The crisis of the Maji Maji rebellion was followed by a period of rapid change both in the African societies of Tanganyika and in Germany's policy towards its East African colony. From these changes there emerged, by 1914, a situation with new potentiality for conflict, an incipient dilemma characteristic of those territories in East and Central Africa with a significant European community. At the heart of the dilemma lay the issue of economic, social, and political control. The growing power of the German settlers in East Africa brought them closer to control of the machinery of territorial government. The new skills which some Africans acquired during the age of improvement gave them the means to assert control of their own societies in a more effective manner than hitherto. A similar dilemma produced the first modern political organisations in Nairobi and among the Kikuyu of Kenya. Another led to John Chilembwe's rising of 1915 in Malawi, the protest of a man of improvement against the sufferings of his people under European control. For reasons which must be explained, no such dramatic confrontation took place in Tanganyika, but this must not obscure the existence of the basic dilemma. The purpose of this chapter is to indicate its character.

Like contemporary administrators in neighbouring territories, Rechenberg's successor, Heinrich Schnee, was only dimly aware of the problem which was coming into existence.