1. German East Africa comprised what is now mainland Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi.

2. Askari is an Arabic and Kiswahili word for soldier, police, or guard. Colonial armies throughout eastern Africa used the term to refer to their rank-and-file African recruits.

3. German officers referred to the African soldiers recruited from Cairo, Egypt, in 1890 and elsewhere in northeastern Africa collectively as “Sudanese.” This ethnic moniker obscures their complex histories as military slaves and former soldiers in the Turco-Egyptian and Anglo-Egyptian army, as well as their wide-ranging geographic and cultural origins. For the sake of simplicity in this article, I retain this label, enclosed in quotation marks, to indicate the problematic nature of the term. The British colonial army in East Africa, the King's African Rifles (KAR), also recruited such soldiers, often using the term “Nubi” as a reference to this group. See Leopold, Mark, “Legacies of Slavery in North West Uganda: The Story of the ‘One-Elevens,’” in Médard, Henri and Doyle, Shane, eds., Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa (Oxford, 2007), 124–144Google Scholar; and Parsons, Timothy, ‘Kibra is our Blood’: The Sudanese Military Legacy in Nairobi's Kibera Location, 1902–1968,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 30:1 (1997): 87–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5. Rockel, Stephen, Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth Century East Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 2006), 117–130Google Scholar.

6. For a comparative case in French West Africa, see Thompson, J. Malcolm, “Colonial Policy and the Family Life of Black Troops in French West Africa, 1817–1904,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 23:3 (1990), 427–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For British East Africa, see Parson, Timothy, “All Askaris are Family Men: Sex, Domesticity and Discipline in the King's African Rifles, 1902–1964,” in Killingray, David and Omissi, David, eds., Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers c. 1700–1964 (Manchester, 1999), 170–5Google Scholar.

7. Besant, W.H., “The Early Days of the Egyptian Army, 1883–1892,” Journal of the Royal African Society 33:131 (1934), 167Google Scholar; Bredin, G.R.F., “The Life-Story of Yuzbashi ‘Abdullah Adlan,” Sudan Notes and Records XLII (1961), 43–44Google Scholar; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 117–30.

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10. Glassman, Jonathan, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (Portsmouth, NH, 1995), 61–64Google Scholar; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 66–68.

11. See, for example, Echenberg, Myron, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (Portsmouth, NH, 1991)Google Scholar; Isaacman and Isaacman, Slavery and Beyond; and Parsons, Timothy, The African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the King's African Rifles, 1902–1964 (Portsmouth, NH, 1999)Google Scholar.

12. For a comparative case, see Mann, Gregory, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham and London, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. I argue this point more extensively in Michelle Moyd, Becoming Askari: African Soldiers and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa, 1850–1918 (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2008).

14. Sunseri, Thaddeus, “Labour Migration in Colonial Tanzania and the Hegemony of South African Historiography,” African Affairs 95 (1996), 581CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Sunseri, these “kraal to compound” interpretations “emphasized the one sidedness of the labour migration process, the power of the capitalist state and settler allies, the complicity of African elites, and the irreversibility of ‘oscillating migration’ as a state of incomplete, but inevitable, proletarianization.” See p. 582.

15. Ibid., 585.

16. Sunseri, Thaddeus, Vilimani: Labor Migration and Rural Change in Early Colonial Tanzania (Portsmouth, NH, 2002), xxiii–xxivGoogle Scholar. Other social histories of African labor that came out around the same time that Sunseri was making his critique of South African historiographical hegemony include Atkins, Keletso, “The Moon is Dead! Give us our Money”: The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843–1900 (Portsmouth, NH, 1993)Google Scholar; and Penvenne, Jeanne, African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques, 1877–1962 (Portsmouth, NH, 1995)Google Scholar.

17. Rockel, Stephen J., Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 2006)Google Scholar.

18. Ibid., 6.

19. Ibid., 117–30.

20. See for example Killingray, David, “Beasts of Burden: British West African Carriers in the First World War,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 13:1/2 (1979)Google Scholar; and Killingray, David, “Labour Exploitation for Military Campaigns in British Colonial Africa 1870–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 24 (1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Page, Melvin, “The War of Thangata: Nyasaland and the East African Campaign, 1914–1918,” The Journal of African History 19:1 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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22. Pesek, Michael, Koloniale Herrschaft in Deutsch-Ostafrika: Expeditionen, Militär und Verwaltung seit 1880 (Frankfurt and New York, 2005), 245Google Scholar; Mann, Erick, Mikono ya damu: “Hands of Blood”: African Mercenaries and the Politics of Conflict in German East Africa, 11888–1904 (Frankfurt, 2002), 273–281Google Scholar.

23. For more on the Maji Maji War and its effects on German East African peoples, see Wimmelbücker, Ludger, “Verbrannte Erde: Zu den Bevölkerungsverlusten als Folge des Maji-Maji-Krieges,” in Der Maji-Maji-Krieg in Deutsch Ostafrika 1905–1907, Becker, Felicitas and Beez, Jigal, eds. (Berlin, 2005), 87–99Google Scholar.

24. Zirkel, Kirsten, “Military Power in German Colonial Policy: The Schutztruppen and their Leaders in East and South-West Africa, 1888–1918” in Killingray, David and Omissi, David, eds., Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers c. 1700–1964 (New York, 1999), 103Google Scholar.

25. Koponen, Juhani, Development for Exploitation: German Colonial Policies in Mainland Tanzania, 1884–1914 (Helsinki and Hamburg, 1994), 241Google Scholar.

26. Ibid.

27. Hildebrandt, F., Eine deutsche Militärstation im Innern Afrikas (Wölfenbüttel, 1905), 23Google Scholar.

28. von Prince, Tom, Gegen Araber und Wahehe: Erinnerungen aus meiner ostafrikansischen Leutnantszeit 1890–1895, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1914), 114Google Scholar.

29. “Vorschriften über die Handhabung des Dienstbetriebes auf den Stationen der Schutztruppe für Ost-Afrika,” Deutsches Kolonialblatt: Amtsblatt für die Schutzgebiete des Deutschen Reichs (hereafter DKB), February 1, 1891, 55–56Google Scholar.

30. Hildebrandt, Eine deutsche Militärstation, 20.

31. “Vorschriften,” DKB, 56.

32. Atkins, Keletso, “‘Kafir Time’: Preindustrial Temporal Concepts and Labour Discipline in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Natal,” The Journal of African History 29:2 (1988), 229–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, E.P., “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38 (1967), 60–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. On the German project of “teaching the Negro to work,” see Conrad, Sebastian, Globalisierung und Nation im Deutschen Kaiserreich (München, 2006), 79–83Google Scholar; and Andrew Zimmerman, “A German Alabama in Africa: The Tuskegee Expedition to German Togo and the Transnational Origins of West African Cotton Growers,” American Historical Review December 2005 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/110.5/zimmerman.html> (accessed September 20, 2010), 55–8 112–13. For a comparative example in Portuguese East Africa, see Penvenne, African Workers and Colonial Racism, 11–7, 104–9. On African work ethics and their collisions with colonial ideas of African “laziness,” see Atkins, The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money!, 664-71778-79 and Zimmerman, “A German Alabama in Africa,” 112–13.

34. Prince, Gegen Araber und Wahehe, 114.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. On gardening, see Hildebrandt, Eine deutsche Militärstation, 12.

39. Stollowsky, Otto, Jambo Sana! Lustige Geschichten, Plaudereien und Schnurren aus dem Leben in Deutsch-Ost-Afrika (Leipzig-Unger, 1935), 123Google Scholar. See also Nigmann, Ernst, Schwarze Schwänke: Fröhliche Geschichten aus unserem schönen alten Deutsch-Ostafrika (Berlin, 1922), 149Google Scholar; Prince, Magdalene v., Eine deutsche Frau im Innern Deutsch-Ostafrikas 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1908), 109Google Scholar; and Wright, Marcia, Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life Stories from East/Central Africa (New York and London, 1993), 179–223Google Scholar.

40. Fleisher, Michael L., Kuria Cattle Raiders: Violence and Vigilantism on the Tanzania/Kenya Frontier (Ann Arbor, 2000), 162CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCabe, J. Terence, Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies: Turkana Ecology, Politics, and Raiding in a Disequilibrium System (Ann Arbor, 2004), 190CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a case of a senior askari receiving a cash payment of bridewealth for one of his female slaves, see Kilimatinde station to Mkalama station, May 23, 1907, G 55/25, Tanzania National Archives, p. 5.

41. Guy, Jeff, “Analysing Pre-Capitalist Societies in Southern Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 14:1 (1987), 21–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Emphasis in original.

42. Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 1165–70.

43. Ibid.

44. Nachlass (NL) Correck, diary entries December 7, 1906, December 10, 1908, Handschriftensammlung HS 908, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (BayHSta), Abteilung IV—Kriegsarchiv, Munich, Germany; Dauber, Heinrich, ed., ‘Nicht als Abentheurer bin ich hierhergekommen . . .’: 100 Jahre Entwicklungs-'Hilfe': Tagebücher und Briefe aus Deutsch-Ostafrika 1896–1902 (Frankfurt, 1991), 181Google Scholar.

45. Dauber, ‘Nicht als Abentheurer,’ 181; Magdalena v. Prince, Eine deutsche Frau, 21.

46. G7/12 TNA.

47. Sperling to Gouvernement, March 1, 1911, G/7/42, TNA, no folio number.

48. Hildebrandt, Eine deutsche Militärstation, 20.

49. Ibid., 119–20.

50. Koponen, Juhani, Development for Exploitation: German Colonial Policies in Mainland Tanzania, 1884–1914 (Helsinki and Hamburg, 1994), 297–314Google Scholar, 410–12. By 1910–1911 some 25,000 people were employed by the railway companies, especially on the Central line. See Deutsch, Jan-Georg, Emancipation without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914 (Oxford, 2006), 219Google Scholar.

51. “Bericht über den Betrieb und die Arbeiten der Usambara-Eisenbahn für die Monate April-September 1899,” DKB, December 1, 1899, p. 807; Sunseri, Vilimani, 167–69.

52. MacDonell, Bror, Mzee Ali: The Biography of an African Slave-Raider turned Askari & Scout (Johannesburg, 2006), 124–25Google Scholar.

53. Ibid., 125, 134.

54. Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 602; MacDonell, Mzee Ali, 125; “Berichte über den Betrieb und die Arbeiten der Usambara-Eisenbahn,” 807.

55. Weule, Karl, Native Life in East Africa: The Results of an Ethnological Research Expedition, Werner, Alice, trans. (London, 1909), 28–29Google Scholar.

56. MacDonell, Mzee Ali, 134.

57. Clement Gillman papers, Mss. Afr. s. 1175, diary entry, 23.XI.05, Rhodes House, Oxford, UK. Gillmann described his own first “very nasty“ experience of publicly whipping three men who rebelled against one of his white overseers. Emphasis in original text. Gillman was a geographer and engineer who helped supervise construction of the Central railway in German East Africa. For more on status hierarchies among different laborers, see Kandt, Richard, Caput Nili: eine empfindsame Reise zu den Quellen des Nils, 5th ed. (Berlin, 1921)Google Scholar, 26. For colonial authorities' discussions of prisoners' treatment, see Gouvernement circulars, November 9, 1906, October 26, 1911 and May 6, 1912, pp. 118–19, 331–32, R 1001/5118, Bundesarchiv-Berlin (hereafter BA-B), Berlin-Lichterfelde, Germany; correspondence and newspaper clippings in R 1001/5379, BA-B.

58. Gillman papers, Mss.Afr. s. 1175, diary entry, 23.XI.05, Rhodes House.

59. Their proximity in these disciplinary and work contexts is suggested by the fact that military doctors recommended similar antimalarial prevention and treatment regimens for askaris and chain-gang prisoners. See Kolonial-Abteilung des Auswärtigen Amts, , ed., Medizinal-Berichte über die Deutschen Schutzgebiete 1903/04 (Berlin, 1905), 31Google Scholar.

60. Poeschel, Hans, Bwana Hakimu: Richterfahrten in Deutsch-Ostafrika (Leipzig, 1940), 23Google Scholar; Hildebrandt, Eine deutsche Militärstation, 60.

61. Dauber, ‘Nicht als Abentheurer’, 189.

62. Hildebrandt, Eine deutsche Militärstation, 60.

63. See, for example, Marks to Bezirskamt Bagamoyo, August 2, 1912, G 32/5, TNA, which records an incident of an askari severely whipping a woman on a chain gang after she refused to continue her street-building work and physically assaulted him.

64. European colonizers throughout Africa used the word “boy” to refer to their domestic servants, regardless of the servant's actual age.

65. Fonck, Heinrich, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika: Eine Schilderung deutscher Tropen nach zehn Wanderjahren (Berlin, 1910), 65Google Scholar. See also Wright, Marcia, Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life Stories from East/Central Africa (New York and London, 1993), 185–87Google Scholar.

66. See, for example, Magdalena von Prince's descriptions of the wives of “Sudanese” askari. These soldiers occupied the highest ranks and because of their experience, leadership skills, and “loyalty” were held in high esteem by German officers. Magdalena von Prince, Eine deutsche Frau, 880–81

67. Arnold, Bernd, Steuer und Lohnarbeit im Südwesten von Deutsch-Ostafrika, 1891–1916 (Münster, 1994), 192Google Scholar.

68. Kommando-Befehl Nr. 10, October 31, 1913, R 1003 FC/1136, BA-B.

69. It should be noted however, that domestic labor became increasingly masculinized during colonialism. See Hansen, Karen Tranberg, “Household Work as a Man's Job: Sex and Gender in Domestic Service in Zambia,” Anthropology Today 2:3 (1986), 18–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For examples of boys expressing their future aspirations for higher status and rank, see Magdalena von Prince, Eine deutsche Frau, 109; diary entry; 23.XI.10, KlE 857 (Alfred Reuss), Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter BA-K), Germany.

70. Fülleborn, Friedrich, Das Deutsche Njassa- und Ruwuma-Gebiet, Land und Leute, nebst Bemerkungen über die Schire-Länder (Berlin, Dietrich Reimer (Ernst Vohsen), 1906), 8Google Scholar.

71. Michael von Herff, “They Walk Through the Fire Like the Blondest German: African Soldiers Serving the Kaiser in German East Africa (1888–1914)” (M.A. thesis, McGill University, Montreal, July 1991), 88.

72. Fonck, Deutsch-Ost-Afrika, 67; Sunseri, Vilimani, 169–71.

73. Ibid., 68; Arnold, Steuer und Lohnarbeit, 192.

74. Arnold, Steuer und Lohnarbeit, 197; Strafsache Miersen, January 20, 1915, G21/592 TNA; MacDonnell, Mzee Ali, 118–121. For comparative cases, see Douglas M. Peers, “Imperial Vice: Sex, Drink and the Health of British Troops on North Indian Cantonments, 1800–1858,” in David Killingray and David Omissi, ed., Guardians of Empire, 25–52; White, Luise, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago, 1990), 86–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of the ubiquitous connections between military bases and prostitution in world history and in the present, see Enloe, Cynthia, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives (Berkeley 2000), 49–107Google Scholar.

75. Groeschel, P., Zehn Jahre christlicher Kulturarbeit in Deutsch-Ostafrika: Dargetstellt in Briefen aus den Jahren 1898–1908 (Berlin, 1911), 222Google Scholar.

76. Gouvernement circular to all districts, 11 June 1913, R1001/923, 160–62 BA-B.

77. Lynn, Women, Armies, and Warfare, 18.

78. Ibid.

79. But see NL Correck, diary entries for May 3 and 4, 1906, BayHSta. Correck claimed that he used a whip to prevent a group of determined women from accompanying their askari on a military operation (“Kriegszug”).

80. Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 117–30.

81. On shauri as part of German colonial practice, see Deutsch, Jan-Georg, “Celebrating Power in Everyday Life: The Administration of Law and the Public Sphere in Colonial Tanzania, 1890–1914,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 14:1 (2002), 93–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pesek, Michael, “Cued Speeches: The Emergence of Shauri as Colonial Praxis in German East Africa, 1850–1903,” History in Africa 33:1 (2006), 395–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82. Diary entry, 21.XI.1910, KlE 857 (Alfred Reuss), BA-K.

83. Lynn, Women, Armies, and Warfare, 8, 10.

84. See White, The Comforts of Home, 10–21. See also Wenig, Richard, Kriegs-Safari: Erlebnisse und Eindrücke auf den Zügen Lettow-Vorbecks durch das östliche Afrika (Berlin, 1920), 101–5Google Scholar.

85. Diary entries, November 24, 1910; December 1, 1910; December 4, 1910; December 6, 1910, KlE 857 (Alfred Reuss), BA-K.

86. von Götzen, G.A. Graf, Durch Afrika von Ost nach West: Resultate und Begebenheiten einer Reise von der Deutsch-Ostafrikanischen Küste bis zur Kongomünde in den Jahren 1893/94, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1899), 2Google Scholar. Götzen became Gouverneur of German East Africa in 1901 and remained so until 1906. He played a central role in the management of the early stages of the Maji Maji War (1905–1907).

87. Ibid., 7, 8.

88. Ibid., 8.

89. Ibid. See also NL Correck, diary entry May 3, 1906, BayHSta; and NL Georg von Prittwitz und Gaffron, diary entry August 6, 1898, Box 248, Folder 6/248, Leibniz Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig, Germany.

90. Götzen, Durch Afrika von Ost nach West, 16, 31.

91. Werther, C. Waldemar, Die mittleren Hochländer des nördlichen Deutsch-Os-Afrika. Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Irangi-Expedition 1896–11897 nebst kurzer Reisebeschreibung (Berlin, 1898), 8Google Scholar; Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 83–4, 174–75.

92. Ibid., 93.

93. NL Correck, diary entry December 7, 1906, BayHSt.

94. Callwell, Charles, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (London, 1899), 1Google Scholar. Caldwell, a British army officer, wrote Small Wars as a kind of manual for other officers facing deployment to areas where they might be involved in colonial warfare. According to Callwell, “The expression ‘small war’ has in reality no particular connection with the scale on which any campaign may be carried out; it is simply used to denote, in default of a better, operations of regular armies against irregular, or constructively speaking irregular, forces.”

95. Zirkel, “Military Power in German Colonial Policy,” 97.

96. The best general synopsis of the Maji Maji War is John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge), 168–202. For the most recent scholarly treatments of the war, see the essays in Giblin, James and Monson, Jamie, eds., Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War (Leiden, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A useful contemporary account of the military campaign is Paasche, Hans, Im Morgenlicht: Kriegs-, Jagd-, und Reise-Erlebnisse in Ostafrika (Berlin, 1907)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97. Moyd, Michelle, “‘All people were barbarians to the askari . . .’: Askari Identity and Honor in the Maji Maji War, 1905–1907,” in Giblin, James and Monson, Jamie, eds., Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War (Leiden, 2010), 168–72Google Scholar.

98. For good overviews of the East African campaign of World War I, see Anderson, Ross, The Forgotten Front: The East African Campaign, 1914–1918 (Stroud, 2004)Google Scholar; Strachan, Hew, The First World War in Africa (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; and Paice, Richard, Tip and Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa (London, 2007)Google Scholar.

99. I discuss this topic in greater depth in “‘We don't want to die for nothing’: Askari at War in German East Africa, 1914–1918” in Race, Empire, and First World War Writing, ed. Santanu Das (Cambridge, 2011).

100. Marine-Oberingenieur Bockmann report, RM 8/368, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg, Germany pp. 152–64.

101. Ibid., p. 160, 163.

102. Space does not permit discussion of the porters as part of this military labor system under German rule. But see Glassman, Jonathon, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (Portsmouth, NH, 1995)Google Scholar; Hodges, Geoffrey, The Carrier Corps: Military Labor in the East African Campaign, 1914–1918 (Westport, CT, 1986)Google Scholar; Page, Melvin, The Chiwaya War: Malawians and the First World War (Boulder, CO, 2000), 107–14Google Scholar, passim; Rockel, Carriers of Culture; and Sunseri, Vilimani for their analyses of porter cultures and work ethics from the nineteenth century through the First World War. According to Page, British colonial labor demands on Malawians during World War One were so extreme that Malawians came to refer to the entire war as “the war of thangata,” or the war of “work which was done without real benefit.” See Page, The Chiwaya War, 5.

103. For a recent attempt to understand colonialism as the product of interactions across the rural-urban divide, see Lawrance, Benjamin, Locality, Mobility, and “Nation”: Periurban Colonialism in Togo's Eweland (Rochester, 2007), 1–6Google Scholar. According to Lawrance, “[t]he periurban zone is . . . a rural zone within the orbit of a major market town or urban center.” See p. 2.

104. Sunseri, Vilimani, 115–18.

105. Military post Tschiwitoke to military post Ishangi, May 8, 1904, R 1003 FC/1162, BA-B.