1929–1961: (Tanganyika’s Relative Success — The African Association Operating Since 1929, TANU Established in 1954 Under Nyerere, Fear of White Settlement an…

1929–1961: (Tanganyika’s Relative Success — The African Association Operating Since 1929, TANU Established in 1954 Under Nyerere, Fear of White Settlement and Brutal Agricultural Interventionism Fueling Popular Support, Swahili as a National Language Enabling Territory-Wide Unity, and the Relative Absence of Divisive Ethnic Politics Making Tanganyika’s Nationalism More Cohesive Than Nigeria’s or Uganda’s): In some territories, the absence of large hegemonic ethnic groupings competing in the political marketplace facilitated a more cohesive national identity. In Tanganyika, the African Association had operated since 1929, but only in the early 1950s did the organization come into its own, mobilizing Africans who had been forced to make way for white settlers — a policy linked to renewed economic interest in the territory. Fear of white settlement and brutal interventionism into African agricultural practices sparked widespread political activity. The Association led to the establishment in 1954 of the Tanganyika African National Union under the charismatic Julius Nyerere, who like Nkrumah had spent years abroad and been inspired by the CPP’s example. Through the mid-1950s, Nyerere broadened TANU’s appeal, transforming it into a genuinely nationwide movement that utilized popular rural unrest stemming from enforced terracing and other colonial intrusions. TANU’s success was greatly assisted by relative linguistic unity — Swahili, established through nineteenth-century long-distance trade and further developed under colonial rule for education and administration, enabled a sense of national unity that the divisive ethnic politics of Nigeria and Uganda made impossible. Rioting erupted in 1955 in response to enforced terracing, and Nyerere skillfully used veiled threats of violence to further nationalist aims while avoiding the direct confrontation that would have invited British repression.