Tanganyika Railways, Carrier of Colonialism

Tanganyika Railways, Carrier of Colonialism PDF

Author: Werner Biermann

Publisher: Lit Verlag

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13:

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Railway systems formed the backbone of the colonial economies. In the industrialized nations the railways laid the foundations for an efficient infrastructure that connected markets and industries. However, in the colonial periphery the railways served one purpose: they were the cheapest transportation of exportable products. Until now, the role of the Tanganyika railways under colonialism has not attracted academic attention. This book contributes to the restoration of an important factor in Tanzania's colonial past by placing the railways in the broader context of colonialism and identifying their economic and social roles. It shows that the railways were forced into the financial policy of "credit peonage" that immediately blocked the modernization of infrastructure and equipment, and led to the employment policy of labor-intensive works and cheap African labor. From a development position the railways contributed nothing to industrial stimulation because locomotives, rolling stock, and other equipment were imported from Britain. Indeed, railway policy should be approached from state-financed incentives for metropolitan capital-goods industries, giving additional support to the classification of the Tanganyika railways as "Carrier of Colonialism".

Landscape, Environment and Technology in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa

Landscape, Environment and Technology in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa PDF

Author: Toyin Falola

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1136657649

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This volume seeks to identify and examine two categories of colonial and postcolonial knowledge production about Africa. These two broad categories are "environment" and "landscape," and both are useful and problematic to explore. Discussions about African environments often concentrate on Africans as perpetrators of their own land, causing degradation from lack of knowledge and technology. "Landscape" defines the category of knowledge produced by foreigners about Africa, where Africans remain part of the scenery and yield no agency over their surroundings. To flesh out these categories and explore their creation and how they have been deployed to shape colonial and postcolonial discourses on Africa, this volume investigates the "technological pastoral," the points of convergence and conflict between Western notions of pastoral Africa and the introduction of colonial technology, scientific ideas and commodification of land and animals.

Africa's Freedom Railway

Africa's Freedom Railway PDF

Author: Jamie Monson

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2009-03-12

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0253002818

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The TAZARA (Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority), or Freedom Railway, from Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast to the Copperbelt region of Zambia, was instrumental in fostering one of the most sweeping development transitions in postcolonial Africa. Built during the height of the Cold War, the railway was intended to redirect the mineral wealth of the interior away from routes through South Africa and Rhodesia. Rebuffed by Western aid agencies, newly independent Tanzania and Zambia accepted help from China to construct what would become one of Africa's most vital transportation corridors. The book follows the railroad from design and construction to its daily use as a vital means for moving villagers and goods. It tells a story of how transnational interests contributed to environmental change, population movements, and the rise of local and regional enterprise.

Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914

Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914 PDF

Author: Andreas Greiner

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-11-07

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 3030894703

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​This book explores the role of caravan transport and human porterage in the colony of German East Africa (present-day mainland Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi). With caravan mobility being of pivotal importance to colonial rule during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the exploration of vernacular transport and its governance during this period sheds new light on the trajectories of colonial statehood. The author addresses key questions such as the African resilience to colonial interventions, the issue of labor recruitment, and the volatility of colonial infrastructure. This book unveils a fundamental contradiction in the way that German administrators dealt with precolonial modes of transport in East Africa. While colonizers championed for the abolishment of caravan transport, they strongly depended on porters in the absence of pack animals or railways. To bring this contradiction to the fore, the author studies the shifting role of caravans in East Africa during the era of ‘high imperialism.’ Uncovering the extent to which porters and caravan entrepreneurs challenged and shaped colonial policymaking, this book provides an insightful read for historians studying German Empire and African history, as well as those interested in the history of transport and infrastructure.

Empire's Tracks

Empire's Tracks PDF

Author: Manu Karuka

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-01-29

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0520296621

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Empire’s Tracks boldly reframes the history of the transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota, and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants who toiled on its path. In this meticulously researched book, Manu Karuka situates the railroad within the violent global histories of colonialism and capitalism. Through an examination of legislative, military, and business records, Karuka deftly explains the imperial foundations of U.S. political economy. Tracing the shared paths of Indigenous and Asian American histories, this multisited interdisciplinary study connects military occupation to exclusionary border policies, a linked chain spanning the heart of U.S. imperialism. This highly original and beautifully wrought book unveils how the transcontinental railroad laid the tracks of the U.S. Empire.

Prisms of Work

Prisms of Work PDF

Author: Michael Rösser

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-12-18

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 3111218090

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The phenomenon of labour takes the character of a prism. Labour is thereby always context dependent and constituted through the actions of all protagonists involved in any labour relationship. On the basis of three case studies in colonial German East Africa - the construction of the Central Railway (1905-1916), the Otto Plantation in Kilossa (1907-1916) and the palaeontological Tendaguru Expedition (1909-1911) - labour and labour relations are analysed. The focus lies on hitherto neglected actors and groups of actors of labour in the colonial context of East Africa. These were especially German companies and their staff, white subaltern railway sub-contractors and labour recruiters, Indian skilled workers and (qualified) East African workers. Furthermore, all three sites of labour proved to have their individual logics and characteristics. But all of them were in tension between the 'global' and the 'local', coercion and voluntariness, machine and manual labour, skilled and unskilled labour, reproductive and wage labour, as well as between black and white. Michael Rösser's dissertation has been awarded with 'honorary distinction' by the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH).

Making Spaces through Infrastructure

Making Spaces through Infrastructure PDF

Author: Marian Burchardt

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-07-03

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 3111191850

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Infrastructures are fundamental means through which societies create spaces, but little is known about the precise ways in which this occurs. How have infrastructures animated certain understandings of space? How do infrastructures stabilize, or undermine, the spatial formats in which we live, which shape our everyday practices and which regulate access to services and resources? And, conversely, how do spaces frame the ways infrastructural provision is organized? How do existing spaces shape infrastructural development and the scope and forms of access to vital services such as transport and water? In this volume, historians and sociologists draw on a range of fascinating case studies and provide compelling answers to these questions. Exploring, among others, the provision of irrigation water in nineteenth-century Los Angeles, the invention of airport transit zones, and the infrastructural practices of homeless people in Berlin, the book demonstrates how the making of spaces through infrastructure is deeply political. Intent on revealing uneven geographies of provision and hierarchies of access, the contributors highlight how infrastructures are products of global entanglements.

The Tanganyika Territory (formerly German East Africa)

The Tanganyika Territory (formerly German East Africa) PDF

Author: Ferdinand Stephen Joelson

Publisher:

Published: 1920

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13:

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When war broke out in Europe in 1914, the fighting quickly extended to the colonial possessions of the European powers. In 1916 British forces operating from South Africa set out to conquer German East Africa (present-day Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda). They were assisted by Belgian and Congolese troops operating from the Belgian Congo. The allies never subdued the German army led by Colonel (later General) Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, but they captured the German rail line and occupied much of the territory of German East Africa. At the conclusion of the war, most of the German colony was transferred to British control under a mandate from the League of Nations. This book by a young British author describes the territory in 1920, the year of its transfer to British control. The author, Ferdinand Stephen Joelson (1893-1979), became a prominent writer on African affairs and the founder and editor of the weekly newspaper East Africa and Rhodesia. British control of Tanganyika lasted until 1961, when the territory became independent. In 1964 it merged with Zanzibar to become the United Republic of Tanzania.

The Implications of Freedom

The Implications of Freedom PDF

Author: Wiebe Nauta

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9783825877989

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The term 'NGO' is so widely used nowadays that it has effectively lost its meaning. Therefore, in order to put back flesh on what has become a very bare skeleton, this book attempts to portray a 'real' organization that originated during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. By meticulously studying this land sector NGO over a prolonged period of time, much is revealed about its internal dynamics and the changing relationships with actors in the state, civil society and the market. This embedded tale (re-)introduces a historical, political and socio-economic dimension in the analysis of NGOs and shows that they are not as value-driven, autonomous, accountable and non-profit as is often claimed.