Hunting : themes and variations -- The nineteenth-century hunting world -- Hunting and African societies -- Hunting and settlement in southern Africa -- Game and imperial rule in Central Africa -- Exploration, conquest and game in East Africa -- The imperial hunt in India -- From preservation to conservation : legislation and the international dimension -- Reserves and the tsetse controversy -- National parks in Africa and Asia -- Shikar and safari : hunting and conservation in the British empire -- Appendices. The game legislation of the African colonies and India -- A colonial game law : Northern Rhodesia, 1925 -- The membership of the Society for the Preservation of the (Wild) Fauna of the Empire -- Game and the independent African state : the Arusha Manifesto, 1961
Summary:
Imperialism was more than a set of economic, political, and military phenomena. It was a habit of mind, a dominant idea in the era of European world supremacy which had widespread intellectual, cultural, and technical expressions. Changing approaches to hunting constitute an important theme in human history. The pursuit and killing of animals has invariably developed ideological overtones and both literature and the pictorial arts have tended to stress the mythic, courtly, and martial rather than the purely practical aspects of the chase. Nineteenth century European hunters--aware of this rich tradition--turned hunting into a symbolic activity of global dominance, and thus of the culture of imperialism. Hunting was closely connected to economics, social functions, the study of natural history, and the technological development of firearms, while being subject to complex legislation. This volume examines hunting as one focus of the interaction of Europeans with Africans and Indians, while illuminating the nature of imperial power when exercised in the relationship between humans and the natural world.
