Creolisation in Secret: The Birth of Nationalism in Late Colonial Uluguru, Tanzania

Abstract

AbstractThis article restudies assumptions about the nature of nationalism in Africa on the basis of the brief moment when African nationalism emerged in the mountain area of Uluguru, in eastern Tanzania. It suggests that our understanding of the emergence of the concept of nationality was far too narrowly focused on the idea of the state and of the unity of the public existing within that state. By exploring a multiplicity of coexisting colonial and indigenous political discourses in terms of ‘creolisation’, and setting this multiplicity of public discourses against the background of the secret politics that determined their interaction, the article suggests directions for the rethinking of African politics in modernity.