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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Life story, utendi, and colonial novel: literature in 'German East Africa' |
Author: | Glinga, W. |
Year: | 1987 |
Periodical: | Afrika und Übersee: Sprachen, Kulturen |
Volume: | 70 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 257-277 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | East Africa German East Africa Germany |
Subjects: | colonization literature biographies (form) |
About person: | Hamid b. Muhammad Tippu Tip (ca. 1840-1905) |
Abstract: | The life story of the Swahili trader Tippu Tip whose real name was Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi, is an important document on the history of East Africa just prior to the German conquest. It shows the antagonism between the coast people with the Sultan of Zanzibar as their highest authority and the inland people where King Mirambo of the Nyamwezi tried to unite the region under his leadership. The arrival of the Germans as a colonial power in East Africa is treated in a different literary genre: poetry and chronicles. Examples are the 'utendi' (epic poems) by Hemedi elBuhriy (1891) on the Abushiri uprising of 1888, and by Abdul Karim bin Jamiddini on the Majimaji revolt of 1905-1907. Whereas these 'tendi' are an expression of national pride and collective reaction toward organized coercion, life stories such as that by Selim bin Abakari (1901) offer a testimony of the fate of the individual caught in the social upheaval brought about by colonial conquest. The settlers' romanticism in German East Africa is expressed in Frieda von Bülow's novel of 1899. Bibliogr. |