2004 - Mimi and Toutou Go Forth by Prefers to remain anonymous, Giles Foden Read Free Book Online Page B

stretches an expanse of lightest, softest blue, from thirty to thirty-five miles in breadth, and sprinkled by the east wind with crescents of snowy foam.
    In the so-called ‘scramble for Africa’ that took place in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, it was Germany that won Tanganyika and its lake. Britain seized neighbouring Kenya and Uganda. Through a series of sham treaties, the Belgians had already taken the Congo in the 1870 s . Many of these treaties were arranged by Stanley, whose activities on behalf of the Belgian King Leopold had spurred on the other powers, especially Germany. Covering roughly the present area of Tanzania, plus Rwanda and Burundi, German East Africa was established in 1885. It would be administered by the Deutsche Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft (German East African Company) until 1890 and thereafter by the Imperial Government. On the far western side of the territory lay the inland sea of Lake Tanganyika.
    Despite the takeover by the Government, German East Africa Inc. had proved a profitable enterprise. Between 1900 and 1913, the value of German exports from Tanganyika had risen from 4 million to 27 million marks. The products sent out of the country, in wooden crates bound for Hamburg, included cotton, sisal, coffee, tea and tobacco.
    Of these, cotton was the most important. Indeed, its significance in the story of German East Africa cannot be overestimated, though to understand why takes some unpacking. One of the reasons is cotton’s qualities as a material. A fabric with a long staple and great resilience, it can be mechanically processed more easily than wool, silk or linen. It was the first fabric to switch from hand-to machine-weaving in Germany, yet even as late in the Industrial Revolution as 1873 the Germans lagged far behind Britain and America in cotton production. By the turn of the century, establishing a secure national supply had become a matter of national pride for Germany, which never again wanted to submit to the indignities of having to pay hiked-up prices for cotton, as she had done during the Napoleonic wars and the American Civil War.
    Even in peacetime, German industrialists like Karl Supf, a Bremen factory owner, resented having to pay what he described as an ‘annual tribute’ to Britain and America. Powerful figures such as Imperial Chancellor Bismarck advocated independence of supply, and the Colonial Office and industrialists like Supf were constantly agitating for it.
    They had a point. In 1900, 80 per cent of Germany’s cotton-was imported from the United States. The remaining 20 per cent they bought from the British: Germany’s main rival for global power. It was decided that Germany would henceforth satisfy her cotton needs with production in the newly established colony of German East Africa. Supf, a colonial enthusiast, emphasised the political benefits of this new economic enterprise. Cotton could be a means of control: ‘Becoming economic master of our colonies depends basically on our succeeding to make the natives dependent on us. Indeed, the economic dependence of the inhabitants will make us real masters of our colonies. The introduction of cotton cultivation as a peasant culture seems to be a very appropriate means of teaching the natives to work while making them at the same time dependent on us.’
    German-American experts were brought in to oversee the new venture in Tanganyika. For four years from 1902, a harsh system of agricultural imposition was put in place, as native Africans were persuaded to grow cotton (from foreign seed) through a mixture of threatened and actual violence as well as punitive taxation—measures that eventually provoked the Maji-Maji rebellion of 1905-7.
    One of the cotton-growing areas was to the north-east of Lake Tanganyika—the destination of Spicer and his men. Tanganjikasee , as the Germans called the lake, was well stocked with fish, hippopotamus and crocodile, but its main appeal was strategic. During