UC Berkeley

ABSTRACT

Imperial Ark? The Politics of Wildlife in East and South-Central Africa, 1920-1992

by

Jeffrey Schauer

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, Berkeley

Professor James Vernon, Chair

The dissertation examines the "politics of wildlife" in British colonies in East and South-Central Africa during the colonial era and after independence. By conceptualizing that "politics" around the institutions, individuals, and interests that took an interest in wildlife matters, the dissertation attends to the emergence of and changes in wildlife policy as they were shaped by the characteristics of colonial rule and a broader set of regional, imperial, and global developments, including decolonization and post-Second World War internationalism. It also attends to the influence of Africans on shaping colonial wildlife policy, whether as farmers, nationalists, or local officials. The central discovery of this dissertation is that wildlife policy moved from being the preserve of an imperial lobby to a policy sphere governed by the concerns of various sectors of local colonial society. After the Second World War, security concerns combined with a strengthened international preservationist movement to effectively internationalise Africa's wildlife. This occurred alongside Africanization, a policy pursued by newly-independent governments in order to shore up their own control over policymaking, and the arrival of international scientists, who sought to introduce their own priorities to the wildlife sector. In this seven-decade contest between those interests which were local, colonial, or national on the one hand, and those which were imperial, international, or global on the other, a surprising array of interests sought to capture East and South-Central Africa's wildlife sector for ambitions related to economic development, anti-colonial campaigning, preservationist advocacy, scientific inquiry, administrative supremacy, and colonial and national security. Over time, struggles for the control of this sector reflected broader trends at the global and local levels, marking the ascendancy and eclipse of colonial empires, and the rise of a neo-colonial order.