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Labor Relations and Population Developments in Tanzania: Sources, Shifts, and Continuities from 1800 to 2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2014

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Abstract

This article analyzes trends in demography and labor relations in Tanzania for four cross-sections: 1800, 1900, 1950, and 2000. It discusses the quality and nature of the sources available on demography and labor relations in Tanzania for the aforementioned cross-sections. Subsequently, it reconstructs the main trends in the population size and composition, and connects them to the major shifts in labor relations in relation to the major historical events that took place in Tanzania over the last two centuries.

Résumé

Cet article analyse, pour la Tanzanie, les tendances survenues au niveau de la démographie et des relations de travail pour les tranches 1800, 1900, 1950 et 2000 par rapport auxquelles il aborde la qualité et la nature des sources disponibles à ce sujet en Tanzanie. Par conséquence, il reconstruit les tendances marquantes survenues dans la taille et la composition de la population et relie ces données aux changements majeurs qui se sont produits en Tanzanie au cours des deux derniers siècles.

Type
Labor History and Africa
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2014 

IntroductionFootnote 1

This article analyzes trends in demography and labor relations in Tanzania between 1800 and 2000. The main aim is to disclose the changes in population size and composition and connect them to continuities and shifts in labor relations. In this paper, I will discuss the quality and nature of the sources available on demography and labor relations in Tanzania for four cross-sections (1800–1900–1950–2000). When necessary, I will refer to the methodological paper in which I present and discuss the calculation methods that I have used to reach the data for the database.Footnote 2 I do not claim that the figures that I have obtained are accurate; they are subject to large margins of error because the basis for estimations is often in itself very poor. Nonetheless, they can provide a degree of magnitude, which is useful for the goals of the Collaboratory and Global Labor History in general.

The dataset also includes information on Zanzibar. Even if not extremely relevant from a statistical point of view, Zanzibar is nonetheless critical in the analysis of labor relations, owing to the peculiarities of its labor market, as well as the better availability of sources.Footnote 3

Shifts and continuities in labor relations are clearly connected to the historical trajectories of the area now known as the United Republic of Tanzania. Therefore, the first section of this paper will present a brief historical overview of the country and particularly of the events that produced significant changes in demography and labor relations. The second section discusses the quality and nature of the sources available on demography and labor relations in Tanzania for the given cross-sections. In light of the available sources, the third section analyzes the main trends in the population size and composition. The final section provides a picture of the major shifts in labor relations, their causes and consequences, in connection with the major historical events that took place in Tanzania over the last two centuries.

Brief Historical Background of the Country from 1800

At present, Tanzania is a country with a population of 44,928,923 occupying an area of almost 950,000 square kilometers.Footnote 4 During the scramble for Africa, the area was occupied by Germany, which combined present-day mainland Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi to create the colony of German East Africa (GEA). In 1890, Great Britain established a protectorate over Zanzibar. After Germany lost the First World War, the area was transferred to Belgium (Rwanda and Burundi) and Great Britain (Tanganyika Territory) through a League of Nations mandate. In 1961, Tanganyika reached independence and in 1964, following the union with Zanzibar, it became the United Republic of Tanzania.

In 1800, the coastal areas of Tanzania were part of the Indian Ocean commercial world. Thanks to the monsoon winds – the driving force of the Indian Ocean commerce – India and the Arabian Peninsula had developed close commercial relationships with East Africa.Footnote 5 In contrast, the interior regions of Tanzania were characterized by a wide network of interregional trade and commercial contacts with the coast were limited. The nineteenth-century demand for ivory in order to produce luxury items for the growing Western middle class and the demand for slave laborers from Zanzibar plantations were the main causes for integrating the interior regions into the commercial empire of Zanzibar. Coastal traders were able to penetrate inland thanks to the Omani state, which supported their commercial enterprises, the Indian financers on the coast, who provided long-term credit facilities, and to the extremely favorable terms of trade that African commodities, particularly ivory, enjoyed throughout the nineteenth century.Footnote 6 At the same time, a growing awareness of the greater value of ivory led enterprising African businessmen from the interior regions to increase regional trading despite hazards and risks of the long journey to the coast.Footnote 7 The development of long-distance trade with the coast gave birth to a new class of paid laborers, namely porters. Porters represent a peculiar case of an early development of wage labor in pre-colonial East Africa.Footnote 8 As the century progressed, a steady increase in the price of ivory expanded the area in which Swahili, Arab and African traders operated.Footnote 9 This led to the development of urban centers along the most important caravan routes, such as Tabora, Ujiji and Bagamoyo, whereas well-developed urban centers already existed on the coast.Footnote 10

The first years of the German colonial period were characterized by a continuation of the economic patterns that had originated in the nineteenth century. Ivory, later replaced by wild rubber, remained the main export item and trade continued to center around Zanzibar. Caravan trade and the number of porters traveling along the caravan routes remained stable between the 1890s and early 1900s.Footnote 11 With the construction of the colonial railways and the introduction of new export crops, new economic patterns started to develop. In 1905, the Tanga line was completed and by 1914, the central railway reached Lake Tanganyika. Railway construction laborers were brought from India, as well as recruited locally, while forced labor was also commonly used.Footnote 12 In the 1890s, coffee was introduced by German settlers. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of German settlers increased and they started to experiment with new crops, especially cotton, sisal and rubber. In the last decade of German rule, the productivity of the settlers’ plantations increased along with a remarkable rise in investments. This development was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. Africans were recruited as porters and soldiers and German settlers also took part in the war. When Germany lost the war, the British took over the area and named it Tanganyika Territory.

Between the wars, two processes characterized Tanganyika’s economic history: an increase in the area’s involvement in the global economy and a process of regional differentiation.Footnote 13 Integration into the global economy was favored by the expansion of new areas for cash crop production – especially coffee, cotton and tobacco – and the development of roads and motor transport. This was accompanied by the further development of African farming, especially coffee by the Chagga. In 1929, the development of the export economy – which had begun in the 1920s – was interrupted by the Great Depression. This reduced the price of Tanganyika’s cash crops on the international markets. In the 1930s, the plantation economy gradually started to recover and became more and more based on the cultivation of sisal. However, Britain failed to create a real structural economic change and basically favored a process of regional differentiation and intensification of labor migration to cash-producing areas.Footnote 14

The outbreak of the Second World War led to a return to widespread forced and conscript labor. During the war, a total of 74,000 forced laborers were enrolled by private employers for the production of sisal, pyrethrum, rubber, rice and essential foodstuffs for troops and prisoners of war.Footnote 15 A total of 87,000 soldiers volunteered or were conscripted for the war.Footnote 16 After the end of the war, large-scale agricultural projects were implemented in Tanganyika. One such project was the East African Groundnut Scheme in the Southern Province, a project conceived to address the world shortage of vegetable oils.Footnote 17 The East African Groundnut Scheme was a failure, but testified to Great Britain’s commitment towards the economic development of its colonies in the post-war period.

New settlement patterns also developed in this period and the colonial authorities started to show some concern towards the increasing urban population of the East African colonies. According to the East Africa Royal Commission Report, “Settlements of closely-packed African huts are to be seen on the fringes of all the larger towns in East Africa” and “Tanganyika is faced, equally with the other territories, with the problem of establishing reasonable conditions of life of its urban populations.”Footnote 18 In 1950, the urban population was still limited (between 1.5 and 2 percent), but it is evident that a process of urbanization was set in motion during this cross-section, which started to transform labor relations in the urban areas. African laborers in the main towns increased, working not only as unskilled laborers, but also as clerks, foremen and artisans, businessmen and builders.Footnote 19 The presence of these laborers was often temporary. They generally retained their landholdings in the areas where they came from and women and children were left behind to cultivate the land.Footnote 20

In December 1961, Tanganyika obtained independence from Great Britain and in 1964, after the union with Zanzibar, it became the United Republic of Tanzania. The most important turning point after independence was the 1967 Arusha Declaration. With this declaration, President Julius K. Nyerere introduced the basic elements of Ujamaa: Tanzanian socialism based on self-reliance and a strong emphasis on agricultural development and production. The objective of Ujamaa was to create a new Tanzanian economy, independent from foreign aid and devoted to the foundation of a more equal society. The economic means to reach the objectives of the Arusha Declaration were the production of Tanzanian cash crops, such as sisal, cotton and pyrethrum, and of food crops, such as maize and wheat.Footnote 21 The project was based on the transfer of peasants to communal villages, where wage labor was banned and means of production were commonly owned. In 1973, almost two million Tanzanians were living in communal villages and, after the forced villagization of 1976, 85 percent of the total rural population lived in communal villages.Footnote 22 From an economic point of view, the results of Ujamaa were poor, partly owing to the low prices of Tanzanian cash crops on the international markets. By the end of the 1970s, Tanzania started to accumulate a rising international debt. Subsequently, in 1986, President Ali Hassan Mwinyi signed the first Structural Adjustment Programme with the International Monetary Fund. In the 1980s, GDP rates decreased significantly together with agricultural and industrial production.Footnote 23

As we are going to see in the following sections, agriculture remained the main occupation of Tanzanian population throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century, with specific developments of commodified labor in some sectors.

“Huts are Easier to Count than Heads:”Footnote 24Counts, Enumerations and Censuses

During the various Africa workshops of the Collaboratory, we discussed the methodological problems related to demography in Africa, especially before 1950.Footnote 25 One of the most problematic issues is the almost total absence of reliable information on the 1800 cross-section. With regard to Tanzania, some fragmentary information can be obtained from estimates made by travelers and merchants who visited the coast. However, no information is available on the interior regions. With the start of the colonial period, the sources gradually become more abundant, but their reliability is hindered by the attitude to enumerations.Footnote 26 Early colonial population surveys were conducted primarily for tax purposes and to fix quotas for forced labor, which were “both excellent motives for avoiding enumeration.”Footnote 27 Therefore, they almost invariably resulted in underestimations of the population.

Generally, the number of children was also underestimated.Footnote 28 In many parts of East Africa, counting children was considered bad luck. As Goldthorpe found out when interviewing his students from various parts of East Africa, “there is a general belief that counting children makes God think that one has too many of them and so He relieves him of some of them.”Footnote 29 Colonial representations of population were in themselves part of a larger discourse of power, control and the exercise of authority, but their results were clearly limited by the reach of the colonial state.Footnote 30 Nonetheless, an analysis of the characteristics and the purposes of the various enumerations and censuses provides an understanding of the mechanisms behind them and can therefore reveal the demographic processes they purport to measure.Footnote 31

In the German colonial period, population estimates were entirely based on tax returns as the administrative capacity of the German colonial state was too limited to carry out general surveys of the population.Footnote 32 Colonial estimates were based on implicit assumptions.Footnote 33 The size of the total population was calculated based on the number of male taxpayers multiplied by 3.5, which was assumed to represent the number of dependents (1 woman and 2.5 children) of every male taxpayer.Footnote 34 Later censuses conducted by the British showed that the German estimations for GEA were even worse than those that the British had conducted during the same period for Uganda and Kenya.Footnote 35

With the transfer of power and the increased capacity of the colonial state, more frequent enumerations and counts were conducted, which resulted in detailed demographic studies.Footnote 36 The British carried out their first enumeration in 1921, another one in 1929 and a census in 1931. These population surveys were again based on implicit assumptions: adult men made up 49 percent of the total population and the number of children under the age of 15 was estimated at 37 percent of the total adult population. As taxes were supposed to be paid by all adult men, the number of women and children was calculated accordingly. Only in 1948, did the British carry out the first real census in the East African Territories, which was the first hut-to-hut enumeration of the population of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika Territory and Zanzibar Protectorate. This was a well-conceived census, carefully organized for two years by the East African Statistical Department and its director, C.J. Martin, who planned it “as a military exercise.”Footnote 37 The census was completed within a few days – most of the enumerators completed their work in four days – and this helped to reduce common mistakes like double counting.Footnote 38 This is the first census that provides us with reliable information on the age composition of the population. Enumerators were trained to estimate people’s age by reference to historical events that had happened in their districts, like the Maji-Maji war, the arrival of the railway, or the recruitment of soldiers for the First World War. In this way it was possible to link age groups to historical events.

Demographic studies were often connected to labor surveys, and colonial authorities perceived and counted the population in terms of labor power.Footnote 39 One of the main concerns of the colonial state was “the perpetual search for labor,”Footnote 40 and the results of censuses and enumerations were interpreted to explain labor shortages, which were often blamed on low fertility rates or poor maternal care. In 1911, the Germans carried out their first detailed labor survey. The British only started to carry out detailed labor surveys towards the end of the colonial period, thanks to the work of the East African Statistical Department.Footnote 41 In 1949, a Labor Census was carried out; followed in 1950, by an analysis of The Pattern of Income Expenditure and Consumption of African Laborers in Dar es Salaam and a Report on the Analysis of the Sample Census of African Agriculture; and in 1952, an Enumeration of African Employees. These sources have clear limits, and they often provide contradictory results. Nonetheless, they provide information on the structure of the labor market and a context for highlighting shifts in labor relations.

Since the 1960s, our knowledge of the demography of the African continent has increased considerably, mostly thanks to the fact that the United Nations Commission for Africa has carried out systematic overviews of the African population.Footnote 42 Demographic data for the 2000 cross-section have been obtained from the 2002 Population and Housing Census, whereas the analysis of labor relations is based on the Integrated Labor Force Survey 2000/2001 Analytical Report and the 2001 Child Labor in Tanzania Country Report.Footnote 43 These data are questionable, owing to invariable problems like double counting, but they have been considered reasonably reliable for the general purpose of the database.Footnote 44

Given the limits of the sources highlighted so far, the next section aims at portraying a general picture of the main shifts in the population size and composition of the area now known as the United Republic of Tanzania.

The Composition of Tanzania’s Population (1800–1900–1950–2000)

Little information is available on the size and growth of Tanzanian population in the nineteenth century. According to both Iliffe and Kjekshus, the population of East Africa was relatively stable or expanded slowly throughout the nineteenth century. Kjekshus calls into question the colonizers’ portrayal of East Africa as a violent victim of the slave trade and internecine wars. He uses economic evidence to support his hypothesis of a stable population or slow population growth in the nineteenth century, only interrupted in the 1890s by colonial occupation and wars.Footnote 45 Iliffe sees in the introduction of new crops, like maize and rice, evidence of an agricultural change that supported a population growth in the nineteenth century.Footnote 46 In contrast, Hartwig is of the opinion that the existing fragments of evidence are an indication of high mortality as a result of warfare and slavery as well as epidemics, such as smallpox and cholera, famines – one very big one in the 1830s – and several, widespread droughts.Footnote 47 Along the same lines, Koponen points out that there were some regions that witnessed a population growth and others a demographic decline, but the general trend was a disruption of population patterns, culminating in the famine of the 1890s.Footnote 48 Manning assumes that death rates declined from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, whereas birth rates remained more or less stable, so that net rates of population growth increased over time on the continent. He then provides a list of social circumstances (for instance, slave trade, migration of free people, famine, and epidemics) and calculates their possible impact on African societies. He concludes that slave trade regions like Tanzania witnessed a population decline at least until the 1880s.Footnote 49 According to Lovejoy, the number of slaves traded in East Africa during the nineteenth century was almost 1,650,000, 47.5 percent of which were retained in the area, being employed in the East African plantations along the coast.Footnote 50 What is today Tanzania was therefore not only a slave-exporting, but also a slave-importing area. Slaves, for instance, were imported to replace caravan porters while they were on journey, or were purchased by traders living in the urban centers of the interior and employed in domestic or plantation work.Footnote 51

From the 1890s there was a significant population decline, caused by an epidemic of rinderpest (1891–1892) and by colonial wars. The rinderpest epidemic spread southwards from the Horn of Africa. Between 1897 and 1898, East Africa fell victim to a widespread famine, which included Tanganyika. We do not have enough data to affirm with any certainty how widespread and destructive these events were. Given that Iliffe and Kjekshus use wider categories of analysis, like settlement patterns and agricultural change, in order to analyze demographic trends for the whole area, I have based my estimates on their hypothesis of a stable or slowly growing population during the nineteenth century. Moreover, I have considered the disruptive effects of the slave trade, as suggested by Manning, and the fact that many slaves were imported and retained locally, as highlighted by Lovejoy. On the basis of the demography of the area in the early colonial period (about 4,000,000 people at the beginning of the twentieth century, see below) and taking into consideration the general nineteenth-century historical trends, the total population of the 1800 cross-section might have ranged between 3,500,000 and 4,000,000. It is not possible to know the composition of the population for the 1800 cross-section, as more precise studies are needed on how the epidemics, famines and wars of the last decade of the nineteenth century affected women and children.

Given that German estimates were based on tax returns, my starting point for estimating the total population for the 1900 cross-section is with the data available after 1905, when a poll tax replaced the hut tax in many districts.Footnote 52 Estimations based on the number of adult men paying tax rather than on the number of huts undoubtedly produce rough results, but at least these are more accurate. According to estimates, in 1906 the total population was 4,009,500.Footnote 53 If considered in relation to the 1948 census data, this figure could be plausible only when considering a constant population increase. However, this was not the case, given that some events that occurred during the German colonial period had disastrous effects on the population size. According to estimates, repressing the Maji Maji revolt (1905–1907) – an uprising in the south of the colony against the forced cultivation of cotton – resulted in 250,000–300,000 mortal victims.Footnote 54 During the First World War, German East Africa was a battlefield that killed civilians, porters and soldiers.Footnote 55 At the end of the war, returning porters and soldiers carried with them the Spanish influenza, an epidemic that actually killed more people than the war itself.Footnote 56 Owing to the combination of these events, there is reason to believe that the population of Tanzania decreased between 1900 and 1925.Footnote 57 Contrary to the general trend of colonial demographic surveys, which tended to underestimate the population, it seems that the Germans overestimated the total population of GEA. Most likely, this overestimate was due to the fact that there were fewer dependents per male tax payer than what the Germans had assumed. Culwick and Culwick studied fertility in the Ulanga District, southern Tanzania, and found that in the 1930s the net reproduction rate was 0.73. They documented a decline in the population from the beginning of the twentieth century. This was corroborated by maps of Ulanga District during the early colonial period, which showed that there were more villages in that period than in the end of the 1930s. This area, which was one of the most fertile areas of East Africa, was also involved in the Maji Maji revolt. Culwick and Culwick therefore concluded that for the period of 1905–1935, similar trends might possibly apply to areas outside of Ulanga district.Footnote 58 Actually, the 1921 census, despite all of its limits, revealed that there were fewer children than assumed. In coastal areas, the adult–children ratio was 1 to 2, whereas in other districts it was 1 to 1.5. In the district of Ujiji, where the Germans had assumed 5 dependents per taxpayer, the actual ratio turned out to be 1 adult per 3 dependents.Footnote 59

Therefore, for the 1900 cross-section I have estimated that the population of German East Africa, excluding Rwanda and Burundi, was between 3,500,000 and 3,800,000, to which I have added the population of Zanzibar, c. 200,000.Footnote 60

Regarding the composition of the population, it is almost impossible to establish how many children and women lived in the colony during this cross-section. According to a German estimate, in 1906 the number of children between 0 and 15 years was 42 percent of the total population. This figure is definitely too high, for the reasons highlighted above, and taking into consideration the overall high child mortality of GEA.Footnote 61 Although this is questionable, I have postulated that the number of children between 0 and 15 years could have been around 35 percent of the population, and from this figure I have then calculated the number of children between 0 and 5 years. No specific data are available on elderly people, only estimates on life expectancy in the African continent. In the early nineteenth century, this was between 20 to 25 years and rose to 35 by 1950.Footnote 62

The Germans estimated the number of women according to the number of taxpayers. In 1931, the British tried for the first time to enumerate the total population of Tanganyika with the help of the native authorities. They estimated that 53 percent of the total population consisted of women.Footnote 63 This data was confirmed by the 1948 census, which estimated that the portion of women was 52 percent. Every enumeration or census conducted from the 1930s onwards showed that women comprised slightly more than 50 percent of the total population. We do not have reliable information on female mortality rates nor evidence of a higher female mortality as a result of the Maji Maji war, the epidemics of the early twentieth century and the First World War. Perhaps even the available evidence points towards the opposite, given that soldiers and porters were almost all men. Therefore, I have guesstimated that in this cross-section, women comprised slightly more than half of the population. This is of course debatable, but 51–53 percent seems to be a plausible rate.

For the following cross-section, namely 1950, I have used data from the 1948 census. The last estimate that still used the old methods estimated the total population at 5,838,888 in 1947, whereas the 1948 census gave the total population at 7,408,000. This discrepancy is mostly the result of there being more children than initially assumed.Footnote 64 Analysis based on later censuses stated that the underestimation of the total population in 1948 was between 1.9 and 3.6 percent, which adds up to a total population of about 7,600,000.Footnote 65 When adding to this the total population of Zanzibar and Pemba (264,162), we get a total population of about 7,900,000.Footnote 66 In the Tanganyika Territory, women comprised 52 percent of the total population, whereas in Zanzibar they comprised 47.5 percent.Footnote 67

Before the 1948 census, two age groups were considered in the various colonial enumerations: 0–15 years old (i.e., non-taxpayers) and over 15 years old (i.e., taxpayers).Footnote 68 Consequently, a distinction was made between adults and non-adults. This was determined according to a vaguely-defined category of “physical development” or “sexual maturity,” which local authorities that carried out the census were asked to determine.Footnote 69 In practice, the way to establish if a boy had reached the age of 15 was to look under his arm and see whether he had any underarm hair.Footnote 70 The 1948 census was the first census to provide fairly reliable information on age groups. As mentioned above, enumerators were trained to estimate people’s age by referring to historical events, like wars or the opening of the railway. This allowed them to link age groups to historical events. The age groups in the census form were 0–1, 1–5, 6–15, 16–45 and over 46.Footnote 71 The age groups clearly got mixed up a bit, and it is very likely that many girls between the ages of 14 and 15 were included in the 16–45 age group and that 16 years old boys were included in the 6–15 age group. Nevertheless, we at least have a more reliable picture of the age composition of the Tanganyika population. Almost 19 percent of the total population were children between the age of 0 and 5, to which I have added the number of children in Zanzibar.Footnote 72 According to C.J. Martin, the director of the East African Statistical Department, men belonging to the group over the age of 46 were too old to work and were, in many cases, exempted from paying poll tax. In Zanzibar, approximately 9 percent of the total population consisted of people over the age of 60.

Finally, for the 2000 cross-section we have a total population of 34,443,603, which includes Zanzibar, of which 51.13 percent were women.Footnote 73 The children age groups are 0–4 years old and 5–9 years old. The number of 0–5 year old children has been calculated accordingly, and represents about 19 percent of the total population. People over 65 represent 3.9 percent of the total population.

In 1800, the area that corresponds to present-day Tanzania probably had a population of between 3,500,000 and 4,000,000 people, which was 3,700,000–4,000,000 in 1900, 7,900,000 in 1950 and almost 35,000,000 in 2000. Not surprisingly, the population doubled from 1900 to 1950, and increased more than fourfold from 1950 to 2000. As discussed at length above, some data, especially on the composition of the population, can only be roughly estimated or even guesstimated. Nonetheless, having a broad, even if sometimes vague, idea of these figures contributes to the aim of the project in obtaining a picture of the active and inactive population for the various cross-sections, which in turn provides a context for analyzing the major shifts in labor relations.

Describing and Quantifying Shifts in Labor Relations

-Labor relations in 1800

The first point to be made when analyzing labor relations in the 1800 cross-section, is the diversity between the coast, which was urbanized and for centuries had been involved in the Indian Ocean trade, and the interior, which was rural and where trade was mainly on a local and regional basis. The coastal economy was based on trade (mainly in ivory, copal, turtle shells and hides), fishing, foodstuff production and watering transport. Also large scale farming, which employed slaves, became a significant part of the coastal economy, especially after the introduction of cloves in Zanzibar in the first decades of the nineteenth century.Footnote 74

The slave trade was an integral part of Zanzibar’s economic enterprise. Especially after 1840, with the development of the clove plantations, Zanzibar and Pemba began to absorb many slaves.Footnote 75 Slaves were also employed in foodstuff production. Urban centers were well-developed along the coast and they created a demand for foodstuffs that caused reverberations in a number of neighboring agricultural areas, which were specialized in supplying grain and vegetables to urban centers.Footnote 76 It is extremely difficult to obtain reliable figures on the number of slaves that were employed, as before the 1860s, estimations were not based on statistics or systematic calculations. However, it could be helpful to consider the slave market as mostly indigenous rather than external, meaning that the available figures on the slave trade largely refer to the slaves who were employed locally.Footnote 77 Available estimates for Zanzibar claim a total slave population of 8,000 in 1811 and 15,000 in 1815.Footnote 78 According to Koponen, when contraband and other invisible trades are taken into account, the figures suggest that early slave trade in the first decades of the 1800 concerned a few thousand slaves and in the 1860s and 1870s, this increased to about 25,000 slaves.Footnote 79

The economy of the interior regions was almost entirely based on agriculture and in the 1800 cross-section most of the population was engaged in agricultural and/or pastoral activities. Broadly speaking, women did the repetitive agricultural work and men herded, hunted, cleared the forest and managed the homestead, performing also part of the agricultural tasks.Footnote 80 By the early nineteenth century, the various regions of present-day Tanzania supported a number of different agricultural systems. The most widely cultivated crops were millet and sorghum. Regions with particular ecological and environmental characteristics supported different agricultural systems, such as pastoralism and intensive cultivation in Engaruka and the integrated livestock and crop husbandry in Ukara Island, Lake Victoria.Footnote 81 Most likely, agriculture consisted not only of subsistence agriculture; small-scale food surplus was possibly produced and traded with other types of food or other items. The people living in the interior were also active in petty trade, mainly in salt, iron and copper, and in production, such as, for instance, iron production, weaving, pottery production, leatherworking, manufacturing of arms, or making jewelry. These items were exchanged in a wide network of interregional trade, which employed porters, who most likely were professional porters.Footnote 82 Also elephant hunting began to develop during this time, even though ivory was not yet largely exported to the coast.Footnote 83 Contrary to the coast, there were no urban centers in the interior regions. Only in the 1840s, due to the development of long-distance trade were urban centers established. Slaves were largely employed in the interior regions. However, as many slaves never reached the coast, there are no available statistics on their numbers. According to some estimates, 10 to 15 percent of the people living in the interior were slaves.Footnote 84

Overall, what can be provided for this cross-section is a general picture of the occupational structure of the coastal towns and of the rural areas of the interior. Reciprocal labor was the predominant labor relation. Slaves were employed in the interior in agricultural works and as domestic servants. Commodified labor also existed, mainly in the form of some thousands of slaves working for the market in the coastal and Zanzibar plantations and porters carrying trade goods.

-Labor Relations in 1900

The historical processes of the nineteenth century contributed to the main shift in labor relations in the 1900 cross-section, namely the increase in commodified labor. During the nineteenth century, porters, in particular, had become a big and organized group of waged workers and in 1900, they were still the largest group of paid laborers in GEA. At the turn of the century, the number of porters traveling along the caravan routes was estimated at 100,000.Footnote 85 At the same time, the beginning of the colonial enterprise contributed to the increase in waged labor employed in the railway construction and in the newly established settlers’ plantations. Consequently, when analyzing the 1900 cross-section, it is extremely important to keep in mind that the intensity of the labor demand was rather exceptional. Porters were in high demand while simultaneously, the plantation enterprise and the railway construction started to develop.Footnote 86 The transitional character of this period was the reason for the Arbeiterfrage in the colony, which refers to the recurrent shortage of workers in the German plantations and in the government caravans. At the beginning of the twentieth century, productivity in the settlers’ plantations had started to increase and so did the employment of African waged laborers. In 1902, European farms employed between 4,000 and 5,000 workers; in 1905–1906, 36,000 workers; and in 1912–1913, 90,000 workers.Footnote 87 Contracts were signed for 180 days and they could be renewed. Upon termination of the contract, about 50 percent of the workers went home, 25 percent remained on the plantations and the remaining 25 percent moved to other plantations.Footnote 88 This confirms that at least half of the plantation laborers combined different labor relations in the course of the year, namely commodified and reciprocal labor. In 1913, the new labor statuses introduced the 240 days-per-year contract, or a minimum of 20 days of work per month.Footnote 89 The development of commercial agriculture was not only the result of colonial intervention. Evidence shows that African entrepreneurs began producing food in the proximity of German plantations.Footnote 90 African farmers also engaged in cash crop production, like the Chagga in the Kilimanjaro area.Footnote 91

In 1912, the Central Railway from Dar es Salaam to Tabora was opened. This reduced the number of porters traveling along the central caravan route as the new railway basically followed their route. In 1900, 35,000 porters reached Bagamoyo on the coast and 43,880 left for the interior. After the opening of the railway, the number of porters drastically declined: in 1912, 851 porters arrived at the coast and only 193 left for the interior.Footnote 92 Nonetheless, the number of employed porters remained high, as they were employed to carry goods from the railway stations to other destinations. Children accompanied caravan porters and helped to carry small loads, like cooking pots, or took over the loads from tired porters for short periods. According to Rockel, these children were hardly in their teens.Footnote 93 However, we have no clear evidence on the age at which children started to work.

According to the 1912–1913 survey on African labor, a total of 172,000 workers were paid laborers. Most notably, laborers were employed on plantations (92,000); in railway construction and operations (22,000); as porters (20,000); as servants (19,000); and in government service (5,000).Footnote 94 The number of porters was however larger, given that only registered porters were included in the survey.Footnote 95 The main occupation of the 5,336 Europeans living in the colony was plantation agriculture, followed by government officials (551), mechanics and workmen (523), priests and missionaries (498) and engineers (352). The Indian population counted 8,784 people, most of which were employed in trade or petty trade.Footnote 96

Forced and tributary labor was widespread, as the Germans used forced laborers for government porterage, on the plantations and in the railway construction.Footnote 97 According to Koponen, most of the railway workers were forced laborers and those enlisted as volunteers were actually tax laborers, employed for one month.Footnote 98 Most of these laborers received a remuneration of some sort, though this was not a fixed wage. For instance, Maji Maji prisoners were employed as convict laborers in the northern plantations.Footnote 99 At the turn of the century, perhaps 10–20 percent of the total workforce consisted of penal laborers, as penal labor was used as punishment for any criminal act, for instance theft, disturbing the peace, fighting, or gambling. Penal labor was a temporary occupation, ranging from one week to several months.Footnote 100 In Zanzibar, forced labor was also used, for instance during the 1904–1905 harvest, during which 5,000 forced laborers were employed.Footnote 101

Another peculiarity in GEA was the use of slaves as laborers, despite the abolition of the slave trade and the anti-slavery proclaims of the Berlin Conference. In order to deal with labor shortages, European planters often hired slaves from their masters.Footnote 102 The number of slaves has been estimated at 400,000 in 1900 and 165,000 in 1912–1913.Footnote 103 According to Sunseri, in 1900 slaves comprised 10 percent of the total population and they largely outnumbered wage laborers. Only in 1922, slavery was officially abolished.Footnote 104 By contrast, in Zanzibar, there was a more noticeable shift from slavery to freedom: between 1898 and 1900, more than 5,600 slaves were freed in Zanzibar and Pemba.Footnote 105 Freed slaves moved to contract labor or squatting or occupied small plots of land on which they cultivated subsistence crops and a small marketable surplus, while also performing waged labor.Footnote 106 Nonetheless, the number of slaves remained high, and in 1910, slaves still numbered 140,000.Footnote 107

-Labor relations in 1950

The transfer of power to Great Britain after the First World War and, more generally, the gradual increase of the colonial state’s administrative capacity, resulted in more available data on labor relations in the Tanganyika Territory. In 1926, the Labor Department was established and in 1927, it started to produce annual reports. What emerges from these reports is that the availability of labor was connected to some variables, such as the collection of taxes, the timing of the agricultural works (it was easier to find laborers in the mid-dry season when work in the fields was less intensive), or the success or failure of the harvest. In 1948, labor demand met supply, whereas in 1949, owing to bad harvests, supply exceeded demand, with the exception of the Southern Province, where the Groundnut Scheme was being implemented.Footnote 108

During the British colonial period, the need of the colonial state to extract labor from Africans and to guarantee food security for the colony led them to induce Africans to produce a surplus in the form of food or wage labor, without causing this to come at the expense of household food production.Footnote 109 Consequently, in the 1950s, the Tanganyika workforce remained “largely agricultural, unspecialized and impermanent” and commodified labor was often combined with other labor relations.Footnote 110 The Enumeration of African Employees in 1952 stated that there were a total of 443,597 employed laborers, corresponding to approximately one seventeenth of the total African population, of which 80 percent were regular workers and 20 percent were casual workers.Footnote 111 Workers were most commonly employed in agriculture (52.5 percent), the private industry (22.7 percent), public service (20.2 percent) and as domestic servants (4.6 percent).Footnote 112 In this cross-section, the Groundnut Scheme – which favored the expansion of wage labor in the Southern Province, employing about 40,000–58,000 workers in agriculture and ancillary work, such as railway construction – inflated the number of waged workers.Footnote 113 Another shift that occurred in this cross-section was the increase in the number of people working for non-market institutions, especially for the railways, the central government and the local authorities.

Evidence on the number and nature of employers is limited. We have data on non-African employers (14,718 men and 1,870 women), but none on African employers.Footnote 114 The 1952 EARC Report mentions the increase of African employers who employed African laborers, but underlines that “it has still not been possible to devise any effective means of even estimating [their] number,” as it fluctuated seasonally, even though it was suspected that a part of this labor force was employed on a regular basis.Footnote 115

Another shift that occurred in this cross-section was the increase in the number of urban laborers. It was estimated that in 1948, c. 24,000 workers were in paid employment in and around Dar es Salaam, of which 10,600 received a daily wage and 12,000 were intermittently employed.Footnote 116 The EARC Report mentions unemployment as a feature of urban areas, where people went in search for work and had to be supported by relatives or friends. However, the number cannot be estimated, as no records were kept.Footnote 117

Starting from this cross-section, women and children were increasingly included in colonial statistics. Generally, men were more occupied with cash-cropping, whereas women were responsible for food crops, but the employment of women as wage earners is visible around this cross-section and increased in the following decade.Footnote 118 Women were mainly employed in light agricultural work, such as plucking tea bushes or picking and sorting coffee beans and pyrethrum flowers. Many of the women who were regarded as wage workers were family members of male workers who were employed on the plantations and these women were employed as part-time workers.Footnote 119 In this cross-section, a total of 22,775 African women were recorded as being in paid employment (4.8 percent of the total working population). Child labor existed in the colony, mainly in the form of paid agricultural work helping relatives who worked on the plantations. Children were also employed as domestic servants in Dar es Salaam and in the Matombo area in Morogoro District. They could only be employed based on a daily wage and on a day-to-day basis, and only if they could return home at night.Footnote 120

The employment of forced labor was not widespread in this cross-section and this is another change in labor relations compared to the German colonial time. In 1930, Great Britain signed the convention against forced labor. The colonial government could requisition labor for various tasks, such as porterage and public works, but these laborers received a wage and were therefore regarded as laborers working for the polity.Footnote 121

The 1948 census that was carried out in Zanzibar inquired about occupation, referring to the activity from which a person received the majority of his/her livelihood. Most of the population declared to be employed in agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing, followed by people working for the government and laborers employed in trade and commerce.Footnote 122 The total of male laborers was 103,550 and the total of female laborers was 52,958.Footnote 123 Women traveled to Pemba with pickers and made a living by selling cooked food. They were not employed in urban industries, but in some coastal localities they made coir, cooking pots and weaved raffia mats.Footnote 124 The colonial administration concerned itself with the employment of children as house servants, a practice which the colonial government tried to discourage, with little success. Children were also employed in light agricultural work, such as bird-scaring, helping in family cultivation or as helpers on local coastal dhows. Many women and children were employed as clove-pickers and were rewarded based on piecework.Footnote 125

In this cross-section, the dominant labor relation was still reciprocal labor, whereas commodified labor was often combined with other labor relations. The value of wages in East Africa made it generally impossible for workers to separate themselves from the rural economy and therefore a combination of labor relations prevailed. According to the EARC Report, “much of the labor which is employed is migrant labor in the sense that it seeks employment for short periods and returns to the tribal area.”Footnote 126 Therefore, in this cross-section, despite the increase in the number of waged workers, no significant and permanent waged labor force developed because people tended to go back to their area of origin where they benefited from social security.Footnote 127

-Labor relations in 2000

At the time of the 2002 population census, despite the economic and social changes that occurred after independence, the biggest part of the population was still employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing: 80.2 percent of men and 84 percent of women. Only 9.9 percent of the total working population was in paid employment, while most of them were defined as ‘own account workers’ (85.9 percent). The portion of economically inactive people in the population was 34.8 percent (students, housekeeping, unable to work). According to the Child Labour Report, almost half of the working children were engaged in housekeeping activities: some 900,000 in agriculture and 353,000 in personal services.Footnote 128

In this cross-section, the urbanization process, which started in the second part of the twentieth century, led to an increasing number of unemployed people in urban areas. This is clearly indicated in the statistics. In 2002, 2.7 percent of the economically active population was unemployed, a figure more pronounced in urban areas.Footnote 129 The percentage of urban inhabitants had remained stable between 1900 (2–2.2 percent) and 1950 (2 percent), but started to increase after the Second World War. This marked the beginning of an urbanization process, which in 2002, resulted in 23.1 percent of the total population living in urban areas.Footnote 130

Conclusion

An analysis of labor in connection to demographic developments allows us to highlight some general trends in the history of labor relations in Tanzania from 1800 to 2000. In the 1800 cross-section, the dominant labor relation was reciprocal labor, with the majority of people being employed in households as leading or kin producers. During the nineteenth century, an international demand for East African ivory arose while plantations were established in Zanzibar and on the coast. This created a shift in labor relations, with increasingly more people working for the market, mainly as slaves and porters. Consequently, the increase in commodified labor around the 1900 cross-section was not only the result of the establishment of settler plantations and the building of colonial transport infrastructures, but also of historical processes originating in the nineteenth century. This accounts for the exceptional number of laborers working for the market in the 1900 cross-section. The overlap between the nineteenth-century economic patterns and the beginning of the colonial enterprise gave birth to the Arbeiterfrage in the colony. That is why the lack of laborers in colonial plantations and government caravans could not be solved with the widespread employment of forced and slave labor or by the measures taken by the Germans of favoring the move of porters from commercial caravans to plantations.Footnote 131 This resulted in a combination of labor relations, with people working part of the year on the plantations, caravans or public works and part of the year in their fields.

The number of waged workers in the 1900 cross-section is particularly striking when compared to the following cross-sections. Between 1900 and 1950, the number of laborers working for the market did not increase dramatically, even though workers were increasingly provided with permanent employment since the 1930s.Footnote 132 Where in 1900 a combination of labor relations, commodified and reciprocal, was still the dominant pattern, in 1950, the number of workers employed full-time increased. However, generally low salaries compelled people to continue to combine labor relations. In the 2000 cross-section, commodified labor was more permanent, but the number of people carrying out wage labor was still limited. Most people continued to work in agriculture, in particular in reciprocal agriculture, which, not surprisingly, is a major continuity in the history of labor relations in Tanzania.

During the colonial period, the need for laborers in order to support the colonial enterprise was one of the main concerns of the colonial authorities. Numerous files in the colonial correspondence discussed labor issues. The recurrent lack of laborers for settlers’ plantations and public works was understood as the direct consequence of a vaguely-defined African ‘idleness’. However, the continuous combination of labor relations that emerges from this study points towards a different interpretation. For many people, the possibility of wage labor depended on the time of year regarding agricultural work and accordingly, this was combined with other forms of labor relations. For instance, in the nineteenth century, porters were more available for wage labor when the work in the fields was less intensive and could be left in the care of women. In the colonial period, people looked for waged employment when the harvest failed or during the mid-dry season, when work in the fields was less demanding. The combination of labor relations in the colonial period was also determined by low wages, which compelled people to devote part of their time to food production.

Therefore, despite the twentieth-century increase of commodified labor in many sectors, reciprocal labor remained the dominant labor relation for two centuries.

As it has been discussed at length above, quantitative sources on population and labor are fragmentary and often unreliable, but they cannot be entirely discarded. Even though coming up with figures is often impossible, thinking about their existence provides a new framework for the analysis of labor relations in connection to local and global historical and demographic trends. Ultimately, this is the main purpose of creating a database on the history of labor relations in a global perspective.

Karin Pallaver (PhD, University of Cagliari, 2005) is Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna. She was previously employed at the British Museum, London, as researcher in the Money in Africa project. Her research interests lie in the social and economic history of nineteenth-century and early colonial East Africa, especially pre-colonial and colonial currencies and nineteenth-century urbanism. E-mail:

Footnotes

1 Earlier versions of this article were presented during the “Africa Workshops” of the Global Collaboratory of the History of Labour Relations in Berlin (November 2009), Amsterdam (April 2011 and October 2012), Addis Ababa (January 2012), and Estoril (June 2013). I wish to thank all the workshops’ participants for their useful critics and comments, and especially Karin Hofmeester, Jan Lucassen and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva.

2 The methodological paper and the database are available on the website of the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations 1500–2000 https://collab.iisg.nl/web/labourrelations/results.

3 Enumerations and censuses referred to both Zanzibar and Pemba; when not otherwise indicated, data on Zanzibar refer to Unguja and Pemba.

4 The United Republic of Tanzania, 2012 Population and Housing Census (Dar es Salaam: National Bureau of Statistics and Zanzibar, Chief Government Statistician, 2013).

5 Erik Gilbert, Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar (1860–1970) (Oxford: James Currey, 2004), 25.

6 Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar. Integration of an East African Commercial Empire into the World Economy 17001873 (London: James Currey, 1987), 156.

7 Charles F. Holmes, “Zanzibari Influence at the Southern End of Lake Victoria: the Lake Route,” African Historical Studies 4–3 (1971), 477–503, 479.

8 Stephen J. Rockel, Carriers of Culture. Labor on the Road in Nineteenth Century East Africa (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 2006).

9 For further reading on ivory prices, see: Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory, 250–256.

10 For the definition of “urban” as adopted in the database see the online methodological paper.

11 John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 128–129.

12 In 1909, forced labor was officially abolished in GEA.

13 Iliffe, A Modern History, 273.

14 Iliffe, A Modern History. To solve the problem of labor shortages, particularly stringent in some years, the British introduced the kipande system: laborers had to fill in a card for every day they had worked for a total of thirty days. The worked days did not have to be consecutive. After completion they received full pay – see: Deborah F. Bryceson, Food Insecurity and the Social Division of Labor in Tanzania, 1919–85 (Oxford: Macmillan, 1990), 95.

15 John F.R. Hill and John P. Moffett, Tanganyika. A Review of its Resources and their Development (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1955), 269.

16 Hill and Moffett, Tanganyika, 269.

17 Matteo Rizzo, “What was Left Out of the Groundnut Scheme? Development Disaster and Labour Market in Tanganyika 1946–1952,” Journal of Agrarian Change 6–2 (2006), 205–238.

18 Great Britain, East Africa Royal Commission, East Africa Royal Commission Report: 1953–1955, presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Parliament by Command of Her Majesty (hereafter EARC Report), June 1955 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1966), 207.

19 EARC Report, 204.

20 This is confirmed by the men-women ratio in urban areas: 72 to 100 – EARC Report, 204.

21 See, among others: Cranford Pratt, The Critical Phase in Tanzania, 1945–68: Nyerere and the Emergence of a Socialist Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); Goran Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry (London: Heinemann, 1980).

22 Paul Nugent, Africa since Independence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 149.

23 Nugent, Africa since Independence, 202–203.

24 The National Archives, London, CO 533/54, “Proposal for the Amalgamation of Uganda and British East Africa,” 19 August 1908.

25 It is not my intention to discuss in detail the debate on African demography. Recent publications have re-discussed available data and provided new estimates on the population of the continent from 1850; see, among others: Patrick Manning, “African Population, Projections 1850–1960,” in: Karl Ittmann, Dennis D. Cordell and Gregory H. Maddox (eds.), The Demographics of Empire. The Colonial Order and the Creation of Knowledge (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), 245–275. See also the website of the Maddison Project at http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm.

26 Robert R. Kuczyinski, Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, volume II (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), 124–125.

27 Dennis Cordell and Joel W. Gregory, “Labor Reservoirs and Population: French Colonial Strategies in Koudougou, Upper Volta, to 1939,” Journal of African History 23–2 (1982), 205–224, 210.

28 Manning, “African Population,” 256.

29 Out of a total of 49 interviewed students, 36 attributed the problems in conducting a census to this belief, whereas 42 students attributed it to suspicion, as censuses were seen as connected to, for instance, conscriptions and land alienations – John E. Goldthorpe, “Attitudes to the Census and Vital Registration in East Africa,” Population Studies 6–2 (1952), 163–171.

30 Dennis D. Cordell, Karl Ittmann and Gregory H. Maddox, “Counting Subjects: Demography and Empire,” in: Karl Ittmann, Dennis D. Cordell and Gregory H. Maddox (eds.), The Demographics of Empire. The Colonial Order and the Creation of Knowledge (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), 1–21, 3.

31 Bruce Fetter (ed.), Demography from Scanty Evidence. Central Africa in the Colonial Era (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990), 2.

32 Reichskolonialamt, Berlin, R1001/7428, “Bevölkerungsstatistik in Deutsch-Ostafrika 1894–1924.”

33 See: Raymond Gervais, “Verités et mensonges: les statistiques coloniales de population,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 17–1 (1983), 101–103.

34 Data on Zanzibar for the same period are better because in 1910 the population of the island was actually counted for the first time. See: John G.C. Blacker, “Population Growth and Differential Fertility in Zanzibar Protectorate,” Population Studies 15 (1962), 258–266.

35 EARC Report.

36 For instance, in 1934, Clement Gillman compiled a map of the population of Tanganyika using data provided by provincial commissioners. See: Clement Gillman, “A Population Map of Tanganyika Territory,” Geographical Review 26–3 (1936), 353–375.

37 Roger M.A. Zwanenberg and Anne King, An Economic History of Kenya and Uganda, 1800–1970 (London: Macmillan, 1975), 14. The 1948 census form contained questions on occupations only for Zanzibar, but not for the Tanganyika Territory.

38 For the same period, the “African Population of Tanganyika Territory: Geographical and Tribal Studies” (1950) provides information on ethnic and linguistic groups, and the composition of the population.

39 Juhani Koponen, “Population. A Dependent Variable,” in: Gregory Maddox, James L. Giblin and Isaria N. Kimambo (eds.), Custodians of the Land. Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania (London: James Currey, 1996), 19–42, 21.

40 Cordell et al., “Counting Subjects,” 8–9.

41 Helge Kjekshus, Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History (London: James Currey, 1996 [1977]), 156. The analysis of labor relations during the German colonial period is limited due to the little surviving official evidence. After transfer of power, the British destroyed many existing files on labor, seriously limiting our understanding of the composition of the labor force and of issues such as the extent of tributary labor and forced labor. See: Juhani Koponen, Development for Exploitation, German Colonial Policies in Mainland Tanzania, 1884–1914 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1995), 49. Before the creation of the East African Statistical Department, statistics on labor were based on estimations – Bryceson, Food Insecurity, 95.

42 Manning, “African Population,” 247.

43 National Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Planning, Economy and Empowerment, 2002 Population and Housing Census. Analytical Report Volume X (Dar es Salaam: National Bureau of Statistics, 2006); National Bureau of Statistics, Integrated Labour Force Survey, 2000/2001 Analytical Report (Dar es Salaam: National Bureau of Statistics, 2002); National Bureau of Statistics, Child Labour in Tanzania, Country Report. 2000/2001 Integrated Labour Force and Child Labour Survey (Dar es Salaam: National Bureau of Statistics, 2002).

44 I have used those enumerations and surveys that were conducted closer to the given cross-section, but at the same time compared them with previous and later available data in order to better grasp changes and continuities in population and labor relations.

45 Kjekshus, Ecology Control, 24–25.

46 John Iliffe, Agricultural Change in Modern Tanganyika. An Outline History (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971), 9.

47 Gerald W. Hartwig, “Demographic Considerations in East Africa during the Nineteenth Century,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 12–4 (1979), 653–672, 670.

48 Juhani Koponen, People and Production in Late Pre-colonial Tanzania: History and Structures (Helsinki: Finnish Society of Development Studies, 1988), 364; Koponen, “Population,” 25.

49 Manning, “African Population,” 258–260.

50 Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery. A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: University Press, 2011), 151.

51 Andrew D. Roberts, “The Nyamwezi,” in: Andrew D. Roberts (ed.), Tanzania before 1900: Seven Area Histories (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968), 117–150 127.

52 Oscar Raum, “German East Africa, Changes in African Life under German Administration 1892–1914,” in: Vincent Harlow and Elizabeth Millicent Chilver (eds.), History of East Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 163–207.

53 R. Hermann, “Statistik der farbigen Bevölkerung von Deutsch Afrika, III, Ostafrika,” Koloniale Monatsblätter 16–4 (1914), 172–176.

54 John Iliffe, A Modern History, 200. See also: Gilbert C.K. Gwassa and John Iliffe (eds.), Records of the Maji Maji Rising (Dar es Salaam: East African Publishing House, 1968).

55 According to some sources, during the war, one out of three men of the total male population in GEA were employed as porters, even if only occasionally. See: Hew Strachan, The First World War in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 5, 102. However, a detailed study on casualties among porters, soldiers and civilians during the First World War still needs to be carried out.

56 Towards the end of 1918, in Tabora, which had become the capital of the colony in 1916, between 20 and 30 persons died daily in the field hospitals built to deal with the emergency; Diaire de St. Boniface de Tabora, Archives of the White Fathers, Rome, entries of 6 November 1916, 20 November 1916, 24 November 1916, 29 November 1916, and 7 December 1916. Kuczyinski estimated the number of the Spanish influenza casualties in Tanganyika at 50,000–80,000 – Kuczyinski, Demographic Survey, 326.

57 Kuczyinski, Demographic Survey, and Kjekshus, Ecology Control are of this opinion.

58 Arthur T. Culwick and Geraldine M. Culwick, “A Study of Population in Ulanga, Tanganyika Territory,” Sociological Review 30–4 (1938), 365–379; Arthur T. Culwick and Geraldine M. Culwick, “A Study of Population in Ulanga, Tanganyika Territory,” Sociological Review 31–1 (1939), 125–143; John E. Goldthorpe, “The African Population of East Africa: A Summary of its Past and Present Trends. Memorandum for Submission to the Royal Commission,” Appendix VII to the EARC Report, 462–473.

59 Tanganyika Territory, 1921 Census Report (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1921).

60 The 1910 census states there were 197,199 inhabitants in Zanzibar (c. 114,000 in Unguja and 87,000 in Pemba), which seems to be fairly reliable, given the 1924 and 1931 census returns. See: Robert H. Crofton, Statistics of the Zanzibar Protectorate, 1893–1931 (6 thedition) (Zanzibar: Government Printer, 1932); Zanzibar Protectorate, Report on the Census Enumeration of the Whole Population on the Night of the 28 th–29 thMarch 1931 (Zanzibar: Government Printer, 1931). For a discussion on the role of ethnicity in these censuses, see: Jonathon Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones. Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 49–50.

61 Koponen, People and Production, 28.

62 Manning, “African Population,” 264.

63 Tanganyika Territory, Census of the Native Population 1931 (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1932), 5.

64 C.J. Martin, “The East African Population Census, 1948. Planning and Enumeration,” Population Studies 3–3 (1949), 303–320.

65 Michael A. Hirst, “Population Growth in Mainland Tanzania, 1948–57,” in: Simeon Hongo Ominde and Charles N. Ejiogu, Population Growth and Economic Development in Africa (London: Heinemann, 1962), 151–156.

66 Zanzibar Protectorate, Notes on the Census of the Zanzibar Protectorate 1948 (Zanzibar: Government Printer, 1951).

67 Brian R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics. Africa, Asia & Oceania, 1750–1993 (London: Macmillan, 1998), 5.

68 Reichskolonialamt, RKA 1001/7429, “Bevölkerungsstatistik in Deutsch-Ostafrika 1924–1938.”

69 Tanganyika Territory, Census of the Native Population 1931, 5.

70 Zwanenberg and King, An Economic History.

71 C.J. Martin, “Some Estimates of the General Age Distribution, Fertility and Rate of Natural Increase of the African Population of British East Africa,” Population Studies 7–2 (1953), 181–199, 186.

72 Zanzibar Protectorate, Notes on the Census of the Zanzibar Protectorate 1948; age groups in the Zanzibar census were less detailed (0–14; 15–60; over 60).

73 National Bureau of Statistics, 2002 Population and Housing Census.

74 Iliffe, A Modern History, 37; I will not go into the debate of what a slave was; I will use the term as indicated in the sources and in the secondary literature; on different categories of slaves see Koponen, Development, 335. According to Kjekshus, coast-centered plantation economy was insignificant during this time; Kjekshus, Ecology and Control, 22.

75 Kjekshus, Ecology Control, 22.

76 Kjekshus, Ecology Control, 30. See the methodological paper for data on towns for various cross-sections: https://collab.iisg.nl/web/labourrelations/results.

77 Kjekshus, Ecology Control, 22–23.

78 Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory, 226; Thomas Vernet, “East Africa: Slave Migrations,” in: Immanuel Ness (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration (Oxford/Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 1283–1290; Thomas Vernet, “Slave Trade and Slavery on the Swahili Coast (1500–1750),” in: Behnaz Asl Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana and Paul E. Lovejoy (eds.), Slavery, Islam and Diaspora (Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 2009), 37–76.

79 Koponen, People and Production.

80 Iliffe, A Modern History, 16.

81 Iliffe, Agricultural Change, 8.

82 Richard Gray and David Birmingham (eds.), Pre-colonial African Trade: Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Africa before 1900 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).

83 During this time, commercial contacts between the interior regions and the coast existed and evidence of Nyamwezi traders visiting the coast is available starting around this cross-section. See: Andrew D. Roberts, “The Nyamwezi.”

84 Vernet, “East Africa: Slave Migrations,” 1287.

85 Thaddeus R. Sunseri, Vilimani. Labour Migration and Rural Change in Early Colonial Tanzania (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 2002) 56–57.

86 Iliffe, A Modern History, 157.

87 Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 367.

88 Albert F. Calvert, The German African Empire (London: T.W. Laurie, 1916), 188.

89 Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 394.

90 Iliffe, Agricultural Change, 23. For some areas, there is evidence on laborers employed by Africans in agricultural works, as, for instance, has been reported by Kjekshus and for the Ruaha/Ulanga area; it is clearly impossible to quantify their number – Kjekshus, Ecology Control, 32.

91 Iliffe, A Modern History, 154.

92 John Iliffe, “Wage Labour and Urbanisation,” in: Martin Kaniki (ed.), Tanzania under Colonial Rule (London: Longman, 1980), 276–306, 280.

93 Rockel, Carriers of Culture, 128.

94 Raum, “German East Africa,” 191; Kjekshus, Ecology Control, Table 7.2, 156. According to Iliffe, these laborers were 20 percent of the total workforce of the colony – Iliffe, A Modern History, 157.

95 In the database I have therefore increased the given figure for porters (20,000) to 30,000 – see the methodological paper.

96 Calvert, The German African Empire, 127.

97 Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 341.

98 Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 410; Naval Intelligence Division, Handbook of German East Africa (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1920), 61.

99 Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 399.

100 Sunseri, Vilimani, 56; I have tried to estimate their number in the database, and considered it as part of a combination of labor relations, given that tributary labor was performed on a temporary basis, usually for one month.

101 Frederick Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters, Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 95.

102 Koponen, Development for Exploitation, 334.

103 Jan-Georg Deutsch, Emancipation without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914 (Oxford: James Currey, 2006), 167.

104 Heinrich Brode, British and German East Africa: their Economic and Commercial Relations (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 72.

105 Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters, 73.

106 Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters, 90.

107 Sunseri, Vilimani.

108 Tanganyika Territory, Annual Report of the Labour Department (hereafter AR LD) (Dar es Salaam: Government Printer, 1951).

109 Bryceson, Food Insecurity, 93.

110 Bryceson, Food Insecurity, 131.

111 East African Statistical Department, Report on the Enumeration of African Employees, July, 1952 (Nairobi: East African Statistical Department, 1953).

112 East African Statistical Department, Report on the Enumeration of African Employees, 4.

113 Rizzo, “What was left,” 206; this booming demand ended around 1952.

114 AR LD 1949, 7.

115 AR LD 1952, 8; for some examples of African employers, see: Iliffe, Agricultural Change, 23.

116 AR LD 1949, 6.

117 EARC Report, 147.

118 Bryceson, Food Insecurity, 39; Zanzibar Protectorate, Labour Report for the Year 1956 (Zanzibar: Government Printer, 1957), 9.

119 AR LD 1948, 80.

120 Bryceson, Food Insecurity, 45; AR LD 1948, 59; domestic child workers were mostly employed illegally by Indians living in Dar es Salaam.

121 AR LD 1948, Table X, 50; Anonymous, “Labour Conditions in East Africa,” International Labour Review, 54, 1–2 (1946), 37–44.

122 Zanzibar Protectorate, Labour Report for the Year 1948 (Zanzibar: Government Printer, 1949); for more details on occupations see the methodological paper.

123 As reported in: Zanzibar Protectorate, Labour Report for the Year 1956, 3.

124 Zanzibar Protectorate, Labour Report for the Year 1949 (Zanzibar: Government Printer, 1950).

125 Zanzibar Protectorate, Labour Report for the Year 1949.

126 EARC Report, 146.

127 EARC Report, 154.

128 Child Labour in Tanzania Country Report, 2001.

129 2002 Population and Housing Census.

130 Hermann, “Statistik der farbigen Bevölkerung;” 1948 Census Report; 2002 Population and Housing Census.

131 In 1899, for instance, the colonial government issued a regulation that limited the length of the journey that a caravan porter could undertake. Once a porter reached the borders of the district where he resided he had to stop and hand over the goods to another porter who would continue the journey. In this way it was hoped that some groups of porters, like the Nyamwezi, could become a more sedentary workforce. See: “Zür Träger und Arbeiterfrage,” Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Zeitung (9 September 1907).

132 Iliffe, “Wage Labour and Urbanisation.”

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