Tanzania's History
Although a Tanzanian gorge recently yielded a few bits of our old mate,
Homo erectus, little is known about the country's really early history.
Recorded history begins around 1800, when the Masai warrior tribes were
migrating from Kenya to Tanzania. While the country's coastal area had
long witnessed maritime squabbles between Portuguese and Arabic traders,
it wasn't until the middle of the 18th century that Arab traders and slaves
dared venture into Masai territory in the country's wild interior. European
explorers began arriving in earnest in the mid-19th century, the most
famous being Stanley and Livingstone. The famous phrase 'Dr Livingstone,
I presume', stems from the duo's meeting at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika.
As the 20th century loomed, Germany got busy colonising Tanganyika -
as the mainland was then known - by building railways and going commerce
crazy. If not for the pesky little tsetse fly, the area could have become
one vast grazing paddock for the fatherland. But losing the war didn't
help the German cause much either, and the League of Nations soon mandated
the territory to the British. The Brits had already grabbed the offshore
island of Zanzibar, which for centuries had been the domain of Arab traders.
Nationalist organisations sprang up after WWII, but it wasn't until Julius
Nyerere founded the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) in 1954 that
they became effective. Tanganyika won independence in 1961 with Nyerere
as the country's first president. Zanzibar was stuck with its British
stiff upper lip for another two years, after which the mainland forged
a union comprising Zanzibar and the nearby island of Pemba. Thus Tanzania
was born.
But unity and a charismatic first president weren't enough to overcome
the country's basic lack of resources. Nyerere's secret ingredient was
radical socialism, a brave concept considering the communist paranoia
of potential aid donors such as the USA. Under the leader's Chinese-backed
reforms, the economy was nationalised, as were great swathes of rental
properties, and the better-off were taxed heavily in an attempt to redistribute
wealth. The early 1960s saw Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda linked in an unlikely
economic threesome, sharing a common airline, telecommunication facilities,
transportation and customs. Their currencies became freely convertible
and there was free and easy movement across borders. But predictable political
differences brought such cosiness to a halt in 1977, leaving the Tanzanians
worse off than ever.
Many factors have contributed to the woes of modern Tanzania, and not
all have been self-inflicted - it is, after all, one of the world's poorest
countries.
*The above information was obtained from
www.lonelyplanet.com and Youth International
wants to acknowlege all due credit to the source of the information.
