Julius Nyerere was one of the greatest African thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century, but until now, no one has looked at how his time in the African Association (AA), before he left for Europe, connected him to a whole world of black thought and shaped his intellectual biography. After demonstrating the lessons Nyerere learned about African unity from the AA and figures like James Aggrey, it will demonstrate how he remolded and used these ideas, and how the strands of both practical pan-Africanism and Ethiopianist-inspired redemptive pan-Africanism can be seen throughout his career. It explores how his ideas of umoja shaped both domestic and international policies in postcolonial Tanzania including the relationship between religion and politics. It then examines how Nyerere wrestled with ideas of African identity, unity, and Africanness (Uarikfa) and highlights the inherent tensions between projects of territorial nationalism and political pan-Africanisms such as African nationalism.

In 1967, Tanzania nationalized many foreign companies as part of the Arusha Declaration’s effort to create socialism and self-reliance. Among the most important were the dominant British banks that shaped investment and exported capital. Building on transcripts, private diaries, correspondence from Barclays Bank, as well as other sources, this chapter analyses how politically independent Tanzania endeavored to remake finance. Economic self-determination depended, in part, on the negotiations between Barclays and Tanzania over how much compensation government would pay for the 1967 expropriation. At stake was not merely a final price; instead, the struggle for economic sovereignty depended on the ability to determine the accounting protocols through which price would be calculated and even to define the bundle of different assets that would be subject to valuation. It was on these technicalities that postcolonial statecraft depended, meaning formulas and figures were imbued with political importance and ethical significance. Yet, ultimately, Tanzania found its authority to govern value was stymied by the enduring inequalities of the global capitalist order.

Chapter 1 begins by broadly sketching how the movement of the masses of African peoples towards armed struggle can be understood within the framework of Robinson’s Black Radical Tradition. Within this context, the First All-African People’s Conference (AAPC) of 1958 takes centre stage as it brought a number of soon-to-be liberation movement figures together with older veterans of the post-WWII anti-colonial struggle on African soil to deliberate on the direction the decolonization process would take. During the conference, a debate emerged among conference participants on Kwame Nkrumah’s non-violent positive action versus Frantz Fanon’s armed struggle. After exploring how this was resolved, the chapter moves on chronologically to a broad examination of the Azanian Black Nationalist Tradition as it in consistent patterns fuelled non-violent insurgencies, dreams of freedom and decisions to return to armed struggle. The second half of the chapter follows Stokely Carmichael in Tanzania. This section is less about Carmichael or Tanzania, but more about tracking how Black Power ideas, concepts and praxis interacted with and within various liberation movements and continental African peoples. Carmichael saw Black Power as important for emerging states which were majority African/Black but was met with resistance by the ANC.

As empires fragmented after the second world war, politicians in the Global South finally had the opportunity to determine the economic policies of their newly independent states. As many of these countries were relatively poor, developmental ideas came to the fore once more. This is true both in sub-Saharan Africa as well as in Asia. Nationalist movements in these regions combined their nationalist economic ideas with a variety of complementary ideologies. In sub-Saharan Africa, politicians such as Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere turned to socialism, which they interpreted as a developmental system. In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, governments espoused free market economics, which they supplemented with an activist state that promoted exports. Argentina and Egypt, on the other hand, saw the rise of populist regimes. These provide another important type of economic nationalism. Populists such as Juan Perón and Gamal Abdel Nasser associated international integration with enrichment by domestic elites Because they opposed these elites, populists sought to cut links with the world economy and espouse isolationist economic systems.

This chapter examines the ways in which the Geneva conference of late 1976, as the culmination of American efforts to push forward with majority rule talks, failed to reach any meaningful results. Part of the failure had to do with the end of President Ford’s administration and the end of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s role in the Rhodesia crisis. Much of the chapter analyzes the diplomatic roles of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, and how they interacted with American, British, and African diplomats and leaders during the conference. The Zairian leader Mobutu was also involved in assessing the African leaders, and his observations of Mugabe and Nkomo are discussed. The chapter shows how Mugabe managed to make the most of the otherwise failed Geneva talks to solidify his leadership role in ZANU, and how after the conference, he and ZANLA leader Tongogara removed the ZIPA leaders by having them imprisoned in Mozambique in early 1977. The chapter also examines British, American, South African, and Rhodesian views of the future prospects of the Zimbabwean nationalist leaders.

This chapter focuses mainly on the attempts by the British, Nigerians, and Zambians to set up the possibility of private negotiations between the Patriotic Front and Ian Smith in 1978. As the war grew increasingly costly and unwinnable from the Rhodesian perspective, Britain’s David Owen tried to work with the Zambians and Joe Garba of Nigeria to bring Ian Smith and Joshua Nkomo together for secret negotiations in Lusaka in August 1978. The diplomacy leading up to this meeting is explored, especially around Nkomo’s insistence and need to involve Mugabe as part of his promise not to break up the Patriotic Front. As numerous sources explain, Nkomo kept to his word not to negotiate a transfer of power from Smith without Mugabe, but Mugabe refused the pressures from the Nigerians to accept further negotiations, mostly because the offer would have required Mugabe to a take a secondary role to Nkomo. The fallout of the meeting is examined, as it led to the heightening of the war and increased accusations that Nkomo was ready to “sell-out” the Patriotic Front.

How did Dar es Salaam became a ‘Cold War city’ in Africa? This chapter sets out the principles which informed the basis of Julius Nyerere’s engagement with the outside world – a set of foreign policy coordinates which remained remarkably consistent. It then shows how a violent revolution in the Zanzibar archipelago pushed Tanganyika into a hasty union with the islands, while an army mutiny in Dar es Salaam exposed the fragility of Nyerere’s government. A series of foreign policy crises with major Western states followed. Meanwhile, Tanzania reached out to the socialist world and developed close connections with China. By the mid-1960s, Dar es Salaam had attracted the attention of the Cold War world. The remainder of the chapter then demonstrates how a ‘Cold War political culture’ became inscribed into Dar es Salaam’s public sphere and concrete spaces. Propaganda, rumour, and espionage were major preoccupations of the Tanzanian government.

This chapter uses case studies of postcolonial Tanzania and Sierra Leone to examine pathways of persecution and punishment during pivotal moments of autocratic contestation and consolidation. Through careful process tracing, I analyze how the politics of the early independence period, which were fundamentally shaped by the struggle for national control, influenced strategies of judicial and extrajudicial repression in the years that followed. My analysis draws on a variety of archival sources that provide a rare window into the challenges faced by new autocrats, including how threats to autocratic survival were perceived in real time.

This chapter examines the ways in which the Geneva conference of late 1976, as the culmination of American efforts to push forward with majority rule talks, failed to reach any meaningful results. Part of the failure had to do with the end of President Ford’s administration and the end of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s role in the Rhodesia crisis. Much of the chapter analyzes the diplomatic roles of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, and how they interacted with American, British, and African diplomats and leaders during the conference. The Zairian leader Mobutu was also involved in assessing the African leaders, and his observations of Mugabe and Nkomo are discussed. The chapter shows how Mugabe managed to make the most of the otherwise failed Geneva talks to solidify his leadership role in ZANU, and how after the conference, he and ZANLA leader Tongogara removed the ZIPA leaders by having them imprisoned in Mozambique in early 1977. The chapter also examines British, American, South African, and Rhodesian views of the future prospects of the Zimbabwean nationalist leaders.

This chapter focuses mainly on the attempts by the British, Nigerians, and Zambians to set up the possibility of private negotiations between the Patriotic Front and Ian Smith in 1978. As the war grew increasingly costly and unwinnable from the Rhodesian perspective, Britain’s David Owen tried to work with the Zambians and Joe Garba of Nigeria to bring Ian Smith and Joshua Nkomo together for secret negotiations in Lusaka in August 1978. The diplomacy leading up to this meeting is explored, especially around Nkomo’s insistence and need to involve Mugabe as part of his promise not to break up the Patriotic Front. As numerous sources explain, Nkomo kept to his word not to negotiate a transfer of power from Smith without Mugabe, but Mugabe refused the pressures from the Nigerians to accept further negotiations, mostly because the offer would have required Mugabe to a take a secondary role to Nkomo. The fallout of the meeting is examined, as it led to the heightening of the war and increased accusations that Nkomo was ready to “sell-out” the Patriotic Front.

How did Dar es Salaam became a ‘Cold War city’ in Africa? This chapter sets out the principles which informed the basis of Julius Nyerere’s engagement with the outside world – a set of foreign policy coordinates which remained remarkably consistent. It then shows how a violent revolution in the Zanzibar archipelago pushed Tanganyika into a hasty union with the islands, while an army mutiny in Dar es Salaam exposed the fragility of Nyerere’s government. A series of foreign policy crises with major Western states followed. Meanwhile, Tanzania reached out to the socialist world and developed close connections with China. By the mid-1960s, Dar es Salaam had attracted the attention of the Cold War world. The remainder of the chapter then demonstrates how a ‘Cold War political culture’ became inscribed into Dar es Salaam’s public sphere and concrete spaces. Propaganda, rumour, and espionage were major preoccupations of the Tanzanian government.

The period of nationalism – 1955–1965 – provides a fitting denouement to bring home the persistence – and relevance – of local urban identity. Having already studied the Wabagamoyo’s behavior in the face of three rounds of imperialism, how did they perceive nationalism and the push for self-rule? This was not a question that was articulated much in Bagamoyo until 1955, the year after Julius K. Nyerere assumed leadership over the Tanganyika African Association and transformed it into the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), a national political party. TANU activists had difficulty whipping up support in Bagamoyo because “many inhabitants did not believe that this country was theirs but that of the English.” The statement reflects the longstanding local orientation of a community which was incorporated into a “state-nation” system of administration that was imposed upon them by foreigners. In other words, Tanganyika was a colonial creation into which Bagamoyo became incorporated. The town may have been made up of peoples who came from diverse parts of the former German colony, but there did not exist a strong sense of nationalism among the Bagamoyo populace.