What did it mean to be an African subject living in remote areas ofTanganyika at the end of the colonial era? For the Kaguru of Tanganyika, it meantdaily confrontation with the black and white governmental officials tasked withbringing this rural people into the mainstream of colonial African life. T. O.Beidelman’s detailed narrative links this administrative world to the Kaguru’s widersocial, cultural, and geographical milieu, and to the political history, ideas ofindirect rule, and the white institutions that loomed just beyond their world.Beidelman unveils the colonial system’s problems as it extended its authority intorural areas and shows how these problems persisted even after Africanindependence.