Being 'Chagga': natural resources, political activism, and identity on Kilimanjaro

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	Being 'Chagga': natural resources, political activism, and identity on Kilimanjaro
Author:	Bender, Matthew V.
Year:	2013
Periodical:	The Journal of African History (ISSN 0021-8537)
Volume:	54
Issue:	2
Pages:	199-220
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Tanzania
Subjects:	Chaga group identity chieftaincy natural resources colonial period
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853713000273
Abstract:	This article argues that the emergence of Chagga political identity on Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) in the 1940s and 1950s can best be understood as a product of intensive debates over the control of natural resources and the nature of chiefly authority. As a result of perceived threats to the land and water resources of the mountain and resentment of the role of the chiefs in these issues, grassroots activists adopted a language of unity using the ethnic term 'Chagga' - a moniker long used by the colonial state but eschewed by the general population. With the rise of a paramount chieftaincy in 1951, the term shifted from being a symbol of colonial rule to one of common identity and resistance against the encroachment of the colonial state in local affairs. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]