German East Africa comprising of Burundi and Rwanda and Tanzania was a large territory with complex geography, including parts of extensive East African Rift Vally, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. It varied from mountainous, well watered and fertile north-west to the drier and sandy or rolling center with wild life, rich grasslands in the North East. Its coast area of uninhabited forest in the South East. Its coast inhabited by the Swahili people and Arab traders, dominated trade with Central Africa in conjunction with British controlled Zanzibar and the coast of modern dy Kenya and Mozambique.
At the start of the First World War or The Great War as its known, the Governor Heinrich Schnee of Germany East Africa ordered that no hostile action was to be taken. To the North Governor Sir Henry Conway Belfied of British East Africa stated that he and this colony had no interest in the present war.
The colonial Governors who often met in pre-war years had dismissed these matters and wish to adhere to the Congo Act of 1886 which called for overseas possessions to remain neutral in the event of a Europen war and neither had many troops.
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