The Ties That Bind: African Colonial Soldiers and Their Loyalties, German East Africa 1890–1918

African soldiers in the colonial army of German East Africa – known as askari -- served multiple roles within the colonial state. They are best known as the disciplined, loyal and ruthless troops who carried out Germany's conquest of the area that now comprises mainland Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. They also conducted a wide range of other ceremonial, punitive, and administrative roles that buttressed colonial authority and power. Askari fought and worked for the German cause not out of any abstract sense of loyalty, but because they understood their German officers to be patrons who were responsible for maintaining askari status, wealth and power vis-à-vis other East Africans. This paper will explore the substance of the everyday relationships between the askari and their German officers, as well as between askari themselves, in an attempt to better understand the character of patron-client relationships in a military setting. Drawing on a variety of primary sources that offer glimpses of askari self-identities as they conquered and administered German East Africa, this paper will speculate on the nature and content of colonial military esprit. To what extent did the concept of “loyalty” matter to askari, and did it feature in their willingness to enact and express colonial power within East Africa? How did military training and disciplinary regimens contribute to askari subjectivities and perceptions of colonial officers' strengths and vulnerabilities as leaders? Answers to these questions will yield further insights into the ways that everyday colonial power and practice created new moral economies that linked African colonial intermediaries with colonial officers in an unequal, yet mutually dependent, relationship that underpinned German colonialism.