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East Africa in the 19th Centuryby Jim Jones (Copyright 2003, All Rights Reserved) | |
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East Africa in the 19th Centuryby Jim Jones (Copyright 2003, All Rights Reserved) | |
As you read this essay, keep in mind that there were several hundred distinct African groups living in East Africa in the 19th century, and that most of their histories are only available through oral traditions collected later by European or African scholars. The exceptions were Ethiopia, which produced its own literature for centuries, and Swahili coastal cities which were inhabited by Muslims who produced records in Arabic.
In the early 19th century, the East African coast was theoretically under the control of the Sultan of Oman whose capital was in the city of Muscat on the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula. The interior was divided into a number of local states which included the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, the animist kingdom of Buganda and many smaller states. The Zulu Mfecane introduced a number of new states towards the south in the area that is now Tanzania and Malawi, while Mehemet Ali's modernization led to the expansion of Egyptian administration into the Upper Nile River (modern Sudan).
Although struggles within the Muslim world and local
political disputes also played a role, European industrialization
and overseas trade combined to undermine the stability of the
region during the 19th century. First, ocean voyages around
Africa meant that Europeans sailed along the East African coast,
and that created concerns about the security of ships and
sailors. Second, the end of the slave trade along the West
African coast shifted slave traders to the East Coast where they
encouraged the expansion of existing slave markets. Third,
industrialization created the demand for tropical products
like rubber and ivory, and East Africa's plains and forests were
a particularly good place to find elephant ivory.
One of the major changes on the East African coast in the
19th century was the decline in the power of the Ottoman Empire.
After two centuries of Portuguese control that resulted from
claims made by Vasco da Gama and his successors at the beginning
of the 16th century, Muslims reasserted their authority along the
Swahili Coast as far south as Cape Delgado (just below the border
between Tanzania and Mozambique). Omani influence ebbed and
waned until the first half of the 19th century when Seyyid Said,
the Sultan of Oman, subdued the East Africa coast. He attracted
the interest of the British, who were sailing regularly to India
by then, and in 1840 they assisted Said to move his capital from
Muscat to Zanzibar, an island off the coast of modern Tanzania.
Within a few years, the USA, Germany, France and Britain all
opened diplomatic missions on Zanzibar.
Zanzibar had been part of Muslim trading networks in the
Indian Ocean for more than eight hundred years. Under Said, its
economy became based on the exploitation of clove plantations
that used African slave labor to produce spices for export to
India and Europe. Slaves brought to the coast were also used to
carry ivory, and through the second and third quarters of the
19th century, Zanzibari traders established posts as far inland
as Tabora (in western Tanzania).
European powers, especially Britain, recognized Seyyid Said
as the "Sultan of Oman and the East African Dominions," and
Zanzibar became known as "The Pearl of the Indian Ocean." Seyyid
Said died in 1856 and his domains were divided between two sons,
Majid (half-Ethiopian) in Zanzibar and Thwain (half-Georgian) in
Oman. Britain's Viceroy in India, Lord Canning, promptly
recognized the division, making permanent the division of Oman
and Zanzibar. Majid ruled from 1856 to 1870, when he was
succeeded by his brother Barghash (1870-1888).
During Barghash's reign, British influence increased in
Zanzibar. Sir William Mackinnon, a Scottish shipbuilder,
organized the first regular mail service between Britain, India
and Zanzibar in 1872. The following year, the British made
Sir John Kirk the permanent Consul-General to Zanzibar and he
convinced Barghash to sign a document abolishing the slave trade.
He almost convinced Barghash to accept a British protectorate in
1877, but by then two German shipping firms had begun to operate
in the region and Barghash began to play them off against the
British.
In fall 1884, the German explorer, Karl Peters, traveled
inland from Zanzibar and spent the next several months collecting
signatures on treaties from local African chiefs on behalf of his
organization, the "Society for German Colonialism" (Deutsche
Kolonialverein). Peters was only 28 years old, the son of a
Lutheran pastor, and a university graduate who had spent some
time in London where he became enthused by the progress of
British imperialism. His travels took him to the area around
Lake Victoria-Nyanza, at the western edge of the territory
claimed by the Sultan of Zanzibar.
Although he had no official position or government backing,
he returned to Germany in February 1885 just before the end
of the Congress of Berlin. Bismarck accepted his treaties as the
basis for a German claim over East African territory. Peters
received a charter for the "German East African Company"
and went on to achieve fame as a lecturer and promoter of African
colonization. His GEAC did not do as well, and the government
had to take it over in 1888 after local revolts destroyed much of
its equipment.
This excerpt from Peters' 1885 correspondence gives an idea
of his personality and attitude towards Africa:
Source: Kolonial-Politische Korrespondenz
(Colonial-Political Correspondence). 1st Year, Berlin, 16. Mai
1885, available at
www.zum.de/psm/imperialismus/peters1e.php
Note that in Peters' mind, land that was under African or
Zanzibari authority was "not yet taken" and that as a result of
his treaties, he considered himself "the rightful owner of 2500
square miles," an area half as large as Connecticut.
Peters continued to promote German interests in East Africa,
and even led an expedition to Buganda in 1888 to search for "Emin
Pasha," one of the many Europeans who were forced to flee the
Upper Nile Valley following the rise of the Mahdi. Although Peters did not
find him, he concluded a treaty with the leader of Buganda, then
left the area in a hurry when a much stronger British force
arrived. Later, he served as the German high commissioner for
East Africa, was convicted of brutality towards Africans and
relieved of his post. He continued to work in East Africa in the
early 20th century and obtained a reputation as a racist for some
of his writings.
Karl Peters' travels in East Africa instilled fear in British
imperialists, especially since his claims straddled the proposed
Cape-to-Cairo overland route. But European interest in East
Africa was already strong thanks to the writings of
missionaries like David Livingstone and explorers like Richard
Burton and William Speke. For the British especially, the East
African interior seemed critical because it contained the elusive
"source of the Nile" on which Egypt's economic well-being and
stability depended.
As European explorers ventured into the "great lakes" region
of East Africa (where Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya meet), they
encountered an African state that was unlike any other. Buganda
was situated in a region of great fertility and
was so densely populated that its leaders exercised control
through title to land rather than lineages. That gave Buganda a
political structure that reminded Europeans of their own feudal
period, with a hereditary king (called the kabaka) and a
landed nobility that served as a counterweight to the monarchy.
For missionaries seeking a point of departure for the
"civilizing" of African, Bugandan society seemed to offer an
advanced place from which to proceed. Europeans with more
mercantile priorities also noticed that Buganda offered plentiful
supplies of ivory and tropical crops. Finally, Buganda contained
the source of the Nile River, so it possessed strategic
importance to Europeans preoccupied with Egyptian stability and
the Suez Canal.
By the 1880s however, Buganda was in a state of turmoil as a
result of foreign influences. Muslim began to arrive from the
coast in the 1860s and in 1868, Kabaka Mutesa converted to Islam.
This alienated Bugandan nobles whose land claims were based on
traditional religious beliefs, so after H. M. Stanley visited
Buganda in 1876, Kabaka Mutesa issued an invitation to Christian
missionaries and the first representatives of the Anglican Church
Missionary Society arrived a year later. In 1879, the first
French Catholic missionaries reached Buganda and made converts,
creating three competing factions--Swahili Muslim, British
Anglican and French Catholic.
After the Kabaka Mutesa died in 1884, this precarious balance
disintegrated. His successor Kabaka Mwanga feared that the
missionaries would bring in other Europeans, so he had an
Anglican missionary named James Hannington assassinated in
November 1885 and executed 30 Catholic Bugandans when they
refused to give up their new religion. The country became
divided into Protestant, Catholic, Muslim and animist factions,
and civil war ensued.
The death of a missionary stirred passions in Britain, and in
1890, the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) sent a
military unit under the command of Captain Frederick Lugard to
Buganda. Lugard's army supported the Protestant faction, which
defeated the Catholics in February 1892. The result was a treaty
that divided Buganda along religious lines.
Lugard's success also extended the authority of the IBEAC
and limited the effect of new treaties collected by Karl Peters about the same time. In late
1890, the IBEAC's director Mackinnon asked the British government
to guarantee the interest on a loan to finance the construction
of a railway from Mombasa (on the Kenyan coast) to Lake Victoria.
After the proposal failed in July 1891, the IBEAC threatened to
withdraw from Buganda. Some members of the government encouraged
that withdrawal out of fear that Lugard's aggressive policy would
lead to another Gordon
incident. Missionary groups roused public opinion against
the withdrawal by claiming it would lead to the death of more
Christians and the IBEAC rallied support from assorted Chambers
of Commerce and trading organizations. A new Foreign Secretary
(Roseberry) supported continued British intervention as a way to
show his independence from the previous generation of British
politicians (including William Gladstone, an outspoken critique
of Disraeli's pruchase of the Suez Canal shares). In the end,
the interventionists won and Uganda became a formal British
protectorate in 1894.
Like Buganda, Ethiopia was a centralized state located inland
from the Muslim-controlled East African coast. Unlike Buganda,
it occupied a fairly poor area that was best suited to animal
grazing rather than farming. Fortunately, Ethiopia was very
mountainous and that enabled the Ethiopians to survive numerous
invasions in the past. In the 19th century, Ethiopia's leaders
were able to cultivate a sense of nationalism and use Ethiopia's
strategic trading position between the coast and the interior to
create the basis for survival during the European conquest of its
neighbors.
A noble named Theodore (Tewodros) founded the modern
Ethiopian state in 1855. He began by confiscating lands owned by
the Ethiopian Christian church to finance the purchase of modern
weapons and roads to connect the capital at Addis Ababa to the
rest of the country. Tewodros' actions provoked internal
resistance as well as European fears, and when the British sought
the right to assign a British consul to Addis Ababa, Tewodros
demanded technical assistance in exchange. The British refused,
so Theodore took the British consul hostage. When the British
sent a force of some 30,000 to free him in 1868, they defeated a
much smaller Ethiopian army at the battle of Magdala and
Tewodros' government disintegrated.
Chaos ensued until the two main rivals for the throne,
Yohannes IV and Menelik II, reached an agreement in 1872.
Yohannes became the new king with the understanding that Menelik
would succeed him, and Yohannes restored the privileges of the
church and nobles. The Ethiopian army also stopped an Egyptian
invasion in 1875-1876 and defeated the Italians at Dogali (near
the Red Sea coast) in 1887, but they were unable to stop the
Italians from occupying the port of Massawa in 1885 or Mahdist forces from invading and
killing Yohannes in 1889.
Menelik II took the throne peacefully and Ethiopia remained
independent, despite increasing European interest in the area.
Not only did the Italians occupy part of the Red Sea Coast
(modern Eritrea), but the British declared a protectorate along
the northern Somali coast facing the Gulf of Aden on July 20,
1887. Meanwhile the French established a protectorate at
Djibouti on the main caravan route between the coast and Addis
Ababa in 1887. In February 1888, the French and British agreed
to divide their spheres of influence along the coast and agreed
not to compete for Harrar (located inland from Djibouti).
Meanwhile, Menelik continued to strengthen Ethiopia using the
proceeds from the slave trade between the Upper Nile Valley and
the Red Sea. That slave route boomed to meet the demand in the
Ottoman Empire after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus
eliminated one source and the 1847 Anglo-Zanzibari treaty reduced
the trade from farther south. Under Menelik, Ethiopians charged
tolls on slave caravans buying or selling slaves themselves.
Menelik used the income to buy military equipment and hire
technical advisors to turn Ethiopia into a modern military power.
In 1891 Ethiopia was able to conquer the region to the southwest
between Addis Ababa and Lake Victoria as well as the Ogaden
Desert to the east. Menelik II also introduced a permanent
bureaucratic administration into occupied territories using both
local leaders and military garrisons.
As a result of Menelik's maneuvering, Europeans extended
diplomatic recognition to independent Ethiopia. Menelik
recognized Italian control of Eritrea in exchange for Italy's
recognition of Ethiopian independence in the Treaty of Wichali on
May 5, 1889. Menelik used Italian recognition plus several
border agreements to obtain French and British recognition. The
three major European powers eventually confirmed Ethiopian
independence with the Tripartite Pace signed on July 4, 1906.
Before that occurred, however, Italy and Ethiopia fought a
major battle at Adowa in 1896. The conflict began over an
argument about the meaning of the Treaty of Wichali. The
Italians insisted that it required Menelik to consult with them
before contacting other European powers, while Menelik believed
that since Ethiopia was independent, no such consultation was
needed. The Italians invaded in 1895, but on March 1, 1896, an
Ethiopian army that numbered nearly 100,000 wiped out a smaller
but better equipped Italian army at Adowa.
The victory at Adowa confirmed Ethiopian independence in the
eyes of other Europeans. Menelik continued to obtain European
investment capital and technicians to help rebuil the
capitol at Addis Ababa, construct a railroad from Djibouti to
the capital in 1894 and introduce postal, telegraph and telephone
service by the early 20th century. He also introduced
other reforms included banking, health care, and education,
although most Ethiopians remained largely unaffected by Menelik's
modernization.
In November 1885 Germany, Britain and France agreed to a
boundary commission to determine the limits of the Sultan of
Zanzibar's domain. In October 1886 the commission announced its
findings.
Although East Africa remained nominally under the control of the
sultan, who exercised direct authority over the islands and a
ten-mile wide coastal strip, Britain and Germany divided up the
interior. The British allowed the British East India Company to
assume control over Kenya and Uganda until a new chartered
company, the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC), took
over in 1888 under the direction of Sir
William Mackinnon and a board that included James Hutton, a
prominent Manchester merchant. Although strategic concerns
certainly motivated the British to form their East African
protectorate, scholars believe that Manchester merchants and
their supporters convinced the government to stake its claim
before other powers could do so.
The profits were slow to appear. The IBEAC needed capital to
build a railroad and develop plantations in Kenya, as well as
settlers to provide labor. Neither appeared in quantity and the
IBEAC nearly went bankrupt in the 1890s. Fewer than one dozen
European families had settled in Kenya by 1902. The German
companies had no more success in German East Africa, and after
the initial land grab in 1885-1886, disillusionment set in.
However, every attempt to relinquish control over a colony ran
into opposition from some interest group--missionaries, merchants
or simple patriots who refused to sanction the loss of territory,
no matter how impractical it was to hang on to it.
In 1890, European nations passed a number of agreements that
tidied up the borders between the lands they acquired in
1884-1886. In East Africa, the most important was the
Anglo-German Colonial Agreement (aka "The Heligoland Treaty") of
July 1, 1890 which recognized a British protectorate over
Zanzibar in exchange for recognition of German claims to land in
Togo, Cameroon, the Caprivi Strip (granting access from Southwest
Africa to the Zambezi River), and the North Sea island of
Heligoland, which had been held by the British since the
Napoleonic Wars.
Other treaties secured French recognition for Britain's
protectorate over Zanzibar in exchange for British recognition of
the French protectorate over Madagascar. Portugal received
recognition for its claims in East Africa by recognizing the
British claims in Nyasaland and Mashonaland.
Thus, by 1890, Europeans had established their claims to all
of Africa's coastal land except for Morocco (independent) and
Liberia (independent under USA protection). Ethiopia remained
independent in the East African interior, as did the two Boer
Republics and a few African states in South Africa, but the major
European powers were threatening them all as they worked to
divide up whatever was left of Africa. The French still faced
opposition in West Africa from Samory Tour‚ and in the Lake Chad
region from Rabah, and no European could safely claim the central
Sahara where various nomadic groups still controlled the land
routes.
The last remaining prizes were the Congo basin, recognized at
the Congress of Berlin as the "Congo Free State" under the
authority of an international association headed by King Leopold
II of Belgium, and the upper Nile River Valley, which had been in
a state of rebellion against the Egyptian government since the
1880s.
THE RISE OF ZANZIBAR
KARL PETERS AND THE GERMANS
THE CONQUEST OF BUGANDA
European Travel Accounts from East Africa
Author Date Author Date
J.L. Krapf 1860 V.L. Cameron 1877
Richard F. Burton 1860
J.F. Elton 1879
J.H. Speke 1863 H.M. Stanley 1880
J.H. Speke 1864 Joseph Thomson 1881
Otto Kersten 1869-71 H.H. Johnston 1886
Richard F. Burton 1872
Jerome Becker 1887
H.M. Stanley 1872 O. Baumann 1891
David Livingstone 1874
Carl Velden 1901 THE SURVIVAL OF ETHIOPIA
THE DIPLOMATIC RESULTS