Negotiations between Germany and Britain late in 1886 established the final boundaries of the colony of German East Africa, but reserved a strip of land, ten miles wide, along the coast as the property of the Sultan of Zanzibar.

On 28 April 1888, Sultan Khalifah bin Said finally signed a treaty, leasing the coastal strip to the German East Africa Company.

[1] From August 1888, the company tried to take over the coastal towns against fierce resistance from the Arab elite, who feared for their slave and ivory trade, and also from the Swahili and African population.

[2] The haughty attempts by Emil von Zelewski, the German administrator in Pangani, to raise the company's flag over the town sparked the uprising.

[3] The revolt around Pangani was led by the plantation-owner Abushiri ibn Salim al-Harthi, who gained the support of both the Arabs of the area and local Swahili tribes.

Under Wissmann's command, it proceeded to establish German rule over the caravan routes to Kilimanjaro and Lake Tanganyika, as the next stage in the complete subjection of the territory.

In the decades prior to the arrival of the Germans, Tanganyika had seen a progressive encroachment of Omani military and administrative power, which altered the established trading networks and socioeconomic relations between Shirazi patricians, Indian merchants, and Arab traders of various origins (Hadramaut, Comoro, Zanzibar).

The uprising, in other words, indicated the precariousness of Omani Arab hegemony, rather than 'Arab' leadership, and was rooted in a social contest that pitted diverse religious and ethnic identities … against each other.