determinism
Technology can serve as a catalyst for environmental change but again the process is usually cast in very linear and mechanical terms.1 Once the process is
set in motion, further technological innovation follows, ultimately resulting in the substitution of the natural by the artificial and, ultimately, of Nature by Culture. Diamond has argued that because Europe benefited from certain geo- environmental advantages, the continent led the way to acquiring guns and steel technology. According to Diamond, these advantages explain why the West colonized the non-West, rather than the other way around. Diamond thus offers an environmental explanation (the geographical realities of the European environment facilitated borrowing) for historical phenomena (European impe- rialism and colonialism) that had transformative environmental impacts locally and globally. Western technology was instrumental not only in paving the way for military and political conquest. It also facilitated environmental conquest within a Nature-Culture dichotomous framework: technology first allowed the West to convert its own environment from Nature into Culture, and subse- quently provided the tools with which to conquer non-Western environments. In this model, the main obstacle to Western dominance is not really non-Western
1 For a strong critique of linear technological determinism, see Thompson, The
Culture, but rather non-Western Nature, because most non-Western societies were held to be both hostage to and part and parcel of their physical en- vironments. The West thus could not conquer Africa militarily and politically until it had developed the necessary technology (i.e., Western medical science and quinine) to overcome the continent’s natural disease environment. Further advances during the post-World War II era made it possible to address the last remaining Natural obstacles to Western development in Africa by using techno- science to eradicate animal and human diseases and to introduce Western tech- nology (erosion control and irrigation, plows, improved cultivars) to harness Africa’s natural resources and effectively exploit them.2
Whereas Diamond’s guns and steel argument appears at first glance persu- asive for the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Americas, since Amerindians had neither steel nor guns with which to resist European conquest, the situation in Africa was radically different. Africans produced and used steel weapons and tools long before Europeans, and from the sixteenth century onwards, Africans rapidly acquired firearms that enabled them to resist European imperialism until the end of the nineteenth century. While Europeans conquered and colonized much of the Americas between the late fifteenth and the late nineteenth centu- ries, at the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans still controlled precious little territory in Africa.
Guns
In Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond identified guns as weapons that gave Europeans a critical military advantage. But how critical were guns, really? Cortés and Pizarro had few guns and the impact of guns may have been more in terms of morale because guns were not very effective as weapons. Moreover, Amerindians and Africans acquired guns during the wars of conquest in the Americas and in Africa.
In many cases, guns not only facilitated Western conquest, but they also have delayed, prevented or reversed it.3 Modern small arms, notably the Ka-
lashnikov AK-47, are credited with liberating the colonized world during the anticolonial and anti-imperial struggle. Mozambique, which emerged as an in- dependent nation after a protracted liberation war in the 1960s and 1970s, prominently bears the image of the Kalashnikov on its national flag.
Although Europeans initiated and controlled the overseas trade in slaves as well as their use in the Americas, they did not control the raiding and the supply of slaves in Africa itself. One explanation for this is that through the gold, slave
2 See chapters 4 and 6.
3 Headrick highlights how guns facilitated conquest, see The Tools of Empire, pp. 83-
and ivory trade during the eighteenth century some West and West-Central African polities acquired enormous quantities, often of the latest technology of guns and ammunition. The same was true in the nineteenth century not only in West and West-Central Africa but also in southern and eastern Africa. In terms of small arms, Africans often were as well armed as the Europeans. Around the turn of the eighteenth century, the Asante purchased large quantities of guns and gunpowder from the Dutch West India Company. In 1706 alone, the Director- General of the West India Company on the Gold Coast requested 6,000 guns and 100,000 pounds of gunpowder from the Netherlands to meet demand there. The guns were the latest flintlocks rather than the outdated matchlock guns that were still in use in Europe at the time.4
Africans also acquired a not inconsiderable amount of the latest gun tech- nology in the late nineteenth century: first percussion muzzle loaders and rifles, then single-shot breechloaders and magazine-fed repeaters, and finally bolt- action rifles. Samory’s forces in West Africa had modern rifles and blacksmiths who could build rifles, although repair and manufacture of firearms was typi- cally a handcraft activity rather than a mass-production one as in Europe. Still Samory’s several hundred blacksmiths produced twelve breechloaders per week as well as 200-300 cartridges. The Boers of South Africa also depended on im- ported firearms, but often were equipped with better small arms than their British opponents in the South African War of 1899-1902. Breechloaders and repeaters flooded the international and African markets in the aftermath of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War.5
Even though firearms had been unknown before the 1860s, by the late nineteenth century the northern Ovambo floodplain polities of the Ombadjas and Oukwanyama were well supplied with guns. King Moshipandeka Hepunda (1862-1882) of Oukwanyama had 1,500 firearms that were mostly muzzle loaders, but also included 50 breechloaders. His successor, King Namadi Mwe- lihanyeka (1882-1884), had a guard 3,000 men strong, armed with Martini- Henry and Westley-Richards breechloading rifles. By 1910, Oukwanyama alone had 15,000 firearms, of which 7,000 were breechloaders, including American
4 Kreike, “Early Asante and the Struggle for Economic and Political Control on the
Gold Coast”. Kea argues that the gun replaced the bow as the main weapon of Gold Coast armies around 1700, in Settlements, Trade, and Polities in the Seventeenth- Century Gold Coast, pp. 156-164.
5 The Boers imported modern firearms from Europe on the eve of the South African
War, see Thompson, A History of South Africa, p. 141. On Samory and modern fire- arms, see Person, Une révolution Dyula, 3:1762; Kanya-Forstner, “The French Marines and the Conquest of Western Sudan”, p. 136. For the postconflict surplus of small arms and Samory’s manufacturing of firearms, see Headrick, The Tools of Empire, pp. 109-110 and 119-120.
magazine-fed Winchester repeating rifles and German Mauser bolt-action rifles. The Ombadja kingdoms west of Oukwanyama were also well supplied with modern firearms.6
The southern Ovambo floodplain polities were less wealthy in ivory and cattle, and so less able to purchase the most advanced firearms, but when the South African colonial administration disarmed their inhabitants in the mid- 1930s, the number of rifles (i.e. breechloaders) that were confiscated totaled almost 3,500, including over 2,000 in Ondonga, close to 1,000 in Uukwambi, 140 in Eunda and Onkolonkathi and 182 in Ongandjera. In 1933, after a series of firefights between different factions, the Onkolonkathi headman handed in 127 modern rifles, most of which were magazine-fed, eliciting Native Com- missioner Hahn’s comment: “This small tribe was much better armed than was thought”. Over 3,000 of the confiscated rifles were kept in storage at the administrative offices at Ondangwa until they finally were destroyed in 1947.7
Thus, during the 1900s and 1910s era of colonial conquest, the Ovambo polities jointly could have assembled at least 10,000 men armed with breechloading rifles. The Portuguese army that invaded Oukwanyama in 1915 – the largest army that had been fielded until then by the Portuguese in Africa, consisted of 10,000 men who were armed with breechloaders, machine guns, and cannon. Challenged by Oukwanyama, armed with approximately 7,000 breechloaders and a similar number of flintlock and percussion cap muzzle loaders, the Por- tuguese army came close to defeat.8 For comparison, in the 1879 Anglo-Zulu
war a British army of 18,000 and 9,000 African levies faced 29,000 warriors who may have been armed with up to 20,000 firearms, mostly old muzzle loaders, and only 1,000 modern breechloaders. The Ethiopian army that in 1896 crushed the Italian army at Adowa had several thousand breechloaders while Samory’s army in 1898 had 4,000 repeaters.9
The inhabitants of the Ombadjas and Oukwanyama captured large amounts of small arms and ammunition, as well as several machine guns and cannon, from their Portuguese opponents following a string of Portuguese defeats. An Oukwanyama blacksmith even repaired one of three captured cannons, a French 75; the Portuguese had removed the breechblock locks from the cannons to pre- vent them from being used against them, but the blacksmith forged a replace- ment lock that rendered the gun operable. When the Portuguese recaptured the
6 Kreike, Re-creating Eden, pp. 27-23 and 41-42; Capello and Ivens, De Angola a
Contra-Costa, p. 228.
7 NAN, NAO 20, Annual Reports Ovamboland, 1937-1938, and Monthly Reports
Ovamboland, June 1933 and Dec. 1939; NAO 60, Quarterly Report Ovamboland, Jan.-March 1947.
8 Kreike, Re-creating Eden, pp. 52-53.
cannon, “the Commanding Officer was so impressed with the native made part that he sent it to the leading museum in Lisbon”. An Anglican missionary iden- tified the blacksmith as Twemuna but Native Commissioner Hahn claimed the feat had been accomplished by Hangush, a headman who died in 1940.
A large majority of the firearms had been acquired from European traders and smugglers at high prices. In 1870, a flintlock muzzle loader in southern Angola cost 10-15 head of cattle. By 1879, availability of and demand for more advanced firearms dropped the price of flintlocks to one head of cattle, and the Angola-based trader Chapman reported that the inhabitants of the Ovambo floodplain refused to buy flintlocks, preferring more modern guns. At the time, the more reliable percussion cap muzzle loaders cost two head of cattle, while such advanced breechloaders as the Martini-Henry and the Snyder were traded for a staggering 48-54 head of cattle apiece. In the 1890s, the percussion cap muzzle loaders had been reduced in price by half, whereas advanced breech- loaders cost 7-10 head of cattle apiece. In Central Sudan in 1895, a Martini- Henry cost 13-33 slaves and in 1898 Somalia, a rifle cost 5-6 she-camels.10 The
acquisition of guns, which in the context of rapid technological advances in firearms technology and the threat of colonial expansion and conquest reached the proportions of a veritable arms race, constituted a serious drain on Ovambo floodplain resources. Cattle were the main export commodity for purchasing firearms, ammunition and horses, and, particularly after the rinderpest deci- mated cattle populations in the region, conflict over cattle increased, leading to escalating violence, population displacement and further investment in guns for defense against cattle raiders.11 In 1890s prices, the 10,000 breechloading rifles
the Ovambo acquired in the early 1900s cost the equivalent of 70,000 to 100,000 head of cattle, whereas colonial estimates for the total number of cattle for Ovamboland were 60,000 in 1925 and 123,000 in 1942.12
Thus firearms had contradictory effects: not only did they facilitate the European conquest, but they also helped prevent (in the case of Ethiopia) or delay European conquest and colonization. The impact of guns as a technology was therefore neither linear nor homogenous. The resistance of Samory, the Ethiopians, the Boers and the northern Ovambo floodplain polities of Oukwa- nyama and Ombadja would not have been as effective or as sustained without modern firearms. But being met with effective resistance also redoubled Portu- guese determination to conquer the area at all costs to maintain legitimacy as a victorious imperial and colonial power. The incursions of well-armed Oukwa-
10 Headrick, The Tools of Empire, p. 110.
11 Kreike, Re-creating Eden, pp. 26-32, 41-47. On the refusal to purchase flintlocks,
see NAN, A233, J. Chapman, 1903-1916, pp. 18-21. On Hangush, see A450, 7, Annual Report Ovamboland 1940.
nyama and Ombadja raiding parties also increased violence and insecurity throughout southern Angola, further challenging the Portuguese.
The South Africans disarmed the refugees from Oukwanyama and the Om- badjas on their side of the border in 1917 after they defeated Mandume Nde- mufayo, the last king of Oukwanyama.13 The colonial administration allowed
selected kings and headmen to keep a small number of modern firearms – 100 in the case of Ondonga – but required all firearms to be registered. It appears that some leniency was extended to muzzle loaders. A couple of hundred barrels without stocks (probably muzzle loaders) were handed in in 1934, but at least some muzzle loaders appear to have continued in use. The administration distributed small numbers of cartridges for the modern guns to the kings and headmen who had kept them. Although gun smuggling had been rampant before colonial occupation during World War I, it seems to have continued at a much reduced scale during the 1920s, and it had become virtually nonexistent by the 1930s. As late as 1928, three “runners” for a Portuguese dealer known as Mengeri from the Humbe area in Angola were arrested: they carried 40 percussion caps, three tins of gunpowder and a Mauser pistol with 69 rounds. In addition, colonial records occasionally note that returning migrant laborers carried a few rounds of ammunition for the registered firearm of a particular headman.14 In 1930, the trader Hermann Burchard, a resident of the Angolan
Lower Kunene and a former inhabitant of the German colony of South West Africa, was banned from re-entry into Ovamboland because he was suspected of having supplied rifles and ammunition to King Iipumbu of Uukwambi in 1925.15 During World War II, the colonial administration issued 36 .303 rifles
(probably war-issue Lee-Enfields) to a selection of Ovamboland’s headmen.16
Combined with the prohibitions on Africans hunting big game – one of the reasons given for the violent removal of King Iipumbu in 1932 was that he had engaged in ‘poaching’ – the disarmament of the Ovambo in part explains the resurgence of big game populations in the 1930s. The introduction of breech- loading cartridge-fed rifles (especially magazine-fed ones) had greatly enhanced the efficiency of big game hunting in the Ovambo floodplain during the close of the nineteenth century, leading, for example, to the near disappearance of ele- phants from the region. The lack of firearms and cartridges also reduced the
13 See chapter 3.
14 NAN, NAO 26, Acting UGR Neutral Zone, Namakunde, March 18, 192[7] to Portu-
guese Govt. Representative Neutral Zone, Namakunde (attached to letter Acting UGR Neutral Zone, Namakunde, Feb. 25, 1928 to O/C NAO, Ondonga). In general, see NAO 18, Annual Reports Ovamboland 1928, 1930, 1932. On precolonial gun smug- gling, see Kreike, Re-creating Eden, pp. 42-43.
15 NAN, NAO 26, NCO to Secretary SWA, Ondangwa, 24 July 1929, and 5 Dec. 1930. 16 NAN, NAO 60, Quarterly Report Ovamboland, Jan.-March 1947.
impact of hunting big game. The resulting recovery of wildlife populations caused increased conflict between predators and elephants on the one side and humans on the other. Colonial reports demonstrate that the local population often was armed with spears, bows and arrows and muzzle loaders, making hunting less effective and much more dangerous. The 1931 annual report, for example refers to a “miniature war” with a pride of lions that had killed two donkeys on the edge of the Ondonga inhabited area: some of the hunters were armed with muzzle loaders “and after discharging their weapons [they] were forced to beat a retreat in order to re-load”. The hunters killed two of the four tracked lions, but not until one of their own had been badly mauled. In Uukwa- luthi lions attacked a herd of livestock but, added Hahn, “I have not heard yet whether any natives were shot,” demonstrating that he had not only little respect for the marksmanship of his subjects, but also no sympathy for their safety or their attempts to protect their precious livestock.17
Moreover, it was difficult to obtain supplies of gunpowder, shot and percus- sion caps or flints, or spare parts for these guns, which were at least forty to sixty years old. The disarmament of the Ondonga district was only completed in 1939, but Native Commissioner Hahn noted the unexpected consequence al- most immediately. In his 1940 annual report he wrote: “The Ondonga natives have suffered considerably since they were disarmed last year. This tribe is bordered by the [Etosha] Game Reserve on the East as well as on the South and as a consequence lions, hyenas and wild dogs affect them much more closely than any of the other tribes”. In the next annual report he also stressed that be- cause the inhabitants of Ovamboland had few rifles left they could not effect- ively keep the lions at bay. Yet, Hahn hesitated to respond to a request by the headmen to issue them rifles for defending themselves against the predators as the attacks mounted.18
Forced disarmament in Ovamboland and the rebounding wildlife population may also have been important reasons that the local population continued to construct elaborate palisades around their homesteads and fences around their fields, even though levels of violence declined in the 1930s. The defenses provided effective protection for humans, their livestock and their crops and fruit trees against big and small game depredations. Disarmament may have contributed to big game conservation in north-central Namibia, but the policy simultaneously may have maintained or even increased the use of woody vegetation as an alternative protection against wildlife.
17 NAN, NAO 19, Monthly Report Ovamboland, April 1931. 18 NAN, A450, 7, Annual Reports Ovamboland 1940 and 1941