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German Colonialism, Race, and Space in East Africa, 1884-1895

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German Colonialism, Race, and Space in East Africa, 1884-1895 i BUILDING THE COLONIAL BORDER IMAGINARY: GERMAN COLONIALISM, RACE, AND SPACE IN EAST AFRICA, 1884-1895 A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Matthew Unangst December 2015 Examining Committee Members: Jay Lockenour, Advisory Chair, History Benjamin Talton, History Kathleen Biddick, History Michelle Moyd, External Member, Indiana University ii ABSTRACT Between 1884 and 1895 several different factions within Germany attempted to understand and control the spaces and peoples of East Africa, called Ostafrika in German. The tensions between their visions for East Africa and local geographies combined to create what I call the “colonial border imaginary,” a set of divisions and meanings for East African space that determined administrative approaches through the German colonial period and after. The different groups involved proposed different solutions to what Germans approached as a problem of development. Much of the dissension among the different parties was over how to understand the relationship between geographical space and people – in German, Land und Leute. The German East Africa Company proposed an approach based on remaking Land. By making East African space more like Germany, it could turn its Leute into productive components of the German economy, as well as making the colony an attractive destination for German emigration. The Foreign Office and missionary groups, in contrast, proposed remaking East African Leute before Land. In their thinking, the education and development of East African Leute would turn them into productive subjects and use them to remake Ostafrika’s Land into a productive colony. The Foreign Office’s geographical model slowly won out over the model that the GfdK and DOAG, who founded managed the colony through the 1880s, faced a series of crises that proved it unable to successfully administer and develop Ostafrika. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1 The German East Africa Company Begins the Colonization of East Africa .........21 2. PRECOLONIAL EAST AFRICA ...............................................................................43 3. THE "POLICY OF RASHNESS": THE SOCIETY FOR GERMAN COLONIZATION AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE GERMAN COLONIZATION OF EAST AFRICA .......................................................................58 The DOAG Uses and Reimagines African Travel .................................................63 Establishing German Sovereignty: The Treaties of the Usagara Expedition ........85 The Period of Flag-Raising ..................................................................................102 4. THE HINTERLAND THEORY AND THE DOAG'S TAKEOVER OF MAINLAND TANZANIA ........................................................................................116 The Delimitation Commission and the Invention of Borders ..............................123 Rationalizing Colonial Rule .................................................................................138 Taking Over the Coast .........................................................................................167 5. THE BUSHIRI WAR AND EMIN PASHA EXPEDITIONS ..................................190 Emin Pasha...........................................................................................................199 The Bushiri War ...................................................................................................221 The Expeditions ...................................................................................................230 iv Spatial Conceptions .............................................................................................233 State of Exception ................................................................................................241 6. RUMOR IN THE GERMAN BUSHIRI WAR AND EMIN PASHA EXPEDITIONS..........................................................................................................251 Making Tropes into Reality .................................................................................259 Rumors of Disaster in the West ...........................................................................291 Plans to Control Information ...............................................................................309 7. COMPLETING THE BORDERING OF EAST AFRICA: THE SODEN ADMINISTRATION, 1891-1894..............................................................................318 Administering the Coast ......................................................................................323 Administering the Interior....................................................................................345 The Soden System Breaks Down .........................................................................370 8. CONCLUSION: THE LEGACIES OF THE COLONIAL BORDER IMAGINARY ............................................................................................................382 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................388 1 CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION Between 1884 and 1895 several different factions within Germany attempted to understand and control the spaces and peoples of East Africa, called Ostafrika in German: members of the Society for German Colonization (Gesellschaft für deutsche Kolonisation, GfdK), the German East Africa Company (Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft, DOAG), German Foreign Office officials, and German missionaries.1 The tensions between their visions for East Africa and local geographies combined to create what I call the "colonial border imaginary," a set of divisions and meanings for East African space that determined administrative approaches through the German colonial period and after. The different groups involved proposed different solutions to what Germans approached as a problem of development. Much of the dissension among the different parties was over how to understand the relationship between geographical space and people – in German, Land und Leute. German colonialists disagreed over whether Land had a greater effect on Leute than vice versa, which shaped their proposed solutions to the development problem, as well as the terms in which the problem was posed. If Leute depended on Land, Germans would have to first remake East African spaces to make the colony viable and "civilize" its inhabitants. If, however, Land depended on Leute, German colonialists would have to remake East African societies before changing its spaces. 1 I will use the term "Ostafrika" to refer to the German colony and "East Africa" to refer to the region in which it was located in order to avoid confusion. By "East Africa," I mean primarily the territory that was part of the German colony, today's mainland Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi, though Germans did at times apply the term to a broader area, including Zanzibar, Kenya, Uganda, northern Mozambique, southern Somalia, and parts of South Sudan. 2 The GfdK, Ostafrika’s founder, proposed an approach based on remaking Land. By making East African space more like Germany, it could turn its Leute into productive components of the German economy, as well as making the colony an attractive destination for German emigration. The Foreign Office and missionary groups, in contrast, proposed remaking East African Leute before Land. In their thinking, the education and development [Erziehung] of East African Leute would turn them into productive subjects and use them to remake Ostafrika’s Land into a productive colony. The division over how to imagine the relationship between Land and Leute bled into the differing ways in which Germans imagined the international dimensions of their colonial empire. Missionaries and the Bismarckian Foreign Office believed colonialism could be an international enterprise, with European Christians or European states, respectively, working to create civilization in Africa for the benefit of harmony in Europe and the world.2 The GfdK/DOAG and its allies, on the other hand, saw empire as a zero-sum game in which one nation would triumph. The Foreign Office’s geographical model slowly won out over the model that the GfdK and DOAG, who managed the colony through the 1880s, faced a series of crises that proved it unable to successfully administer and develop Ostafrika. The debate over the relationship between Land and Leute implicitly dominated the first decade of German discussions of the colonization of East Africa; it dictated the possibilities for economics and politics in the region and both shaped and was shaped by ideas about race and world geography. 2 For missionary internationalism, see Jeremy Best, "Founding a Heavenly Empire': Protestant Missionaries and German Colonialism, 1860-1919" (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 2012). 3 In the same era, the question of the relationship between Land and Leute was the fundamental issue motivating the development of an academic discipline, that of human geography. Germans led the way in the development of geography as a field. Carl Ritter, a German geographer from the first half of the 19th century, posited a new way of looking at geography. Ritter, in his nineteen-volume Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss
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