The Chagga and Meru of Tanzania

Book excerpt: The Chagga and the Meru are related peoples living on the rich banana-grove and coffee-plantation slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru in Northern Tanzania. While the literature on the Chagga is overwhelmingly large little is generally available on the Meru. This volume, originally published in 1977, provided for the first time a concise, comprehensive and well-documented overview of Chagga society, history and cosmology, drawing not only on the authors’ field work but on the works of the prolific Germans: Gutmann, Raum and others. It also detail original research and uses reports of the famous Meru Land Case to illuminate Meru society and economy and their adjustment in turn to Arusha, German and British colonial, and independent government influences.