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THE BEARERS OF NEWS: PRINT AND POWER IN GERMAN EAST AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2021

Fabian Krautwald Open the ORCID record for Fabian Krautwald [Opens in a new window]
Fabian Krautwald*
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Princeton University
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Abstract

Historians have drawn on newspapers to illuminate the origins of modern nationalism and cultures of literacy. The case of Kiongozi (The Guide or The Leader) relates this scholarship to Tanzania's colonial past. Published between 1904 and 1916 by the government of what was then German East Africa, the paper played an ambivalent role. On the one hand, by promoting the shift from Swahili written in Arabic script (ajami) to Latinized Swahili, it became the mouthpiece of an African elite trained in government schools. By reading and writing for Kiongozi, these waletaji wa habari (bearers of news) spread Swahili inland and transformed coastal culture. On the other hand, the paper served the power of the colonial state by mediating between German colonizers and their indigenous subordinates. Beyond cooptation, Kiongozi highlights the warped nature of African voices in the colonial archive, questioning claims about print's impact on nationalism and new forms of selfhood.

Keywords

East AfricaTanzaniacolonial intermediariesmedialiteracynationalism
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 5 - 28
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of The Journal of African History as well as participants of Princeton University's African History Workshop (13 Oct. 2017) and the Greater New York Area Workshop on African History at Columbia University (2 Mar. 2018) for helping me to clarify my argument. Attendees of the workshop Print Cultures and the Making of a Colonial Public Sphere at Yale University (31 Mar. to 1 Apr. 2017) graciously shared their knowledge with me. I am also indebted to James Brennan, Katrin Bromber, Jacob Dlamini, Andreas Eckert, Jörg Haustein, Isabel Hofmeyr, John Iliffe, Emmanuel Kreike, Yusufu Q. Lawi, Michelle Moyd, Morgan Robinson, and Thaddeus Sunseri. All translations are by the author.

References

1 Barber, K. (ed.), Africa's Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self (Bloomington, IN, 2006); Uchida, J., ‘The public sphere in colonial life: residents’ movements in Korea under Japanese rule’, Past & Present, 220:1 (2013), 217–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dubrow, J., Cosmopolitan Dreams: The Making of Modern Urdu Literary Culture in Colonial South Asia (Honolulu, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Anderson, B. R., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (rev. edn, New York, 2006)Google Scholar.

3 Dharwadker, V., ‘Print culture and literary markets in colonial India’, in Masten, J., Stallybrass, P., and Vickers, N. (eds.), Language Machines: Technologies of Literary and Cultural Production (New York, 1997), 108–33Google Scholar; Hofmeyr, I., Kaarsholm, P., and Frederiksen, B. F., ‘Introduction: print cultures, nationalisms, and publics of the Indian Ocean’, Africa, 81:1 (2011), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peterson, D. R. and Hunter, E., ‘Print culture in colonial Africa’, in Peterson, D. R., Hunter, E., and Newell, S. (eds.), African Print Cultures: Newspapers and their Publics in the Twentieth Century (Ann Arbor, MI, 2016), 1–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunter, E. and James, L., ‘Introduction: colonial public spheres and the worlds of print’, Itinerario, 44:2 (2020), 227–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 The history of Swahili has to be understood ‘outside of the teleological history of anti-colonial nationalism’. Robinson, M., ‘The idea of the upelekwa: constructing a transcontinental community in Eastern Africa, 1888–96’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 81:1 (2020), 85–106, 106CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

6 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 133. Emphasis in original.

7 The National Archives of the UK, Kew (NA) CO 691/62, dispatch by Governor H. Byatt to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 9 Mar. 1923, 301–5, 303. On Tanganyika's press, see, among others, Scotton, J. F., ‘Tanganyika's African press, 1937–1960: a nearly forgotten pre-independence forum’, African Studies Review, 21:1 (1978), 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bromber, K., ‘Ustaarabu: a conceptual change in Tanganyikan newspaper discourse in the 1920s’, in Loimeier, R. and Seesemann, R. (eds.), The Global Worlds of the Swahili: Interfaces of Islam, Identity and Space in 19th and 20th-Century East Africa (Berlin, 2006), 67–81Google Scholar; Suriano, M., ‘Making the modern: contestations over muziki wa dansi in Tanganyika, ca. 1945–1961’, African Studies, 70:3 (2011), 393–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brennan, J. R., Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania (Athens, OH, 2012)Google Scholar; Hunter, Political Thought; Hunter, E., ‘Modernity, print media, and the middle class in colonial East Africa’, in Dejung, C., Motadel, D., and Osterhammel, J. (eds.), The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire (Princeton, 2019), 105–122Google Scholar.

8 Other examples include Malay in the Dutch East Indies and Swahili in the Belgian Congo. See J. Hoffman, ‘A foreign investment: Indies malay to 1901’, Indonesia, 27 (1979), 65–92; J. Fabian, Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo, 1880–1938 (Berkeley, 1991).

9 See W. Külz, ‘Die Presse in den deutschen Kolonien’, Koloniale Monatsblätter, 16:6 (1914), 263–73; D. Spennemann, ‘Government publishing in the German Pacific 1885–1914’, The Journal of Pacific History, 52:1 (2017), 68–95; C. Schäfer, ‘The right to write in German colonies of the early twentieth century: pugnacious settler newspapers, anxious governors and African journalism in exile’, Cultural and Social History, 15:5 (2018), 681–98.

10 M. M. Mulokozi, ‘Revolution and reaction in Swahili poetry’, Kiswahili, 45:2 (1975), 127–40; C. Pike, ‘History and imagination: Swahili literature and resistance to German language imperialism in Tanzania, 1885–1910’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 19:2 (1986), 201–33; A. J. Biersteker, Kujibizana: Questions of Language and Power in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Poetry in Kiswahili (East Lansing, MI, 1996); G. Miehe (ed.), Kala Shairi: German East Africa in Swahili Poems (Köln, 2002).

11 J. Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule, 1905–1912 (Cambridge, 1969), 187. Swahili poetry constituted one dimension of this process. See K. Askew, ‘Tanzanian newspaper poetry: political commentary in verse’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 8:3 (2014), 515–37; K. Askew, ‘Everyday poetry from Tanzania: microcosm of the newspaper genre’ in Peterson, Hunter, and Newell, African Print Cultures, 179–223.

12 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Volume I (2nd exp. edn, Tübingen, 1925), 28.

13 See, for instance, J. Koponen, Development for Exploitation: German Colonial Policies in Mainland Tanzania, 1884–1914 (Hamburg, 1995).

14 M. Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft in Deutsch-Ostafrika: Expeditionen, Militär und Verwaltung seit 1880 (Frankfurt, 2005).

15 P. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 167.

16 Bourdieu, Language, 167.

17 On the importance of Swahili and government education for German rule see M. Wright, ‘Local roots of policy in German East Africa’, The Journal of African History, 9:4 (1968), 621–30.

18 Bourdieu, Language, 164, 170; Pesek, Koloniale Herrschaft, 27.

19 H. Lemke, ‘Die Suaheli-Zeitungen und -Zeitschriften in Deutsch-Ostafrika’, (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leipzig, 1929).

20 E. Hunter, ‘“Our common humanity”: print, power, and the colonial press in interwar Tanganyika and French Cameroun’, Journal of Global History, 7:2 (2012), 279–301; H. Englund, ‘Anti anti-colonialism: vernacular press and emergent possibilities in colonial Zambia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 57:1 (2015), 221–47.

21 N. R. Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (London, 1999); B. N. Lawrance, E. L. Osborn, and R. L. Roberts (eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison, WI, 2006); M. R. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa (Athens, OH, 2014).

22 See D. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Oxford, 2000); H. J. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (Berkeley, 2003).

23 W. J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New York, 1982); J. P. Gee, Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (5th edn, New York, 2015).

24 D. R. Peterson, Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth, NH, 2004), 4; H. A. Yousef, Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870–1930 (Stanford, 2016), 5.

25 James Collins and Richard Blot explore this relationship in colonial Latin America but overstress literacy's impact on ‘identity’, see J. Collins and R. K. Blot (eds.), Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power, and Identity (Cambridge, 2003). For an interpretation that focuses more on power, see A. Rama, The Lettered City (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996). For a cogent analysis of the ideology of print culture in a colonial context, see A. Asseraf, Electric News in Colonial Algeria (Oxford, 2019), 27–9.

26 S. Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison, 1990), 22.

27 For a similar view on print's limited ability to reflect conceptions of selfhood, see S. Newell, The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa (Athens, OH, 2013).

28 Paul Blank was born in 1871 and served as a teacher in Berlin. After studying Swahili and Gujarati, he joined the colonial service in 1895. See G. Lenz, Die Regierungsschulen in den deutschen Schutzgebieten (Darmstadt, Germany, 1900), 24.

29 G. Taddey, ‘Die Gründung der ersten deutschen Schule in Ostafrika’, Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte, 43 (1984), 415–22, 416.

30 Tanzania National Archives, Dar es Salaam (TNA) G9/57, letter from Blank to Government, 13 May 1905, 27–29, 29.

31 TNA G9/58, letter from District Officer Tanga to Government, 2 Oct. 1910, 34–5; TNA G9/57, letter from Blank to Government, 21 Dec. 1904, 52–5, 54.

32 TNA G9/57, letter from Blank to Government, 13 May 1905, 27–8.

33 See the debate following TNA G9/56, letter from Götzen to District Officers, 14 Mar. 1904, 114.

34 Lenz, Regierungsschulen, 5–7, 13.

35 J. Mugane, The Story of Swahili (Athens, OH, 2015), 97–106, 175–90.

36 M. Wright, ‘Swahili language policy, 1890–1940’, Swahili, 35 (1965), 40–8.

37 A. Brumfit, ‘The rise and development of a language policy in German East Africa’, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 2 (1980), 219–332, 275. Similar concerns existed in West Africa. See A. D. Lienau, ‘Reframing vernacular culture on Arabic fault lines: Bamba, Senghor, and Sembene's translingual legacies in French West Africa’, PMLA, 130:2 (2015), 419–29.

38 German Federal Archives, Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArch) R 1001/991, letter from Governor Rechenberg to Colonial Department, 23 Feb. 1907, 117.

39 M. Robinson, ‘An uncommon standard: a social and intellectual history of Swahili, 1864–1925’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2018), 56–7, 62–98.

40 TNA G9/57, letter from Committee of German Protestant Missions to Colonial Office, Dec. 1904, 74–80, 76; on German missions see Brumfit, ‘Language policy’, 281–306.

41 Iliffe, Modern History, 209; J. Glassman, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (Portsmouth, NH, 1995), 158–61.

42 Iliffe, Modern History, 210.

43 L. Wimmelbücker, ‘Ansichten eines “regierungstreuen Eingeborenen”: Mzee bin Ramazani über den Krieg in Songea’, in F. Becker and J. Beez (eds.), Der Maji-Maji-Krieg in Deutsch-Ostafrika: 1905–1907 (Berlin, 2005), 130.

44 Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee 1905/06 (Berlin, 1907), 21.

45 A. Juma, ‘Maisha ya waletaji habari: 1. Alfred Juma’, Kiongozi, Jun. 1908; on Magila, see J. Willis, ‘The nature of a mission community: the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa in Bonde’, Past & Present, 140 (1993), 127–154.

46 T. S. Y. Sengo and M. M. Mulokozi, History of Kiswahili Poetry, A.D. 1000–2000: A Report (Dar es Salaam, 1995), 38; G. Hornsby, ‘A brief history of Tanga School up to 1914’, Tanganyika Notes and Records, 58 (1962), 148–150, 148; Hauptlehrer Mwabondo, ‘Sikukuu ya kuzaliwa kaiser wetu’, Kiongozi, Feb. 1912.

47 A. J., ‘Habari za nchi: Tanga’, Kiongozi, May 1906.

48 A. C. Madan, Swahili-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1903), 158. German colonialists similarly translated ‘kiongozi’ as ‘leader’ or ‘guide’. See ‘Kiongozi’, Usambara Post, 24 Nov. 1906.

49 Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 61.

50 Mb. M.-M., ‘Tambo’, Kiongozi, Jul. 1908.

51 See, for instance, ‘Majibu kwa’, Kiongozi, Jan. 1907; ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, May 1910.

52 ‘Paul Nyanye: barbier, Tanga Ngomaplatz’, Kiongozi, Jan. 1913; Anon., ‘Karani’, Kiongozi, Mar. 1909; S. H. Dalal, ‘Tabora: nani anataka ukarani?’, Kiongozi, Sept. 1909.

53 Kiongozi, Apr. 1906; Kiongozi, Nov. 1906; Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 70–2.

54 ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, October 1910. They hailed from Tanga (8), Pangani (7), Bismarckburg (5), Wilhelmstal (4), Tabora (4), Ruanda (4), Dar es Salaam (3), Bagamoyo (3), Uzumbura (3), Kilwa (2), Songea (2), Mwanza (2), Lindi (2), Bukoba (1), Moshi (1), Morogoro (1), Kilimatinde (1), Shirati (1), Langenburg (1), Mohoro (1), Saadani (1), and Mpapua (1).

55 ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, May 1913.

56 ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, Nov. 1911.

57 Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee 1907/08 (Berlin, 1909), 91.

58 Oberstleutnant Gallus, ‘Die afrikanische Presse’, Zeitschrift für Kolonialpolitik, Kolonialrecht und Kolonialwirtschaft, 10:10–11 (1908), 789–842, 839; Hornsby, ‘Tanga School’, 149; TNA G9/59, letter from Teacher Sperling to Government, 2 Jul. 1906, 33–4.

59 Dt., ‘Kwa ajili gani tunamheshimu Kaiser wetu’, Kiongozi, Feb. 1910.

60 A. Saidi, ‘Shukurani ya Kaiser Wilhelm II’, Kiongozi, Feb. 1911.

61 Ibid.

62 Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 65.

63 Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht 1905/06, 21. On Islam and the colonial press see J. Haustein, ‘Provincializing representation: East African Islam in the German colonial press’, in F. Becker, J. Cabrita, and M. Rodet (eds.), Religion, Media, and Marginality in Modern Africa (Athens, OH, 2018), 70–92.

64 Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 72.

65 NA CO 691/64, dispatch by Governor Horace Byatt to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 9 Nov. 1923, 428–9.

66 See, respectively, J.-G. Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914 (Oxford, 2006), 109; J. L. Giblin, The Politics of Environmental Control in Northeastern Tanzania, 1840–1940 (Philadelphia, 1992), 121–30; T. Sunseri, Vilimani: Labor Migration and Rural Change in Early Colonial Tanzania (Portsmouth, NH, 2002), 64, 150, 167.

67 M. M. Matano, ‘Watoto, shikeni mwendo mwema!’, Kiongozi, Sept. 1911.

68 Ibid.

69 Eustice, ‘Kijana asiye funzwa’, Kiongozi, Feb. 1912.

70 Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 79.

71 A. Juma, ‘Masimulizi ya Mwalimu Alfred Juma: sehemu ya nne’, Mambo Leo, Nov. 1932, 233.

72 Peterson, Creative Writing, 6.

73 R. L. Pouwels, Horn and Crescent: Cultural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900 (Cambridge, 1987), 87–9.

74 E. A. Mang'enya, Discipline and Tears: Reminiscences of an African Civil Servant on Colonial Tanganyika (Dar es Salaam, 1984), 216–7.

75 ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, May 1910.

76 ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, Oct. 1913.

77 For such an order to maakida of Tanga, see Prussian Secret State Archives, Berlin (GStA) VI HA, Nl. Schnee, H., Nr. 62, letter from District Officer of Tanga Noetze to Akidas, 2 Oct. 1909. On Mursal, see Iliffe, Modern History, 175.

78 Blank, ‘Tangazo kwa waalim, 31. August 1906’, Kiongozi, Sept. 1906; on Mbezi see Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee 1903/04: Anlagen (Berlin, 1905), 51.

79 Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee 1908/09 (Berlin, 1910), 187; TNA G9/84, letter from Schutztruppe Command to Government, 2 Apr. 1914, 67–8.

80 ‘Lokales’, Usambara-Post, 17 Jun. 1905.

81 ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, Feb. 1910; ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, Dec. 1910; ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, Jun. 1913; ‘Mfuko wa barua’, Kiongozi, Nov. 1913; Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee (ed.), Koloniales-Handelsadressbuch 1907 (Berlin, 1907), 27, 29. The colony's Indian and Arab minorities barely featured in Kiongozi. On both, see F. Raimbault, ‘Les stratégies de reclassement des élites arabes et indiennes à Dar-es-Salaam durant la colonisation allemande (1891–1914)’, Hypothèses, 1:4 (2001), 109–18.

82 Reichskolonialamt, Die Deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee: Amtliche Jahresberichte 1910/11 (Berlin, 1912), 11.

83 TNA G9/60, letter from School Inspector Ramlow to Government, 15 Aug. 1912, 108–18, 115.

84 TNA G1/5, letter from District Officer Tanga to Government, 5 Mar. 1910, 344–6; TNA G1/55, letter from District Officer Tanga to Government, 15 Mar. 1910, 348.

85 M. Sturmer, The Media History of Tanzania (Mtwara, Tanzania, 1998), 37.

86 Gallus, ‘Die afrikanische Presse’, 825; Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht 1907/08, 91; Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 25.

87 BArch R 1001/940, Kaiserliches Gouvernement, Handbuch für Deutsch-Ostafrika (Dar es Salaam, 1914), 18–356, 101, 58, 62. Between 1909 and 1910, for instance, 51 askari were taught to read and to write basic ‘dispatches’ in government schools. See Reichskolonialamt, Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee: Amtliche Jahresberichte 1909/10 (Berlin, 1911), 11.

88 Iliffe, Tanganyika, 183–6; R. Fitzner, Deutsches Kolonialhandbuch (Berlin, 1901), 275–6, 309–10; Militärisches Orientierungsheft für Deutsch-Ostafrika, Entwurf (Dar es Salaam, 1911), I, 11; VI, 9; X, 9; XV, 8.

89 ‘Majibu kwa’, Kiongozi, Jun. 1907; Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht 1905/06, 21; Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht 1906/07, 80; Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht 1907/08, 89; Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht 1908/09, 12; Reichskolonialamt, Jahresberichte 1910/11, 11; Reichskolonialamt, Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee: Amtliche Jahresberichte 1911/12 (Berlin, 1913), 10; Reichskolonialamt, Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee: Amtliche Jahresberichte 1912/13 (Berlin, 1914), 17.

90 Reichskolonialamt, Die deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee: Amtliche Jahresberichte 1912/13: Statistischer Teil (Berlin, 1914), 9.

91 K. Weule, Negerleben in Ostafrika: Ergebnisse einer ethnologischen Forschungsreise (Leipzig, 1908), 448.

92 On Dobbertin, see C. Conte, ‘Power, production, and land use in German East Africa through the photographs of Walther Dobbertin, c. 1910’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 12:4 (2018), 632–54, 636. However, a systematic study of the photographer's oeuvre is still lacking.

93 P. von Lettow-Vorbeck, Heia safari!: Deutschlands Kampf in Ostafrika (Leipzig, 1920), 37.

94 Askari Salimu, ‘Habari za nchi: Tanga, mchezo wa vita’, Kiongozi, Sep. 1911.

95 Dt., ‘Asakari wa kidachi kazini’, Kiongozi, Apr. 1910.

96 TNA G9/84, letter from Schutztruppe Command to government, Apr. 2, 1914, 67–8.

97 GStA VI HA, Nl. Schnee, H., Nr. 69, Askari. Fahndungsblatt, May 1907; Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht über die Entwickelung der Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee 1906/07 (Berlin, 1908), 80.

98 M. R. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 23.

99 Gallus, ‘Die Afrikanische Presse’, 839.

100 M. M. Mndiga, ‘Habari za nchi: Tabora’, Kiongozi, Mar. 1907.

101 J. F. Scotton, ‘Growth of the vernacular press in colonial East Africa: patterns of government control’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1971), 32.

102 Robinson, ‘Uncommon standard’, 3.

103 Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 20.

104 Ibid.

105 See ‘Habari za mwezi’, Habari za Mwezi, Jan. 1908, 3.

106 Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 31–5, 39–40.

107 Ibid., 35, 40; Robinson, ‘Upelekwa’, 100; Scotton gives Habari's circulation in 1914 as 6,000, but his citation does not bear this out. Scotton, ‘Vernacular press’, 30. In 1896, circulation amounted to 150 copies. See Archives of the Universities Mission to Central Africa, Bodleian Library, Oxford (BDL) UMCA Box List A–F A1 (VII–VIII), letter by H. W. Woodward to UMCA, 15. Jul. 1896. I am grateful to Morgan Robinson for this reference.

108 Robinson, ‘Upelekwa’, 104–5.

109 Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 77–8.

110 Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht 1912/13: Statistischer Teil, 65.

111 Hemedi bin Abdallah bin Said bin Abdalla bin Masudi al Buhriy, ‘Utenzi wa vita vya wadachi kutamalaki Mrima 1307 A. H.’, in Miehe (ed.), Kala Shairi, 118–88.

112 A. Juma, ‘Kuwasili Bwana Guveneri wa Dar-es-Salaam’, Habari za Mwezi, Mar. 1899, 4.

113 Lemke, ‘Suaheli-Zeitungen’, 35; B. Struck, ‘Die Entwicklung der Eingeborenenpresse in Afrika’, Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung, 24 Oct. 1908; K. Axenfeld, ‘Geistige Kämpfe in der Eingeborenenbevölkerung an der Küste Ostafrikas’, Koloniale Rundschau, 5 (1913), 647–73.

114 See Robinson, ‘Upelekwa’, 91; L. Mwaimu, ‘Kuwaeleza wajinga’, Habari za Mwezi, Jun. 1908, 48; 1. Mwera, ‘Udanganyi wa mshenzi’, Rafiki Yangu, Apr. 1912; M. R. Nyangye, ‘Maana yake “mshenzi”’, Pwani na Bara, Aug. 1914.

115 K. Barber, ‘I. B. Akinyele and early Yoruba print culture’, in D. R. Peterson and G. Macola (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens, OH, 2009), 31–49, 41.

116 K. Barber, The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics: Oral and Written Culture in Africa and Beyond (New York, 2007), 139.

117 T. Geider, ‘The paper memory of East Africa: ethnohistories and biographies written in Swahili’, in A. Harneit-Sievers (ed.), A Place in the World: New Local Historiographies from Africa and South Asia (Leiden, 2002), 255–88, 262.

118 Mb. M.-M., ‘Nguvu ya dola ya kidachi’, Kiongozi, Aug. 1908; R. J., ‘Faida ya schule nini?’, Kiongozi, Nov. 1908; Kiongozi, ‘Kwa wasomaji’, Kiongozi, Dec. 1906.

119 Reichskolonialamt, Jahresbericht 1908/09, 187; A. Roberts, ‘African cross-currents’, in R. Oliver (ed.), The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume VII: From 1905 to 1940 (Cambridge, 1986), 223–66, 233.

120 Barber, Anthropology of Texts, 153.

121 J. R. Brennan, ‘Blood enemies: exploitation in the nationalist political thought of Tanzania, 1958–1975’, The Journal of African History, 47:3 (2006), 389–413; see also J. Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington, IN, 2010).

122 Glassman, Feasts and Riot, 117–9.

123 Swahili poets similarly integrated Germans into the local system of authority. See K. Bromber, ‘Ein Lied auf die hohen Herren: Die deutsche Kolonialherrschaft in der historiographischen Swahiliverskunst der Jahrhundertwende’, in A. Wirz, A. Eckert, and K. Bromber (eds.), Alles unter Kontrolle: Disziplinierungsprozesse im kolonialen Tanzania (1850–1960) (Köln, 2003), 73–98.

124 M. Zuberi, ‘Kutoka ndani ya ujinga’, Kiongozi, Jul. 1911.

125 A. J., ‘Habari za nchi: Tanga, kuauwa schulen’, Kiongozi, Jan. 1913.

126 A. J., ‘Bado kukamatwa!’, Kiongozi, Oct. 1906.

127 A. J., ‘Kuauwa schulen’.

128 F. Ansprenger, ‘Schulpolitik in Deutsch-Ostafrika’, in U. van der Heyden and P. Heine (eds.), Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Kolonialismus in Afrika: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Peter Sebald (Pfaffenweiler, Germany, 1995), 59–93, 87–9.

129 TNA G9/64, complaint of Yazidi bin Jumbe, Muhamadi bin Kathi, and Hamiss bin Akida, 16 Jun. 1902, 120–4; TNA G9/64, letter by District Officer Tanga to government, 26 Jun. 1902, 121.

130 G. Hornsby, ‘German educational achievement in East Africa’, Tanganyika Notes and Records, 62 (1964), 83–90.

131 On Swahili Islamic learning, see Pouwels, Horn and Crescent, 86–9.

132 Mb. M.-M., ‘Nani hapendi dawa ya bwana mganga?’, Kiongozi, Mar. 1913.

133 Ibid.

134 Ibid. On the private nature of waganga knowledge see Pouwels, Horn and Crescent, 90.

135 Ibid.

136 R. Saidi, ‘Uchawi’, Kiongozi, Sep. 1910.

137 Iliffe, Modern History, 207.

138 Pouwels, Horn and Crescent, 89.

139 R. Saidi, ‘Bembe’, Kiongozi, Jan. 1911.

140 A. Musoga, ‘Ukaidi wa mgonjwa’, Kiongozi, Jan. 1910.

141 W. U. Eckart, ‘The colony as laboratory: German sleeping sickness campaigns in German East Africa and in Togo, 1900–1914’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 24:1 (2002), 69–89, 76–7.

142 M. K. Webel, The Politics of Disease Control: Sleeping Sickness in Eastern Africa, 1890–1920 (Athens, OH, 2019), 3.

143 On Maji Maji see Iliffe, J., ‘The organization of the Maji Maji Rebellion’, The Journal of African History, 8:3 (1967), 495–512CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gwassa, G. C. K., ‘The German intervention and African resistance in Tanzania’, in Kimambo, I. N. and Temu, A. J. (eds.), A History of Tanzania (Nairobi, 1969)Google Scholar; Sunseri, T., ‘Statist narratives and Maji Maji ellipses’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 33:3 (2000), 567–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Becker, F., ‘Traders, “big men” and prophets: political continuity and crisis in the Maji Maji Rebellion in Southeast Tanzania’, The Journal of African History, 45:1 (2004), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Giblin, J. L. and Monson, J. (eds.), Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War (Boston, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

144 J. L. Giblin and J. Monson, ‘Introduction’, in Giblin and Monson (eds.), Maji Maji, 1–32.

145 Liwali Mzee bin Ramazani, ‘Habari za fitina ya majimaji katika nchi ya Songea’, Kiongozi, Mar. 1907. A German translation was published in December 1906 in the Usambara Post.

146 Gallus, ‘Afrikanische Presse’, 839; B. Struck, ‘Die Einheitssprache Deutsch-Ostafrikas’, Koloniale Rundschau, 13 (1921), 164–96, 193.

147 Bin Ramazani, ‘Habari za fitina’.

148 Liwali Mzee bin Ramazani, ‘Tuitii sirkali!’, Kiongozi, Mar. 1907.

149 Becker, ‘Traders, “big men” and prophets’, 18.

150 Bin Ramazani, ‘Habari za fitina’. Emphasis in original.

151 Iliffe, ‘Maji Maji’, 496.

152 Z. Mwinyipembe, ‘Habari za nchi: Mohoro’, Kiongozi, Sep. 1906.

153 M. Muhamadi, ‘Habari za nchi: Daressalam’, Mfuasi wa Kiongozi, Nov. 1906; A. Mwinyi-Ali, ‘Habari za nchi: Songea’, Kiongozi, Mar. 1907.

154 Z. Mwinyipembe, ‘Habari za nchi: Mohoro’, Mfuasi wa Kiongozi, May 1906; M. Akida, ‘Habari za nchi: Kilwa’, Kiongozi, Mar. 1907; R. Ali, ‘Habari za nchi: Mahenge’, Kiongozi, Jun. 1907.

155 TNA G9/61, letter from District Officer of Tanga Auracher to government, 27 Aug. 1914, 35.

156 Sengo and Mulokozi, Kiswahili Poetry, 38–9; Robinson, ‘Uncommon standard’, 242–3.

157 Gh. Mb. M. M., ‘Utokezi wa Mwalimu Mwabondo Mwinyi Matano’, Mambo Leo, Dec. 1926, 533; A. Juma, ‘Ubora wa kutenda haki na faida yake’, Mambo Leo, Dec. 1938, 190.

158 On some of these afterlives in Cameroon and Togo see, respectively, Derrick, J., ‘The “Germanophone” elite of Douala under the French mandate’, The Journal of African History, 21:2 (1980), 255–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lawrance, B., Locality, Mobility, and ‘Nation’: Periurban Colonialism in Togo's Eweland, 1900–1960 (Rochester, NY, 2007), 121–47Google Scholar.

159 NA FO 395/64, memorandum by J. E. Philipps to Foreign Office, ‘“Africa for the African” and pan-Islam’, 15 Jul. 1917, 5–6.

160 NA CO 691/62, dispatch by Governor H. Byatt to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 9 Mar. 1923, 301–5, 302.

161 ‘Mambo Leo’, Mambo Leo, Jan. 1923, 2.