Maji Maji Rebellion

1905

Many peoples of German East Africa rise against forced cotton farming and are crushed in a war that kills hundreds of thousands.

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The story

In July 1905, villagers in the Matumbi hills of German East Africa (in modern Tanzania) attacked a cotton plantation and began a rebellion that spread across the south of the colony. German officials forced Africans to grow cotton for export and imposed taxes and labor duties. A spirit medium, Kinjikitile Ngwale, taught that a sacred water (maji) would turn German bullets to water. The rising drew many peoples who had not united before.

The Germans, with machine guns and troops brought from overseas, defeated the rebels by 1907. They also burned crops and villages to starve the rebels into surrender. Estimates of the dead range from about 200,000 to 300,000, mostly from famine and the war's aftermath. Some German officials criticized the policy, and the colonial government changed its approach to colonial administration. In Tanzania the memory of Maji Maji became part of the national story and inspired the later fight for independence.

Why it mattered

The rising was among the first large anti-colonial wars in Africa uniting different peoples.
The deaths and famine depopulated much of southern German East Africa.
It became a symbol for Tanganyika's nationalists, including Julius Nyerere, in the independence era.

Sources

Maji Maji Britannica
Tanzania: German East Africa Britannica

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BookJohn Iliffe

A Modern History of Tanganyika