2. Seminar questions

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  How did colonial hunting and policy develop over the colonial period?

-       1800s explorers and missionaries arrived in Africa and hunted for skins and ivory.

-       Missionaries from colonial Europe came over to covert Africans, and found to their delight a plentiful supply of game and wild animals to hunt.

-       They bargained with the local authorities for hunting rights and land ownership.

-       A good missionary was simultaneously a good hunter à locals would ally if the colonialists gave them guns. Also,, they found they could guarantee labourers if they paid through meat: missionaries in particular did not have vast funds for their work, so paid through meat to avoid loss of money.

-       More and more explorers arrived, each hunting and damaging the wildlife either ‘for science or the pot’. They would take home skulls and entire bodies of exotic animals for display in both museums and their own homes as trophies from their expeditions.

-       Roosevelt is arguably the most famous hunter in this time, known for his outrageously destructive hunting trips but also for his implementation of conservation within policy.

-       Roosevelt noticed on a hunting trip to Dakota that there were no game to shoot. Thus he implemented ‘conservation strategies’ in America during his presidency which were later transferred to Africa.

-       These included the creation of national parks and reserves to prevent hunting from occurring in particular spaces, as well as the introduction of the hunting liscence: only those who could afford to were able to hunt, namely Europeans.

-       Hunting to The Hunt: Hunting became a gentleman’s game, whereby the introduction of the Code of Conduct meant that only certain methods of hunting were deemed acceptable and humane: shoot to kill not to cripple. Any traditional African methods were deemed inhumane and unacceptable. It was seen that to kill for food was not very evolved.

-       Africans were seen to be the main reason for the depletion of game, despite the fact that their methods of hunting were far less competent than those of the Europeans. Africans had previously hunted only for subsistence, to support themselves. Yet with the introduction of guns, many more animals had been killed.

-       As a result of this, local Africans were eventually completely excluded from the hunt: they could not afford the hunting licences, and were considered by many (for example, German guy) to have no place in ‘pristine Africa’: the creation and effect of national parks shall only be successful if humans have no part in them. No human should live in a reserve.

-       This view resulted in hundreds of native people’s including the Maasai being moved out of the land which they had lived in and around for many thousands of years.

-       Anthropomorphism of animals contrasted the view of Africans by the colonials. There was a general acceptance of killing Africans as justifiable: they

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