A Changing Narrative: Wildlife Conservation in Africa

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S. F. Tates

S1428098

University of Leiden

Colonial and Global

History (MA)

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Chapter I - Introduction

Welcome to Serengeti National Park

Few people forget their first encounter with the Serengeti. Perhaps it's the view from Naabi Hill at the park's entrance, from where the grasslands appear to stretch to the ends of the earth. Or maybe it's a coalition of lions stalking across open plains, their manes catching the breeze. Or it could be wildebeest and zebra migrating in their millions, following the ancient rhythm of Africa's seasons. Whatever it is, welcome to one of the greatest wildlife-watching destinations on earth. 1

This vivid description of the Serengeti is from the website of Lonely Planet, one of the largest travel guidebook publishers in the world. It gives us insight into how Africa’s nature is regarded and promoted by tourist agencies in the Western world. The Serengeti is described as one of nature’s highlights: a place that is unaffected by modern times, where the ancient rhythm of Africa’s seasons still dictates the direction of the wildebeest and zebra migrations. Importantly, an image is created of the Serengeti and other National Parks in East Africa, as one of the last bastions of the world where ‘true nature’ still exists. Countries like Tanzania and Kenya, both popular safari tourist destinations, seem to contribute to a view of nature in which National Parks are heralded as places that seem unaffected by human life. What’s more, parks like the Serengeti, Masai Mara and Ngorongoro Crater are often advertised as real Gardens of Eden . This concept has a positive connotation in the Western world because places that are regarded as such is where nature is at its finest, its most wild yet in perfect harmony. This brings up the question: why are Africa’s National 2 Parks nowadays considered to be the epitome of nature in the Western imagination?

Financial arguments, in which these countries try to appeal to mostly Western markets, can be made to explain the somewhat exaggerated description of the Serengeti by Lonely Planet, but the influence that foreign perceptions have on the countries of East Africa goes much further than the marketing in tourists brochures would suggest. A depiction of East Africa’s nature has emerged as something that is still pristine and undisturbed. In other words: something that is frail and should be protected against the destruction that modernisation often brings. This idea of nature as undisturbed, which can often be seen in many kinds of marketing of Africa in Western media, is used as a big selling point for tourists agencies, movies, NGOs or other kinds of formats. The reality is more nuanced, however, as the Serengeti and many other National Parks in Africa have been profoundly influenced by human intervention, especially by the Western colonising powers who had their own view on nature and how it should be managed.

Western conceptions about the relationship between humans and nature have changed during the period of African colonisation on which this thesis will focus, but many of them have stayed the same as well. A peculiar idea about how nature has emerged during this period and was also applied to many places in East Africa. This thesis sets out to discuss how the Western philosophy of the relation between human and nature has dominated and

1_{Lonely Planet. (n.d).}_{Tanzania / Northern Tanzania, Serengeti National Park.}

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/tanzania/northern-tanzania/serengeti-national-park.

2_{Hermon, M. (2017, August 16). Exploring The Ngorongoro Crater: Tanzania's Garden of Eden. Retrieved}

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continues to dominate many places in Africa. Western conceptions of what nature is and what it is not are seemingly still present to this day and age. The wildlife tourism in Africa nowadays, for example, is closely interlinked with older colonial ideas about nature. More specifically, as D. Harrisson argues, wildlife tourism was developed ‘by colonialists for colonialists’. Through (neo)colonial ties a fabrication of nature, which has been largely3 determined by Western conceptions, has affected the East and Central African landscape for more than 150 years. How did Western conceptions begin to influence the creation of nature in Africa and why is this imaginary perception of nature still persisting and even dominating a place that is so distant from its origins?

Figure 1: Human impact on the land. 4

Nature in Africa: an artificial concept?

True ‘natural places’, as they were defined in the early colonial days, are increasingly becoming more of an illusion that endures through media rather than a reality. In Figure 1, the impact of humans on the land is measured by combining four different datasets about

3Harrison, D. (2000). The political economy of tourism development in Africa. Cognizant Communication Corporation, 37-51.

4_{Marris, E. (2020, June 5).}This Map Shows Where on Earth Humans Aren't. National Geographic. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/06/where-people-arent/. Original Source: Riggio, J., Baillie, J. E., Brumby, S., Ellis, E., Kennedy, C. M., Oakleaf, J. R., ... & Watson, J. E. (2020). Global human influence maps reveal clear opportunities in conserving Earth’s remaining intact terrestrial ecosystems. Global Change Biology.

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human impact on environments and it illustrates the extent of human impact on the world. What is immediately visible are the predominantly white spaces in East Africa, which depict a high human impact on the land. The (light)green spots that remain in East Africa are probably less impacted by humans and correspond largely with the various National Parks. However, the models on which the image is based only reflect the contemporary situation of the land. This means that the human impact of the past is left out in the equation, which may give the impression that many of the National Parks in East Africa have been unaffected by man. It therefore hides an important paradox of the East African National Parks: nature which has been created by man.

Take the Serengeti for instance, a National Park that has been created and modeled in 1952 by the British colonial regime. Over the course of the centuries, this vast area of savannah has been changed and shaped by many hands. For example, by the pastoral Maasai, who were newcomers themselves in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as they changed the landscape by letting their herds of cattle graze and therefore creating more grasslands instead of bush. At later points in time, hunters from the West, colonial-servants, conservationists and tourist agencies came to the East African plains, each leaving their own distinct mark on the environment. Interestingly, these areas have been and still are regarded as nature in its most purest form. A strange anomaly indeed, and one that seems to continue throughout the twenty-first century.

An important element in the portrayal of Africa in the Western mind of today, is that of a ‘natural’ continent. In what follows, this notion of nature will be explored in more detail. According to the Oxford English Dictionary , nature is by definition opposed to humans and human creations. In this definition a clear division between nature and civilisation is 5 created: everything that is man-made is not considered to be nature and vice versa. This strict division was constructed at a time when large parts of the Western world went through a period of rapid industrialisation that disconnected many people from a rurallike environment. The clear distinction between nature and manmade was not so authentic to Africa but has been intensively applied to it through decades of Western interference. Many National Parks, like the Serengeti for instance, are considered as purely natural lands. Everything that lies beyond the borders of these parks is regarded as influenced by or even tainted by man. This dualistic approach in which nature and society are seen as something different has spread from the West to the rest of the world. These concepts were largely 6 alien to Sub-Saharan Africa, but had been introduced in the nineteenth century by European colonisers. Now that the concept of what nature is, and what it is not, has been discussed to some extent, we can look at how it was introduced and implemented in Africa.

Wild Africa and the visualisation of nature

Since the beginning of imperialism in the late nineteenth century, perspectives regarding nature which originated from West European colonising countries like Great Britain, France, Germany and Belgium, had been introduced and applied to the lands of Central and East Africa. In their subjugation of the African continent, the colonising powers did not only

5_{Oxford English Dictionary Online, ‘natural, 11a,’.}

https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl:2443/view/Entry/125332?rskey=gxU2Od&result=1&isAdvanced =false#eid.

6_{Ramutsindela, M. (2004).}_{Parks and people in postcolonial societies: experiences in southern Africa. Kluwer}

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attempt to conquer the indigenous people but also tried to become masters of the natural world. An example of this is the changing of the hunting tradition that was introduced by the colonising powers. Instead of killing animals for food and resources, hunting was 7 turned into a sport in which gathering trophies was the most important goal as it showed one's masculinity and superiority over nature. Furthermore, the new scientific approach of natural history, in which species were catalogued and studied, was brought to Africa by Westerners. The British had a leading role in the formation and implementation of Western conceptions of nature in the African Great Lakes region. Not only did the British Empire control most of the African colonies, but concepts such as the tradition of hunting and the science of natural history were of British origin as well. Interestingly, the first conservation practices were instigated by colonial authorities in the eighteenth century. European colonial powers started to notice that the natural resources and the environments of the various islands they used as refreshing stations that laid on the shipping routes began to deplete and an attempt was made to form legislation to manage and protect the fragile ecosystems on these islands. Other notions, such as conservation and the creation of National Parks, can be 8 traced back to the United States but were implemented under colonial rule of the European countries in Africa. These conceptions began to expand from the colonial period onwards as the notion of dominating nature began to change and develop.

Relevancy

In this thesis, how these Western conceptions of nature came to be and why this external vision has been so extensively applied to the African continent will be explored. Wildlife conservation practices have become one of the most discernible and disputed areas of contact between the Western world and Africa. Conceptions of nature have changed and evolved during the years of (neo)colonisation and have led to major interventions in the landscapes of East and Central Africa but also resulted in the dehumanisation of Africans as agents in history. Many indigeneous occupants of National Parks in Africa have been forced 9 to leave their lands for the conservation cause invented by Westerners.

Academic debates around the topic of conservation in Africa of nowadays are roughly divided as follows: on the one side are the social studies and the humanities like history or anthropology, where more emphasis is put on the marginalisation of indigenous park occupants that results from Western conservation practices, while the conservation biologists on the other side, put more priority on stopping the decline in biological diversity.

The debate around conservation is therefore often typified as a ‘good guy vs. good guy’

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debate, as both sides are committed to virtuous causes. In recent scholarly literature, the 11 consequences of the ecological domination of Western standards in Africa are gradually being acknowledged, but there remains work to be done as changes are slow to come and

7_{Thompsell, A. (2015).}_{Hunting Africa: British sport, African knowledge and the nature of empire (Britain}

and the world). Palgrave Macmillan. 9-11.

8_{Grove, R. (1995).}_{Green imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of}

environmentalism, 1600-1860. (Studies in environment and history). Cambridge University Press, 5-6.

9_{Adams, J. S., McShane, T. O. (1996).}The myth of wild Africa: conservation without illusion. University of

California Press.

10_{Mulder, M. B., & Coppolillo, P. (2005).}_{Conservation: linking ecology, economics, and culture. Princeton} University Press. 61-68.

11_{Dowie, M. (2011).}_{Conservation refugees: The hundred-year conflict between global conservation and native}

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this critical approach to the ecological history of Africa has certainly not come to fruition in mainstream media. 12

The following example illustrates the continuation of old colonial paradigms about African nature in Western popular media and the slow trickle down of academic ideas around the topic. In Decolonising Nature, W.M Adams argues that The Lion King (1994) , Disney’s highly successful box office movie, is exemplary for the Western imagination of Africa’s primeval nature. Not only does the story depict a paradisal East Africa (without 13 any humans), but it also gives a clear vision of how nature should be treated and managed. The young lion Simba has to be taught the ways of the circle of life , in which nature has to be kept in harmony, in order for it to exist as an Edenic place. What’s more, the movie is filled with other principles and tropes like a paternalistic, arguably even an imperialistic, approach to conservation, which reflects the Western ideologies of nature that are now prevalent in Africa. These paradigms about the East African wilderness and nature are primarily Western conceptions that have been forced upon the region by years of colonialism and Western domination. What is striking is that these imaginative perspectives of Africa still resonate in this day and age, as a remake of the Lion King was released in 2019. This blockbuster was arguably even more successful than its predecessor as it had a box office of 1.67 billion dollars, taking the 7th spot as highest grossing film ever. Asides for the 14 now computer-generated animation, there are no major plot differences or other substantial changes to its original of 1994, making the mainstream media depiction of Africa's nature seemingly unchanged over the past twenty five years.

In the past thirty years, scholars have begun writing works that highlight the colonial character of wildlife conservation today. From the 1980s onwards, there has been an increased awareness regarding the marginalisation of indigenous people due to Western conservation practices in Africa. This shift can be seen in research by Dowie (2011), Cronon (1996), Anderson & Grove (1987), Brockington & Igoe (2007) and Igoe & Croucher (2007) as they focus on the eviction of indigenous people and other negative aspects of conservation practices in the African National Parks. The case studies of Moyo & Ijumba & Lund (2016) 15 and Marijnen & Verweijen (2016) contribute to bringing to light the forced evictions that have occured in the past. Historical works like the classics of Mackenzie (1988 and 1990), 16 Neumann (1995), Adams (2003) and Beinart (1989 and 2000), have laid the groundwork on how Western ideas about nature have impacted Africa's nature during and after the colonial period and are therefore used in this thesis to define the colonial character of nature-human

12_{Maddox, G. H. (1999).}_{Africa and Environmental History, Environmental History, 4(2), 162.} 13_{Adams, W. M., & Mulligan, M. (2003).} Decolonising Nature. 3.

14_{Box office Mojo. (n.d.)}The Lion King. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3321923073/ 15_{Dowie, M. (2011). Conservation refugees; Cronon, W. (1996). The trouble with wilderness: or, getting} back to the wrong nature. Environmental history, 1(1); Anderson, D., Grove, R. (1987). Conservation in

Africa: people, policies and practice. Cambridge University Press; Igoe, J., & Brockington, D. (2007).

Neoliberal conservation: a brief introduction. Conservation and society, 5(4); Igoe, J., & Croucher, B. (2007). Conservation, commerce, and communities: the story of community-based wildlife management areas in Tanzania’s northern tourist circuit. Conservation and Society, 5(4).

16_{Moyo, F. & Ijumba, J., Lund, J., F. (2016) Failure by Design? Revisiting Tanzania’s Flagship Wildlife} Management Area Burunge. Conservation and Society 14(3), 232-242; Marijnen, E., & Verweijen, J. (2016). Selling green militarization: The discursive (re)production of militarized conservation in the Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Geoforum 75, 274-285.

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relations in Africa. 17 Primary sources like the early travel journals of Stanley (1878) and Lugard (1892), as well as newspaper articles from the Telegraaf (1961 and 1963), illustrate the different narratives that will be discussed in the coming chapters. The more recent 18 writings of Garland (2006 and 2008), Lekan (2005, 2011 and 2016) and Mbaria & Ogada (2016) are excellent examples of the relevancy of the debate in which the colonial narrative regarding nature is still very much alive today in African conservation. The Western vision 19 of nature in Africa is for the most part unknown by its practitioners and greatly influenced by the colonial past. The need to acknowledge this connection between the past and the present is therefore not only relevant but also very important as it contributes to the change in which Africa's nature is being regarded. This change of narrative has started to surface in the last decades: the colonial character must be recognised and acknowledged so that it can be altered and improved upon to make the Western involvement in Africa's nature more inclusive to all and for that reason ultimately more successful.

The changing connotation of Africa’s nature in the nineteenth

century

Nature currently has a positive connotation in the modern world. 20 Many favorable associations, like that it is healthy, beautiful and exciting, are often attributed to it. In our modern urban world, going back to one’s roots in nature is often regarded as a spiritual journey in which a distant past is rediscovered. This positive connotation and understanding of the natural world today is inspired by the ethics of Green Romanticism of the nineteenth century. The21 Garden of Eden , a concept that is used to describe a pinnacle of nature and its

17_{MacKenzie, J. (1988).}_{The empire of nature: Hunting, conservation and British imperialism. Manchester} University Press; MacKenzie, J. (Ed.). (1990). Imperialism and the natural world. Manchester University Press; Neumann, R. P. (1995). Ways of seeing Africa: Colonial recasting of African society and landscape in Serengeti National Park. Ecumene, 2(2); Adams, W. M., & Mulligan, M. (2003).

Decolonising Nature : Strategies for Conservation in a Post-colonial Era. London: Routledge; Beinart, W.

(1989). Introduction: the politics of colonial conservation. Journal of Southern African Studies, 15(2), 143-162; Beinart, W. (April, 2000). African History and Environmental History. African Affairs 99(395), 269-302.

18_{Stanley, H. (1878). Through the dark continent, or the sources of the Nile, around the great lakes of}

equatorial Africa and down the Livingstone river to the Atlantic ocean. Marston, Searle & Rivington;

Lugard, F. (1892). Travels from the East Coast to Uganda, Lake Albert Edward, and Lake Albert.

Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, 14(12), 817-841; Belgen

redden wildreservaat in Kongo. (1961, Juli 15). De Telegraaf; Geen plaats voor wilde dieren. (1963, April 5). De Telegraaf.

19_{Garland, E. C. (2006). State of nature: colonial power, neoliberal capital, and wildlife management in} Tanzania. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology); Garland, E. (2008). The elephant in the room: confronting the colonial character of wildlife conservation in Africa.

African Studies Review, 51-74; Lekan, T. (2005). German landscape: Local promotion of the Heimat

abroad. The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness, 141-166; Lekan, T. (2011). Serengeti shall not die: Bernhard Grzimek, wildlife film, and the making of a tourist landscape in East Africa. German

History, 29(2), 224-264; Lekan, T. (2016). A Natural History of Modernity: Bernhard Grzimek and the

Globalization of Environmental Kulturkritik. New German Critique 43(2 (128)), 55–82; Mbaria, J., & Ogada, M. (2016). The big conservation lie: the untold story of wildlife conservation in Kenya. Lens & Pens Publishing. 110.

20_{Griffiths, T., & Robin, L. (Eds.). (1997).}_{Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies.} Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 229-230.

21_{Ottum, L., & Reno, S. T. (Eds.). (2016).}_{Wordsworth and the green romantics: Affect and ecology in the}

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similarities to the Christian heaven, has often been applied to the wonders of the East African National Parks. 22 However, Africa’s jungles and savannahs also held a different connotation as they once symbolised danger and darkness. In the nineteenth century, the first explorers also described the continent in these rather negative terms. The way in which Sub-Saharan Africa was regarded thus seems to have changed over the years. It is therefore important to analyse and contextualise the origin and subsequent evolution of the Western concepts of nature that have been so intensively applied to the East African savannah in order to better understand the current state and to determine which Western ideas still dominate and shape the natural world of Africa.

The drastic transformation that Africa’s nature has undergone began with the fascination of Western colonial powers with the supposedly pristine and wild character that was ascribed to Africa's nature. The great animals, untamed nature and dangerous natives they encountered appealed vividly to the imagination. Western conceptions and ideas about nature were and, as will be argued, still are dominant in shaping most Sub-Saharan African environments. In the first chapter of this thesis, the question of how and why conceptions of nature in East Africa began to change during early colonial times. Why did this come to be and how was this imaginary view of nature realized?

The twentieth century and the origins of conservation in East Africa

From the twentieth century onwards, the Western coloniser regarded nature as something that should be preserved and protected. In this period, the first international conservation organisations were founded. As will become clear, in Sub-Saharan Africa, colonial authorities were relatively free to implement their own vision of how nature should be. From the 1930s onwards, Africa was introduced to the concept of the National Park, formulated in the United States and firstly implemented in Africa by the Belgians and British. This had severe consequences for people and places alike. The transformation of Africa’s nature is partly the result of a difference in thought between the industrialized colonisers, who had a view of nature that was highly inspired by Christian morals and notions from the Romantic period, and the many indigenous peoples, who had a rural, pastoral or nomadic way of life in which they were directly dependent on their near environment. Importantly, the colonial narrative became the dominant one in Africa and pushed others aside which made them ultimately obsolete. The marginalisation of many African people therefore also has an ecological dimension to it. There are many developments in the inserted colonial narrative, as we will see, but to this day a division between ‘natural’ and ‘manmade’, as introduced by the coloniser in the beginning of the twentieth century, is still immensely relevant in Africa. Importantly, it helped create the current Western vision of Africa's nature, which can be seen in its portrayal through media like the internet, in films or series, in literature, in documentaries, on the news and in this case, in tourist brochures. In what way were Western convictions, which stem from the first half of the twentieth century, regarding Africa’s nature implemented under early colonisation and how did it set the foundation for future conservation practices?

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Figure 2: The Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, advertised as the Garden of Eden. 23

Decolonisation and its effects on human-nature relations in Africa

Even after decolonisation, the Western school of thought regarding nature seems to have been an influential force in East and Central Africa. Twenty years after the Second World War, when countries like Congo, Tanzania and Kenya were gaining their independence, Western ideas about nature and how nature was regarded, framed and ultimately shaped, continued to remain the norm in these countries. The independence of African countries brought great worries to the Western world, as the survival of many natural places was thought to be at risk. The natural world, once seemingly endless and obstinate, seemed more vulnerable and even threatened by the doing of mankind. This in turn resulted in the efforts of mostly Western NGOs and conservationists who were trying to save Africa's Garden of Eden. When it became clear that natural places and the number of animals began to decline in the second half of the twentieth century, the solutions to the deterioration of nature were also of Western origin.

An utilitarian view of nature, in which it is regarded as a commodity, began to make its impact on the African continent in the twentieth century. This meant that many places 24 and landscapes were altered by people in order to fit in the capitalistic system. Forests were being chopped down, grasslands were made into farmlands and swamps were being drained, all of which led to pressure on natural areas. Nature had to be profitable in order to survive in the modern world as intrinsic arguments were no longer enough. In the capitalistic system, every piece of land is given a price tag which is determined by its

23_{FamilyHoliday. (n.d.).}_{Ngorongoro Crater The Garden of Eden in Africa Tanzania Holiday.} https://www.familyholiday.net/ngorongoro-crater-the-garden-of-eden-in-africa-tanzania/. 24_{Mulder, M. B., & Coppolillo, P. (2005).}_{Conservation.}_34.

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productivity among other factors. However, in the second half of the twentieth century, an utilising purpose was invented and applied to the National Parks in Africa. By letting tourists, scientists and NGOs into the various National Parks, money could be made by the independent African states and nature as envisioned by Westerners could be protected as well. By commercialising these natural areas without harming them, a new incentive was created to protect these places. The introduction of these new utilising systems brought new sets of dynamics to the East African savannah. The need to protect the natural places in Africa by the Western world did not falter with the loss of direct control through colonialism in the 1960s, but took other forms instead. These developments affect how nature is regarded and managed in the beginning years of African independence and are still influential when it comes to current conservation practices. In chapter 4, the focus is therefore on the question: How did old colonial conceptions of nature in the Western school of thought continue to influence conservation practices just before and after the independence of East African countries?

What made Africa a fascinating case is that the African wildlife and supposedly untamed wilderness peaked European interest. In combination with the political and economic circumstances in which colonial regimes were relatively free to do as they pleased, Africa and its nature were one of the most directly affected by Western standards and practices. This pattern of the Western view of nature that dominates Africa’s wildlife and nature continued after decolonisation but took on other forms and became more subtle and indirect instead. Western influence in the interior of Africa continued in the shape of NGOs, scientists or tourist organisations. The effect of Western notions regarding ‘true’ nature and how it should be taken care of caused by decades of (neo)colonialism might be one of the most impactful and lasting in the world. Tourism, conservation and media outings of Africa’s nature are reinforcing stereotypes of not only nature but also of people, symbols and myths of Sub-Saharan Africa. 25 The discourse in which Africa’s nature is treated according to Western interpretations is therefore in need of a revision. The revision should not only reflect the real status of these places in present day Africa but should also encompass the expectations and ideas of the Africans themselves who are still largely being ignored in the debate about nature.

In this thesis, the changing narrative of Western thought regarding Africa's ‘natural’ wonders, exotic animals and colonial subjects will be examined. It is likely that a variety of opinions, dogmas and ultimately policies that are based on these narratives will be encountered. In combination with the hypothesis that the dominant narrative of today can be traced back to the discourse about nature in (neo)colonial times, makes these developments interesting to research. A continuation of Western traditions regarding the East and Central African ‘nature’ is what I expect to encounter in the assorted sources. The main argument is based on various primary and secondary sources that illustrate the canon of the nature-human relation that has been and is still dominated by Western instead of African standards. Although the examples of authors, texts, books and journals that are used in this research project are by no means complete, as countless other ones had to be left out, the sources that were included are representational for the historical generalisations that compromise the discourse about the continuation of Western imperialism in African wildlife and nature.

25_{Dunn, K. C. (2004). Fear of a black planet: anarchy anxieties and postcolonial travel to Africa.}_Third

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Chapter II - The colonisation of Africa: from ‘Dark Continent’

to ‘Garden of Eden’

Ideas and policies that colonialism brought to Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century were mostly based upon ideas and perceptions that were formed during the time when European adventurers ventured into the heart of Africa. In order to examine the discourse regarding the nature-human relationship in Sub-Saharan Africa and especially East and Central Africa, it is important to explore the state of wildlife and its conservation just before the Europeans came to Africa and the period soon after the arrival of Europeans, since many of human-nature relations that are important today, originate from this period. European colonisation took off during the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, in which Africa was divided between the different European powers. In a timespan of 30 years, European states conquered enormous amounts of lands in the African continent. What’s important to 26 note, however, is that the ties between Africa and Europe had already been established much earlier. In other words, before the critical moment of the Berlin Conference, when the supposedly Dark Continent , as it was labeled by Sir Henry Morton Stanley - one of the most famous and influential European explorers of his time - a certain image of Africa had already taken shape in Europe. Importantly, this particular perception of Africa set the tone 27 for later colonisation, as I will explain. This perception, as could be found in popular European culture, was shaped around the supposed dangers of nature and the accompanying challenges that had to be overcome in order to triumph in this hostile environment. The sense of adventure and natural beauty that the savannahs and jungles of East and Central Africa evoke can be traced back to the colonial times. However, the sense of adventure that has been linked to the African jungles and savannas of today held a totally different connotation in the nineteenth century.

In what follows, I will focus on particular developments in the discourse around Africa that took shape from halfway through the nineteenth century. I am aware, of course, that some developments took place before the nineteenth century. The discourse regarding Sub-Saharan Africa before the late nineteenth century is by no means unimportant and might be summarized as generally more positive and less prejudiced than later points in time. According to Brantlinger, the Victorian abolitionist propaganda was the most influential form of writing about Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, 28 the role it had in forming the present-day narrative of Africa's Sub-Saharan nature is minimal and I will leave it out as it is, in my opinion, less important and influential than some other time periods and it would go beyond the scope of this thesis to address more developments from the past. For the sake of clarity and coherence, I will start at a specific period of time namely just when imperialism began to take full swing in Africa as it affected the discourse regarding nature the most.

26_{Press, S. (2017). Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe's Scramble for Africa. Harvard} University Press. 219-220.

27_{Stanley, H. (1878). Through the dark continent, or the sources of the Nile, around the great lakes of}

equatorial Africa and down the Livingstone river to the Atlantic ocean. Marston, Searle & Rivington.

28_{Brantlinger, P. (1985). Victorians and Africans: The Genealogy of the Myth of the Dark Continent.}

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European Explorers in ‘Dark’ Africa

When the Europeans first set foot in Africa, they encountered a world that was mostly unknown to them. Some coastal settlements had been established prior to the nineteenth century but the interior of Africa remained a mystery to the Europeans. The first explorers had to describe this totally different space and employed a narrative in which the East Central African nature and its people were portrayed as the ‘Other’. This well-known concept was first introduced by Hegel and further developed by other scholars. In Hegel’s theory, the concept of the ‘Self’ is explained in relation to the ‘Other’, in which the ‘Other’ is everything the ‘Self’ is not. This so-called ‘Othering’ was further developed by Edward Said in his book Orientalism, in which he criticizes the Western and Eurocentric view of the Orient; a term that is used to generalize the East, which consists of the Middle East and later encompassed East Asia. This appropriation of the Orient was only theoretical at first, but would be applied to developments in reality, such as administral, military and economic policies during imperialistic times. 29 Colonial regimes used this principle to express the differences between the regime and the people they governed. In Africa, emphasis was put on contrasts such as black and white, indigenous and alien, and most importantly in this particular case, between civilised and wild. 30 ‘Othering’ provided a way for the Western powers to process and express the differences they encountered in these unfamiliar places. They did not comprehend the cultural differences they encountered and thought of Western culture as superior. ‘Othering’ eventually became a way to legitimise colonialism. Although the process of ‘Othering’ originated earlier, it became a more common practice at the end of the nineteenth century as the contact between Europe and the rest of the world intensified.

As mentioned before, prior to the occupation of Africa by the European colonial powers, a certain narrative had already been established on which the early colonial occupation could build. Through earlier expeditions, such as the ones by Stanley and David Livingstone, the inner territories of Africa were partially discovered. The quest to discover the seemingly inaccessible interior of Africa started to shape the narrative regarding vast portions of the continent. The travel journals were popular in Europe and spoke greatly to the imagination of the European colonial powers and their inhabitants as they were published in major newspapers and played a central part in the European depiction of Central Africa. A popular theme was the quest in the discovery of the origin of the Nile in which Livingstone and Stanley among others did partake. In these books a picture of Africa is created as a sometimes beautiful but also very dangerous place that was to be overcome. In the following example Stanley gives a depiction of the ‘plain of Ugumbo’ located in present day Tanzania, that he had to cross in his journey to reach the missing Livingstone:

Altogether this side of the picture was not inviting; it exhibited too plainly the true wilderness in its sternest aspect; but perhaps the knowledge that in the bosom of the vast plain before me there was not one drop of water but was bitter as nitre, and undrinkable as urine, prejudiced me against it. 31

29Said, E. (2003). Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient. Penguin Books Limited. 210. 30_{Jones, A., & Manda, D. (2006).}Violence and ‘othering’ in colonial and postcolonial Africa. Case study: Banda’s Malawi. Journal of African cultural studies, 18(2), 197.

31_{Henry, H. M. (2004).}_{How I Found Livingstone. Gutenberg project.} https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5157/5157-h/5157-h.htm

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Also the titles of Stanley and Livingstone books are exemplary of their content: Through the dark continent, Expeditions into the dark continent and The Darkest Africa. What’s important to note, is that these books have an important metaphor in their title, which links tropical Africa to ‘darkness’. 32 It might be said that works such as these set the tone for all Euro-American works about Africa in the years to come. By using the notion of a ‘Dark 33 Africa’, in need of enlightenment by European colonists, the early European explorers like Stanley and Livingstone unknowingly homogenized and simplified a wide variety of places and people, making it harder to differentiate and thus effectively Othering Africa. Creating 34 the contrast between ‘Dark Africa’ and ‘Enlightened Europe’ was achieved through various types of media. According to ‘Constructing the Dark Continent’, by Jarosz (1992), the Dark Continent metaphor that was used to differentiate Africa from Europe was based upon the duality of darkness and light. 35

Figure 3: Book covers of the various expeditions into Africa. 36

This duality consisted of three major factors. As Jarosz points out, the first of these factors was related to religion. The early explorers for example were sometimes portrayed as bringers of light. By means of the Christian faith, the Dark Continent could be enlightened and its heathen inhabitants saved. Subsequently, thousands of Christian missionaries went to Africa to spread the word of God and to combat the alleged darkness and ignorance of its godless inhabitants. Interestingly, the christianisation of Africa continues to this day and many missionary-organisations proudly proclaim that their roots lie at the beginning of

32_{Murray, B. (2016). Building Congo, Writing Empire: The Literary Labours of Henry Morton Stanley.}

English Studies in Africa, 59(1), 6-10.

33_{Jarosz, L. (1992). Constructing the Dark Continent: Metaphor as Geographic Representation of} Africa. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 74(2), 105–115.

34_{Jarosz, L. (1992).}_{Constructing the Dark Continent, 105.} 35_Ibid_{, 104-107.}

36_{Stanley, H. M. (1878).}_{Through the Dark Continent. First American Edition. New York: Harper &} Brothers; Stanley, H. M. (1890). In Darkest Africa. London: Sampson Low; Livingstone, D. (1857). Dr.

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imperialistic times, as illustrated on their various websites. The civilisation mission that the 37 European colonisers initiated is recognised as the second part of the metaphor in which the darkness of Africa had to be expelled by Western enlightenment. By means of commerce, 38 science and the bringing of order, Africa was to be turned into a sensible place where ratio and logic would triumph over the alleged primeval irrationality of the savage customs that the African tribes practiced. The last aspect of the duality between the light of the West and the darkness of Africa, which is most relevant for my thesis, has to do with the difference in environments. Unlike Europe and North America, Africa's nature was first and foremost considered to be inhospitable, dangerous, and indeed, dark. The influence of these journals was considerable as they often attributed to the moral justification of the imperial endeavour.39 This becomes clear in the next citation of Stanley’s book How I found Livingstone, in which he is guessing what precisely moved Livingstone to the inners of Africa:

With every foot of new ground he travelled over he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter bind the Christian nations in bonds of love and charity to the Heathen of the African tropics. If he were able to complete this chain of love—by actual discovery and description of them to embody such peoples and nations as still live in darkness, so as to attract the good and charitable of his own land to bestir themselves for their redemption and salvation—this, Livingstone would consider an ample reward. 40

The tropics of central Africa were deemed almost impenetrable because of the many possible dangers such as tropical diseases, fearsome animals and impassable lands terrains. It also allegedly harboured many dark secrets and mysteries that could pour into the Western mind and make even the bravest of adventurers mad. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, is one of the most famous fictional explorations of (central) Africa. Although Conrad expressed some criticism with regard to the colonial empires that had been established in the inners of Africa, he also portrayed the Congo as a dangerous and mysterious place. Interestingly, in his criticism he suggested that the supposed darkness and evilness that was inherent to the jungles of Africa could also be found in the modern morality of colonisers. 41

In short, then, the image of Sub-Saharan Africa that was created by Western media in the nineteenth century had a rather negative connotation. Unlike Europe or other places in the world, nature was omnipresent in Africa. The state of nature was often not expressed in beauty but rather in threaths. Danger loomed everywhere in the jungle or savanna, be it the fearsome animals, tropical diseases, inaccessible terrain or the savage human-inhabitants. This dogma holds especially true for East and Central Africa, which were largely unexplored and relatively unknown by the West, as the difference between this region and Europe were deemed the greatest. Importantly, besides the notion of a Dark Continent, another aspect that found its way through journals and other media, meant describing the

37_{Africa Inland. (n.d). Vision 2020, In faith, in hope, inland. Retrieved from}

https://eu.aimint.org/about/vision2020/ ; Missionaries of Africa, Serving God's people in Africa since 1868. (n.d). Retrieved from http://www.missionariesofafrica.org/.

38_{Youngs, T. (2017).}Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues, 1850–1900. Manchester University Press.

142.

39_{Lewis, J. (2018).}_{Empire of Sentiment. Cambridge University Press. 246-247.} 40_{Henry, H. M. (2004).}_{How I Found Livingstone.}

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new and unrept lands as ‘empty’. The explorers portrayed Africa as an empty continent that had few things of value. This vast ‘empty’ space ought to be filled with purpose, culture and civilisation of the colonial empires. In short, the early explorers traveled to Africa to promote the three C’s: Christianity, commerce and civilisation.

In The Rhetoric of Empire, David Spurr describes this kind of rhetoric as a form of negation. By describing Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of absence, emphasis was put on the42 difference between ‘civilised’ Europe and ‘primitive’ Africa. This division between Europe and Africa was established by journals such as the ones by Stanley and Livingstone and this image was later extended by the colonial empires. Allegedly, only chaos, primitivism, and lawlessness were to be found in these unknown and exotic places, as can be seen in a comment by Sir Samuel Baker. Baker, the former governor-general of the Equatorial Nile Basin in Sudan, replied as follows as he was questioned by a Times journalist in 1874:

Central Africa … is without a history. In that savage country ... we find no vestiges of the past, no ancient architecture, neither sculpture, nor even one chiselled stone to prove that the Negro of this day is inferior to a remote ancestor. We find primeval races existing upon primitive rock formation .... We must therefore conclude that the races of man which now inhabit this region are unchanged from the prehistoric tribes who were the original inhabitants. 43

According to Sir Samuel Baker then, time was supposedly standing still in the African continent because progress was deemed impossible as it was a place of ever changing laws. By conquering Africa, European powers envisioned themselves as the breakers of this ‘cycle of nothingness’ by pulling Africa from the prehistory into history. The empty lands were to be filled with culture, economic prosperity and progression and these ideas served as a legitimation of the subjugation that followed. This conquest was also in line with the natural order, in which it was explained that it was only natural that the civilised and more advanced people should rule over the undeveloped ones. Besides this idea, other reasons were also put forward for the justification of colonialism. These reasons can be categorised as follows: economic, cultural and religious arguments. Importantly, all arguments could be placed under the umbrella term of the now infamous White man's burden. More specifically, this term denoted a certain cultural superiority which legitimised imperialism as something that was not caused by a desire for power or greed for resources, but rather as a mission to civilise the dark and empty continent that was Africa. Interestingly, this notion can also be applied to the relation that Europeans and Africans had with nature. The following excerpt from natural law, for example, illustrates European views on the cultivation of land:

Land that is left wholly to Nature, that hath no improvement of Pasturage, Tillage, or Planting, is called, as indeed it is, wast[e] . . . As much Land as a Man Tills, Plants, Improves, Cultivates, and can use the Product of, so much is his Property. 44

42_{Spurr, D. (1993).}_{The rhetoric of empire: Colonial discourse in journalism, travel writing, and imperial}

administration. Duke University Press. 92-93.

43_{Cairns, H. & Craig, A. (1965).}_{Prelude to imperialism : British reactions to Central African society}

1840-1890. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (As cited in: Spurr, D. (1993). The rhetoric of empire: Colonial discourse in journalism, travel writing, and imperial administration. Duke University Press. 98-99).

44_Locke, Two Treatises, II, Paragraph 42. (As cited in Arneil, B. (1992). John Locke, natural law and colonialism. History of Political Thought, 13(4), 587-603.

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This quote encompassed an important facet of the Natural Law in which include the allocation of land in the new colonies . The neglect and denying of indigenous rights by colonial authorities of the occupants of the New World in the seventeenth century is another parallel to the treatment of the inhabitants of Central and East Africa in the nineteenth century. When a piece of land was seemingly free of agriculture or could be used for other kinds of production capacities, this parcel could be legally used by the colonial or imperialistic powers as indigenous people had no legitimate grounds in the eyes of the Western colonisers. Because territories in Africa were often regarded as uncultivated wastelands by their colonisers, the Europeans considered them to be available for appropriation. All over the world, European colonisers denied any form of authority to the45 indigenous people as they supposedly did not cultivate or improve their lands. Only other European powers were considered to be legitimate sovereignties. The complete division of Africa at the Berlin conference table, without any regard for Africa’s inhabitants, is perhaps the best example of this notion.

The first ecological changes induced by Europeans

With the colonisation of Sub-Saharan Africa in the nineteenth century, African regions were increasingly integrated within the commercial networks of the world. The transformation to a more production-based economy, in which commodities like palm oil, minerals, cloves and ivory were produced, reshaped the relation of communities with their environment. 46

When the first European hunters came to East Africa, they mainly sought the valuable ivory that was previously imported by the Arab Sultanates from the coasts. By ‘cutting out the middleman’, European hunters took it upon themselves to hunt large quantities of elephant, resulting in a sharp decline of the elephant population in East Africa. Elephants favor bushlike areas instead of the grassy plains as they prefer to browse instead of graze. With removal of these big browsers, trees and bush could grow denser, contributing to the tsetse fly increase at the end of the nineteenth century. In this way, the commercial hunting of 47 foreigners also contributed to a change of the landscape of eastern Africa. The exploitation of Africa by their colonial masters was accompanied with a considerate environmental destruction. However, the increase of the commercial hunt of elephants was by no means48 the most impactful change instigated by foreign invaders.

Like other examples from around the world, colonialism and the movement of both people and animals that ensued through the new global connections created serious consequences for the African continent. More specifically, almost simultaneously with the arrival of Europeans, an outbreak of disease swept through Africa. This epidemic had serious consequences for the outlook of Europeans on Africa’s nature. When the English and Germans arrived at the savannas of East Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, they encountered mostly empty lands that were seemingly devoid of people. This was in fact the result of the rinderpest, which had had a devastating impact on the cattle, wildlife and eventually human inhabitants of Africa. The disease originated from Asia and was brought to the shores of Somalia by the Italians. In 1891 the epidemic had spread to East Africa and

45_{Arneil, B. (1992).}_{John Locke, natural law and colonialism. 601.}

46_{Maddox, G. (2006). Sub-Saharan Africa: an environmental history. ABC-CLIO. 103-104.} 47_{Ibid. 189-190.}

48_{Murphy, J. (2009). Environment and imperialism: why colonialism still matters.}_{Sustainability}

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was moving south until it finally reached the Cape in 1897. Researchers have estimated that 49 the total of killed cattle in Africa lies somewhere between 75 and 225 million. The journal of 50 the African Union states that the rinderpest decimated two thirds of the cattle in Tanzania. The rinderpest eventually led to a great famine and was mostly felt by hunters and pastoralists who were directly dependent on these animals. However, not only did the rinderpest lay waste to cattle and other animals, in many places where agriculture was practiced, such as in South-East Africa, more misfortune followed, as severe droughts, devastating locusts swarms and tsetse flies which harboured diseases that also harmed the continent. Famine ensued and other diseases like smallpox and typhoid followed due to51 malnourishment. Many pastoralists, like the Maasai for example, felt these consequences most severely and were forced to move away in search of food. As some scholars have pointed out, the natural calamities that had such an impact on Africa had long lasting consequences as the social-economic status of many Africans was eroded by the agricultural and pastoral crises. 52 What’s more, these long lasting effects of the rinderpest have eventuated in a more coercive and ultimately easier colonisation of South and East Africa, as the social-economic position of Africans was diminished by their loss of livelihood. 53

Now that I have discussed the effects of the rinderpest on human life, I would like to turn to the following question: what kind of effects did these natural calamities such as the rinderpest have on wild animal populations? Upon taking a closer look, it might be said that the effects can be divided between short term and long term effects. Not only did the disease affect the cattle of pastoralists, it also had an effect on particular game species. The epidemic quickly swept through the continent, and besides cattle, wildlife such as buffalo’s, deer, and other cloven-hoofed animals were affected at large. According to Clive Spinage, who based his estimation on primary sources mostly written by Europeans, over forty species were affected by the rinderpest. Buffalo and eland populations suffered the most while elephants and rhinos were less affected. Big herds disappeared and were forced to retreat to bushlike 54 terrain where the animals were more isolated and less likely to be infected by the rinderpest. One of the earliest reports from Uganda states:

This plague has practically exterminated all the buffalo, which formerly were to be met with in great herds. It has also attacked much of the game, especially the eland, and, I believe, the pig [warthog]. Some of the small antelope (especially the bushbuck) have suffered; but the waterbuck, hartebeest and zebra, appear to have enjoyed complete immunity. The giraffe has died out; but the elephant, rhinoceros and hippo are untouched. 55

49_{Mack, R. (1970). The great African cattle plague epidemic of the 1890's. Tropical animal health and}

production, 2, 210-219.

50_{African Union. (2010). History of rinderpest eradication from Africa: impact, lessons learnt and way} forward. African Union (AU), Addis Ababa. 2.

51_{Pribyl, K., Nash, D., Klein, J., & Endfield, G. (2019). The role of drought in agrarian crisis and social} change: The famine of the 1890s in south-eastern Africa. Regional Environmental Change, 19(8),

2686-2689.

52_{Pribyl, K. and others. (2019). The role of drought in agrarian crisis. 2694.}

53_{Spinage, C. A. (2003).} Cattle plague: a history. Springer Science & Business Media. 637-638. 54_{Ibid. 638-639.}

55_{Lugard, F. (1892). as quoted in Spinage, C.A. (2003).}_{Cattle plague: a history. Springer Science &} Business Media. 640.

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Since many Europeans did not have a frame of reference of the situation under ‘normal’ circumstances, and thus did not know how many animals had died or survived, they had to rely on the information given to them by Africans. The effects of the rinderpest are therefore hard to measure as the concerned areas were huge and the impact it had on different species was uncertain. In the short term, many cattle as well as other wild animal species died because of the disease, which obviously had a negative effect on wild-animal populations. In the long term however, a contradicting effect took place as the rinderpest opened the way for another disease. With grazer populations suffering, tsetse flies who feed on these animals diminished at first, thereby reducing the sleeping sickness or trypanosomatidae that they brought with them. Unlike the rinderpest, sleeping sickness directly affects humans as well as cattle and is still a major problem in Africa. With the disappearance of many grazers, vegetation could grow wildly, transforming grasslands into environments with more bush, that served as ideal breeding grounds for the tsetse fly. The relocations and decline of people contributed to the loss of environmental-control, as areas that were previously controlled with bush-burning and the grazing of cattle were now left unattended. Because pastoralists evaded tsetse fly-rich areas, bushlike environments could grow even more, thus strengthening the impact of the tsetse flies, which prevented the pastoralist to return to these areas. By the transformation of environments in favor of wildlife, wildlife populations recovered much faster than the pastoralists and their cattle. 56Despite, tsetse flies, rinderpest and being vigorously hunted by Europeans, wild animal populations seem to have recovered at the beginning of the twentieth century.

When the European colonists came to Central and East Africa in greater numbers, they encountered many empty lands because many pastoralists had moved to areas that were safe from tsetse flies. These empty lands fit their expectations of pristine wilds, seemingly not (yet) touched by men, as was previously created by the exploration journals and hunting stories. The lack of people and the apparently unused lands gave colonial regimes the incentive to cultivate these lands and make them productive. It seems that the white colonial regimes began to act to make these ‘wildlands’ habitable or at least give them a purpose and in doing so fulfill their plight of the White Man's Burden.

The beginning of the civilisation mission

By looking at the discourse of Western views in the long nineteenth century about the nature of Central and East Africa, a few elements are standing out. As pointed out before, an important facet is that the early writings about the inners of Africa and its wilderness had a mainly negative connotation. The descriptions of the journeys of the European explorers were full of the danger of fearsome animals, inaccessible terrain, hostile and savage inhabitants, foul tropical diseases and the mysterious darkness of the unknown. The liberal usage of the word ‘dark’ in various forms of literature helped create an adverse image that had to be overcome: in other words, Africa had to be enlightened. As illustrated in this quote from Frederick Lugard, colonial administrator in Sub-Saharan Africa, the notion of Africa as a Dark Continent still resonated at the end of the nineteenth century:

To many people in England, Africa is still a great Dark Continent, the continent of our childhood, when we pictured the vast interior as something between a great Sahara and a vast swamp, a land of 56_{Pearce, F. (2000). Inventing Africa.}_{New scientist, 167(2251), 30-32.}