Emancipation without Abolition in German East Africa, c. 1884–1914 (review)

As indicated by its title, Jan-Georg Deutsch's study of slavery under German rule in mainland Tanzania has a very clear argument. When the Germans took over this territory, it contained over 400,000 slaves, concentrated along its coast and in the central region around Tabora, where they formed a very high proportion of the population. Yet shortly after German expulsion from East Africa during the First World War, the numbers of local slaves had become negligible – probably under 10,000. This change occurred despite German refusal to abolish slavery and even a willingness by colonial authorities to recognize ownership of other human beings as a legal form of property. The immediate causes of abolition therefore derived from the internal dynamics and agency of local African society, partially continued from pre-colonial conditions but strongly abetted by other German policies, especially the cutting off of sources for new slaves and the creation of a vastly expanded wage labour market.

Deutsch begins his study with a careful review of slavery and the slave trade in pre-colonial Tanzania to demonstrate how these institutions grew out of encounters with global capitalism but also embedded themselves in broader local social contexts, such as 'kinship, clientelism and community' (p. 53). Although this section is based mainly on secondary literature it does effectively set up what Deutsch describes as 'the historical dynamic' of slavery, critical to understanding its colonial transformation.

The middle section of this book is devoted to German policy debates about slavery, beginning with discussions in the public at large and the Reichstag and then moving to the more closed spheres of the metropolitan Kolonialrat (Colonial Council) as well as the East African administration (extending from Dar es Salaam down to the district level). This is a very rich body of documentation, which Deutsch has explored quite thoroughly – perhaps in more detail than necessary to make his point about the roles of racism (lack of confidence in the ability of Africans to work efficiently under conditions of freedom) and conservatism (fear that abolition would alienate elite collaborators of the colonial regime and let loose an unmanageable 'mass' of lower-class subjects). I was a little surprised not to find among these arguments – especially some of the conservative ones – any echo of Deutsch's own analysis: that emancipation was unnecessary, since 'modernization' would bring about a 'natural death' of slavery. Also, the stress on the fecklessness of the German anti-slavery movement ignores the fact that its main object (effectively pursued, it is true, by government rather than private action) was the abolition of the slave trade, with all its well-publicized horrors, rather than African 'domestic slavery', understood (both by contemporaries and in Deutsch's presentation) as quite different from the plantation system of the New World. Deutsch makes frequent references to German sanctioning of slave sales among their East African subjects to show the disregard for anti-slave trade principles, but in practice these transaction had no impact upon the supply of new slaves into the local system, something the Germans did bring to an end.

Deutsch insists that his book is not a 'history from below' (note that its publication is in Currey's East African rather than its Social History series) but by far the most interesting portion of the work is the last one, which examines the interplay between the German presence and African social change. The emphasis here is less upon abolishing slave imports than the shifting labour markets and how slaves used these to their advantage. An interesting source used by Deutsch is the set of some 60,000 Freibriefe (emancipation certificates) issued by the German regime. These documents do not represent abolitionist interventions, since both the substance and (Islamic) legal forms of emancipation existed prior to European rule in Tanzania...