The fertile highlands overlooking the Pangani supported relatively dense populations among whom political consolidation began at least by the early nineteenth century. By the 1850s the Kilindi ruler of Usambara, Kimweri za Nyumbai, dominated the lower valley, conducting a profitable trade with Pangani and employing literate coastal agents.

The first railway in the colony was built inland from Tanga after 1891

The first taxation ordinance was issued in 1897. Areas under full political control were subjected to a hut Tax whose main object was stated to be 'educational', in that it was intended to oblige Africans to accept paid labour and accustom themselves to European administrative discipline. Unpaid labour on public works could be offered in lieu. The 'educational' objects were soon subordinated to the pressing need for current revenue.

European agriculture accompanied it inland, reaching East Usambara in the early 1890s, West Usambara in 1898, and the great mountains - Kilimanjaro and Meru - shortly before the rebellion

In 1905 Gotzen abolished labour in lieu of Tax and substituted paid work to earn the necessary sum, with compulsory labour for defaulters. He also fixed the maximum assessment at three rupees per hut. By this date, annual payment had become a normal feature of life on the coast and in the more closely administered areas elsewhere. But in many inland regions Tax was still virtually a tribute, 'i.e. the station commander must be satisfied with what he gets '.

It reached Mombo, below the foothills of Usambara, in 1905.

Hut, house, and poll Tax revenue, with total local revenue, 1905-12 in marks

In practice, what mattered was not the Colonial Secretary's public statements with regard to settlement, but his administrative decisions on the problems which it presented. The first of these was the northern railway. When Dernburg conceded the building of the line from the River Pangani to Moshi, he insisted that this must be the terminus.

Right- wing opinion disagreed. In February 1911 the Colonial Society petitioned the Reichstag for extension to Arusha, and in July it revived the old idea of a line to Lake Victoria. Rechenberg had long opposed these views, but Lindequist accepted the Arusha line in principle, a decision which was to bind his reluctant successor.

An African or Arab administrator of a section of a district.

An African soldier in the German army

The records of the former Colonial Office are the second major source for this book. Apart from military, personal, and railway records, they are substantially complete, and are open without restriction until at least 1914.

The reference system is a simple series numbering, recently superimposed on the original system. Indispensable to a study of German colonial policy, the records are nevertheless weak on the internal affairs of German East Africa. The archive also holds the records of the Chancellery (valuable for interdepartmental negotioations), the Reichstag (including the proceedings of the key Budget Commission), and the German Colonial Society.

The policy of encouraging the settlement of European small farmers

An Arab or African governor of a town, usually a district headquarters

A system of self-administration in local affairs

Most area (formerly district) offices have a district book, a volume of typescripts on local history, customs, and administration. Some of these are of considerable importance. The Tanzania National Archives is microfilming them. Photostats of a few books are in the library of Makerere University College, and typescript selections may be found in the Tanzania National Museum, the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, and Rhodes House, Oxford,

One or other copy of each book has been used in this study, with the exception of Chunya, Mpanda, and Nachingwea. The area offices do not possess German records.

The main holdings relevant to this study are the surviving records of the government of German East Africa. These were assembled by the British administration between 1916 and 1951, and were first lodged in the Land Office, where the present writer studied them. They are now deposited in the archives. The government filed its records centrally, but numbered them by departments and subjects on a variant of a decimal classification system:

TNA IX Missions, churches, schools

TNA IX/B Schools

TNA IX/B/4 Tanga School

TNA IX/B/4/1 Tanga School, 1895-1906

District offices kept their own files, as did a number of specialist agencies. Many records were hidden or destroyed during the First World War, and some - although surprisingly few - have been lost subsequently. Land files are especially numerous, and there is a large holding of legal records, only a selection of which were consulted for this study. There are important collections on European political organisations and self- government, public works, plantation companies, missions, education, and Islam.

The records of district political administration are few. For a historian, the reference system is wildly impracticable. The archivists have tried to reconstitute the German filing system, and this book follows the same practice. However, the British administration imposed several different reference systems on the records. It was chiefly interested in land titles, and therefore reconstituted two series of files, from various sources, numbered against the relevant entry in a Grundbuch or Landregister. It also put together a series numbered against the proceedings of the land commission which first surveyed the plot concerned (e.g. TNA LKV Moshi 6).

Many of these files are in fact of general political or other interest, and only incidentally contain a land commission report. Further, another series is listed against the number of the enemy property lot by which the land was auctioned after 1918; these became known as grants (e.g. TNA Grants Tanga 24.).

Files not concerned with land were given a series number as 'Minute Papers, German'. Finally, many files are simply numbered on the front in crayon, and can be cited only by this number and the colour in which it is written (e.g. TNA brown 17). Many have several different numbers; preference is given in this book according to the order in which the systems are summarised here.

The library houses the papers of the late Hans Cory, a government sociologist who collected a valuable assortment of local histories, and the manuscript collection of the former East African Swahili Committee. The committee's interests were literary rather than historical, but some manuscripts are relevant to this study. See the list in Swahili, xxxv, no. i (March 1965), pp. 99-115.

German East Africa's currency was the rupee. Fifteen rupees were equal in value to twenty German marks or to one English pound.

The society holds the records of the former Universities Mission to Central Africa. Those relating to the diocese of Zanzibar date back to the 1860s. Missionary correspondence from the episcopates of Hine and Weston is relevant to this study, as also is a small collection of letters and unpublished memoirs written by the first generation of African priests and teachers. The papers are to be reorganised and catalogued. At present they are kept in packets listed by diocese and episcopate.

'A people's crop'. A cash crop produced by African farmers as opposed to plantation farming