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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Dogs, Poison and the Meaning of Colonial Intervention in the Transkei, South Africa
Author:Tropp, JacobISNI
Year:2002
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:43
Issue:3
Period:November
Pages:451-472
Language:English
Geographic terms:South Africa
Transkei
Subjects:social relations
colonial policy
wildlife protection
colonialism
History and Exploration
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/4100603
Abstract:In the 1890s and 1900s in the Transkei, South Africa, colonial relations were severely strained as Cape colonial officials attempted to constrain African men's hunting activities by systematically poisoning and shooting their dogs. For colonial foresters, such efforts were part of a larger strategy to 'protect' flora and fauna by controlling African environmental activities and mobility more thoroughly. Yet on the ground in many areas, State-sponsored dog-killing was drawn into more complex understandings of, and popular frustrations with, transformations in local landscapes and livelihoods during this period. As rural men and women responded to the particular changes in their local political ecologies arising from colonial wildlife preservation policies, they also located conflicts over state forestry and its policies of exclusion within broader popular experiences of political, economic and ecological subordination. In several communities, rumours and stories proliferated, connecting the killing of dogs to other official attempts to poison and bewitch Africans, their animals and their landscapes. Such stories were ways for people to express deeper concerns over the spreading influence of colonial power in their daily practices and its toll on local communities' health and welfare. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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