Imposing Wilderness and Imagining Serengeti (Dual Book Review)

                               

Neumann, Roderick. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002.

Shetler, Jan. Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape and Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Time to the Present. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007.

Here we will be looking at two books on similar subjects. Roderick P. Neumann’s Imposing Wilderness and Jan Shetler’s Imagining Serengeti both seek to unravel the true histories of the lands now under the jurisdiction of natural conservation parks in Tanzania, the former Arusha and latter Serengeti. They reveal that prior to colonization the landscapes were in fact shaped and used by the indigenous peoples. Though not building towns and cities in the vein of European cultures, they did consider the landscape their home and property. This changed in the 19^th Century. In Imagining Serengeti, the peoples of the Serengeti were temporarily displaced by a series of disasters in the mid 19^th century, among them Masai invasions and several droughts and famines. When the European colonizers arrived and saw no settlement on much of the land, they assumed that they were on a pristine land untouched by man’s intervention. They decided to keep it that way as a game preserve, setting the stage for the Serengeti National Park. Likewise, in Imposing Wilderness the colonizers believed that the wildlife and land needed to be preserved. In both cases indigenous peoples exercising their old land and hunting rights were mislabeled as villainous poachers. This mindset has continues today. Many within the Tanzanian government do not necessarily hold this viewpoint, but side with the exclusion of local peoples in order to acquire funding from international conservationist groups. Many who trespass or poach on the parks are merely trying to support themselves or see themselves as dispensing justice against park policies which cut off traditional resources. Overall, Neumann and Shetler want conservationists to understand that wildlife issues in Africa are not black-and-white, that the zealous fight to preserve wildlife is actually harming many indigenous peoples and trapping them in a cycle of poverty.

Neumann and Shetler’s books are eye-opening and appear to suggest that a moderate adjustment to national park policies is needed to address both Tanzanian and conservationist concerns. What this solution would look like is not given. So which book is better? Neumann spends less time on pre-colonial history. As a result he spends less time on oral history and more on examining the European, conservationist, and Tanzanian governmental viewpoints. One of the high points is his chapter on the psychology of Europeans towards nature, which Shetler does get into as well. The natural landscapes of 18^th-century European pastoralist paintings conjured up the images of true “nature”, usually absent of people, and influenced what colonizers thought landscapes should look like. Africans were often seen as part of the landscape, but only as a representation of European origins that instead of going on the path of civilization, remained in the “savage noble” state. The Meru who showed enterprise in clearing out vegetation for cultivation or finding ways to trap or ward off animals attacking their crops and livestock were seen as improper representations of the ideal native. To Europeans this divergence from the idealized African could not be allowed to taint the Mount Meru National Park. While not often sharing the early colonists’ racial views, conservationists have similarly stated that only people who are “harmonious” with nature can live on the park, and in their definition this does not include anybody who hunts or tears down plant life for cultivation or construction. This disqualifies almost all natives in the region from having access to the park.

Shetler’s book is much longer and involves much more oral research, digging deeper into Tanzanian peoples’ culture, religion, and pre-colonial history. A unique challenge for her is that Serengeti society had no clear hierarchy, thus there are no royal genealogies or royally approved tradition of the past within their oral tradition. She attempts to overcome this problem through what she calls spatial analysis, deducing the past by how the people in the oral traditions dealt with their geographic surroundings. She bolsters this with environmental and social history, as well as archaeology and what archival information she can find. Shetler’s book is longer and thus more chock-full of information and examples.

Imposing Wilderness is a better bet for a more casual reader, not merely because it’s shorter. Neumann’s text is clearer and easier to follow than Shetler’s, especially when it comes to explaining European views of nature and the reasons why African governments would feel pressured to dispossess some of their own people. Shetler’s book is more valuable for its methodological explanations, which she spends a good deal of time explaining in her introduction. A professional historian looking for ways to approach history obscured by illiteracy can appreciate and implement her use of spatial analysis.

Imposing Wilderness Rating: Highly Recommend

Imagining Serengeti Rating: Recommend

Neumann, Roderick. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. Buy the book here.

Shetler, Jan. Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape and Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Time to the Present. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007. Buy the book here.

Rating System

Must-Read: Definite read for history in general

Highly Recommend: Definite read within a certain subject

Recommend: Good for further information or into on a certain topic

Adequate: Useful if looking for further information certain topic

Pass: Awful, only useful for examining bad or ideologically-tainted history