European Attitudes and African Realities: The Rise and Fall of the Matola Chiefs of South-East Tanzania

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Periodical article

Title:	European Attitudes and African Realities: The Rise and Fall of the Matola Chiefs of South-East Tanzania
Author:	Ranger, Terence O.
Year:	1979
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	20
Issue:	1
Pages:	63-82
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Tanzania
Subjects:	colonial conquest colonial policy indigenous peoples ethnicity History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) colonialism
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/181974
Abstract:	From the 1870s to the 1930s successive Europeans in south-east Tanzania looked for an ethnically based political authority under whom to live or with whom to work. The European preoccupation with ethnicity bore little relation to the actualities of the region, a mosaic of small, autonomous and ethnically mixed groupings. Certain African adventurers were able to take advantage of the European need for allies to build up their power, become recognised as 'chiefs' and ultimately to become regarded as leaders of ethnicities. This was the case with Matola I and Matola II of Newala. However, the varying ethnic identities which belonged or submitted to the Matola polity did not entirely disappear and the Indirect Rule inquiries of 1925, emphasising ethnicity as the only legitimate base for political authority, had the result of dismantling the Matola polity. Map, notes, sum.