their labor power out whenever passengers or goods arrived by train.149 The East African railways, it shows, merged with existing patterns of local and regional circulation, with porterage assuming a new complementary role. This has also been observed for other means of mobility. Patrick Krajewski’s as well as Erik Gilbert’s works on dhows illuminate that these typical sailing vessels of the Indian Ocean world proved resilient against both increasing colonial regulation and the competition of steam-powered boats.150 In the ports of the Swahili coast, dhows remained key movers well into the twentieth century, as Krajewski notes: “the dhow economy was capable of adapting itself to changes in the market and the political climate. Because Dar es Salaam’s import trade was increasingly mediated by steamers, a business with feeder vessels developed”151 with dhows collecting lumber, gum copal, and copra in smaller ports and transferring

Fig. 6.4  Porters on the Usambara Railway, undated. Source: Image Collection of the German Colonial Society, Frankfurt am Main University Library, 006-1137-02

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them to steamships anchoring in the colonial capital. Where infrastructure systems developed from within the world region overlapped with those imported from Europe, the bricolage of these different forms of mobility created new spatial hierarchies. The transformation of space by means of infrastructure, to conclude this chapter, was a contested affair. The previous analysis confirms the overall observation of this study: the slowly progressing German consolidation of power did not simply replace precolonial mobilities but had to engage and interact with them. Whereas the earliest colonial road works were literally path dependent, large-scale spatial interventions sought to challenge existing spatial and commercial relations. By situating infrastructures on the level of everyday interactions along the roads, the previous analysis has revealed that, beyond lofty expectations, the German efforts to inscribe rule into space remained humble for the longest time, given the lack of power to enforce building and maintenance of infrastructure. A focus on those African actors using the roads (or being expected to do so) has also revealed that colonial infrastructure schemes often collided and competed with African spatial practices. The persistence of established forms of mobility becomes most overt from the coexistence of caravans and railways. “Caravan and Railway,” in contrast to what the flyer of the same name propagated, were not mutually exclusive. Instead, their combination led to a new infrastructure network in which mechanized and non-mechanized transport complemented each other. By 1914, after more than two decades of colonial efforts to minimize caravan transport, “multiple mobilities” (Mimi Sheller and John Urry) still coexisted in the colony.152 The Germans would soon have to learn that the transport mode they had deemed archaic for so long was anything but obsolete. As we shall see in the Epilogue of this study, upon the outbreak of the World War in 1914, porterage would once more become essential to the German Empire.

Notes 1. Drummond, Tropical Africa, 32. 2. Ibid., 34. See also Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 36. 3. See also Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 210–211; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 99–103.

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4. Portal, The British Mission to Uganda, 162. Very similar descriptions are given by numerous travelers, see, for instance, H. M. Stanley, In Darkest Africa, 134; and R. Burton, “The Lake Regions,” 104. 5. For the formation of the central route, focusing on the activities of users and residents, see Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 13–40. 6. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 99–103, 135–141, 152–153. For different groups that established market days, see Hartwig, Art of Survival, 96–97; Kimambo, “Environmental Control & Hunger,” 89–92; Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 25–34; Rockel, “Forgotten Caravan Towns”; Roberts, “Nyamwezi Trade,” 57; Gooding, “Lake Tanganyika,” 56; Wimmelbücker, Kilimanjaro, 132–133. For an overview, see Koponen, People and Production, 117–121, 236–241. 7. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 153–154. For armed conflicts over the control of long-distance commerce, see Reid, War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa, 108–110. 8. Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 13–16, 25–27, 34–35; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 99–103, 199–208; Sissons, “Economic Prosperity,” 96. 9. Rockel, “Caravan Porters of the Nyika,” 21–34, 351–356. 10. Ibid., 14. 11. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 41–42. 12. Wolfrum, Briefe, 101. 13. Grace, African Motors, 39. 14. Galbraith, Mackinnon, 29–70; Gray, “Dar es Salaam.” 15. Pallaver, “Donkeys, Elephants and Oxen,” 303–306. 16. Ibid., 301; Smith, “Ox-Wagon”; Price and Mullens, “A New Route”; Gooding, “Tsetse Flies, ENSO, and Murder.” 17. Rosenhainer, Verkehrsgeographie, 54; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 448. 18. BAB, R 1001/6988, “Etat für das ostafrikanische Schutzgebiet auf das Etatsjahr 1893/4,” 86. 19. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 344–345. 20. “Denkschrift betreffend das ostafrikanische Schutzgebiet im Jahre 1893/4,” 385. 21. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 448; Meyer, “Vom Wegebau in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” Kolonie und Heimat in Wort und Bild, (1 October 1908), 4–5. 22. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1894/5,” 896. 23. Alber, “Motorization and Colonial Rule,” 86. See also Larkin, “The Politics and Poetics”; Appel, Anand, and Gupta, “Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure.”

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24. “Denkschrift betreffend das ostafrikanische Schutzgebiet im Jahre 1893/4,” 385. 25. Ibid.; Mann, Mikono ya damu, 205. 26. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 954. 27. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1895/6,” 2979. 28. BAB, R 1001/6467, “Jahresbericht,” [1897], 263–269; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1894/5,” 886, 896; Werther, “Die Erschließung des Innern Deutsch-Ostafrikas,” DKZ (6 January 1894), 2–5; Fonck, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 102.  See also Hart, Ghana on the Go, 44. 29. “Wegebau in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” DKB (1 August 1904), 477–478; Benndorf, Verkehr, 77; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 448. 30. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 190. 31. Lent, Tagebuch-Berichte der Kilimandjaro-Station, 23 [page 130 in the book]; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1894/5,” 896; BAB, R 1001/1054, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 8 December 1903, 138. 32. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1895/6,” 2979. 33. See TNA, G1/102, “Runderlass,” Dar es Salaam, 19 May 1897, 77. 34. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 954–960. 35. TNA, G1/102, “Runderlass,” 12 July 1897, 89. See also the brochure “Grundsätze für den Wegebau in Deutsch-Ostafrika” annexed to the circular. 36. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 954; BAB, R 1001/786d, “Runderlass,” 25 May 1899, 253; “Runderlass betreffend Wegebauten,” 31 March 1898, in Landes-­ Gesetzgebung 1902, 339. 37. Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 124; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 64. 38. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 453–460; TNA, G1/102, “Runderlass,” 19 May 1897, 77–78. 39. Clarence-Smith, “The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World.” 40. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 456; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 947; “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2873. 41. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1894/5,” 896; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 959; “Denkschrift über die

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213

Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee im Jahre 1900/1,” 2915; “Ein Beitrag zur Transportfrage in der Kolonie,” DOAZ (5 July 1902), 1. 42. For a short introduction to the role of these councils, see Bald, Deutsch-­ Ostafrika, 40–57; Weckner, Strafrecht, 87–88. 43. BAB, R 1001/1053, Liebert to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 24 January 1899, 73; “Denkschrift 1898/9,” 2878. See also Sunseri, Vilimani, 64–66. 44. For examples of forced road building in other colonies, see Okia, Communal Labor, 9–22; Akurang-Parry, “Colonial Forced Labor”; Allina, Slavery by Any Other Name, 112–124; Wiemers “It is All He Can Do to Cope with the Roads”; as well as Freed, “Networks of (Colonial) Power.” 45. Sunseri, Vilimani, 66; BAB, R 1001/1054, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 8 December 1903, 137. 46. BAB, R 1001/220, Zache, “Reisebericht,” 23 January 1900, 21–22. 47. BAB R 1001/1053, Styx, “Bericht über Ermordung von 2 Ombasha,” Kisaki, 6 December 1900, 182. 48. Maji Maji Research Project, 7/68/2/1, Libaba, “The Maji Maji Rising in the Lindi District,” 6. 49. BAB, R 1001/1053, Stuhlmann to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 21 November 1900, 94. 50. See Spear, Mountain Farmers, 77. 51. BL, EAP099/1/2/10/2, “Kollegialschreiben I,” Schwartz to Foreign Office, Leipzig, 16 September 1901, 141–142. 52. Allina, Slavery by Any Other Name. 53. BAB, R 1001/1053, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 13 April 1901, 184. 54. For the notion of nomadic colonialism, see Pesek, “Colonial Conquest,” 164. 55. IFL, 245/1, Prittwitz, Journal July 1897–August 1898, entry of 9 June 1898. 56. Ibid., entry of 15 June 1898. 57. Ibid., entry of 11 November 1897; IFL, 247/3, Prittwitz, Journal February–April 1902, entry of 5 March; IFL, 247/7, Prittwitz, Journal May–October 1905, entry of 13 June; IFL, 848-2/350, Jaeger, Journal May–August 1906, entry of 3 August. 58. BAB, R 1001/1054, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 8 December 1903, 140. 59. Fitzner, Kolonial-Handbuch, 277, 327. 60. “Wegebau in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” DKB (1 August 1904), 477–478; “Unerträgliche Zustände,” DOAZ (14 March 1903), 3; “Schlechte

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Rasthallen,” DOAZ (19 March 1903), 2; TNA, G4/6, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 28 December 1903, 6; “Der Zustand der Straßen,” DOAZ (21 May 1904), 3; “Rasthallen bei Tabora,” DOAZ (4 Juni 1904), 2. 61. Fonck, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 102. See also [untitled], DOAZ (28 April 1901), 3. 62. A Greek trader, for instance, used oxen to bring products from the British railway stop in Voi to Moshi. See ELM, II.32.6., contract between Leipzig Mission and Meinoridis, 8 November 1904. 63. TNA, G1/38, Charisius to Government, Tabora, 30 July 1906, 2. 64. Ibid. 65. Geologist Carl Lent hinted to the numerous interventions, which he depicted as done without rhyme or reason, arguing that “I, too, prefer straight-lined thoroughfares but their usefulness should depend on the local conditions.” Lent, Tagebuch-Berichte der Kilimandjaro-Station, 23 [page 92 in the book]. See also BAB, R 1001/5499, Rechenberg, “An sämmtliche Bezirksämter und Militärstationen,” 5 November 1906, 114. 66. TNA, G1/35, Ewerbeck to Government, Lindi, 22 January 1900, 223. 67. Ibid. 68. Various European reports give evidence that caravans ignoring colonial roads were a common phenomenon until the World War. See, for instance, IFL, 247/3, Prittwitz, Journal February–April 1902, entry of 16 March; IFL, 848-3/351, Jaeger, Journal September–December 1906, entry of 7 September; IFL, 180/45, H. Meyer, Journal October–November 1911, 2; BL, EAP099/1/2/10/4, Siegel to Dannholz, Mombo, 26 August 1913, 211. 69. IFL, 247/3, Prittwitz, Journal February–April 1902, entry of 19 March. 70. Schweinitz, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 31; Werther, “Die Erschließung des Innern Deutsch-Ostafrikas,” DKZ (6 January 1894), 3; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1895/6,” 2979; “Der Karawanen-Verkehr: Eine Gefahr für unsere Kolonie,” DOAZ (27 July 1901), 1; Meyer, “Vom Wegebau in Deutsch-Ostafrika,” Kolonie und Heimat in Wort und Bild, (1 October 1908), 4; Pfeiffer, Bwana Gazetti, 96. 71. Rathenau, Reflexionen, 184. 72. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 962. 73. IFL, 245/2, Prittwitz, Journal August–October 1898, entry of 5 October 1898. See also Alber, “Motorization and Colonial Rule,” 86. 74. IFL, 849-1/2, Jaeger, Journal June–November 1904, entry of 24 July 1904. 75. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1895/6,” 2979; IFL, 180/43, H.  Meyer, Journal September–

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215

October 1911, 41 & 152; IFL, 247/3, Prittwitz, Journal February–April 1902, entry of 19 March. 76. See TNA, G1/35, Engelhardt to Colonial Government, Tabora, 22 November 1897, 107; TNA G1/35, District Office to Colonial Government, Bismarckburg [Kasanga], 4 July 1900, 248. 77. BAB, R 1001/786e, “Runderlass,” 14 December 1899, 64. 78. “Aus der Kolonie,” DOAZ (28 October 1899), 1; Wohltmann, Deutsch-­ Ostafrika, 70; “Wirthschaftsleben im Innern unserer Kolonie,” DOAZ (27 October 1900), 1; Fonck, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 107. 79. For depopulation, see Pawełczak, The State and the Stateless, 186–191; F. Becker, “A Social History of Southeast Tanzania,” 30–31. 80. BAB, R 1001/6468, “Denkschrift [draft],” 1898, 268; BAB, R 1001/6473, “Jahresberichte,” 1900, 293; 357–358; BAB, R 1001/6474, “Jahres-Bericht [draft],” 1901, 2; BAB, R 1001/224, Lambrecht to Government, Kilosa, 12 January 1901, 12; BAB, R 1001/224, “Bericht über Wegeverhältnisse,” Kilosa, 1903, 28. See also Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 152; Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 176. 81. BAB, R 1001/220, Zache, “Reisebericht,” Lindi, 23 January 1900, 41; BAB, R 1001/220, “Vertrag,” Lindi, 20 September 1900, 102–105. 82. “Rechenbergs Ansichten über den Neger und die Praxis,” Usambara-­Post (7 December 1907), n.p. 83. BAB, R 1001/5750, Scherschmidt, “Beschreibung der Station Neu-­ Langenburg,” 1913, 353. 84. Fonck, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 107. See also Oberländer, Jagdfahrt, 136. 85. Reichskolonialamt, Medizinal-Berichte 1903/4, 16; Fonck, Deutsch-­ Ostafrika, 107; Benndorf, Verkehr, 76. In 1903, Götzen instructed all caravans to avoid these facilities. See TNA, G5/25, “Verfügung,” 9 December 1903, 1. 86. “Runderlass betreffend Erhaltung der Wege,” 12 May 1900, in Kolonial-­ Gesetzgebung V, 79; “Entwurf zu einer Verordnung betreffend die Erhebung einer Wegeabgabe,” 12 May 1900, in ibid., 80. See also “Der Karawanen-­Verkehr: Eine Gefahr für unsere Kolonie,” DOAZ (27 July 1901), 1. 87. TNA, G1/35, Winterfeld to Government, Dar es Salaam, 4 May 1901, 210. 88. See, among others, TNA, G1/35, Abel to Government, Tanga, 21 July 1900, 213; TNA, G1/35, Lambrecht to Government, Kilosa, 24 April 1901, 231; TNA, G1/35, Zache to Government, Lumbira, 7 March 1900, 246. 89. TNA, G1/35, Götzen to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 12 May 1900, 252. 90. For the construction of the Central Railway, see Pallaver, Lungo le piste, 122–130; Biermann, Tanganyika Railways; Reichart-Burikukiye, Gari la

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Moshi; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 63–70; as well as van Laak, Imperiale Infrastruktur, 137–142. 91. The first car was introduced in 1907. By 1914, 20 cars existed in the colony. See TNA, G7/20. 92. Rhodes, Building Colonialism, 61. 93. Götzen, “Denkschrift betreffend den Ausbau des Wegenetzes im Ostafrikanischen Schutzgebiete,” in Haushalts-Etat für die Schutzgebiete: auf das Rechnungsjahr 1905 (Berlin: Reichsdruckerei, 1904), 63; “Bekanntmachung betreffend Festlegung eines Wegebauplans,” 28 March 1904, in Kolonial-Gesetzgebung VIII, 84–85. 94. “Verordnung betreffend die Erhebung einer Häuser- und Hüttensteuer,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (1 April 1905), 1–3. 95. “Verordnung betreffend die Heranziehung der Eingeborenen zu öffentlichen Arbeiten,” Amtlicher Anzeiger (1 April 1905), 7. 96. Sunseri, Vilimani, 65–67. See also BAB, R 1001/790, “Runderlass,” 1 October 1910, 195–197. 97. “Die wirtschaftliche Lage und Sklavenhandel in Donde,” DOAZ (22 April 1905), 1–2. The translation is taken from Larson, “The Ngindo,” 100. 98. BAB, R 1001/726, Haber to Götzen, Dar es Salaam, 9 September 1905, 85; BAB, R 1001/726, “Bericht,” Dar es Salaam, 4 December 1905, 98; BAB, R 1001/726, Wilhelm Schultz and John Booth, “Bericht,” 11 December 1905, 106; BAB, R 1001/767, Haber to Foreign Office, Dar es Salaam, 9 May 1906, 64. 99. Larson, “The Ngindo.” 100. “Die Reise des hochwürden Herrn Bischof Thomas Spreiter nach Matumbi und Kwiro,” Missions-Blätter von St. Otilien 13:6 (1908/9), 82. See also Sunseri, Vilimani, 59. I am much obliged to Thaddeus Sunseri for sharing this source with me. 101. Streit, “Beyond Borders,” 103–106. 102. Weule, Native Life, 239. See also Zimmerman, “What Do You Really Want,” 443–444. 103. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 399. See also Allmaras, “Ich baue 2000 km Eisenbahnen,” 43. 104. Dernburg, speech of 26 February 1909, in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 12. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, Band 235 (Berlin: Norddeutsche Buchdruckerei, 1910), 7178. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 449–450. 105. IFL 848-3/351, Jaeger, Journal September–December 1906, entry of 7 September 1906. 106. BL EAP099/1/2/10/4, Siegel to Dannholz, Mombo, 26 August 1913, 211. For similar observations, see, for instance, IFL 247/3, Prittwitz,

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Journal February–April 1902, entry of 16 March 1902; IFL 180/45, H. Meyer, Journal October–November 1911, 2. 107. Fabian, “Curing the Cancer of the Colony,” 453. 108. Ibid., 450. See also Sutton, “Dar es Salaam,” 4. 109. For the history of Dar es Salaam, see Brennan and A. Burton, “Emerging Metropolis”; also Becher, Dar es Salaam; and Sutton, “Dar es Salaam.” 110. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 261–273, esp. 263. 111. Ibid. 270; Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, esp. 86–93, 257–271, Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 183; BAB, R 1001/639, “Mittel um den deutschen Handel von Zanzibar nach dem Festland zu ziehen,” Berlin, 23 June 1890, 11–18. 112. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 128. For these figures, see also BAB, R 1001/640, Strandes to Foreign Office, Zanzibar, 28 November 1902, 151. 113. See above all Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 261–273; Fabian, “Curing the Cancer of the Colony”; Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 224–271. 114. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete im Jahre 1896/7,” 954. 115. BAB, R 1001/812, “Protokoll über die Erste Sitzung des Gouvernementsrates,” Dar es Salaam, 27–28 April 1904, 10. 116. BAB, R 1001/812, “Sitzung des Gouvernementsrates,” Dar es Salaam, 18 May 1906, 145. 117. TNA, G4/123, Communal Council Bagamoyo to Government, Bagamoyo, 5 October 1905, 35; TNA, G4/57, Wächter to Government, Dar es Salaam, 11 March 1906, 20–21. 118. TNA, G4/123, Government to Communal Council Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, 25 October 1905, 38. 119. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 271. 120. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee im Jahre 1905/6,” 39. 121. “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee im Jahre 1907/8,” 6551. See also Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 272. For the harbor closure, see Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 224–234. 122. Stenzler, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 111. 123. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 273. 124. In accordance with this program, the new governor of German East Africa, Albrecht von Rechenberg (1906–1912), promoted the African cash crop economy and infrastructure extension. For this phase, see especially Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule; Bald, Deutsch-Ostafrika; Bald, “Die Reformpolitik von Gouverneur Rechenberg”; Pierard,

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“Dernburg Reform Policy.” For the elections, see Short, “Colonialism, War, and the German Working Class.” 125. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 135–137; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 297–314; Baltzer, Kolonialbahnen, 35–56. 126. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 274. “Der Niedergang von Bagamoyo,” DOAZ (12 September 1908), 1. See also Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 266–269. 127. Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 274; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 267. 128. Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee 1911/12, 142; and Die deutschen Schutzgebiete 1912/13, 175. See also Becher, Dar es Salaam, 46–47; Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 137. 129. Ray bin Juya, “Kupotea kwa Bagamoyo,” Kiongozi (January 1911), 5. For the newspaper, see Krautwald, “Bearers of News.” 130. BAB, R 1001/6569, “Jahresbericht über Ostafrika 1912/3 [draft],” 176. See also Becher, “Tabora,” 134; Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 137. 131. For smuggling, see Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 164–171. 132. N.N., “Ein- und Ausfuhrmarkt 1912,” 15. See also Fabian, Making Identity on the Swahili Coast, 274. 133. van Laak, Imperiale Infrastruktur, 137–143; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 307–309; BAB, R 1001/300, Dernburg, “Bericht über eine vom 13. Juli bis 30. Oktober 1907 nach Ostafrika ausgeführte Dienstreise,” November 1907, 22. See also “Denkschrift betreffend die Weiterführung der Eisenbahn Daressalam–Morogoro bis Tabora,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 12. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, Band 246 (Berlin: Sittenfeld, 1908), 24. 134. See Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung, 81–82; Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 307–308. 135. Becher, “Tabora,” 134. 136. BAB, R 1001/6568, “Jahresbericht über Ostafrika 1911/2 [draft],” 18–19. 137. TNA, G4/100, Lambrecht to Government, Morogoro, 9 July 1904, 26; “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” 2961. See also Schwidder, “Kolonialhandelshaus,” 338–339 138. See Grace, African Motors, 43–45. 139. TNA, G54/28, Illich to District Office Wilhelmstal, Kwai, 1 August 1911, 76. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 449. 140. TNA, G54/28, Illich to District Office Wilhelmstal, Kwai, 1 October 1912, 104; “Regelmäßiger Automobilverkehr Mombo–Wilhelmstal,” DOAZ (16 August 1911), 3.

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141. Söldenwagner, Spaces of Negotiation, 134–135. See IFL, 180/44, H.  Meyer, Journal October 1911, 146–147; “Ermäßigung der Eisenbahntrarife auf der Usamabaraeisenbahn für Landesprodukte aus dem Innern zur Küste,” DOAZ (9 August 1902), 9; “Die hohen Frachtpreise auf der Usambarabahn,” DOAZ (14 February 1903), 1; BAB, R 1001/6567, “Jahresbericht 1910/1 [draft],” 103. 142. In Moshi, for instance, a South Asian trader began operating the first truck in 1916. See ELM, II.32.6., report April 1914–April 1920. 143. BAB, R 1001/6568, “Jahresbericht über Ostafrika 1911/2 [draft],” 236. 144. N.N., “Ein- und Ausfuhrmarkt 1912,” 3. 145. Die deutschen Schutzgebiete 1912/13, 20. According to Werner Biermann, in 1913 the total number of male wageworkers was c. 200,000. See Biermann, Tanganyika Railways, 11; Sippel, “Wie erzieht man am besten,” 330. 146. Die deutschen Schutzgebiete 1912/13, 48. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 367. 147. Reichart-Burikukiye, Gari la moshi, 92–93. 148. Ibid.; H.  Fuchs, “Wakamba,” 391; IFL, 180/45, H.  Meyer, Journal October–November 1911, 36; IFL, 188/21, Uhlig, Journal April 1904, entry of 5 April. 149. H. Fuchs, “Von Nordpare,” 378; H. Fuchs, “Wakamba,” 391. 150. Gilbert, Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar; Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg. See also Rhodes, Building Colonialism, 112. 151. Krajewski, Kautschuk, Quarantäne, Krieg, 270. 152. Sheller and Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” See also Huber, “Multiple Mobilities.”

CHAPTER 7

Epilogue

On 1 July 1914, no ribbon was cut, no bottle of champagne broken when the 1250 kilometers of the Central Railway, connecting the Indian Ocean Coast with Lake Tanganyika, were finally handed over to the railway operator. The timing could hardly have been more unfortunate. In late June, just two days before the opening, a special issue of the Deutsch-­ Ostafrikanische Zeitung had informed the German settlers of German East Africa that the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife had been shot in Sarajevo the previous day.1 In Europe, the empires armed for war. The World War reached German East Africa on 8 August, when two British cruisers began a bombardment of Dar es Salaam. Hoping to protect the colony from warfare, Governor Heinrich Schnee immediately raised the white flag of truce over the colonial capital and retreated from the coast. However, Schnee soon found himself outmaneuvered in what historian Tanja Bührer calls a “coup d’état” by Schutztruppe commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.2 Von Lettow-Vorbeck intended to make East Africa a battleground in the global war. Until 1916, his forces successfully engaged the reinforced British troops in skirmishes and conducted raids in the Anglo-German borderlands. Then, the Allied powers mounted a large campaign with British, Belgian, and Portuguese forces simultaneously attacking the German territory. This strike from several directions pushed the Germans © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2_7

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back immediately, but von Lettow-Vorbeck’s troops continued with “hit-­ and-­run” tactics while constantly retreating southward. It was only on 25 November 1918, 14 days after the armistice in Europe, that the last German soldiers surrendered.3 The East Africa Campaign was a “war of legs” (Michael Pesek):4 in Europe, the First World War was marked by the modernization of warfare with chemical weapons, tanks, and airplanes entering the theaters of war. In East Africa, by contrast, the combatants’ movement was built upon established forms of mobility. In 1914, the 14 Schutztruppe companies commanded over corps of 50 porters each. The more pressing the demand for porters became, the more the colonial rulers resorted to labor coercion. Forced porterage for the state had always existed. But now raids on villages or pressure on chiefs to provide porters became the sole mode of recruitment.5 The World War was the culmination of the already war-like atmosphere discernible from expeditions since at least the 1880s. Porters in army columns and supply caravans were exposed to corporal punishment and treated under martial law.6 Recruits who did not manage to flee their conscription or desert the columns were in high danger of never returning home. In all armies, mortality rates of porters were shocking. Geoffrey Hodges estimates them at over 20 percent (including the missing) amongst British front-line porters. Similar numbers have been estimated for the Belgian forces and appear likely for the German army, too.7 During the four years of war, more than one million Africans served as porters. The British forces raised between 500,000 and 750,000 Africans for their Carrier Corps. The Belgian side employed 260,000 porters, the Portuguese 60,000, and recruited an additional 30,000 as auxiliary forces for the British troops.8 At the height of the war, in 1916, the Germans had 45,000 porters in their service.9 Anne Samson estimates the total number of Schutztruppe porters at around 192,000.10 In all armies, porters carried the supplies, equipment, ammunition, and the personal belongings of the soldiers.11 As such they literally “were the feet and hands of the army,” as is still inscribed on the Askari Monument in Nairobi.

Concluding Remarks This book has examined the complex and often conflictual relationship between caravan mobility and colonial rule in German East Africa. Because no pack animal could withstand the difficult terrain and the animal

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sleeping sickness, porter caravans were at the center of all logistical and commercial operations in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Eastern Africa. This outstanding role of caravan mobility for colonial statehood stood in sharp contrast to its discursive representation and to the everyday experience of colonial agents, who perceived porterage as a hindrance to economic development and a source of unrest. Putting the tensions underlying the continued existence of caravan transport in the colonial period front and center, the aim of this study was twofold. First, to illuminate the longevity and resilience of vernacular conceptions of mobility, spatial and economic structures related to it, as well as its established actors in the colonial period. The second aim was to illuminate the inner workings of colonial state formation, that is, the dynamics and tensions which shaped colonial policymaking and the tools of mobility management in particular. The most obvious finding to emerge from this study, relating to the first aim, is that caravan mobility and its (old and new) agents continued to play a critical role in the colonial era. Previous research by Stephen J.  Rockel has highlighted the professionalization of porterage since the mid-nineteenth century. The persistence of this profession and the resilience of its structures and practices have been at the center of my analysis. After the colonial takeover, the young colonial state had to adjust to existing structures. In the early years of German rule, South Asian, Omani, and Nyamwezi traders remained leading in commerce, and the colonial administration intervened in the existing business only cautiously, seeking to promote ivory trade flows. After the mid-1890s, shifts in the economy caused the decline of the established long-distance trade. This, however, did not bring an end to caravan mobility. German trade houses, such as Hansing and O’Swald, but also the DOAG, coopted established patterns of long-distance mobility and based their commerce on human heads and shoulders. Through the trade in wild rubber, a product in high demand on the world market, along with the expansion of consumption patterns far into interior areas, where South Asian shopkeepers sold imported commodities to African clients, the profession of porterage expanded after the mid-1890s. The colonial state, too, made extensive use of porter labor. Simultaneous efforts to replace the established transport system with alternative infrastructures over which the German colonizers could command, most prominently railways, remained unsuccessful. Even where railways were inaugurated, the static lines did not simply replace caravan mobility.

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Porterage, an African transport system and wage-earning profession developed before European conquest, persisted as the chief means of transportation in colonial East Africa. That the periodization of “colonial” and “precolonial” lacks explanatory power when applied to caravan transport was already plainly visible to any contemporary observer. By 1900, safari, the Kiswahili word for journey, had entered several European languages.12 Even more symbolic was the regular intersection of “multiple mobilities.” Because all transport was conveyed by human porters, technology transfer from Europe could only work if porters mediated the actual transfer. Steamboats, which were meant to ply the African Great Lakes, for instance, could not reach their destinations other than by being dismantled and carried, which was why the Germans originally intervened in the porter recruitment market. Caravan mobility outlived German rule. After the Germans had surrendered in 1918, German East Africa was divided between Belgium, which obtained Rwanda and Urundi, and the British who took over the rest of the colony under a League of Nations mandate. According to historian Joshua Grace, the British colonial state still used 60,000 porters in 1930, of whom 22,000 were conscripted, before the numbers dropped by the end of the interwar period due to an increase in motor vehicles.13 Some African men, Grace contends, “created labor regimes around this persistent need for hauling and guiding that recall Rockel’s description of porters as ‘professionals.’”14 Long-distance porterage as a profession thus proved its resilience, existing through the German period until at least the 1930s. The works by Rockel, Grace, as well as Geoffrey Hodges’ study Kariakor (1997) on porters in the First World War all examine the history of mobility in Tanzania.15 By focusing on the comparatively understudied German Empire and illuminating the centrality of caravan mobility to the German colonial project, the preceding analysis has filled a gap in the existing literature. It adds a missing link to the study of mobility and transport in Eastern Africa, which can now be studied from a long-term perspective over the course of more than one century. While the continued utilization of transport labor under German rule implies that the colonial state was incapable of developing those alternative infrastructures it desired, it does not mean that state agents were entirely powerless or that the profession and its practices could continue completely unchanged under colonialism. Rather, colonizers left specific aspects of the caravan economy untouched, but replaced or restructured

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others to make them fit into the colonial system, often by force. In the period under consideration, the job profile of porterage as well as the labor culture were characterized by both change and continuity. While a force of full-time porters continued to exist within the ranks of the colonial state, under the influence of colonial capitalism the profession increasingly became attractive to a less-skilled labor force without prior experience. At the same time, established work routines and day-to-day activities on the road were challenged by European employers who sought to transform their porter crews into human “tools of empire”: a disciplined, reliable, and quasi-mechanical workforce. To this end, caravan travel was to be rationalized and racialized, and everyday violence and excessive punishment became defining elements of the everyday life of many porters in both private and state-organized expeditions and caravans. Throughout the decades under scrutiny in this study, transport workers had considerable leverage over their workplace. They successfully preserved aspects of the established labor culture throughout the phases of transition. Being aware of their central role as “movers,” they adapted strategies of individual and collective action known from earlier caravan and expeditionary travel to oppose exploitative or violent working conditions. More than defending vested rights, porters also turned out adaptive to the new environment. Many learned how to capitalize on the firepower of the colonizers by engaging in raids on villages while others took advantage of the colonial territorialization and sought better employment elsewhere. A few others again made use of the judicial institutions established by the state and turned the colonial law against their employers. Different generations of porters thus insisted on negotiating the terms of their employment. Porterage as labor was a bricolage, presenting itself as a mixture of European efforts of rationalization and discipline and an established labor culture which Africans brought to their workplace. The safari never became a purely colonial form of mobility. Regarding the inner workings of colonial statehood, the study has demonstrated that the governance of caravan mobility was not shaped on the top of the colonial system but in interactions, negotiations, and struggles between different individual and group actors, both colonizers and colonized. To understand these processes, colonial statehood has been conceptualized as a social field: an arena in which actors and groups with different interests negotiated colonial governance. By systematically studying the tensions and contradictions inherent to colonial mobility and focusing on supposed colonial subjects, the analysis in this book has

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identified the roots of colonial policymaking and uncovered the many competing actors that shaped policies. As the investigation of state activities in the three fields of legislation, control systems, and infrastructure has explored, the colonial administration understood the governance of caravan traffic as a compromise between the general necessity to allow mobility and the need to restrict what was perceived as a threat. Acknowledging the centrality of the caravan economy, it was the government’s aim to fit this established system into the new colonial system. Ordinances in the early 1890s were expected to inhibit violence between villages and caravans. Travel permits and different spatial interventions, such as caravanserais or medical checkpoints, aimed at making the caravan system and its workers administratively manageable and easy to monitor for authorities, which would ideally allow them to channel African movement. Then again, investment in infrastructure sought to rationalize the modes of travel. Ultimately, it was hoped that vehicles and railways would eliminate porterage in the long run. Two aspects have persisted like a common thread through the preceding analysis of governmental action. First, the weak capabilities of the colonial administration. The colonial state showed that it did not possess the means to enforce most of its regulations along the caravan routes, while caravanners were unwilling to subject themselves to the rule set. The second limitation was the government’s own reluctance to impose stricter laws on the caravan traffic. Colonial rule in German East Africa was not altogether “long arms and weak fingers,”16 as Frederick Cooper’s famous dictum goes. Rather, as seen in Chap. 3, it was the “strong fingers” on the spot which took measures against the deficient caravan legislation, often acting against the wish of the governor whose “short arms” tried to stop them. The central administration indeed often felt the need to apply “weak fingers” towards caravanners and traders. This approach has been shown with regards to the liability system and the codification of caravan labor, in which deliberate non-regulation was one possible action to avoid conflicts. Only with enough of what they would have called Fingerspitzengefühl— the instinctive feeling of knowing when to tighten the reins and when to slacken them—did German state officials gradually dare to touch the caravan system. The actors of the established long-distance caravan economy—its financiers, traders, and transport workers—held decisive positions in the processes of colonial state formation. They challenged and shaped them either through direct involvement (e.g., petitions) or through their practices and

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routines. By locating colonial rule on the level of micro-politics, the book draws attention to non-elite actors. Porter behavior sometimes effected only small alterations, such as when the medical authorities switched their system of identifying Africans from passports to wristbands. Other activities reverberated on a larger scale, such as raids or cross-border movement, understood as smuggling or illicit migration in the colonizers’ perception. Moreover, the likely actions of African, South Asian, and Omani agents were a steady source of uncertainty for the German officials. The permanent preoccupation with how they might respond to enacted measures set tight limits to the modes of governance. It was the importance of their business, and the resulting ambivalence for the colonial administration, which made porters and caravan entrepreneurs “veto players” to colonial rule, both on the macrolevel and on the microlevel of travel parties. Given these premises, this book is, to a large extent, a study of the limited power of colonial rule and its transformative effects. The colonial state, however, was both weak and violent.17 In all regions where colonial rule gained a foothold, authorities exposed their coercive power in the everyday life of those colonized. As tributary or pressed workers, Tanzanians worked in road constructions or as porters for the state. The look at the internal workings of colonial logistics has revealed the violence inherent in a regime through which expedition leaders sought to minimize the agency of porters. Arguably, the massive scale of their violence was a strategy to cope with the menace Europeans felt in the presence of porter crews, in this sense giving evidence of their insecurity rather than their power.18 Still, as Eric Allina rightly observes in his study of the colonial labor regime in Mozambique, “Africans who lived under colonial rule […] were unlikely to view the brutality of their colonial masters as an expression of weakness.”19 The European claim to colonize mobility was very real for flogged porters, manifesting itself in assaults on their bodies and the scars these left. The preceding analysis has defied a clear divide between strong and weak statehood. Instead, this book promotes the need to look into different policy fields and investigate how continuity and transformation were negotiated in the interaction between different actors and on different levels.20 In this way, the analysis contributes to a point of more general importance for colonial history, which relates to the transformative effects of colonialism on African societies in the era of “high imperialism.” This study illuminates how different socio-economic and political trends, which had set in before colonization, were either coopted by the colonizers or

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proved resilient against them. At the same time, the study also points to the many societal and structural transformations that colonial occupation brought about, often through violence. Most importantly, this study reveals the fissures inherent to colonial state formation. I have chosen caravan transport as a lens through which I have studied the different branches of an emerging colonial state and the impact of vernacular actors and structures on their trajectories. The example of colonial mobility can provide a starting point for future research on how colonial rule was constituted and challenged during the transition period of the late nineteenth century and on the ways colonial regimes engaged with the structures they encountered. Once we perceive the longevity of precolonial structures and how they shaped the everyday lives of colonized Africans, we better understand the transformative power colonial states were able to exert and the manifold dynamics and tensions that permanently shaped the trajectories of their rule.

Notes 1. “Extra-Blatt: Ermordung des Thronfolgers von Oesterreich und seiner Gemahlin,” DOAZ (29 June 1914). 2. Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 473–477. 3. For the First World War in East Africa, see R. Anderson, Forgotten Front; Strachan, First World War, 93–130; Paice, Tip & Run; Pesek, Das Ende eines Kolonialreiches; as well as Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe, 401–477. 4. Pesek, “War of Legs.” 5. Bührer, “Massenmobilisierung,” 117. See also Savage and Munro, “Carrier Corps Recruitment;” and Hodges, Kariakor, 33–47. For conscriptions in the Belgian army, see Northrup, Beyond the Bend in the River, 108–111. 6. Bührer, “Massenmobilisierung”; Pesek, “War of Legs,” 112. 7. Hodges, Kariakor, 19; Pesek, Ende, 174; Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 250. 8. Pesek, “War of Legs,” 103. 9. Iliffe, Modern History of Tanganyika, 249. 10. Samson, “East and Central Africa.” 11. For porters in the East Africa Campaign, see above all Hodges, Kariakor. See also Savage and Munro, “Carrier Corps Recruitment”; and Pesek, Das Ende eines Kolonialreiches, 154–187. 12. See Gissibl, Nature of German Imperialism, 80; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, xiii.

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13. Grace, African Motors, 49. See also Bryceson, Food Insecurity, 103–104. 14. Grace, African Motors, 49–50. 15. Hodges, Kariakor. 16. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 197. 17. For this duality, see Isaacman, Cotton is the Mother of Poverty, 9. 18. Rempel, “Exploration, Knowledge, and Empire,” 225–226; Schaper, “Law and Colonial Order,” 25. This has also been argued by Rachel Standfield regarding the encounters between James Cook’s Endeavour expedition and Maori warriors in the Tasman Sea around 1770. See Standfield, “Violence and the Intimacy of Imperial Ethnography,” 33. 19. Allina, Slavery by Any Other Name, 13. 20. See also Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 129–130.

Glossary

akida, maakida (pl.) (Kiswahili)  A non-European administrative agent Arbeiterfrage (German)  The labor question askari (Kiswahili) / Askari (German)  An African soldier of the German colonial army barabara (sg. & pl.) (Kiswahili)  A paved road, built by the colonial state Bezirksamt (German)  A German district office Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft (German)  German East Africa Company duka, maduka (pl.) (Kiswahili)  A shop, usually run by a South Asian trader Erlaubnisschein (German)  A travel permit Erziehung zur Arbeit (German)  Education for work Frondienst (German)  Corvée hongo (Kiswahili)  The road toll jumbe, majumbe (pl.) (Kiswahili)  A chief Kaiserliches Gouvernement (German)  Imperial Government, the central administration of German East Africa kiboko (Kiswahili)  A hippopotamus-hide whip kirangozi, virangozi (pl.) (Kiswahili)  A caravan leader mnyampara, wanyampara (pl.) (Kiswahili)  A caravan headman

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2

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mnyamwezi, wanyamwezi (pl.) (Kiswahili)  A person from the central Tanzanian region of Unyamwezi pagazi, wapagazi (pl.) (Kiswahili)  A long-distance porter Passierschein (German)  A travel permit posho (Kiswahili)  A daily or weekly allowance for food procurement Reichskolonialamt (German)  Imperial Colonial Office Reichstag (German)  The German parliament safari (Kiswahili)  A journey Schutzgebiet (German)  Protectorate Schutztruppe (German)  The colonial army Selbstverwaltung (German)  Local self-government Strafexpedition (German)  A punitive expedition Trägerfrage (German)  The porter question Tributarbeit (German)  Corvée wali (Kiswahili)  A non-European deputy officer in the coastal towns Zentralmagazin (German)  The Central Depot

Note 1. The available volumes and issues of the listed newspapers and journals were examined systematically. Other newspaper articles were usually found as press clippings in archival files and are not listed here. Newspaper-style articles and news items from the above list are referenced in the respective endnotes.

Bibliography

Archival Sources Bodleian Library, Commonwealth and African Manuscripts, Oxford, United Kingdom (BDL) MSS.Afr.s.105: Gerald Portal Papers.

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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2

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[1904] “Anlagen zur Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 11. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, 1. Anlageband. Berlin: Sittenfeld: 143–468. [1905] “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und in der Südsee, 1903/4,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 11. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, 5. Anlageband. Berlin: Sittenfeld: 2949–3002. [1905] Medizinal-Berichte über die deutschen Schutzgebiete: Deutsch-Ostafrika, Kamerun, Togo, Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Deutsch-Neuguinea, Karolinen, Marshall- und Palau-Inseln und Samoa für das Jahr 1903/04. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. [1907] “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee im Jahre 1905/6,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 12. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, Band 239. Berlin: Sittenfeld: 23–92. [1908] “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee im Jahre 1906/7: Deutsch-Ostafrika,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 12. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, Band 245. Berlin: Sittenfeld: 3689–3824. [1909] “Denkschrift über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee im Jahre 1907/8: Ostafrika,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages: 12. Legislaturperiode, 1. Session, Band 252. Berlin: Sittenfeld: 6521–6690. [1912] Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee: 1910/11. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. [1913] Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee: 1911/12. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. [1913] Medizinal-Berichte über die deutschen Schutzgebiete: Deutsch-Ostafrika, Kamerun, Togo, Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Deutsch-Neuguinea, Karolinen, Marshall- und Palau-Inseln und Samoa für das Jahr 1910/11. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. [1914] Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee: 1912/13. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn.

Law Books [1898] Die Deutsche Kolonial-Gesetzgebung: 1893–1897, vol. II.  Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. [1899] Die Deutsche Kolonial-Gesetzgebung: 1897–1898, vol. III.  Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. [1901] Die Deutsche Kolonial-Gesetzgebung: 1899–1900, vol. V.  Berlin: Mittler & Sohn. [1902] Landes-Gesetzgebung des Deutsch-Ostafrikanischen Schutzgebiets: Systematische Zusammenstellung der in Deutsch-Ostafrika geltenden Gesetze, Verordnungen etc. Berlin: Mittler & Sohn.

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Books and Articles1 Aas, Norbert. 1989. Koloniale Entwicklung im Bezirksamt Lindi (Deutsch-­ Ostafrika): Deutsche Erwartungen und regionale Wirklichkeit. Bayreuth: Bumerang-Verlag. Abakari, Selim [Silimu] bin. 1901. “Meine Reise nach dem Nyassa mit der Dampferexpedition des Herrn Major von Wissmann,” in Schilderungen der Suaheli: Von Expeditionen v. Wissmanns, Dr. Bumillers, Graf v. Götzens, und Anderer, edited by Carl Velten, 56–115. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Abrahams, Raphael Garvin. 1967. The Peoples of Greater Unyamwezi, Tanzania: Nyamwezi, Sukuma, Sumbwa, Kimbu, Konongo. London: International African Institute. Akurang-Parry, Kwabena Opare. 2000. “Colonial Forced Labor Policies for Road-­ Building in Southern Ghana and International Anti-Forced Labor Pressures, 1900–1940.” African Economic History 28: 1–25. ———. 2002. “‘The Loads are Heavier than Usual:’ Forced Labor by Women and Children in the Central Province, Gold Coast (Colonial Ghana), ca. 1900–1940.” African Economic History 30: 31–51. Alber, Erdmute. 2002. “Motorization and Colonial Rule: Two Scandals in Dahomey, 1916.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 15: 79–92.

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Index1

A Abushiri Uprising, 38, 44, 85, 88, 91, 160 Akida, 58, 60, 107, 169 Arab, see Omani Askari, 13, 45, 48, 54, 60, 62, 66, 68–70, 137, 169, 197 Automobile, 198, 206 B Bagamoyo, 20, 50, 51, 85, 91, 98, 109, 110, 121, 124–126, 134, 142, 160, 161, 163, 168, 198, 201–205, 208 Barabara, see Road Beeswax, 59, 121, 123, 125, 129 Berlin Conference (1884/5), 37, 166 bin Mwinyi Bakari, Mtoro, 22 Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889/1890, 2, 94

Bujumbura, 79n149, 165, 167, 173, 175 Bukoba, 59, 123, 127, 129, 165, 167, 170, 171 Bumiller, Theodor, 38, 39 C Caravan camp life, 49, 65 food procurement, 43, 59, 62, 70, 87, 88, 99, 197 trader, 21, 91, 92, 97, 101, 104, 112, 134, 223 Caravan monitoring gatekeeping, 27, 158, 159, 168, 176 passport, 169, 173 travel permit, 95, 97, 101, 104, 106, 107, 159, 164, 165, 169, 170, 194

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89470-2

267

268 

INDEX

Caravan route central route, 6, 19, 23, 26, 45, 64, 89–91, 93, 125, 190, 197 northern route, 19, 134 southern route, 19, 122, 126, 137 Caravanserai, 160–164 Cart, 4, 39, 193, 198, 206 Cash, 22, 59, 63, 129, 197 Cattle, 59, 94, 134, 135, 137, 138, 165 Chief, see Jumbe Cloth, 20, 43, 63, 93, 124, 134 Colonial state border, 17, 109, 133, 138–139, 166–175, 227 Central Depot, 53–57, 59, 63, 71, 134 Communal Council, 110, 191 district office, 38, 51, 53, 60, 65, 95, 97, 103, 111, 124, 138, 142, 159, 162, 163, 169, 189, 198 Governmental Council, 142, 143, 164, 202 policymaking, 5, 14, 86, 88, 96, 98, 111, 112, 157, 226 state formation, 5, 12, 223 station, 10, 38, 54, 55, 58, 62, 65, 93, 95, 96, 100, 101, 103, 144, 167, 187, 190, 192 Congo, 17, 23, 57, 91, 92, 98, 108, 124, 127, 166, 167, 173, 174 Cooper, Frederick, 9, 158, 226 Corvée, 58, 59, 63, 188, 190–192 Customs collection, 7, 37, 87, 97, 123, 158, 162, 167, 168, 176 D Dar es Salaam, 53, 57, 58, 63, 103, 135, 142, 162, 188, 191, 201, 204, 221 Dernburg, Bernhard, 144, 203, 204

Desertion, 14, 38, 41, 42, 62, 68, 136 Deutsch, Jan-Georg, 13, 112 Disease, 4, 8, 160, 197 sleeping sickness, 4, 170–172, 223 Duka, 21, 91, 110, 129 E East Africa Protectorate, see Kenya Emin Pasha (Eduard Schnitzer), 41, 45, 48, 49 European trade firm Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft, 37, 51–53, 99, 134, 143, 160, 202, 223 Hansing & Co., 22, 92, 110, 123, 130, 133, 134, 137, 223 Smith, Mackenzie & Co., 51 Wm. O’Swald & Co., 22, 110, 124–126, 206, 223 Expedition marching distance, 69 marching order, 65 violence, 41, 46, 65–68, 139, 227 F Famine, 59, 60, 70, 188 Female companion, 49, 56 Firearm, 89, 93, 101, 105, 130 Footpath, 18, 46, 164, 186, 189, 195 G Gissibl, Bernhard, 86, 107, 167 Götzen, Gustav Adolf von, 138, 141, 143, 164, 166, 198, 200 H Haji Paroo, Sewa, 43, 50, 51, 90, 91 Hongo, 87, 89, 100

 INDEX 

I Iliffe, John, 12, 44, 60, 95 Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC), 91, 167 Indian, see South Asian Infrastructure, 2, 10, 85, 88, 185, 188, 193, 196, 201, 202 Iringa, 46, 87, 134, 192 Isike, 45 Islam, 8, 24 Ivory export, 88, 108, 167 trade, 20, 22, 50, 90, 92, 108, 166 J Jumbe, 45, 58, 107, 169, 170, 188, 192, 197 K Kasanga (Bismarckburg), 55, 59, 167, 173 Kenya, 9, 14, 91, 109, 125, 140, 166, 169, 205 Kilimatinde, 58, 106, 194 Kilwa, 19, 23, 97, 107, 122, 136, 190, 199 L Labor code, 132, 139 Labor migration, 23, 125, 129, 138, 145, 169 Lake Nyasa, 19, 51, 123, 126, 167, 188, 199 Lake Tanganyika, 19, 124, 167, 172, 174, 199, 204, 208 Lake Victoria, 19, 50, 92, 109, 123, 125, 127, 170, 172, 190, 208 Liebert, Eduard von, 59, 110, 128, 196, 197

269

Lindi, 19, 38, 65, 124, 190, 191, 197, 199 Lumbila (Langenburg), 60, 137, 167 Lushoto (Wilhelmstal), 167, 200, 206 M Maakida, see Akida Maduka, see Duka Maji Maji War, 60, 61, 69, 144, 199 Majumbe, see Jumbe Marangu, 58, 167 Marketplace, 20, 99, 133, 186, 197, 208 Markthallenzwang, 110 Men on the spot, 103, 104, 197 Mirambo, 89 Mission Church Missionary Society, 39, 94, 188 Leipzig Mission, 58–59, 128, 136, 192 Mkwawa, 45 Mnyampara, 48 Mombasa, 92, 109, 111, 139, 167 Moshi, 45, 46, 48, 58, 167, 169, 192, 195, 204 Mount Kilimanjaro, 46, 58, 128, 169, 199, 204 Mozambique, 19, 51, 107, 167, 192, 227 Mpwapwa, 19, 63, 93, 106, 188, 194 Mwanza, 55, 63, 91, 123, 125, 129, 161, 167, 190, 205 N Nyamwezi Nyamwezi as porters, 23, 54, 125 Unyamwezi, 6, 15, 21, 23, 89, 101, 125, 139, 145

270 

INDEX

O Omani, 5, 12, 21, 22, 90, 91, 101, 134, 165, 208 P Pack animal donkey, 4, 39, 191 oxen, 4, 39, 191, 193, 206 Pallaver, Karin, 15, 85, 102, 188 Pangani, 38, 142, 161 Pawełczak, Marek, 18, 158 Pesek, Michael, 10, 15, 40, 88, 96, 222 Peters, Carl, 37 Plague, 157, 169 Plantation, 1, 7, 64, 121, 128, 131, 141, 208 Porter auxiliary porter, 45, 63, 87, 186 everyday life, 65, 68, 107, 133 labor culture, 24, 41, 43, 56, 71, 127 load, 23, 43, 63, 124, 135, 140 motivation, 24, 128–134 names, 24, 56 recruitment, 45, 50, 51, 54, 57, 60, 126 travel experience, 23, 55 wage labor, 23, 24, 61, 125 wage level, 63, 128, 134 Porter question, 5–9, 38, 141 Posho, 70, 140, 143 R Raid, 62, 88, 89, 94, 99, 107, 123, 157, 197 Railway Central Railway, 198, 204, 205, 221 Uganda Railway, 109, 123, 125, 127, 134, 142, 205, 208

Usambara Railway, 190, 199, 205 Rechenberg, Albrecht von, 111, 133, 144, 173, 200, 217n124 Reichard, Paul, 41, 42 Rempel, Ruth, 42 Rest house, 197 Rinderpest, 59, 99, 134, 165 Road, 189, 202, 206 construction, 59, 65, 188–190, 192, 198 maintenance, 190 usage, 106, 194 Rockel, Stephen J., 4, 12, 14, 18, 19, 21, 23, 40, 41, 43, 88, 104, 125, 126, 130, 134, 136, 187, 224 Rubber, 57, 59, 109, 121–123, 127, 129, 132, 172, 223 Ruga ruga, 89 Rwanda, 127, 165, 224 S Saadani, 45, 121, 161 Schele, Friedrich von, 52, 53 Schnee, Heinrich, 111, 175, 221 Schutztruppe, 46, 63, 69, 90, 133, 168, 187, 222 military campaign, 46, 69 porter corps, 39, 61 Sheriff, Abdul, 18, 20, 158 Slave slaves as porters, 24, 107 slave trade, 2, 20, 107 Smuggling, 92, 108, 168 Social field, 13, 86, 96, 112, 143, 225 Soden, Julius von, 8, 90, 97, 100, 103, 104, 159, 161 Songea, 134, 137, 167 South Asian, 5, 12, 21, 22, 86, 90–92, 98, 101, 105, 109, 110, 123, 124, 129, 134, 165, 201, 208 Stairs, William Grant, 44, 50

 INDEX 

Stanley, Henry Morton, 41, 51 Strike, 41, 136 Stuhlmann, Franz, 6, 48, 133 Swahili Kiswahili, 24, 111 Swahili coast, 19, 23, 37, 38, 50, 61, 65, 91, 122, 168, 209 Swahili culture, 21, 24, 130 T Tabora, 19, 63, 87, 90–92, 104, 125, 161, 190, 192, 204 Tanga, 99, 137, 141, 161, 189, 208 Taxation, 59, 98, 128, 191 tax labor, 59, 60, 128, 131, 191, 192, 199 Trans-colonial, 17, 139, 166, 172, 173 Trotha, Lothar von, 62, 105 U Uganda, 91, 140, 169–172 Ujiji, 20, 55, 64, 89, 91, 167, 173–175

271

Urundi, 165, 171, 224 Usambara Mountains, 142, 199, 200, 206 V Visram, Allidina, 22, 90, 110, 111 W Wanyampara, see Mnyampara Wanyamwezi, see Nyamwezi Webel, Mari K., 173, 175 Weule, Karl, 55, 65, 200 Wissmann, Herrmann (von), 38, 41, 43, 46, 49, 50, 85, 90, 91, 96, 159, 160 World War I, 221 Y Yao, 23, 45, 124, 133 Z Zanzibar, 20, 22, 37, 50, 95, 139, 158, 168, 201 Sultan, 38, 101, 158, 201