Changing models: The discord between the European settlers and the administration of German East Africa

In East Africa, the Germans' influence created a different colonial model than those typically found in Africa. This model mixed indirect and direct rule. The German government also attempted to draw the indigenous African population into active participation in economic development. These variations resulted not only from the agency of the indigenous peoples, who exercised a first voice, or the edicts issued by Berlin or Dar es Salaam, the second and third voices, but also demonstrated the influence of the European settlers of German East Africa, a much ignored fourth voice.;These settlers, while small in number (a total of 5336 Europeans in the colony at the outbreak of WWI), exercised an historiographically undervalued power in the colonial political and economic scene. The power they exercised developed small political grants from the imperial government into organs for Selbstverwaltung (self-administration) in the colony. They employed strong friends in Berlin to influence legislation and budgetary processes to accommodate their demands. They consolidated their power in opposition to the reform movement instituted by Governor Rechenberg and Colonial Secretary Dernburg after the Maji-Maji Rebellion of 1905--06, and became the leading voice in the colony's affairs toward the end of the colonial period.;However, they did not overthrow the reforms put in place during the Rechenberg-Dernburg administration. Nor did they ever completely control the political machinery. The government made concessions to colonist demands but never compromised its goal of economic autarchy as a dependency of the Reich.;The interaction of the various groups in German East Africa created a colonial model that differed from what could be seen elsewhere. It had a unique political combination of direct rule and interest group influence. It displayed an unusual acceptance of the economic role that could be played by the native peoples. It was also a place of substantial European settler influence. The purpose of this work is to investigate the effect of the interplay of the various actors on the colony in order to enhance our understanding of the historic changes of the imperialist period.