Visions of Wildlife and Hunting in the “Sportsmen’s Paradise”: Exploring Photography from the Mozambique Company’s Archive

Direito, Bárbara

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-27795-5_7

Bárbara Direito⁵

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

Because of its once rich and varied wildlife, celebrated in the accounts of travellers and professional and amateur naturalists, its proximity to South Africa and Southern Rhodesia, and also its more flexible hunting regulations, the territory governed by the Mozambique Company—a chartered company—in central Mozambique since 1892, became an attractive destination for hunters and tourists of different origins. This chapter proposes an exploration of the changing policies regarding wild animals in central Mozambique in the early twentieth century, as well as of the changing perceptions on nature and wildlife, while bearing in mind race- and class-based divisions that characterized colonial society in Mozambique, through an analysis of hunting photographs chosen among the hundreds that compose the photographic archive of the Mozambique Company.

The present chapter is a revised and updated version of Bárbara Direito, “Caçados e caçadores nas fotografias do arquivo da Companhia de Moçambique,” in O império da visão: fotografia no contexto colonial português (1860–1960), ed. Filipa Lowndes Vicente (Lisboa: Edições 70, 2014), 141–156. Research for this chapter was supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., through a CEEC contract (CEECIND/01948/2017), as well as by CIUHCT (UIDB/00286/2020 and UIDP/00286/2020).

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Notes

1.
José dos Santos Rufino, Álbuns fotográficos e descritivos da colónia de Moçambique, vol. 9 Companhia de Moçambique—A Cidade da Beira. Aspectos do Território (Hamburgo: Broschek & Co., 1929). For a discussion of these albums as an official response to the anti-Portuguese sentiment caused by the campaign against slavery and forced labour in Africa under Portuguese rule, see Eric Allina, “Fallacious mirrors: colonial anxiety and images of African labor in Mozambique, ca. 1929”, History in Africa, vol. 24 (1997), pp. 9–52.
2.
This chapter builds on the important scholarship that has helped advance our understanding of the role photography played in the creation and consolidation of specific representations of Africa. One of the classic texts in this field is David Killingray and Andrew Roberts, “An outline history of photography in Africa to ca. 1940,” History in Africa, 16 (1989): 197–208. In a seminal work, Jill Dias, a historian of Angola, proposed a preliminary analysis of photographic sources relating to former Portuguese colonies: Jill R. Dias, “Photographic sources for the history of Portuguese-speaking Africa, 1870–1914,” History in Africa, 18 (1991): 67–82. On photography and hunting in Africa, see Paul Landau, “Hunting with gun and camera: a commentary,” in The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History, ed. Wolfram Hartman, Jeremy Silvester and Patricia Hayes (Cape Town: UCT Press, 1998), 151–155.
3.
The region was ruled by the Mozambique Company, a chartered company, between 1891 and 1942. On the company’s origins and history, see Companhia de Moçambique, A companhia de Moçambique—monografia para a exposição de Sevilha (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1929), 15; and also Barry Neil-Tomlinson, “The Mozambique Chartered Company, 1892–1910” (PhD thesis, University of London, 1987).
4.
Malyn D. Newitt, A history of Mozambique (London: Hurst & Company, 1997), 23 and ff.
5.
Carlos Serra, ed., História de Moçambique, vol. I Primeiras sociedades sedentárias e impacto dos mercadores (200/300-1886) (Maputo: Tempo—UEM, 1982), 86.
6.
Decreto com força de lei de 11 de Fevereiro de 1891, Diário do Governo, n. 199, 7 September 1891, article 21. A few works have studied some of the actions and policies of the Mozambique Company in more depth: Eric Allina, Slavery by Any Other Name: African Life Under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique (Charlottesville, VA.: University of Virginia Press, 2012). Bárbara Direito, Terra e colonialismo em Moçambique: A região de Manica e Sofala sob a Companhia de Moçambique, 1892–1942 (Lisboa: Imprensa de CIências Sociais, 2020).
7.
Frederick C. Selous, Travel and adventure in South-East Africa (London: Rouland Ward, 1893). Reginald C. F. Maugham, Portuguese East Africa: the history, scenery & great game of Manica and Sofala (London: John Murray, 1906). Teodósio Cabral, Abel Pratas, and Henrique Galvão, Da vida e da morte dos bichos, vol. 5. Narrativas da caça grossa em África (Lisboa: Popular de Francisco Franco, n.d.). José A. Silva, Gorongosa: experiências de um caçador de imagens (Lourenço Marques: [n.p.], 1964). José C. Pardal, Cambaco: caça grossa em Moçambique ([n.p.], 1996).
8.
On Gorongosa and how its “resources”, including elephants, were seen in the late nineteenth century by a businessman with economic interests in the region, see Matheus A. R. Sampayo, A Gorongoza: o seu presente e o seu futuro (Lisboa: Typ. Lusitana, 1898).
9.
On the emergence and popularity of Portuguese sportsmen and their representations in the press, see Luís Trindade, “A imagem do sportsman e o espectáculo desportivo,” in Uma história do desporto em Portugal, vol. I, Corpos, Espaços e Media, ed. José Neves and Nuno Domingos (Vila do Conde: Quidnovi, 2011), 121–146. On the contexts and meanings of hunting in British colonial Africa, see John M. Mackenzie, The Empire of Nature: hunting, conservation and British imperialism (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998) and William K. Storey, “Big cats and imperialism: lion and tiger hunting in Kenya and Northern India, 1898–1930,” Journal of World History, 2, no. 2 (1991): 135–173.
10.
Eduardo Costa, O território de Manica e Sofala e a administração da Companhia de Moçambique: 1892–1900 (Lisboa: Typ. da Comp. Nacional Editora, 1902). Letter from Luciano Lanne to the governor of Manica and Sofala, 3 March 1904, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT)-Fundo da Companhia de Moçambique (FCM), n. de ordem 2181, n. 895-AZ8.
11.
For instance, ordem n. 685, 31 October 1895, Boletim da Companhia de Moçambique (BCM), no. 53, 1 November 1895, limited the hunting of elephants in certain regions of the territory.
12.
Ordem de Serviço n. 4178, BCM n. 6, 2 March 1921. Decreto n. 26076, 21 November 1935, BCM, n. 1, 2 January 1936, article 10.
13.
Todd J. French, ““Like leaves fallen by wind”: resilience, remembrance, and the restoration of landscapes in central Mozambique” (PhD diss., Boston University, 2009), 165–166.
14.
Passagem para a administração do Estado, dos territórios autónomos em Moçambique, 1942, pp. 19–20, ANTT-Arquivo Salazar, UL-9A, cx.801, pt. 1.
15.
On the role of hunting in the lives of African and European populations more generally, see Mackenzie, The Empire of Nature, ch. 3 and 4. David Hedges and especially Marcos Coelho have looked more in depth at the contexts of hunting in Southern Mozambique from the perspective of African populations: David Hedges, “Trade and Politics in Southern Mozambique and Zululand in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries” (PhD diss., University of London, 1978). Marcos C. Coelho, “Maphisa & Sportsmen: a caça e os caçadores no sul de Moçambique sob o domínio do colonialismo – c1895–c1930” (PhD diss., Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2015).
16.
William Beinart and Peter Coates, eds. Environment and History: The Taming of Nature in the USA and South Africa (London: Routledge, 1995), 27.
17.
Pierre Bourdieu, ed. Un art moyen, Essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie (Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1965), 24–27.
18.
Christraud M. Geary, “Photographs as materials for African history: some methodological considerations”, History in Africa, 13 (1986): 89–116. Jennifer Tucker, “Entwined Practices: Engagements with Photography in Historical Inquiry”, History and Theory, 48 (2009), 1–8. Robert Gordon and Jonatan Kurzwelly. “Photographs as Sources in African History”. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. 30 Jul. 2018; Accessed on 11.10.2021. https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-250.
19.
The criteria used in the archival treatment of this photographic archive can be consulted on https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=3678261 Accessed on: 11.10.2021
20.
On the evolution of animal and wildlife photography in the nineteenth century, see Gael Newton, “Animal and zoological photography”, in Encyclopedia of nineteenth century photography, vol. 1, ed. John Hannavy (New York, NY and Oxford: Routledge, 2008), 40–42.
21.
For an important reflection on the photographic archive and its “resourcefulness”, see Elizabeth Edwards, “Photographs: Material Form and the Dynamic Archive”, in Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History, ed. Constanza Caraffa (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2011)
22.
Helen of Orleans (1871–1951), the sister of D. Amélia, queen of Portugal, became the duchess of Aosta after she wedded the second duke of Aosta. She would travel extensively during her life, including in Africa, sharing her experiences in memoirs such as S.A.R. la Princesse Hélène de France, Duchesse d’Aoste, Voyages en Afrique (Milano: Fratelli Treves, 1913).
23.
In zoological sections of museums, many animals captured in Africa are displayed in seemingly realistic poses, after a laborious work of mounting and stuffing of the skins performed by taxidermists. On taxidermy, its difficulties and the prized art of making animals look ferocious, see Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 251–252. For a telling example of the role of taxidermy in the construction of representations of live animals, see Leslie Witz, “The making of an animal biography: Huberta’s journey into South African natural history, 1928–1932”, Kronos, 30 (2004): 138–166.
24.
“Exposição do Pôrto” (PT/TT/CMZ-AF-GT/E/27/1/63). Available at: https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=3682981 Accessed on: 11.10.2021.
25.
On the musealization of animals in Europe, as well as the fascination and fear they elicit, and the common exhibition of stuffed animals next to ethnographic objects, see Benoît de L’Estoile, “La vie sauvage sous vitrine: les animaux d’Afrique au musée”, in L’animal cannibalisé – Festins d’Afrique, ed. Michèle Cros, Julien Bondaz and Maxime Michaud (Paris: Editions des Archives Contemporaines, 2012), 89–104.
26.
For a reflection on the growing symbolic importance of the lion in European medieval thought, see Michel Pastoureau, “Quel est le roi des animaux?”, in AAVV, Le monde animal et ses représentations au moyen-âge (XIe–XVe siècles) – Actes des congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public, 15^e congrès (Toulouse, 1984), 133–142. Ritvo also discussed the contradictory views on lions in British sources: the lion appears both as King of beasts and a vindictive animal. The Animal Estate, 26–28. On the specific meanings of lion hunting in colonial Kenya and how it was reserved for the most powerful, see Storey, “Big Cats”, 154, 166.
27.
Maugham, Portuguese East Africa, 128, 49.
28.
Guillaume Vasse, “The Mozambique Company’s Territory – II”, Journal of the Royal African Society, 6, no. 24 (1907): 385. Guillaume Vasse, “Animaes ferozes ou nocivos – Maneira de os destruir”, Revista de Manica e Sofala, 37 (1907): 4–10.
29.
Ordem n. 86, 2 February 1893, BCM n. 7, 15 February 1893, articles 1 and 11.
30.
On the wild animal poisoning clubs created in the Cape Colony and their action, see Lance V. Sittert, ““Keeping the enemy at bay”: the extermination of wild carnivora in the Cape Colony, 1889–1910”, Environmental History, 3, no. 3 (1998): 333–356. For a more general reflection on the perceptions of European populations vis-à-vis “vermin”, see Jane Carruthers, “Changing perspectives on wildlife in Southern Africa, c.1840 to c.1914”, Society & Animals, 13, no. 3 (2005): 190–192.
31.
Bernard Gißibl, “German colonialism and the beginnings of international wildlife preservation in Africa”, GHI Bulletin Supplement, 3 (2006): 128 and ff.
32.
Mark Cioc, The Game of Conservation: International Treaties to Protect the World’s Migratory Animals (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009).
33.
See, for instance, “Rinoceronte” (n.a., n.d.), PT/TT/CMZ-AF-GT/E/26/1/85, available at: https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=3682897 Accessed on: 11.10.2021; and “Elefantes novos. Chupanga” (n.a., 1915–1937) PT/TT/CMZ-AF-GT/E/26/1/89, available at https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=3682901 Accessed on: 11.10.2021. José S. Rufino, Álbuns fotográficos e descritivos da colónia de Moçambique, vol. 10 Raças, usos e costumes indígenas. Fauna moçambicana (Hamburg: Broschek & Co., 1929), 101, 104, 105, 109 and 110.
34.
Pardal, Cambaco, 21–23.
35.
Silva, Gorongosa, 20.
36.
Susan Sontag, “On Photography”, in Essays of the 1960s & 1970s (The Library of America, New York, 2013), 538.
37.
Edward I. Steinhart, Black poachers, white hunters: a social history of hunting in colonial Kenya (Oxford: James Currey, 2006), 140.
38.
On the duchess’ visit to Mozambique, the circulation of her photographs and writings on her travels, and on royal photography in colonial Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Inês Vieira Gomes, “Women Photographers in Angola and Mozambique (1909–1950) A history of an absence”, in Women and Photography in Africa Creative Practices and Feminist Challenges, ed. Darren Newbury, Lorena Rizzo and Kylie Thomas (London, Routledge, 2020), 66–72.
39.
Maugham, Portuguese East Africa, 135–139. On the specific practices of Africans specializing in hippopotamus hunting in Zululand and Southern Mozambique, see Hedges, “Trade and Politics”, 56–57. On the social role of hunting in the latter region, see also Coelho, “Maphisa”, 57–58.
40.
See photographs PT/TT/CMZ-AF-GT/E/29/2/40 to PT/TT/CMZ-AF-GT/E/29/2/44, available at https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=3683275 Accessed on: 11.10.2021.
41.
N.a., “As caçadas de S.A.R. a duqueza d’Aosta”, Ilustração Portuguesa, no. 210, February 28, 1910, 257–259.
42.
Allina, Slavery by Any.
43.
On the local hunting methods used by different peoples of Southern Mozambique, see Coelho, “Maphisa”, ch. 1. For a comparison of the typical methods of hippopotamus hunting used by Europeans and Africans in South Africa, see, Witz, “The making”, 160–161.
44.
Carlos Rossetti, “De la conservation de la faune dans les pays neufs et des problèmes qui s’y rattachent”, in Institut Colonial International, Le droit de chasse dans les colonies et la conservation de la faune indigène (Brussels: Institut Colonial International, 1911), 19.
45.
Ordem n. 86, 2 February 1893, BCM n. 7, 15 February 1893, article 7.
46.
Ordem n. 684, 30 October 1895, BCM n. 53, 1 November 1895.
47.
Alguns usos e costumes indígenas da circunscrição de Sofala, 1907, p. 19, ANTT-FCM, n. de ordem 2193, RA23.
48.
For a discussion of representations on the role of women in leisure activities in the Portuguese press, some of which were actually sportswomen, see Trindade, “A imagem”, 132–134.
49.
On the accessory role of women in big game hunting in Africa, see Mackenzie, The Empire of Nature, 22. On the emergence of women hunters in Africa in the beginning of the twentieth century, including the duchess of Aosta, see Angela Thompsell, Hunting Africa: British Sport, African Knowledge and the Nature of Empire (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Chap. 4.
50.
Thomsell, Hunting Africa, p. 102.
51.
“Mulher caçadora junto a elefante e indígenas” (n.a, 1928), PT/TT/CMZ-AF-GT/N/1/3/2, available at https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=3684210 Accessed on: 21.12.2018.
52.
René Pélissier, Naissance du Mozambique, Résistance et révoltes anticoloniales (1854–1918), 2 vols. (Orgeval: Éditions Pélissier, 1984). Newitt, A history. Similarly, Thomsell’s upper-class “Edwardian Dianas” did not lose any of their respectability and glamour despite participating in a traditional male activity like big game hunting, and in fact garnered much interest and support. Thomsell, Hunting Africa, 110.
53.
On the case of Gorongosa, see French, “’Like leaves fallen by wind’”, Chaps. 5 and 6; and Katie McKeown, “Tracking Wildlife Conservation in Southern Africa: Histories of Protected Areas in Gorongosa and Maputaland”, (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2015), pp. 67–79. For a political economy explanation of the post-war wildlife conservation boom in British East and Central Africa, see Roderick P. Neumann, ‘The Postwar Conservation Boom in British Colonial Africa’, Environmental History 7, 1 (2002), pp. 22–47.

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Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia (CIUHCT), NOVA School of Science and Technology, Caparica, Portugal
Bárbara Direito

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Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Filipa Lowndes Vicente
Art History Institute (NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST), Lisbon, Portugal
Afonso Dias Ramos

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Direito, B. (2023). Visions of Wildlife and Hunting in the “Sportsmen’s Paradise”: Exploring Photography from the Mozambique Company’s Archive. In: Vicente, F.L., Ramos, A.D. (eds) Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860–1975. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27795-5_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27795-5_7
Published: 01 September 2023
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