ABSTRACT
The Germans provided the chiefs with ruthless military backing and helped them extract taxes and corvee labour from the citizens. The chiefs thus strengthened by outside forces became increasingly exploitative of their positions. Resentment of the powers of the local chiefs grew as they used their positions
more and more to increase their own wealth at the direct expense of their constituents (HRAF Recht:332,345,348,354; Gutmann, 1926b:370,385,387,394). Unlike the days of the ivory and slave trades and of local warfare, chiefly enrichment no longer came from the outside, from war booty and exchange, but from the ever increasing levels of taxes and labour contributions. The Germans themselves, always short of workers, maintained chain gangs of prisoners at hard labour. The prisoners were sent to the Germans by the chiefs. The Germans assumed they had been tried according to Chagga custom, but there often had been no hearing. Anyone labelled a miscreant by the Chief, persons who failed in tax or corvee obligations and the like, were treated as criminals and made prisoners by the Germans (HRAF Recht:352; Gutmann, 1926b:392). It must not be forgotten though, that the chiefs had been capable of considerable cruelty in pre-colonial times (New, 1874:416).
