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Majimaji and the Millennium: Abrahamic Sources and the Creation of a Tanzanian Resistance Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Thaddeus Sunseri
Thaddeus Sunseri*
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
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Extract

Writing thirty years ago the historian of the Majimaji rebellion, Gilbert Gwassa, emphasized the purely Tanzanian nature of the uprising, as seen in the ideology which he believed was the inspiration for the widespread war against German colonialism. To Gwassa, southern Tanzanians created an innovative, secular ideology after the turn of the twentieth century which enabled Africans to resist German colonialism supra-ethnically rather than locally. Gwassa was adamant that the Majimaji ideology owed nothing to outside influences.

Gwassa's contention has been largely unchallenged despite obvious paradoxes. Majimaji emerged in a region widely permeated with Islamic influences by 1905, the time of the rebellion. Moreover, the Christian colonial power structure had been present in the outbreak region for some twenty years by 1905, while Christian missionaries had been active in Tanzania for almost forty years. By the time the Majimaji historical tradition was being written in Tanzania in the 1960s, the nation included many Muslims and Christians, including many of Gwassa's research informants, who helped shape his interpretation of Majimaji. Aside from these circumstantial suggestions of the possibility of an externally-influenced Majimaji tradition, a close reading of archival sources from the German period, including several documents which have not been considered in the historiographical tradition, suggest that Christian and Islamic influences helped to shape the writing of Majimaji, if not the resistance movement itself. This paper will examine some of these “Abrahamic” sources of the Majimaji tradition, and consider how they might have been used to formulate a Majimaji epic which has become a standard icon of early African colonial history.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 26 , January 1999 , pp. 365 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1999

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References

1 By Abrahamic I mean Biblical and Islamic traditions. Although most German archival sources were clearly products of Christian mission stations, many were more am biguous and suggestive of Islamic teachings, which themselves stem from Judaic and Christian traditions. My thanks to James E. Lindsay for his comments on this paper.

2 Recent reevaluations of Majimaji include Wright, Marcia, “Maji Maji: Prophecy and Historiography” in Anderson, David M. and Johnson, Douglas H., eds., Revealing Prophets: Prophecy in East African History (London, 1995), 124–42Google Scholar; Sunseri, Thaddeus, “Famine and Wild Pigs: Gender Struggles and the Outbreak of the Majimaji War in Uzaramo (Tanzania),” JAH 38 (1997), 235–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monson, Jamie, “Relocating Maji Maji: The Politics of Alliance and Authority in the Southern Highlands,” JAH 39 (1998), 95–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Gwassa, G.C.K., “Kinjikitile and the Ideology of Maji Maji” in Ranger, T.O. and Kimambo, I.N., eds., The Historical Study of African Religion (London, 1972), 204.Google Scholar

4 Gwassa, G.C.K., “The Outbreak and Development of the Maji Maji War, 1905-1907” (PhD, Dar es Salaam, 1973), 13, 16, 138.Google Scholar

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6 Bundesarchiv-Potsdam, AA1001/724, “Denkschrift über die Ursachen des Aufstandes in Deutsch-Ostafrika 1905”, published as Reichstag paper No. 194, 11. Legislatur-Periode, II. Session 1905/06.

7 Ibid., 6.

8 Sperling, David, “The Frontiers of Prophecy: Healing, the Cosmos and Islam on the East African Coast in the Nineteenth Century” in Anderson, /Johnson, , Revealing Prophets, 95.Google Scholar Sperling relates the concept of “prophets of God” to Christian and Islamic monotheistic traditions.

9 Ibid., 83.

10 Klamroth mentions the spread of Islamic influences in Uzaramo in Berlin Mission-Maneromango, III/X/3, “Propaganda der Islam in Usaramo,” 5 January 1906, 2-10.

11 Information on African soldiers in Tanzania comes from Koponen, Juhani, Development for Exploitation: German Colonial Policies in Mainland Tanzania, 1884-1914 (Helsinki, 1995), 133n132.Google Scholar

12 Gwassa discusses his field work in “Outbreak,” x-xviii.

13 For example, Haya informants recount the “Tree of Iron” myth which has obvious parallels with Biblical, “Tower of Babel” myths in Schmidt, Peter R., Iron Technology in East Africa: Symbolism, Science, and Archaeology (Indiana, 1997), 40–43.Google Scholar Meru oral historians, speaking in the 1960s, similarly recounted a tradition of “wandering forty years in the desert” in describing their exodus from the Kenyan coast. Fadiman, Jeffrey, When We Began, There Were Witchmen: An Oral History from Mount Kenya (Berkeley, 1993), 51.Google Scholar

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16 Gwassa, , “Outbreak”, 213.Google Scholar While Gwassa did not assert that his informants were free of such influences, he accepts prima facie that their testimonies were untainted.

17 Gundolf, Hubert, Maji Maji—Blut für Afrika: Auf den Spuren des 1905 in Ostafrika ermorderten Missionsbischofs Cassini! Spiss OSB (St. Ottilien, 1984), 146Google Scholar; Sunseri, , “Famine and Wild Tigs,” 242–44.Google Scholar

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20 Esherick, Joseph, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley, 1987).Google Scholar The Berlin Mission tracked developments in China during the Boxer rebellion in its press. For example, “Einwirkung der chinesischen Wirren auf die Entwickelung von Kiautschou,” Afrika, 8(1901), 15.Google Scholar

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22 Gwassa, , “Outbreak,” 12, 153–54Google Scholar, and “Kinjikitile and the Ideology,” 206-08.

23 Researching in the 1960s and later, Swantz established the ongoing importance of Kolelo as a spirit located in the Uluguru mountains, to whom the Zaramo appealed at times when rainfall was scarce and land and crops needed protection. Swantz, Marja-Liisa, Ritual and Symbol in Transitional Zaramo Society (Motala, 1986), 175–76, 203Google Scholar; idem., Blood, Milk, and Death: Body Symbols and the Power of Regeneration Among the Zaramo of Tanzania (Westport, CT, 1995), 129.

24 Klamroth, , “Beiträge zum Verständnis,” 122–23.Google Scholar

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26 Berlin Mission-Maneromango, III/X/3, I. 1906, Klamroth, Martin, “Propaganda der Islam in Usaramo”, 5 January 1906, 5.Google Scholar

27 Klamroth, , “Beiträge,” 140.Google Scholar Unlike other descriptions of Koleo, this passage excludes the original source, so we do not know whether it was in Swahili or Zaramo. My translation of this passages is slightly different from Gwassa, , “Kinjikitile and the Ideology,” 207–08.Google Scholar

28 Koleo is mentioned as the inspiration of the rebellion in Bundesarchiv-Potsdam, , “Denkschrift,” 6.Google Scholar

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31 Swantz, Ritual and Symbol, passim.

32 Berlin Mission-Maneromango, IV/II/2, Bd. 1, “Koleo Muungu wa tatu”,” n.d, 1-4.

33 Ibid., 3.

34 Geheimes Staatsarchiv-Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin, Schriftstücke in Suaheli, “Masika.” n.d.

35 Sunseri, , “Famine and Wild Pigs,” 252–54.Google Scholar

36 East, John, translation of Stollowsky, Otto, “On the Background to the Rebellion in German East Africa in 1905-1906,” IJAHS 21 (1988), 687.Google Scholar

37 Ibid.

38 Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Nachlass Heinrich Schnee, “Kolelo.” n.d.

39 Klamroth, , “Beiträge,” 140.Google Scholar

40 Swantz, , Ritual and Symbol, 309–10.Google Scholar

41 Berlin Mission Maneromango, III/X/3, “Bild von Maneromango,” 11.

42 “The Revelation to John,” The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York, 1973), 1501.Google Scholar On locust plagues in Egypt see “Exodus” in ibid., 79.

43 “Über die Belagerung und den Aufstand von Mahenge”, Missions-Blätter, X/8 1905/1906, 113.Google Scholar

44 Über die Belagerung,” ibid., 116.

45 Bundesarchiv-Potsdam, “Denkschrift,” 2, 6.