In Search of a Nation: Histories of Authority and Dissidence in Tanzania

The double-sided nature of African nationalism–its capacity to inspire expressions of unity, and its tendency to narrow political debate–are explored by sixteen historians, focusing on the experience of Tanzania. The narrative of the nation of Tanzania, which was created by the anticolonial nationalist movement, expanded by the Union after the Zanzibar Revolution, and fused by the ideology of Ujamaa by Julius Nyerere, has shaped Tanzanian political discourse for decades, but has not obliterated the great wealth of political discourses and identities which exist within the nation.