Paper short abstract:

Drawing on a case study of geological exploration in colonial French West Africa, I ask how geological understandings of ethnicity, history and human-nature relationships shaped colonial ethnography and its codification in colonial rule.

Paper long abstract:

Scholars have long attended to how anthropologists shaped colonial understandings of African “tribes” and “customs.” Earth scientists, employed by colonial states to survey the territory’s resources, also generated ethnographic knowledge that shaped colonial policy and practice. This paper centers on geologists who carried out mineral prospecting in the federation of French West Africa (Afrique Occidentale Française) in the early decades of colonial rule. As geologists deepened their knowledge about the land, they also learned regional languages and histories. Contrary to the emphasis placed by colonial-era anthropologists on the supposed origins of isomorphic and homogenous “tribes” in the federation, geologists underscored how histories of forced migration and violence created ethnic diversity on the land. French geologists, for example, wrote about how the legacies of Atlantic-era enslavement encouraged multiethnic settlements, or maroon communities, in the highlands of Cote d’Ivoire. Drawing on this case, I ask how geological understandings of ethnicity, history and human-nature relationships shaped colonial ethnography and the ways in which ethnography became codified in colonial rule. This inquiry takes part in a multi-disciplinary project to interrogate how the earth sciences—and vernacular geological knowledge—have shaped political power in the formerly colonized world.