Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Tanganyika Territory
Summary
Tanganyika was a colonial territory in East Africa which was administered by the United Kingdom in various guises from 1916 until 1961. It was initially administered under a military occupation regime. From 20 July 1922, it was formalised into a League of Nations mandate under British rule. From 1946, it was administered by the UK as a United Nations trust territory.
Before World War I, Tanganyika formed part of the German colony of German East Africa. It was gradually occupied by forces from the British Empire and Belgian Congo during the East Africa Campaign, although German resistance continued until 1918. After this, the League of Nations formalised the UK's control of the area, who renamed it "Tanganyika". The UK held Tanganyika as a League of Nations mandate until the end of World War II after which it was held as a United Nations trust territory. In 1961, Tanganyika gained its independence from the UK as Tanganyika. It became a republic a year later. Tanganyika now forms part of the modern-day sovereign state of Tanzania.
The name of the territory was taken from the large lake in its west. Henry Morton Stanley had found the name of "Tanganika", when he travelled to Ujiji in 1876. He wrote that the locals were not sure about its meaning and conjectured that it meant something like "the great lake spreading out like a plain", or "plain-like lake".
The name was chosen by the British with the Treaty of Versailles, and as such the name took effect when Britain was given control of Tanganyika in 1920. Britain needed a new name to replace "Deutsch Ostafrika" or "German East Africa". Various names were considered, including "Smutsland" in honour of General Jan Smuts (denied for being "inelegant"), "Eburnea," "New Maryland," "Windsorland" after the British Royal Family's new family name, and "Victoria" after both the Lake and the Queen. The Colonial Secretary insisted that "a native name prominently associated with the territory" be selected.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.