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EUROPE AND AFRICA
sufficient for the natives who were needed as laborers on the
European estates. By inspection and consideration of the
system used in Uganda, they came to see also the advantages
of encouraging the natives to produce for themselves cotton
and other crops which can be grown without great technical
skill. The Germans were most successful with sisal, and it
may be noted that East African sisal offered the only ex-
ample of a raw material of which Germany secured the
major part of her supply from a German colony. In fact,
all the German colonies combined supplied Germany with
less than two per cent of her imports of those raw materials
which the colonies exported,! and certainly not more than
one half of one per cent of all the raw materials, domestic
and imported, consumed by German industry. The total
imports and exports of German East Africa reached $17,-
000,000 in 1911-12, having increased fifty per cent in three
years.?
During the Great War, Great Britain launched a cam-
paign to secure control of German East Africa. It was
organized and led by General Smuts, and began in March,
1916. The more settled portions near the seacoast were
conquered in a few months. But the German commander,
General von Lettow-Vorbeck, with 200,000 square miles of
tropical wilderness in which to maneuver and being driven
finally into northern Rhodesia, managed to hold out with
150 Europeans and 1100 Askaris till after the Armistice was
signed in Europe. The Belgians cooperated in the conquest
and occupied the northwestern part of the territory. They
administered Kigoma and the country north of it until March,
1 U.S. Tariff Commission, Colonial Tariff Policies, p. 232. Government
Printing Office, 1922.
2 The total trade of British East Africa and Uganda for the same year
was £3,364,000 or $16,320,000. The British in their less populous (though
in most other respects better) area achieved substantially the same trade
results as the Germans, and with a smaller expenditure of money.
