Academic literature on the topic 'German East Africa'

In March 1907, as newly-appointed Colonial Minister Bernhard Dernburg prepared to visit German East Africa to assess the colony's potential for economic development following the recent Maji Maji rebellion, requests poured in from businessmen seeking to accompany the minister. Prominent among the select few allowed on the trip were representatives of the German textile industry interested in founding cotton plantations in the colony. Among those participants was Gustav Hertle, director of the Leipzig Cotton Spinnery, the largest cotton spinner in Germany, who had long expressed interest in colonial cotton production. Following the trip the Leipzig Spinnery went on to acquire land in German East Africa, where it founded one of the biggest cotton plantations in the colony. Other textile industrialists who accompanied Dernburg also established cotton plantations in East Africa.

My main concern in this paper is to throw some light on the scope of the problem from the view of the development of African historical studies in East Germany after World War II. It is necessary first to discuss some negative and positive sides of German historical African studies before 1945. For several decades German research has demonstrated a startling lack of interest in the research problems of African history. In connection with the colonial conquests of the European powers, special institutes grew in social anthropology, colonial economics, and geography, although the historical development of the peoples of Africa was ignored. As an outward appearance of this development there grew in several German universities, departments for Oriental languages e.g., at the University of Berlin on the direct instruction of Bismarck, and in 1908 the Colonial Institute at Hamburg University.Leading German historians and Africanists of the past demonstrated their theoretical ignorance in relation to African history. They proceeded from the definition of Leopold von Ranke, who classed the African peoples with the “non-history possessing” peoples who have made no contribution to world culture. G. W. F. Hegel uttered only fatalistic and stereotyped ideas—for him Africa was “no historical part of the World, it has no movement or development to exhibit.” These fundamental conceptions penetrated in one degree or another, the majority of publications on Africa up to 1945. Even Dietrich Westerman, one of the best known Africanists, who published one major book on African history in the German language, Geschichte Afrikas, in 1952 made his studies in the old tradition of seeing sub-Saharan Africa predominantly from the European point of view and continuing the image of an African peoples' history that was not accomplished by the world moulding civilized mankind and has not contributed its share to it. In short, the theoretical foundation of colonialism was rooted in German research in a deep racialist ideology. Only a few explorers and scientists swam against the tide.

The reunification of the Germanies in 1990 has opened up research opportunities for historians of Africa. While research in East German archives was possible for Western scholars during the Cold War, conditions for research were not as easy or affordable as they currently are. Intent on obtaining foreign exchange, East German authorities channeled Western researchers to expensive hotels and limited the number of files a researcher could see in a day in order to prolong the process. Visas had to be obtained well in advance of research trips, and for prescribed durations, curtailing the flexibility one needed if archival materials proved to be especially rich. From the Western side, while the Federal Republic was generous in allocating funds for research in its archives (particularly through DAAD—German Academic Exchange Service—research grants), it prohibited use of those funds for research undertaken in East Germany. Today it is possible to use DAAD funds for travel and research throughout reunited Germany.While federal and state archives in eastern Germany offer valuable resources for researchers interested in the former German colonies, mission archives located in the East have not been widely used by historians of Africa. For the most part these have been content to use published mission histories and newspapers as their sources of information, neglecting diaries, station reports, and correspondence which offer more nuanced and detailed pictures of African life.

The East German regime provided extensive military assistance to developing countries and armed guerrilla movements in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. In the 1980s, the pro-Soviet Marxist government in Nicaragua was one of the major recipients of East German military assistance. This article focuses on contacts at the level of the ministries of defense, on Nicaraguan requests to the East German military command, and on political and military decision-making processes in East Germany. The article examines the provision of weaponry and training as well as other forms of cooperation and support. Research for the article was conducted in the formerly closed archives of the East German Ministry for National Defense regarding military supplies to the Third World as well as the voluminous declassified files of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (the ruling Communist party).

One of the many problems facing the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 was the future of the conquered German and Turkish territories in Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East. Widespread anti-imperialist sentiment in Europe and the United States opposed direct annexation of the possessions, but wartime agreements and the security interests of the Allies prevented returning the conquered areas to their former rulers. In particular, many British leaders wanted to ensure that Germany could never again attempt world domination and were convinced that the restoration to Germany of its overseas possessions would pose a “grave political and military menace” to Britain's vital maritime connections with South Africa and India. After a long, often acrimonious debate, the Conference agreed on a compromise that placed the former German colonies and Ottoman provinces under the supervision of the League of Nations. This solution gave the Allies control of their acquisitions as “mandates” within a framework of international accountability. Great Britain received the most mandates, including Germany's largest colony of German East Africa. For the British leaders who had always advocated transforming German East Africa into a British colony, the new system seemed to make little practical difference. For the colonial officials in London and at the highest levels of colonial administration within the conquered possession, however, the mandates system presented serious problems and was not simply a disguise for annexation.

Why does sub-Saharan Africa exhibit the highest rates of gender inequality in the world? This article evaluates the contributions of Christian missionary societies in German East Africa to current socioeconomic gender inequalities in Tanzania. Previous studies ascribe a comparatively benign long-term effect of missionary societies, in particular of the Protestant denomination, on economic, developmental, and political outcomes. This article contrasts that perception by focusing on the wider cultural impact of the civilizing mission in colonial Africa. The analysis rests on a novel georeferenced dataset on German East Africa—based on digitized colonial maps and extensive historical records available in the German colonial archives—and the most recently available DHS-surveys. The results highlight the formative role of Catholic missionary societies in German East Africa in shaping gender inequalities currently witnessed in Tanzania.

AbstractHistorians have drawn on newspapers to illuminate the origins of modern nationalism and cultures of literacy. The case of Kiongozi (The Guide or The Leader) relates this scholarship to Tanzania's colonial past. Published between 1904 and 1916 by the government of what was then German East Africa, the paper played an ambivalent role. On the one hand, by promoting the shift from Swahili written in Arabic script (ajami) to Latinized Swahili, it became the mouthpiece of an African elite trained in government schools. By reading and writing for Kiongozi, these waletaji wa habari (bearers of news) spread Swahili inland and transformed coastal culture. On the other hand, the paper served the power of the colonial state by mediating between German colonizers and their indigenous subordinates. Beyond cooptation, Kiongozi highlights the warped nature of African voices in the colonial archive, questioning claims about print's impact on nationalism and new forms of selfhood.