HISTORY
Tanganyika/Tanzania
Northern Tanganyika's famed
Olduvai Gorge has provided rich evidence of the area's prehistory,
including fossil remains of some of humanity's earliest ancestors.
Discoveries suggest that East Africa may have been the site of
human origin.
Little is known of the history of Tanganyika's interior
during the early centuries of the Christian era. The area is believed
to have been inhabited originally by ethnic groups using a click-tongue
language similar to that of Southern Africa's Bushmen and Hottentots.
Although remnants of these early tribes still exist, most were
gradually displaced by Bantu farmers migrating from the west and
south and by Nilotes and related northern peoples. Some of these
groups had well-organized societies and controlled extensive areas
by the time the Arab slavers, European explorers, and missionaries
penetrated the interior in the first half of the 19th century.
The coastal area first felt
the impact of foreign influence as early as the 8th century, when
Arab traders arrived. By the 12th century, traders and immigrants
came from as far away as Persia (now Iran) and India. They built
a series of highly developed city and trading states along the
coast, the principal one being Kilwa, a settlement of Persian
origin that held ascendancy until the Portuguese destroyed it
in the early 1500s.
The Portuguese navigator
Vasco da Gama explored the East African coast in 1498 on his voyage
to India. By 1506, the Portuguese claimed control over the entire
coast. This control was nominal, however, because the Portuguese
did not colonize the area or explore the interior. Assisted by
Omani Arabs, the indigenous coastal dwellers succeeded in driving
the Portuguese from the area north of the Ruvuma River by the
early 18th century. Claiming the coastal strip, Omani Sultan Seyyid
Said (1804-1856) moved his capital to Zanzibar in 1841.
European exploration of the
interior began in the mid-19th century. Two German missionaries
reached Mt. Kilimanjaro in the 1840s. British explorers Richard
Burton and John Speke crossed the interior to Lake Tanganyika
in 1857. David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary-explorer who
crusaded against the slave trade, established his last mission
at Ujiji, where he was "found" by Henry Morton Stanley, an Anglo-
American journalist-explorer, who had been commissioned by the
New York Herald to locate him.
German colonial interests
were first advanced in 1884. Karl Peters, who formed the Society
for German Colonization, concluded a series of treaties by which
tribal chiefs in the interior accepted German "protection." Prince
Otto von Bismarck's government backed Peters in the subsequent
establishment of the German East Africa Company.
In 1886 and 1890, Anglo-German
agreements were negotiated that delineated the British and German
spheres of influence in the interior of East Africa and along
the coastal strip previously claimed by the Omani sultan of Zanzibar.
In 1891, the German Government took over direct administration
of the territory from the German East Africa Company and appointed
a governor with headquarters at Dar es Salaam.
Although the German colonial
administration brought cash crops, railroads, and roads to Tanganyika,
European rule provoked African resistance, culminating in the
Maji Maji rebellion of 1905-07. The rebellion, which temporarily
united a number of southern tribes and ended only after an estimated
120,000 Africans had died from fighting or starvation, is considered
by most Tanzanians to have been one of the first stirrings of
nationalism.
German colonial domination
of Tanganyika ended after World War I when control of most of
the territory passed to the United Kingdom under a League of Nations
mandate. After World War II, Tanganyika became a UN trust territory
under British control. Subsequent years witnessed Tanganyika moving
gradually toward self-government and independence.
In 1954, Julius K. Nyerere,
a schoolteacher who was then one of only two Tanganyikans educated
abroad at the university level, organized a political party--the
Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). TANU-supported candidates
were victorious in the Legislative Council elections of September
1958 and February 1959. In December 1959, the United Kingdom agreed
to the establishment of internal self-government following general
elections to be held in August 1960. Nyerere was named chief minister
of the subsequent government.
In May 1961, Tanganyika became
autonomous, and Nyerere became prime minister under a new constitution.
Full independence was achieved on December 9, 1961. Mr. Nyerere
was elected President when Tanganyika became a republic within
the Commonwealth a year after independence.
Zanzibar
An early Arab/Persian trading center, Zanzibar fell under Portuguese domination in the 16th and early 17th centuries but was retaken by Omani Arabs in the early 18th century. The height of Arab rule came during the reign of Sultan Seyyid Said, who encouraged the development of clove plantations, using the island's slave labor.
The Arabs established their own garrisons at Zanzibar, Pemba, and Kilwa and carried on a lucrative trade in slaves and ivory. By 1840, Said had transferred his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar and established a ruling Arab elite. The island's commerce fell increasingly into the hands of traders from the Indian subcontinent, who Said encouraged to settle on the island.
Zanzibar's spices attracted
ships from as far away as the United States. A U.S. consulate
was established on the island in 1837. The United Kingdom's early
interest in Zanzibar was motivated by both commerce and the determination
to end the slave trade. In 1822, the British signed the first
of a series of treaties with Sultan Said to curb this trade, but
not until 1876 was the sale of slaves finally prohibited.
The Anglo-German agreement
of 1890 made Zanzibar and Pemba a British protectorate. British
rule through a sultan remained largely unchanged from the late
19th century until after World War II.
Zanzibar's political development
began in earnest after 1956, when provision was first made for
the election of six non-government members to the Legislative
Council. Two parties were formed: the Zanzibar Nationalist Party
(ZNP), representing the dominant Arab and Arabized minority, and
the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), led by Abeid Karume and representing
the Shirazis and the African majority.
The first elections were
held in July 1957, and the ASP won three of the six elected seats,
with the remainder going to independents. Following the election,
the ASP split; some of its Shirazi supporters left to form the
Zanzibar and Pemba People's Party (ZPPP). The January 1961 election
resulted in a deadlock between the ASP and a ZNP-ZPPP coalition.
United Republic of Tanzania
Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom on December 19, 1963, as a constitutional monarchy under the sultan. On January 12, 1964, the African majority revolted against the sultan and a new government was formed with the ASP leader, Abeid Karume, as President of Zanzibar and Chairman of the Revolutionary Council. Under the terms of its political union with Tanganyika in April 1964, the Zanzibar Government retained considerable local autonomy.
On April 26, 1964, Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. The country was renamed the United Republic of Tanzania on October 29, 1964.
To form a sole ruling party in both parts of the union Nyerere merged TANU with the Zanzibar ruling party, the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) of Zanzibar to form the CCM (Chama cha Mapinduzi-CCM Revolutionary Party), on February 5, 1977. The CCM was to be the sole instrument for mobilizing and controlling the population in all significant political or economic activities. He envisioned the party as a "two-way street" for the flow of ideas and policy directives between the village level and the government. On April 26, 1977, the union of the two parties was ratified in a new constitution. The merger was reinforced by principles enunciated in the 1982 union constitution and reaffirmed in the constitution of 1984.
President Nyerere stepped down from office and was succeeded as President by Ali Hassan Mwinyi in 1985. Nyerere retained his position as Chairman of the ruling CCM party for 5 more years and was influential in Tanzanian politics until his death in October 1999. The current President, Jakaya Kikwete, was elected in December 2005. Zanzibar President Amani Abeid Karume, the son of Zanzibar’s first president, was elected in 2000, in general elections that were marked by widespread irregularities throughout the Isles. His predecessor, Salmin Amour, was first elected in single-party elections in 1990, then re-elected in 1995 in Zanzibar’s first multi-party elections. These elections also were tainted by violence and serious irregularities in the voting process.
