Paper short abstract:

The paper is on visualizations of space as expression of environmental perception. The materialized objects are crucial for reproducing history. They re-present a situated knowledge which is related to people who were moving to, through or from a region with intentions, imaginations or expectations.

Paper long abstract:

The Western Plateau of today’s Tanzania is comparatively sparsely populated. However, for decades it provided an area of encounter and refuge to different people. The arrival of the Ngoni in the area was accompanied by decades of turbulence, former enslaved people sought shelter in the plateau’s woodland, Uvinza’s inhabitants came to the region to maintain social and political contacts or they followed economic objectives, Nyamwezi, Swahili and Arabs passed by transporting goods on the long-distance trade, European missionaries and so-called explorers crossed the area on their way to promising fields, Tongwe were relocated from the region to avoid epidemics, and Rwandese and Burundians were settled in there for security and humanitarian reasons.

This paper is part of a historical research project on mobility, migration and environmental transformation which covers Tanzania’s Western Plateau in a period of roughly one hundred years (1870s-1980s). Based on extensive archive material, categories like missionaries, travellers and refugees are analysed as references to and as expressions of environmental perception. They constitute nodes for the creation of space within the process of knowledge production. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the paper presents examples of visual materializations of space, focussing on imaginations (e.g. “civilizing mission”), processes of annexation (e.g. colonialism), transformations and visions (e.g. REDD+).

By emphasising diverse identities, the arbitrariness and impermanence of space, knowledge and categorization becomes obvious, but also perspectives and hidden or underlying intentions. It is the aim of this paper to offer examples of alternative interpretations of colonial data.