TANU and the Colonial Office

Abstract

This paper tries to summarise the evidence available in British Government Records about the winning of independence in Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania). Such documents generally become available to historians thirty years after the events described. The most important documents will eventually be published as part of a project covering the entire British colonial empire, but a short, interim account may interest Tanzanians. However, this paper is not a history of nationalism and decolonisation in Tanganyika. That would require study of the Tanganyika African National Union archives in Dodoma, the private papers and recollections of TANU members, and the records of the British Government of Tanganyika (presumably in the National Archives in Dar es Salaam). This paper is purely about the thinking of British policy-makers.