| dc.description.abstract | This thesis seeks to provide a fresh perspective on imperial hunting in Africa, c. 1870-1914, and its entangled discourses using a material culture approach. Specifically, it analyses imperial hunting using the systemic logic of collecting as theorised by Jean Baudrillard (1994) and takes hunting travelogues published in this period as its source material. The bulk of these travelogues and the subsequent historiography on imperial hunting see its practices and symbolism in terms of projecting imperial power and maintaining racial divides. By contrast, this thesis argues that viewing hunting trophies (both those produced from animal bodies and photographs of live animals) as objects to be possessed and collected reveals the underlying anxieties and fears about the effects of civilisation that shaped colonial discourses. This is manifested most clearly in the production of trophies as ‘perfect’ specimens and the impossibility of possessing Africa’s wildlife. Furthermore, viewing ‘camera hunting’ through this theory of collecting reveals a new perspective on the shift from imperial sport hunting to wildlife photography, conservationism and the formation of game reserves around the turn of the century: namely, it reveals the underlying systemic logic that created the need for a pristine wilderness. In sum, this thesis argues that analysing hunting trophies and African wildlife as objects provides a new perspective on the scientific and aesthetic discourses and practices through which the imaginative geography of Africa was constructed in British imperial culture. | |
