What are the Significance of the Early african Resistances

Significance of the Early Resistances.

i. Primary resistances helped to shape the environment of later African politics because of their impacts upon the thinking and action of the colonial authorities. The formation of TANU in Tanganyika had connection with Maji Maji and other associations.

ii. Primary resistances brought about the collapse of the commercial companies, which were at first employed by the German and British to open East Africa spheres of influence. So this forced the two governments to take direct responsibility.

iii. Primary resistances helped to change the early European attitudes of superiority. The thinking of administrators and settlers especially in Tanganyika and Southern Rhodesia after Maji Maji and Shona and Ndebele rising of 1896-1897, were dominated by fear of the repetition of such horrible outbreaks.

iv. Primary resistances showed Europeans that Africans were not willing to be colonized by Europeans. They wanted to remain' with their traditional ways of living.

v. Primary resistances displayed African grievances to the Europeans, e.g. Land alienation, forced cultivation, taxation, and low wages.

vi. Primary resistances forced Europeans to change their methods of ruling Africans. For example, in Tanganyika after the Maji Maji war the Germans made changes in their way of ruling including land ownership, taxation, whipping people in public etc.