Status: Republic in East Africa
Population: 62,092,761 (2021 est.)
Area: 365,755 sq. miles    
Currency (since 1917): 100 cents = 1 shilling

Portugal laid claim to the coast of East Africa after Vasco da Gama’s 1498 voyage to India. By the early 18th century the Sultan of Oman and his allies had driven the Portuguese from all of their settlements north of Mozambique. But the penetration of the interior was left to explorers of the mid-19th century. German missionaries reached Mt. Kilimanjaro in the 1840s. British explorers discovered Lake Tanganyika in 1857. David Livingstone was famously “found” at his mission in Ujiji by the American journalist Henry Stanley, in 1871.

Carl Peters, a German adventurer, acting without Berlin’s authorization, persuaded several central African chiefs to sign protection agreements in 1884. At first, Chancellor Bismarck refused to accept the agreements. When Peters threatened to sell them to Belgium, he acquiesced, with the understanding that Peters’ German East Africa Company should assume the costs of the new territory.   

German East Africa Scott 3,16, and N21

The company quickly proved unable to manage the territory and in 1890 the German government assumed direct control. A post office was opened in Dar es Salaam on October 4, 1890, using German stamps. On July 1, 1893, stamps surcharged in local currency were placed in use. Overprinted Imperial stamps were replaced by the Hohenzollern yacht issue on January 1, 1901. 

World War I brought a variety of occupation issues. In January 1915, the British overprinted stamps for the island of Mafia in the Rufiji River Delta, which they occupied in their search for the German warship Konigsberg. During 1916, five Nyasaland stamps were overprinted “N F” for use in the area controlled by the Nyasa-Rhodesian force. In September 1915 and October 1916, values of the GEA yacht issue were overprinted “I.E.F.” by the postal authorities in Zanzibar for use in areas occupied by the Indian Expeditionary Force. Beginning in 1915, Belgian Congo stamps were overprinted for use for the military districts of Ruanda and Urundi (later Rwanda-Burundi) which were occupied by troops from the Belgian Congo. The Portuguese overprinted four Mozambique stamps in 1916 for use in the small border enclave of Kionga.

In 1917, the British overprinted stamps of the East Africa and Uganda protectorates “G.E.A.” as a general issue for use throughout the territory. They later decided to call the territory “Tanganyika,” the name that Dr. Livingstone had given the lake. In 1922, Tanganyika was assigned to Great Britain as a League of Nations mandate. That same year, it issued a set of definitives featuring a giraffe and inscribed with the new designation. This was followed in 1927 by 16 values with a profile of George V inscribed “Mandated Territory of Tanganyika.”

 In 1927, the British unified the postal services in its three East African colonies. On April 15, 1935, stamps inscribed “Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika” were introduced. Tanganyika became independent December 9, 1961. Afterwards some stamps were issued for Tanganyika alone although common issues continued until June 30, 1977, when tripartite postal cooperation virtually ceased. In April 1964 Zanzibar joined Tanganyika to form the Republic of Tanzania.  This designation has appeared on all its stamps since 1965.

Tanzania Scott 1, Tanganyika Scott 21,37, and 58