The skull of Mkwawa and the politics of indirect rule in Tanganyika

ABSTRACT

This article traces the history of a key symbol of colonial authority in Tanganyika – the skull of the defeated Hehe chief, Mkwawa. From the late 1890s through to the 1950s, officials in both the German and British colonial states wrote extensively about the skull, contending that it served as a linchpin of traditional authority amongst the Hehe people. At the same time that colonial officers attempted to reinforce the importance of the skull – through its removal or its restoration – they directly folded themselves into its history. While belief in the sacred importance of ancestors and their corporeal remains supposedly belonged exclusively to the political systems of colonized Africans, European colonizers also found themselves enmeshed in the construction of these very concepts. Nowhere did such engagement appear more evident than in the correspondence of the British Colonial Governor in Tanganyika, Edward Twining. Before officially returning the skull to the Hehe people in 1954, Twining wrote about his own encounters with the “poltergeistic qualities” of Mkwawa’s skull. While these interactions never found their way into official histories of the skull, this article uses their presence to offer a closer examination of the seemingly disparate realities that informed colonial governmentality.

KEYWORDS:

• Tanganyika
• indirect rule
• tolerance
• colonial violence

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Derek Peterson and Joost Fontein as well as two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. PRO CO 822/770 – “Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika.” Letter from Twining to E.B. David, 15 February 1954.

2. Ibid.

3. There seems to have been a strong overlap between the moments when Mkwawa acted and his presence on forms of colonial transport technology, a connection reminiscent of scenes from White, Speaking with Vampires.

4. PRO CO 822/770 – Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika, Letter from Twining to E.B. David, 8 March 1954. Emphasis in original.

5. PRO CO 822/770 – Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika, Speech by Twining, 19 June 1954.

6. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 19.

7. Ibid., 36–37.

8. Lalu, The Deaths of Hintsa, 5–6.

9. See also Bernault, “Body, Power, and Sacrifice,” and Fontein, “Graves, Ruins, and Belonging.”

10. Gordon, Invisible Agents and Roberts, A Dance of Assassins.

11. Steven Feierman has eloquently written about the tensions that exist between the modern techniques of historical writing and forms of knowledge and practice that are not readily reducible to this same impulse in his chapter, Feierman, “On socially composed knowledge.”

12. Redmayne, “The Wahehe” and Redmayne, “Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars.”

13. Winans, “Hyenas on the Border.”

14. Giblin, A History of the Excluded.

15. Doubts about the skull’s authenticity appear in the 2001 Martin Baer film, Eine Kopfjagd.

16. Iliffe, A Modern, 58.

17. Ibid., 57.

18. Redmayne, “The Wahehe” and M. Wright, German Missions in Tanganyika.

19. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 37.

20. Wright, German Missions in Tanganyika, 69.

21. Wright, German Missions in Tanganyika, 70. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 210–1, suggests that Mkwawa had tricked Mpangire and created a scenario in which it appeared that Mpangire retained loyalty to Mkwawa and not the Germans, leading to Mpangire’s execution.

22. Stierling, “The Hehe Royal Graves,” 25–8.

23. Adams, Im Dienste des Kreuzes.

24. Iliffe, A Modern, 57.

25. Stierling, “The Hehe Royal Graves.”

26. Ibid., 28.

27. Ibid., 27.

28. Schmiedel, “Bwana Sakkarani,” 43.

29. Michelle Moyd describes how Zelewski’s death “ignited a strong desire for vengeance among young officers like Tom von Prince” in Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 136.

30. See Giblin, A History, 24.

31. For a full discussion of the German-Hehe wars, see Redmayne, “Mkwawa and the Hehe wars,” Iliffe, A Modern History, and Pizzo, “To devour the land.”

32. Pizzo, “To devour,” 216.

33. See Prince, Eine deutsche Frau; Gegen Araber und Wahehe; Nigmann Die Wahehe; Baer and Schröter, Eine Kopfjagd; Giblin, A History.

34. Prince, Eine deutsche Frau, 182–3.

35. There are many points of overlap between the history of Mkwawa’s skull and the collection of human remains described in Zimmerman, Anthropology and Antihumanism.

36. Virchow, “Sitzung vom,” 136–40.

37. Ibid.

38. Harrison, “Skulls and Scientific Collecting,” 295.

39. Ibid., 295.

40. Schmiedel, “Bwana Sakkarani,” 46.

41. Monson, “Claims to History,” notes that “When the British introduced their administrative system of indirect rule in the 1930s, they reinforced this chiefly authority. Under indirect rule, the rights of local chiefs to administer land and subjects were linked to their status as descendants of original or founding lineages. These rights were validated through the writing down of tribal histories,” 543.

42. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 260.

43. Redmayne, “Research on Customary Law,” 26.

44. Article 246 stated:

Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty, Germany will restore to His Majesty the King of the Hedjaz the original Koran of the Caliph Othman, which was removed from Medina by the Turkish authorities and is stated to have been presented to the ex-Emperor William II. Within the same period Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty’s Government the skull of the Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of German East Africa and taken to Germany. The delivery of the articles above referred to will be effected in such place and in such conditions as may be laid down by the Governments to which they are to be restored. (Emphasis added)

45. The National Archives of the UK, Kew, Public Record Office (PRO) Foreign Office (FO) 608/215/29 – Recovery from Germany of the Skull of the late Sultan Mkwawa.

46. Cameron, My Tanganyika Service, 50.

47. Iliffe, A Modern, 322–3.

48. Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals, 135.

49. Ibid., 136.

50. Lumley, Forgotten Mandate, 18.

51. Brown and Hutt, Anthropology, 34.

52. Ibid., Anthropology, 28.

53. Ibid., Anthropology, 211.

54. A. Redmayne, “Mkwawa and the Hehe,” 410.

55. A. Redmayne, “Mkwawa and the Hehe,” 416.

56. A. Redmayne, “Mkwawa and the Hehe,” 416.

57. Winans, “Hyenas on the Border,” 112.

58. Ibid., 121.

59. Ibid., 121.

60. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 305.

61. Ibid., 310–1.

62. Mumford, “The Hehe-Bena-Sangu.”

63. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 306.

64. Ibid., 401.

65. Brown and Hutt, Anthropology, 9.

66. A. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 314–315. Michelle Moyd describes how numerous Hehe people were recruited to serve the German colonial state, particularly for the Schutztruppe, see Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 68.

67. Brown and Hutt, Anthropology, 38 and 43.

68. Brown and Hutt, Anthropology, 39.

69. Brown and Hutt, Anthropology, 40–1.

70. Brown and Hutt, Anthropology, 43.

71. Twining, it seems, had a long standing interest in royal lineage and pageantry that extended beyond his support for the Hehe King. Before and after his time in Tanganyika, Twining wrote multiple studies of European royal ceremony, tradition, and regalia. See, for example, Twining, A History and Twining, European Regalia.

72. Winans, “The Head.”

73. Especially Tanganyika, The Skull of Chief Mkwawa.

74. PRO CO 822/770 – Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika, Speech by Twining on 19 June 1954. Moreover, an article published in the Manchester Guardian described how Twining had identified Mkwawa’s skull because it possessed “the uncommon cephalic index of 71” a number which “matched what [Twining] was looking for” since “Mkwawa had been noted for longheadedness” in “Journey of a Skull,” 4.

75. PRO CO 822/770 – Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika.

76. Harris, Donkey’s Gratitude, 222.

77. See Brown and Hutt, Anthropology.

78. Harris, Donkey’s Gratitude, 222.

79. Bates, A Gust of Plumes, 203 and 216.

80. Ranger discusses Twining and his exuberance for inventing traditions across his colonial career in Uganda and Tanganyika, Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition,” 233–6.

81. PRO CO 691/180/15 – Deportation of Sapi Mkwawa.

82. Ibid.

83. Longford, The Flags Changed, 83. After independence, Adam Sapi was the Speaker for the national Parliament. See also, Harris, Donkey’s Gratitude, 217.

84. Bates, A Gust, 246.

85. See Sunseri, Wielding the Ax.

86. See Bender, “Being ‘Chagga’” for a discussion of Edward Twining’s participation in “Chagga Day” in 1952.

87. Lumley, Forgotten Mandate, 18–20.

88. Ibid., 68.

89. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 317.

90. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 317.

91. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 327.

92. Redmayne, “The Wahehe,” 329.

93. PRO CO 822/770 – Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika, Speech by Twining on 19 June 1954.

94. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.

95. Brown, Regulating Aversion.

96. Brown, Regulating Aversion, 14.

97. “Journey of a Skull,” 4.

98. PRO CO 822/770 – Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika, Letter from Edward Twining to Oliver Lyttleton, 6 July 1954.

99. Ibid.

100. PRO CO 822/770 – Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika, Speech by Twining, 19 June 1954.

101. PRO CO 822/1369 – Opposition by TANU to cattle-dipping schemes at Iringa, Tanganyika. See also Winans, “Hyenas on the Border,” 112–3.

102. PRO CO 822/770 – Return of the Skull of the Late Chief Mkwawa to Tanganyika, Speech by Twining, 19 June 1954.

103. Ibid.

Additional information

Funding

Funds supporting the research and writing of this article were provided by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at The College of New Jersey; the Department of History at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; and a Faculty Summer Research Award from Roanoke College.