Dar es Salaam, a major urban center in early 21st-century East Africa, was founded in 1862 as a mainland outpost of the sultanate in Zanzibar. From its very beginnings, the town was a cosmopolitan, polyglot, and multiethnic space. Following colonial conquest, the Germans used Dar es Salaam as their capital of German East Africa from 1891 onward, as did the British administration of Tanganyika, as the territory was renamed after the transfer of power following World War I, until independence in 1961. Colonial rule shaped the city’s geography according to racialized zoning, yet both colonial and subsequent postcolonial governments often found themselves reacting to dynamics (particularly immigration and informalization) rather than initiating them. Since the late colonial period, social and political dynamics in Dar es Salaam—such as the growth of nationalism—have had repercussions in all of Tanzania. In the 1960s and 1970s, the city became a transnational revolutionary hub at the crossroads of Pan-Africanism, anticolonial currents, and Cold War rivalries. At the same time, at the national level, the government tried to peripheralize Dar es Salaam and announced the relocation of the capital to Dodoma in 1972. Despite the antiurban bias of Tanzania’s policies of African socialism (
ujamaa
) and neoliberal reconfigurations from the 1980s onward, both of which put a brake on state investments in urban infrastructures and services, Dar es Salaam remained a commercial, cultural, and diplomatic center. With a population that grew from 22,500 in 1913 to 5.4 million inhabitants in 2022, it has become one of Africa’s major metropolises.
Article
Dar es Salaam
Eric Burton
Article
Newspapers as Sources for African History
Emma Hunter
Newspapers have become increasingly important as a source for African history, and the range of historical questions newspapers have been employed to address has expanded dramatically. Newspapers are not only sources for political history, they also have much to teach us about the social, cultural, and intellectual history of Africa. They were spaces of literary and textual experimentation. They also played an important role in the creation of new identities. It is essential, however, that we approach newspapers critically as sources and think carefully about their limitations, as well as the opportunities they present to the historian.
Article
Pan-Africanism
Harry Odamtten
Pan-Africanism is an idea that calls for unity for all peoples of African heritage in order to overcome inequitable global systems, especially racial capitalism. However, defining Pan-Africanism requires a survey of definitions to delineate areas of historical consensus. Thus, this work makes a historical distinction between a prior period of Pan-African ideas and a subsequent Pan-African social movement era, dating from the 1900 Pan-African Conference in London. It also recognizes that Pan-Africanism is dynamic and not static; it evolves within various historical contingencies. Furthermore, a distinction between the canon of Pan-African ideas and the Pan-African social movement is paramount. Black intellectuals, such as Edward Blyden, were the producers of the series of ideas in the 19th century that would catapult Pan-Africanism into a worldwide social movement for global Black unity, racial equality, and legitimize African histories and cultures. Building on these forerunners were the leading lights of the social movements, Henry Sylvester Williams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, Marcus Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Amy Jaques Garvey, Paulette Nardal, Jane Nardal, George Padmore, and Kwame Nkrumah. The latter two are included in the pantheon for imbuing the Pan-African ideas and social activism of two prior generations. They were distinctive by their explication of Blyden’s 19th-century African Personality and adopting the symbolism of Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association in the early 20th century and working with DuBois to organize the 5th Pan-African Congress in 1945. Finally, they also pushed for the Organization of African Unity’s (OAU) formation in 1963.
In the aftermath of the seventh Pan-African Congress organized in Dar es Salaam, from 1974 to the end of the 20th century, Pan-Africanism reached its organizational nadir. Beset by neocolonialism, bad leadership, and the complex demands of nation-states in Africa, the movement struggled to maintain worldwide interest even as Pan-African activities and Black internationalist engagements proliferated in various regional enclaves including North and South America, as well as the Caribbean. In the 21st century, the exuberance of Muammar Gadhafi and the sentimental pragmatism of Thabo Mbeki rose to the fore. This new dynamism generated a restructuring of the OAU into the African Union, and the African diaspora became a region of the African continent. Beyond this, while belief in Pan-Africanism as a liberation tool remains, questions persist about African leaders’ agency and institutional frameworks for achieving Pan-African goals.
