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- Convenors:
-
Dmitri Van den Bersselaar
(Universität Leipzig)
Jean Sebastian 'Baz' Lecocq (Humboldt University of Berlin)
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Short Abstract:
This panel invites papers from a historicizing perspective that explore continuities and changes in transport and travel in Africa, with a focus not so much on the connections, but on the intended and unintended disruptions of social, cultural, economic, and political relations and structures.
Long Abstract:
This panel seeks to explore continuities and changes in modes of transport and travel in Africa, with a focus not so much on the connections, but particularly on the intended and unintended disruptions of social, cultural, economic, and political relations and structures. The development of transport and its infrastructure is often imagined as a history of growth, increasing connectivity, and globalisation. However, this development has not only been uneven, it has also involved disconnections and disruptions alongside connections and flows.
Travel and transport alter patterns of human power and hierarchy, enabling to either strengthen or weaken, enhance or disrupt them. Over time, these patterns have changed, in part through the interactions between technological developments, the organisation of transport and its infrastructure, and other material and immaterial institutions within and between different societies.
Changes in means of transport and the ways people, goods and ideas travel, can be either complementary (or parallel) to existing connections, strengthening established relations and structures, but they can also disrupt them; leaving places previously connected disjointed from networks of social and economic interactivity, or rupturing cultural, economic and social structures depending on older forms of spatial (im)mobility.
We invite papers across the disciplines that engage from a historicizing perspective the connections and disruptions transport and travel bring about, involving all forms of transport and travel across time in, to, and from Africa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 14 June, 2019, -Miriam Musonye (University of Nairobi)
Paper short abstract:
This paper proposes to read matatu as public spaces which embody various forms of disruptions namely; disruption of social codes; human interactions; and gender identities. It investigates how these disruptions play out and the impact of travel and related technologies on social trends.
Paper long abstract:
Public transportation in Africa remains central to socio-economic realities within the continent. In Kenya, for example, the market-driven private-owned public transport system known as matatu is a major player in the economy and a key influence on social trends. Although the matatu sub-sector's fundamental role is the transportation of people and goods, it also acts as a key site of popular culture especially in urban areas. As a mode of transport, matatu connect people in different locations across the country and at the same time, bring people of different walks of life together in these public transport vehicles; consequently, matatu are seen as means of connection. While this connecting element is a defining factor of matatu as technologies of travel; as public spaces, matatu embody various forms of disruptions which this paper proposes to analyze. The matatu vehicle puts together people of different ages and social standings and subjects them to the same discourses such as radio and TV shows, music, visual art and talk from the crew in a manner that does not normally happen outside this confined space and this has the potential to cause ruptures in this social context. I propose to focus on three forms of disruptions namely; disruption of social codes; disruption of human interactions; and disruption of gender identities. I seek to investigate how these disruptions play out in the matatu transport sub-sector and what this implies about the impact of travel and related technologies on social trends.
Peter Lambertz (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses the early postcolonial origins and the development of the DR Congo's wooden baleinières and their multiplication and spread across the waterways of the Congo basin in the times before, during and after Zaire's socioeconomic crisis.
Paper long abstract:
In the 1990s Zaire's state-owned system of passenger transportation by larger carrier boats inherited from colonial times came gradually to a halt. Together with a vanishing road network the end of the "Office National du Transport" (ONATRA) entailed a disruption in the colonial transport geography, causing more "informal" means of transportation such as canoes and the larger "baleinières" to become crucial lifelines and agents of transport and change across the Congo basin. Nowadays propelled by Chinese Diesel engines, and depending on the navigational skills and knowledge of old riverine communities, they combine old and new, local and imported materials and craftsmanship in order to face Congo's transport-related disruptions, thus causing new connections to come about. Based on ethnographic and oral historical research in the provinces of Tshopo and Mai-Ndombe, the paper discusses the early postcolonial origins and the development of the DR Congo's wooden baleinières and their multiplication and spread across the Congo basin in the times before, during and after Zaire's socioeconomic crisis.
David Drengk (Technical University Dresden)
Paper short abstract:
This paper provides an account of the 1910 Abbey revolt in Côte d'Ivoire, demonstrating how colonial infrastructure projects often lead to unintended socioeconomic disruption in local environments. In such contexts, it is vital to consider the two sides of the story of colonial transport endeavours.
Paper long abstract:
In January 1910, a group of the Ivorian population, the Abbey, stood up against the French colonial administration in the area around Agboville. Within one month, they attacked and destroyed the railway lines in their forests, derailed trains, and ruined telegraph lines. Train stations and some French administrative posts were under siege, and the colonizers could only regain control of the critical infrastructure systems with enormous military effort in the dense Ivorian forests. This paper shows that the railways system constructed by the colonial power had a two-fold impact. First, it made previously deserted regions accessible by land transport, thus facilitating the systematic economic exploitation of the forest. In contrast, it interfered with existing local and regional trade networks, economies, and means of social organization. I argue that the rigorous disarmament campaign by the French and the construction of the railway line itself meant a fundamental violation of the Abbeys' integrity. Hunting grounds, agricultural land and economic predominance in the area were under threat, and economic and social structures were ruptured. Archival documents from the French and Ivorian national archive illustrate how colonial infrastructure projects often led to unintended social and economic disruption. This contribution adds an unexplored facet to the discussion; It presents the other side of the story of (colonial) infrastructure endeavours and highlights the impacts experienced by the local population of the Abbey.
Annette Skovsted Hansen (Aarhus University)
Paper short abstract:
Shipping has and still interferes with the present Ghana as it connects the area to the rest of the world over the oceans. This paper discusses shipping as global history integrating African histories and argues that the Port of Tema is key to the world of shipping historically and today.
Paper long abstract:
Some historians have focused on specific products to write global histories, others have focused on single oceans as spaces of global history. However, this paper uses shipping as a way to show how people, states, and companies have connected and interfered in local affairs through the shipping industry as new technologies, products, and entrepreneurs have changed and benefitted over centuries. The specific focus of this paper will be the ports of Ghana, formerly known to Europeans as the Gold Coast, and how shipping of slaves, fish, oil, and much more has connected Ghana to the Americas, Europe, and Asia since the 1400s and how the largest shipping company in the world, Maersk, gained their preferential status at Tema Port. Based on critical readings of archival findings, recent reports, and interviews, the paper argues that the Port of Tema is key to the world of shipping, historically and today. Nevertheless, the interests of the shipping industry have not always coincided with those of local stakeholders. The paper raises questions on how and when the Port of Tema has worked on its own terms, as well as, how and when shipping on Tema has disrupted shipping elsewhere. The argument is that shipping as an industry has a history involving places on its own terms and only, secondarily, the terms of the places it connects.