Tabora in the framework of long-distance and inter-regional trades.

         THE PRECOLONIAL PERIOD IN TANGANYIKA

Tabora in the framework of long-distance and inter-regional trades.

Until the beginning of the 19th century the East African coast was more part of the commercial world of the Western Indian Ocean than of East Africa, being almost completely separated from its interior. The goods requested by Indian and Arabian traders could be obtained in the immediate coastal hinterland and therefore there was no need to organize expensive commercial expeditions into the interior. At the same time, the regions of the interior were characterized by the presence of a widespread network of African local and inter-regional trades, mostly in salt, iron, copper, foodstuffs and forest products It was only from the first decades of the 19th century that these two separate worlds began to establish a strong connection as a consequence of the huge increase in the international demand for ivory and slaves. East African ivory was very valuable since it was particularly suitable for being carved, and in the 19th century it began to be widely requested in Europe and America to produce luxury goods such as carved figures, parts of instruments, combs, billiard balls, and so on.The increased demand for slaves was due to the establishment of clove plantations in Zanzibar and Pemba and to the sugar-cane production of the Mascarene Islands. There were other East African goods requested by the international markets like gum copal, which was used to produce varnishes for the American furniture industry and hides, which were used in American and European tanneries. The international demand for these products became a great stimulus for Indian, Swahili and Arab traders operating on the coast to expand their commercial activities into the East African interior. At the same time African traders already operating in the interior organized their own caravans to the coast. Nyamwezi traders, in particular, pioneered the commercial routes to the coast and with the development of the long-distance trade they began to enlist as porters in the Arab-Swahili caravans and organized at the same time their own caravans to the coast. The active response of the Nyamwezi came from their long tradition in the interregional trade networks that connected Unyamwezi, their place of origin, with Lake Tanganyika on the west, Lake Victoria on the north and the southern regions of Ufipa and Ruemba. They extended their interregional trade networks and put in contact two commercial worlds that until that moment had been almost completely separated. As Juahni Koponen points out, “It was certainly not a question of the flutes in Zanzibar making the Africans on the mainland dance, as the old saying put it. It was a much more complex process of initiative and counterinitiative, stimulus and response, taking place under specific but rapidly changing historical conditions.

 The historical changes brought by the new trade patterns were most visible in the town of Tabora, which was the main centre of the ivory and slave trades in the interior. The expansion of the commercial activities, both with the coast and in the interior, had a strong effect on the pre-colonial urban structure of Tabora, with the increase of the number of its inhabitants and the subsequent enlargement of the area of the town situated around the market. Urban development in the interior of Tanzania was a direct consequence of the growth of long-distance trade: the journeys into the interior lasted many months, so the necessity to store and protect the goods, particularly during the rainy season, obliged the coastal merchants to establish depots where the caravans could halt. Furthermore, porters generally did not undertake the entire journey from the coast to Lake Tanganyika or Lake Victoria. The Nyamwezi, who were the most requested pagazi, refused to go beyond Tabora, their place of origin. They were, in fact, at the same time porters and farmers, and when they returned from the coast they had to till and sow their fields, especially during the rainy season. A stop was therefore unavoidable in order to recruit fresh gangs of porters that could reach the shores of the central lakes or the central region of Manyema, the area where slaves were mainly captured.Tabora was particularly suitable for becoming a urban centre: the plain of Tabora was very rich in water, which was essential to allow the cultivation of foodstuffs needed for the maintenance of the town and of passing caravans.

The sources at our disposal on the date of foundation of the town are scattered and contradictory. A comparison of the available written and oral sources suggests that Tabora was not founded in a precise year as the explorer Richard F. Burton and many others after him affirmed, but was the result of a long-term process of agglomeration that involved Arab and Nyamwezi settlements. An interesting aspect that emerges from the White Fathers correspondence, and which is not evident from contemporary European traveller reports, is that the coastal traders settled in a place where there already existed an African settlement. According to Father Guillet,

“Tabora is built without a precise order: it is more a series of villages, rather than a homogeneous city. It extends for more than two kilometres; once it was limited to the huts of the quarter called chem-chem, which is the name of the spring which is there. Than the Arabs established themselves here and have extended it to its actual borders”.

The presence of an African settlement in Chem-chem, was probably due to the presence of a spring there which could provide water to caravans: Tabora was, in fact, situated at the natural junction of the commercial routes of the African interregional trade, coming from the North, or the Lake Victoria region, from the Lake Tanganyika area to the West and from Ufipa and Northern Zambia in the South, and, as we have seen above, Nyamwezi traders had a fundamental role in this trade network.

The precolonial structure of Tabora.

Richard Francis Burton, the first European to visit the town in 1857, gives us the following description of Tabora:

“Contrary to what might be expected this “Bandari-district” contains villages and hamlets, but nothing that can properly be termed a town. The Mtemi or Sultan Fundikira, the most powerful of the Wanyamwezi chiefs, inhabits a Tembe, or square settlement, called “Ititenya”, on the western slope of the southern hills. A little colony of Arab merchants has four large houses at a neighbouring place, “Mawiti”.  In the centre of the plain lies “Kazeh”, another scattered collection of six large hollow oblongs, with central courts, garden-plots, store-rooms, and out-houses for the slaves. Around these nuclei cluster native village - masses of Wanyamwezi hovels, which bear the names of their founders.

The “little colony” of coastal traders living in Tabora was largely composed by Arabs coming from Oman. It was not a big community, generally no more than one hundred individuals. Burton estimated that the Arab population of Tabora in 1857 amounted to no more than 25 people, whereas in 1872, according to Livingstone, their number had increased to 80 inhabitants.Generally, Arab merchants resided in the town only for short periods and sent their agents around to conduct their business. The Arab community lived in the commercial part of Tabora, in the quarter called sokoni, where porters were recruited and where there was a daily market. Their houses were called tembe and were rectangular stone buildings, with flat roof and a large courtyard in the interior, where livestock was sheltered during the night. When Burton arrived in Tabora in 1857, there were only six Arab tembes. In a sketch of Tabora made by Stanley in 1871 the Arab houses in the town had increased to seventeen.Close to Arab houses lived the wangwana, coastal people who served in the caravans as guards (askari) and were generally in good termes with the Arab community.  In the surroundings of Arab tembes, Nyamwezi houses were built with, apparently, no order. The houses where the Nyamwezi lived were cylindrical huts with conical roof, called msonga. The diameter of these houses was 4-10 metres and they had only one door, made by sorghum or bark. A type of construction also typical of the landscape of Tabora, was that of the Tutsi herders, who kept their cattle around their houses; the milk and meat production of the town was almost totally in their hands.

Before the German occupation, there were no European residents in Tabora, except for the White Fathers, who established themselves in Tabora from 1882 to 1883, and then moved to Kipalapala, close to Kwikuru, where they established an orphanage for ransomed slave children, which they maintained until 1889.

An important feature of precolonial Tabora was the private ownership of the land. The Grundstücksbuch (Registers of the landed properties) of Tabora produced by the German colonial administration since 1903 are a particularly helpful source to understand who owned the land in Tabora and where. Through the registration of the names, ethnicity, and land locations, the German administrators offer a deep insight into the history of Tabora. The biggest part of the landed properties situated in the Sokoni quarter, i.e. the market, was owned by Arabs, who in that area had constructed their houses and stores. The areas in the surroundings of the town were instead owned and cultivated by Nyamwezi, Manyema, Ganda and Sukuma, who, according to what is reported by the Grundstücksbuch, had acquired the ownership of the land through its cultivation. An interesting aspect that emerges from a comparison between colonial and missionary sources is that, in some cases, the right to own land was recognized also to slaves. Generally, the slave owner allowed his slaves to cultivate and live on his land, without owning it, but sometimes the master could concede the ownership of a piece of land to particular good slaves:  Father Henri mentions a slave named Songoro, who had obtained a piece of land situated in the Gongoni area, owing to his valour as a warrior.

From the available sources, in the second part of the 19th century Tabora was formed by different settlements, of which the most important were:

TABORA, itself, where the quarter of sokoni (market) was situated. It was the place where caravans coming from the coast and from surrounding regions and those going to the coast stopped, sometimes for many days, and where porters could be recruited. Water was available to refresh caravans, thanks to the presence of a source called Chem-Chem, which was also the name of a quarter of the town.In Tabora we could find both the most important tembes of the Arabs, built around the market place, and the houses of the chief Nyamwezi traders. In the neighbourhood of the market square there were the depots for the goods to be sent to the coast or towards the central lakes. The Nyamwezi houses were scattered in the vicinity of the Arab tembes. Close to the houses and in the environs of the town were situated the cultivated areas, whose production was needed to feed the town and the passing caravans. The market (sokoni) of Tabora (or Kazeh, as it was called by the first Europeans visiting it) was the economic and commercial heart of the town. In the market were available fruit, vegetables and grains coming from the local cultivations, together with a great variety of products of the African interregional trade, like dried fish, salt, forest products, iron hoes, etc., which were exchanged for coastal imports, such as cloth, glass beads and metal wires. Other articles, such as beef, which were usually difficult to find along the caravan roads, were also available.The trade in ivory and cloth was not conducted in the local market, but from door to door by intermediaries. An important feature of the town was the daily nature of the market. As Paul Tyambe Zeleza asserts, the recurrence of markets in East Africa depended on the demand, the population distribution, and the local authorities’ intervention. Daily markets in East Africa were typical of urban centries, weekly markets were more common in rural areas.

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