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- Convenors:
-
Claudia Berger
(Erfurt University)
Stephanie Zehnle (University of Kiel)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussants:
-
Claudia Berger
(Erfurt University)
Sarah Ehlers (Deutsches MuseumLMU Munich)
Perseverence Madhuku (University of Bayreuth)
Dennis Yazici (Kiel University)
Klemens Wedekind (Hildesheim University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Linguistic and visual (de)colonialisms
- Location:
- Room 1015
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the rarely discussed connection between human and/or animal disease and media visualisation, particularly cartography, in Africa's past.
Long Abstract:
Epidemic diseases on the African continent were a defining theme of European colonialism. Firstly, epidemics were fuelled by different variants of colonial mobility and activities, secondly, some epidemics opposed colonisation by weakening and killing European staff and livestock, and thirdly epidemics served as a legitimising argument in favour of colonisation. The reality of epidemic diseases for humans and animals, as well as the representation of the 'nature - culture' nexus in visual media, will be discussed in this panel. To what extent, for example, did the need to be able to assess the risk of such diseases for expansion and economic exploitation influence mapping strategies found in colonial cartography? Which kind of visualisation strategies did authors of colonial cartography choose, and what kind of human-animal relations were they based on? How was cartography influenced by other genres of colonial scientific and health communication? Which perceptions of territoriality were supported or contradicted by the maps or by the experience on the ground? This panel takes a multi-perspective approach to the problem of epidemic diseases in a colonial African setting and invites us to take a closer look at colonial visualisation strategies concerning disease and the environment.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 8 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Based on the project “Cartographies of Africa and Asia (1800-1945)”, the presentation analyses the depiction of diseases in Africa by German colonial cartography. The focal point is the collection of Justus Perthes Gotha, a famous cartographic publishing house during High Imperialism.
Paper long abstract:
Based on research for the project “Cartographies of Africa and Asia (1800-1945). A Project for the Digitization of Maps of the Perthes Collection Gotha”, the presentation gives insights into the development of the depiction of diseases in Africa by German colonial cartography. The focal point is the collection and works of one of the most important German cartographic publishing houses during the era of High Imperialism, the Justus Perthes Publishing House in Gotha (Justus Perthes Geographische Anstalt).
The dangers of the “foreign” are a popular topic in colonial cartography, highlighting the heroism as well as the usefulness of the discipline itself as well as feeding into existing myths of the “other”, which legitimized the exploitation of faraway peoples and lands. One of these dangers were sicknesses, which were also depicted in cartography, attributing it to the landscape and thereby inscribing them into the landscape, as if they were permanent features like mountains, rivers or lakes.
Justus Perthes Gotha was a very influential cartographic publishing house in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a first and foremost economic endeavor, an enterprise, whose main aim was to generate a profit, they excelled in collecting geographic data. Under the auspices of August Petermann, one of their most influential head cartographers, they even went on to organize expeditions. When Germany’s Colonial project started, Perthes welcomed it with a specialized atlas of Africa and a Foreword firmly encouraging colonization.
Paper short abstract:
Via the example of medical maps produced during the sleeping sickness epidemics in colonial Africa, this paper illuminates how spatial practices shaped colonial conceptions of territory, nature and disease.
Paper long abstract:
At the beginning of the 20th century, sleeping sickness epidemics broke out in various parts of colonial Africa. Particularly in the densely-populated areas along the shores and on the islands of Lake Victoria, the disease spread unhampered and caused escalating death tolls. Colonial responses to the epidemic were closely tied to colonial governance, combining pharmaceutical with ecological techniques of disease control. Maps were crucial for this new field of inquiry. For officials managing the challenges of colonial administration, knowledge gathered in sleeping sickness maps and documentation was interesting for many more reasons than the disease itself. Conversely, for scientists participating in the sleeping sickness expeditions, the relative openness of their field of inquiry allowed for testing their own hypotheses about the relation between disease and place. Using sleeping sickness maps as a way of exploring entanglements between medical concerns and colonial governance, this paper illuminates how spatial practices shaped conceptions of territory, nature and disease. Through examining medical maps not only as visual representations but also as sources of knowledge, shapers of assumptions and as tools of political power, it seeks to explore in which ways disease control created openings for the articulation of colonial visions of the African environment.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the centrality of maps and map making during smallpox control programms in Africa. Mapping epidemics, allowed for the othering of Africa and Africans' ideas about the disease and its control measures, yet and at a local level it became an instrument of governmentality.
Paper long abstract:
When in the late 1960s, the World Health Organisation announced its global smallpox eradication plan, there existed a huge collection of maps. Clearly, smallpox control programmes in many parts depended heavily on thorough data collection and mapping, yet scholarship has remained silent on the centrality of maps to the visual culture of public health. This paper explores the role of disease maps in the final stages of smallpox eradication in Africa. Using maps from the World Health organisation databases and archival data, this paper argues that data from this collection helped define the smallpox problem and challenge of eradication in Africa, particularly the presumed resistance to control measures. More importantly, maps became medium and primary articulators of power, serving the interests of global health experts. However, in Africa, specifically in colonial Zimbabwe, disease maps increasingly became central to the visual culture of public health and exerted broad influence on debates over labour migration and governmentality. Not only did mapping pathologised migrants from Nyasaland and Portuguese East Africa but also fostered the idea of Portuguese East Africa as inherently a distinct place of sickness.