The Culture of Colonialism

T. O. Beidelman

Description

2013 Bethwell Ogot Book Prize finalist

What did it mean to be an African subject living in remote areas of Tanganyika at the end of the colonial era? For the Kaguru of Tanganyika, it meant daily confrontation with the black and white governmental officials tasked with bringing this rural people into the mainstream of colonial African life. T. O. Beidelman's detailed narrative links this administrative world to the Kaguru's wider social, cultural, and geographical milieu, and to the political history, ideas of indirect rule, and the white institutions that loomed just beyond their world. Beidelman unveils the colonial system's problems as it extended its authority into rural areas and shows how these problems persisted even after African independence.

Preface

Introduction: Colonialism and Anthropology
Part 1. History
1. Kaguru and Colonial History: The Rise and Fall of Indirect Rule
Part 2. Colonial Life
2. Ukaguru 1957–58
3. The Kaguru Native Authority
4. Court Cases: Order and Disorder
5. Subversions and Diversions: 1957–58
6. The World Beyond: Kaguru Marginality in a Plural World, 1957–61
Part 3. How It Ended and Where It Went
Epilogue: Independence and After
Conclusion

Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• África
• Sociology
• General officer
• Anthropology
• General
• History
• Africa
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 27 juin 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253002204
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE CULTURE OF COLONIALISM
AFRICAN SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT
Ivan Karp, editor
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
James W. Fernandez
Luc de Heusch
John Middleton
Roy Willis
THE CULTURE OF COLONIALISM
THE CULTURAL SUBJECTION OF UKAGURU
T. O. BEIDELMAN
Indiana University Press
Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
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2012 by T. O. Beidelman
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beidelman, T. O. (Thomas O.), [date]
The culture of colonialism : the cultural subjection of Ukaguru / T. O. Beidelman.
p. cm. - (African systems of thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00215-0 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00208-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00220-4 (e-book) 1. Kaguru (African people)-Ethnic identity. 2. Kaguru (African people)-Politics and government. 3. Great Britain-Colonies-Africa-Administration. 4. Great Britain-Colonies-Africa-Cultural policy. 5. Tanzania-History-To 1964. I. Title. II. Series: African systems of thought.
DT443.3.K33B435 2012
306.08996391-dc23
2012001252
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12
To those I knew in the colonies and to the memory of Ivan Karp
Why is it that civilized humanity
Must make the world so wrong?
In this hurly-burly of inanity
Our dreams cannot last long. . .
NO L COWARD, TWENTIETH CENTURY BLUES
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction: Colonialism and Anthropology
PART 1 HISTORY
1 Kaguru and Colonial History: The Rise and Fall of Indirect Rule
PART 2 COLONIAL LIFE
2 Ukaguru 1957-58
3 The Kaguru Native Authority
4 Court Cases: Order and Disorder
5 Subversions and Diversions: 1957-58
6 The World Beyond: Kaguru Marginality in a Plural World, 1957-61
PART 3 HOW IT ENDED AND WHERE IT WENT
Epilogue: Independence and After
Conclusion
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Index
PREFACE
This work is the product of over fifty years pondering the nature of one East African society, the Kaguru. When I commenced fieldwork in 1957, Kaguru society was located in what was termed Tanganyika, a British United Nations mandated territory that was in most respects virtually a British colony. That was a social world now gone. Yet the impact of that lost world, the world of colonial life, remains an important influence on Kaguru and many other East Africans. When I later did more fieldwork from December 1961 until mid-1963, Kaguru society was located in a Tanganyika newly independent of colonial rule but still mainly run locally by the same British and African colonial officials who had managed things earlier. Still later, in 1965 and 1966, I briefly worked in Tanganyika, after it had become Tanzania. By then almost all formal vestiges of colonial rule were gone, and British officials had been entirely replaced by local Africans. While the impact of colonial rule remained, the way of life itself had profoundly altered from what I had originally encountered. This study is about my experiences during my first two field trips, when Kaguru society was still essentially ruled along a colonial model. In an epilogue I briefly mention some of the many changes that took place after that period. This is mainly to show how much has vanished but, ironically, also to show how modern Tanzania has still not entirely escaped the colonial imprint.
I considered writing this volume while I was first doing fieldwork in Ukaguru (1957-58). I attended court hearings, local moots, and political meetings. I spoke to numerous Kaguru leaders and to British colonial officials and examined what local government records I was allowed to see. When I wrote my doctoral dissertation at Oxford, I included a section on colonial rule. In large part, this book is an expanded and revised version of my doctoral dissertation (1961e). I later published some of these findings in articles on Kaguru government and law and on Kaguru political movements (1961a, 1961b, 1961d, 1966, 1967a, Winter and Beidelman 1967). None of these works attracted much interest from my colleagues, so I abandoned colonial topics and concentrated on writing about Kaguru traditional beliefs and social organization. When I again wrote about colonialism, it was about the local Christian missionaries and their impact on Kaguru life, and about the impact of life in Ukaguru on the missionaries themselves (1982a, 1982b, 1999). I neglected the piles of data I had collected on the colonial Kaguru Native Authority. I now return to this colonial political material, partly because colonialism has always interested me, but also because colleagues assure me that a study of colonial life in Ukaguru would interest others, that indeed colonialism is a topic of renewed interest to scholars in the social sciences, including anthropologists (A. Smith 1994). Since this book aims at creating a picture of local colonial political rule, I have provided little material on Christian missions or on colonial economy. Of course, I consider these important and relevant topics, but I have already published extensively on colonial missions (Beidelman 1974a, 1982a, 1982b, 1999) and on the economy of colonial Ukaguru and Tanganyika (Winter and Beidelman 1967).
Before embarking on writing this book, I examined much of the current writings on colonial societies in the course of teaching a graduate seminar on colonialism. Some writing was provocative and interesting, but much struck me as mechanistic, narrow, shrilly self-righteous, and unduly doctrinaire, especially that by authors who seem keen to condemn the entire colonial endeavor in the name of liberal political correctness. It also struck me that almost none of these more negative critics had ever actually lived in a colonial regime. I realized then with surprise that I must be one of the few anthropologists still working who actually experienced colonial life. That seemed an added reason to write this work. I do not mean to argue that those of us who lived in a colonial society are necessarily better analysts than those who did not. It might even be argued, wrongly I think, that our very experiences may cloud our vision. Yet I believe that first-hand experiences provide a vividness and insight lacking in accounts by those who did not have those experiences. At the least, I can provide another point of view. For these reasons I emphasize grassroots descriptions of the local surroundings, everyday activities, etiquette, recreation, and gossip within one small colonial area. I make no claims that the Kaguru case is typical, even for East Africa, but this is an ethnographic slice of life as I experienced it first-hand and therefore has as much value as the other accounts by administrators and travelers that are prized today as resources by scholars of colonialism. As a social anthropologist I provide some analysis, but the chief value of this account is its ethnographic description of everyday affairs. In this I try to appreciate the views of all the protagonists I encountered, but in large part this remains a personal view.
One reason I think that this account may be of special value is that even many colonial old-timers who wrote about their experiences tended to omit much about everyday routine, apparently assuming that their readers only wanted to be diverted by reports of dramatic, exotic, or humorous materials. They wrongly assumed that much that now interests historians, sociologists, and anthropologists would seem humdrum.
I first set foot in East Africa in August 1957, in Nairobi. Kenya was still under a state of emergency due to Mau-Mau; barbed wire, gun emplacements, and armed patrols gave a bellicose aura to the city. Africans were required to show government passes. I saw Africans detained and searched on the streets by soldiers or police. In the countryside I saw detention camps of Africans surrounded by stockades and gun towers. I was told these camps were for displaced and dissident Kikuyu. In 1957 much that I saw in Kenya recalled my grim military experiences in wartorn Korea, only a few years before (see Beidelman 1998).
Later, in Arusha, Tanganyika, I was introduced to a government anthropologist (Phil Gulliver) by my research supervisor (E. H. Winter) who had taken me to East Africa. As they drank and reminisced, the two anthropologists swapped stories about their past experiences and about the adventures of fieldwork. I listened and felt ignorant, intimidated, and awed. My supervisor then spent several weeks driving me about eastern Tanganyika so I could pick a place to work. We finally decided on Ukaguru, mainly because I thought the countryside beautiful, because I had always wanted to study matrilineal people, because I found an empty house I could rent at a local mission station, and because I would be only 70 miles from where my supervisor planned to work in the town of Kongwa. That seemed important at the time, since I had no transportation other than a bicycle. As it turned out, I made use only once of my supervisor s transport and rarely saw him. Being without an automobile turned out to be an excellent way to do fieldwork. Lacking ready transport, I was forced to spend long periods in Ukaguru since I was unable to leave easily even when I wa