ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on archival and oral sources, seeks to recapture the world of the Tanga dockworkers during most of the British colonial period, and to relate their experience to their immediate community and environment in Tanga. It also focuses on a social history research project that is still in progress. Dockworkers, especially In Dar es Salaam, are invariably viewed as the 'vanguard' of the Tanzanian working class, who conducted heroic struggles against employers and the colonial state, and pioneered the Tanzanian trade union movement. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the studies of dock labour in Tanzania is the embattled attempt by both the state and the employers to impose on the dockers an industrial work discipline. Dockers and other groups of workers have rubbed shoulders in different contexts, especially housing and what one may broadly refer to as social life.
