Paper short abstract:

This paper compares climate knowledges amongst Europeans in southeast Africa between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It examines shifts in climate knowledge over time and explores the crystallisation of climate coloniality in the region.

Paper long abstract:

Climate was one amongst a select number of recurring themes in documents detailing the long history of colonial occupation in Mozambique. While writings on local climatic hazards such as drought and floods have received more attention in recent years (e.g. Hannaford and Beck 2021), for the most part African climates were conceptualised and described in terms of their (in)salubrity and perceived implications for colonial expansion. This presentation traces the deep history of such colonialities of climate knowledge in southeast Africa from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. For most of the period the focus is primarily on Portuguese records, but the paper seeks to compare and contrast these with climate knowledges emanating from later (nineteenth century) writings found within the archives of other colonial powers. The implications of climate knowledges for material practices are also considered.