Tanzania History

To attempt to go through the entire pre-history of Tanzania in a few short paragraphs is only to scratch on what many call the cradle of mankind….but here goes! Situated in the band of the earth that is closest to the sun, the region to the north of the country, and, in particular the Great Rift Valley, has played a significant part in the formation of what we, today, call “humans”.

This unique valley, where the earth’s crust has cracked and formed a series of water pools and fertile, volcanic pastures, played host to (it has been discovered) 3 or 4 different species of hominid man. Through findings in the Turkana region of Kenya, in Ethiopia and in the famous Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, bones have been dated back as far as 2 million years ago.

Many of these discoveries took place in the 1970s and, where up until then scientists had thought that man had separated from chimps around 20 million years ago, these findings shook the world into realising that we are far closer than this and that it may have been more like 2 to 4 million years.

For further information on Olduvai Gorge and the discovery made by the Leakeys’ please follow the link at the bottom of the page.

From the millions to the hundreds, namely up until the 1500s, there is very little that is known of Tanzania’s interior (I am calling it “Tanzania” mainly for simplicity…it only gained the name and the boundaries around the turn of the 19th century during the “scramble for Africa”…please see below). Largely inhabited by hunter-gatherers that lived off the land and forests in a symbiotic balance. (examples of such communities can still be found today across Lake Tanganyika in the Congo Basin, such as the “Twa”, or the "Hadza” in northern Tanzania).

This relative tranquil was disrupted in the early 1900s by the arrival of what are dubbed the Ngoni, a warring race of exiles that had travelled north from Southern Africa. Their arrival, along with the bolder and bolder advances of the Arab slave traders out of Zanzibar, meant that the local communities were forced to conglomerate and form larger and larger areas.

The history of Africa’s Eastern coastline is far more well known and references to traders and bountiful riches are dotted throughout the manuscripts of the most famous seafaring nations, such as the Phoenicians of 600 BC, or even as far back as 2,500 BC with the landings of an explorer called Sahare.

The most important period in its development was with the arrival of the Arabic traders, descendant from the Shiraz region of Persia, looking to extend their empires and seek out new riches…mainly in the form of gold, from around the 10th century AD. This created trade within the African continent as African traders then started to move the gold of the interior, out to coastal ports such as Mombasa and Kilwa, on the Tanzanian coast.

This period of real wealth and expansion lasted for around 500 years until the beginning of the 15th century, when the roaming Portuguese captured Mombasa and burnt several of the more important coastal towns, such as Kilwa, to the ground. Unlike the Shirazi sultanates, the Portuguese were not able to continue the gold trade and so, by the late 1600s, the east African coastline had all but collapsed, economically.

The final piece in the puzzle, however, was the arrival of the Sultan of Oman.

Undoubtedly one of the main things that the Tanzanian coastline, and the island of Zanzibar, is most famous for. Where, traditionally, the western coast of Africa had been very strong for slave trading, due to its proximity to the Americas and the Caribbean, by the early 1900s the British had put an end to the trade.

Originally backed by the British in his advancement south, the Sultan Said of Oman had established a trading post on the small island of Zanzibar and, by the middle of the 18th century was well entrenched there. Using the traditional gold routes to deal in African slaves it is astounding to look back at the numbers of slaves that started to pass through this small island. By the end of the trading period, some 45 years later, it was estimated that, per year, there had been around 40,000 slaves passing through. This count obviously only takes into account the able bodied men and women that made it to the island and, in regards to the communities and tribes on the mainland meant that many disappeared forever. This period was probably the most devastating in the country’s history.

At the end of the 18th century, on a whim of personal gain, the then king of Belgium, Leopold, decided that he would like to own the Congo basin (what is now the Congo and the DRC). While this act triggered a frenzy of activity from many of the main European powers at the time, notably the French, Portuguese and the British, this did not, initially have much bearing on Tanzania or East Africa.

Having established good relations with the new Sultan of Oman, the British were already very firmly entrenched in Zanzibar to the point that it could even have been deemed a protectorate. Through a strange twist of fate, however, the German leader, Bismarck, looking for bargaining tools in his search for more sway in Europe, saw Tanzania as potential.

Over the course of the next 6 years or so the two countries vied for the upper hand, claiming different regions and signing treaties with local rulers. In 1890, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain and Bismarck signed a treaty that gave the Germans rule in Tanzania, and the British the protectorate ship over Zanzibar, forming the border of what is now Kenya and Tanzania.

The period of German occupation, from the 1840s until the end of the First World War, was not a happy one for Tanzanians. Along with trying to rule by force rather than coercion, the country experienced a wave of drought and disease in the late 1890s that did little to endear the new rulers to their people. With an ill-advised attempt to turn the southern region of the country to cotton production and the Maji Maji uprisings, it was little wonder that, by 1914, the German occupation of the country came to and end and the British took over.

Now re-named “Tanganyika”, the British had a far more liberal and laid-back approach to rule. The local populations were actively encouraged land ownership and agriculture and, while not exactly shooting the country’s development forwards, a sense of peace returned to the people and the land.

As this ethos continued and the country prospered relatively during the Second World War (the country was not involved in any fighting, but did benefit from world food prices going upwards and the agricultural output increasing), there emerged one man that would lead the country towards its future, Julius Nyerere.

Educated in Edinburgh University and having fought in the Second World War on the side of the British, Nyerere had grown up with the relaxed and pro African government of British rule. Today he is widely regarded by his detractors as something of a socialist, determined to create waves for those in the west, but, in reality, he appeared to be much more of a nationalist, wanting only the best for his country and its people. This love came through during the period of his long tenure, from the 1960s through until the mid 1980s.

As Africa was once more becoming governed by Africa and the decolonisation spread (starting in Ghana in 1958), the British government offered free elections to Tanzanians who all voted in favour of their own Tanzanian run government headed by Nyerere. In May 1961 the country was granted independence and, by April 1964 the countries of Tanganyika and Zanzibar had merged to form the free and self-governed country of Tanzania.

It is said that he did much damage to Tanzania during the 20 years or so that he was in power, such as a misguided attempt to bring its population together into small communities in the “Ujaama” project, but there are also, undeniably plenty of things that have turned out right.

Today Tanzania is one of the most stable countries in Africa with a, relatively, free and fair electoral process, very limited corruption in government, and none of the tribal problems that have plagued many of the other countries around the continent. It is true that, economically, it is still struggling somewhat but, using its stability as a basis, it appears that it is beginning to find its feet at last.