African Response to Colonial Conquest
Senior 2 · History
African Response to Colonial Conquest
Lesson 3 of 5
24 min
Maji Maji was the largest rising against colonial rule in East Africa. It brought together many different peoples of southern Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania) against German rule, and it was crushed at a terrible human cost. Its name comes from maji, the Kiswahili word for water. Later, Tanzanian nationalists remembered it as the first time the peoples of their country fought together against foreign rule.
Germany ruled German East Africa, which included present-day mainland Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. In Tanganyika the Germans ruled largely directly, through military posts and through akidas and jumbes, local agents who were often strangers to the people they governed.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 1905 | In the Matumbi hills people uproot the cotton; on 31 July they attack a German trading post at Samanga. The war begins. |
| August 1905 | Kinjikitile is arrested and hanged. The rising spreads among the Matumbi, Ngindo, Pogoro, Zaramo, Bena and others; German posts such as Ifakara are overrun. |
| Aug–Sept 1905 | Thousands attack the German fort at Mahenge but are driven back by machine-gun fire. |
| Oct 1905 | The Ngoni join with about 5,000 fighters but are defeated. About 1,000 soldiers arrive from Germany as reinforcements. |
| 1906–1907 | German columns burn villages, crops and food stores (a scorched-earth policy) to starve out the fighters. The last resistance ends in August 1907. |
The death toll is estimated at between 75,000 and 300,000 Africans, most of them from the famine that the scorched-earth policy deliberately caused. Official figures record 15 Germans and about 390 African soldiers and auxiliaries on the German side killed.
Question: What does the difference between German and African deaths tell us about the war?
About 15 Germans died, against tens or even hundreds of thousands of Africans. This shows the huge gap in weapons, but also something more: most Africans did not die in battle. They died of hunger after German troops deliberately destroyed crops and food stores. The figures therefore show that the war was won by starving the civilian population, not only by defeating fighters. This is why many scholars describe the German methods as genocidal.
Tip
The Maji Maji story in five C's: Cotton (the forced scheme, the main cause), Charm (Kinjikitile's maji), Coalition (many peoples joined), Crushed (machine guns and scorched earth), Change (Rechenberg's reforms and the nationalist memory).
State four causes of the Maji Maji rising.
Solution. Any four of: forced cotton growing from 1902; taxes paid in cash; forced labour; brutal akidas, jumbes and askari; hunting and forest laws; loss of independence; Kinjikitile's maji, which united people.
Who was Kinjikitile Ngwale?
Solution. A spirit medium at Ngarambe who gave people maji, water mixed with castor oil and millet seeds, said to turn German bullets into water. He was hanged by the Germans in August 1905.
Why did most victims of the war die of hunger?
Solution. German troops deliberately burned villages, crops and food stores to starve out the fighters. The resulting famine killed far more people than the fighting.
Name one positive and one negative consequence of the rising for the people of Tanganyika.
Solution. Positive: the forced cotton scheme ended and colonial rule became somewhat less harsh under Rechenberg; the rising also left a memory of unity. Negative: tens to hundreds of thousands died, mostly of famine, and southern Tanganyika was depopulated for decades.
Remember
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
