Black Poachers, White Hunters: A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya

by Edward I. Steinhart

Overview

For centuries, Kenya’s game-laden plains and forests were the rewarding hunting grounds of her native African population. Black Poachers, White Hunters traces the history of hunting there in the colonial era, describing the British attempt to impose the practices and values of nineteenth-century European aristocratic hunts. This both created and enforced an image of African inferiority and subordination. Ultimately conservationists came to claim sovereignty over African wildlife, completing the transformation of indigenous hunters into criminal poachers and seeking to eliminate them altogether from the “sportsman’s paradise” of Kenya.ABOUT THE AUTHOR—-Edward I. Steinhart is an associate professor of history at Texas Tech University, Lubbock.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821416648
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	01/10/2006
Series:	Eastern African Studies
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Edward I. Steinhart is an associate professor of history at Texas Tech University, Lubbock.

Editorial Reviews

Edward Steinhart's new book invites Kenya's historians to expand our understanding of colonial political life. Steinhart convincingly shows that the control over wild animals was a key area of conflict between Africans, settlers and colonial officials. Where in precolonial eastern Kenya people developed a dynamic hunting tradition, white settlers and government officials presumed that they were naturally the owners of Kenya's wildlife. White hunters disparaged Africans' courage and skill, while post-Second World War conservationists regarded African hunters as poachers, illegally intruding on sacrosanct national parks. Debates over the ownership of Kenya's wildlife, argues Steinhart, were central in the definition of 'what it has meant to be Kenyan, what it meant to be male and what it continues to mean to be civilized'. Where scholars have often characterized colonial Kenya's history as a struggle over land and labour, this book enables us to see how debates over the control of animals shaped colonial political life. ...this readable book deserves attention both from Kenya's political historians and from the growing company of scholars exploring the problematic origins of conservationism. - Derek R. Peterson in JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY
The protracted struggle for control over African wildlife parallels the ongoing struggle over land, which has been far more thoroughly chronicled. This exciting, accessible and challenging book is a timely addition to the literature. ...Kenya today is rife with talk of who 'owns' wildlife and who has the right to manage and hunt it (let alone shoot poachers), within a broader context of debates over national heritage and the future of national parks. This book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to enter the fray, by first arming themselves with the historical facts. - Lotte Hughes in AFRICAN AFFAIRS
...enjoyable, readable and original book. - Dan Brockington, University of Oxford

From the Publisher