Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914

Andreas Greiner is a research fellow in global and transregional history at the German Historical Institute Washington (GHI), in the USA.. Before joining the GHI, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Max Weber Program at the European University Institute in Florence and a research assistant for the Chair of Modern History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). His research specializes in East African history, the history of the German Empire, and the history of global infrastructure networks in the long nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 2021, he received the Walter-Markov-Prize of the European Network in Universal and Global History for his research on Tanzanian porters.

“In his doctoral thesis at the ETH Zürich, Andreas Greiner tried to come to a better understanding of colonial state formation in German East Africa through the lens of human porterage. … Based on this doctoral research … published the reviewed monograph with the fitting subtitle ‘Tensions of Transport’. … Greiner does an excellent job reconstructing and explaining the practical and moral dilemmas the German colonizers were facing in East Africa.” (Geert Castryck, H-Soz-Kult, hsozkult.de, May 30, 2024)

• 1. Introduction: Tensions of Transport.- 2. Shouldering the State: Violence, Coercion, and Professionalism in State-Organized Transport.- 3. Facing an Established Business: The Self-Limitation of Colonial Rule.- 4. Carrying On: Caravan Labor and Legislation in the Colonial Era.- 5. Managing Mobility: The Colonial State as a Gatekeeper of Caravan Travel.- 6.- Challenging Spatial Relations: The Colonial Quest for New Infrastructures.- 7. Epilogue.