Book ID 131
Koponen, Juhani Population: A Dependent Variable, 1996
Extract Date: 1890's
In 1892-3 the rains were sparser than usual on the coast and in some parts of the interior and, in three successive years from 1897 to 1899 the rains were particularly poor. The Locusts plagues coincided with the years of Drought. In 1893-5, they destroyed the harvest in the greater part of the country and in 1897-9 the same thing happened again.
See also
Koponen, Juhani Population: A Dependent Variable, 1996
Extract Date: 1890's
The catastrophes of the 1890s began with the great Rinderpest panzootic in 1890. Spreading southward from the Horn of Africa, Rinderpest swept over the country like bushfire, killing cattle and game. The estimate first put forward by the German lieutenant, who said that 90 per cent of Tanganyika's cattle and half of its wild animals perished from Rinderpest, may well be roughly accurate.
Famine and Smallpox followed [the Rinderpest], especially among peoples who depended on cattle. While the endemicity of Smallpox was no doubt maintained by caravan traffic, which had grown up with the establishment of colonialism, another factor also involved in the Smallpox epidemics of the 1890s was the increased mobility of people who were searching for food and security. The pastoral Maasai, of whom perhaps two-thirds died, suffered the worst. Northwestern Tanzania was also hit by Smallpox, particularly Karagwe. In the mid-1890s German doctors claimed that "every second" African had a pock-marked face.