German Boma at Arusha, Tanzania

Here is the central block house of the German Boma or Fort at Arusha, under Mount Meru in Northern Tanzania. It was built in 1900.

The Germans colonised Tanganyika in the late 1880s and in the so-called 'pacification years' of 1890 to 1906 established Arusha Town as the military and administrative centre of the Arusha and Mount Meru district.

The two local tribes were defeated and pacified by Captain Kurt Johannes who commanded in Moshi - east of Arusha from 1892 and 1901, and presumably commanded the building of this fort. Captain Johannes affected a Kaiser Wilhelm moustache and practised the brutal methods of German colonialism.

Next to the Boma or Fort, Indian Greek and Arab shops appeared, selling cloth, soap, plates, beads etc. The Wameru and Waarusha local population now sold their agricultural produce there.

By 1913 there were 100 European farms in Arusha occupying 52,000 ha. and the total Europeans numbered only 500, with Germans, Afrikaaner refugees from British South Africa and Greeks in that order. The principal cash crop was coffee.

There were 84,200 Africans in the 1913 census, but their livestock had dramatically diminished because the European farms had expropriated and enclosed wells and streams.

German occupation ended during the First World War when British Empire Forces, after a campaign that lasted longer than the War n Europe - the German Commander von Lettow Vorbeck only surrendered after the Armistice.

In 1919 Tanganyika became a League of Nations Mandate granted to the UK. Tanganyika became independent in 1961 and joined Zanzibar in Tanzania in 1962.