Cued Speeches. The Emergence of Shauri as a Colonial Practice in German East Africa, 1850-1903

In 19th century, early every European traveller made during his way through the East Africa sometime a shauri (pl. shauri), or negotiation, with Africans. He had to hold many shauri when he had to organise his expedition, recruit porters and guides and buy exchange goods. A shauri was necessary when he met African chiefs and liked to pass the chief’s territory and get food and water for his expedition. The Europeans often despised such shauri as an annoying palaver. Nevertheless, the shauri was for them a matter of necessity. When Germans established their colonial rule in the 1890ies, they held shauri with African chiefs in order bring them to an acceptance of their rule. Often these shauri occurred before or after military engagements or treats with them. In addition, with the word shauri Germans labelled every native court hearing. In 1891, a decree of the German Emperor declared the shauri as the most important form of administrative practice regarding the local African population in the colony.
At that time, the shauri had long history as an inter-cultural practice. Shauri is the Swahili word for having a council. As it Swahili origin suggests, the shauri as a form of intercultural communication evolved in the context of the interregional caravan trade of the 19th century, when traders from the Swahili coast travelled into the interior to exchange for clothes and guns ivory, rubber and slaves. The shauri emerged in this context as a bricolage of cultural practices of different origins. It combined local traditions with those of the coastal Swahili culture. Often it included the exchange of gifts, sometimes both parties made rituals of blood brotherhood. In any case, a shauri was of highly ceremonial character. Seating arrangements for instance, were thought to express status and power. The German traveller Hermann Wissmann fought veritable symbolic battles with Africans to get a higher seating place than his African counterpart. The same Wissmann introduced some years later, then Governor of the colony, the shauri as an administrative practice.
My paper is an attempt to write a history of the shauri as form of an inter-cultural practice, which was shaped by the historical transformations in nineteenth and twentieth century East Africa. Shauri were important means to establish and negotiate economical and political ties within the context of the caravan trade. In colonial times, the shauri did not lose its importance as a moment and practice of inter-cultural communication, but, now regarded by Germans as a colonial practice, it underwent some significant modifications. German colonizers tried to remould the shauri along the patterns of colonial rule. The shauri’s character as, in principle, open and negotiable form of communication was now designed as patriarchal way of dealing with Africans. The colonial practice of shauri is therefore a good example of the invention of traditions by German colonizers. Germans now regarded the exchange of gifts as a one-sided duty of the African counterpart. Seating arrangements were fixed in spatial structures; shauri took place in so-called shauri huts or shauri place. However, African chiefs, masters in shauri themselves, neglected the German’s attempt to dominate the shauri and tried to manipulate it for their own sake. Even when the colonial rule was firmly established, there was enough room for symbolic battles over the meaning of a shauri. Nevertheless, especially urban Africans adopted the German sense of the shauri as a formal administrative and juridical practice. By doing so, they disputed the patriarchal character of the shauri. Wealthy Indian and African merchants hired professional advocates for their shauri. Since many German administrators were not educated bureaucrats or lawyers, they felt themselves sometimes overtaxed by such efforts. The shauri was therefore not only the place where Africans negotiated and contested colonial rule, but also the colonialism’s promise of modernity.
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