1860s–1870s: (Msiri’s Garenganze, Nyungu-ya-Mawe Among the Kimbu, and the Inherent Instability of Military States Built on Youthful Rejection of Patriarchal …

1860s–1870s: (Msiri’s Garenganze, Nyungu-ya-Mawe Among the Kimbu, and the Inherent Instability of Military States Built on Youthful Rejection of Patriarchal Authority — Rooted as Much in Criminality as Political Creativity, Unable to Survive European Hegemony): Mirambo’s career was brilliant but not wholly unique. Another Nyamwezi leader, Msiri, built the commercial and military power of Garenganze southwest of Lake Tanganyika during the 1860s and 1870s, sitting astride a trade network linking eastern to south-central Africa. Among the Kimbu, to the southeast of Mirambo, Nyungu-ya-Mawe carved out a loose hegemony in much the same manner. These states were innovative, dynamic, and violent responses to the opportunities of the age, yet they were as much rooted in criminality as political creativity, and therein lay the causes of their inherent instability. The forces that assisted their construction — particularly a generation of youth able and willing to reject the values of their fathers, driven by new social, political, and economic aspirations — were also those that rendered these states unsustainable in the longer term. Despite Mirambo’s attempts to historicize his warfare and claim deeper political heritage for Urambo, he was ultimately unable to do what Shaka had done for the Zulu. The raison d’être of these new states — commercial freedom and military adventurism — would have been impossible in the face of European hegemony. Nonetheless, the energy with which Africans engaged in global commerce and attempted to invent new political structures was an indication of what was to come under colonial rule.