Namibia's Red Line

The History of a Veterinary and Settlement Border
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-349-34098-9
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US

Buch, Englisch, 327 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 494 g

Reihe: Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies

Based on archival sources and oral history, this book  reconstructs a border-building process in Namibia that spanned more than sixty years. The process commenced with the establishment of a temporary veterinary defence line against rinderpest by the German colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century and ended with the construction of a continuous two-metre-high fence by the South African colonial government sixty years later. This 1250-kilometre fence divides northern from central Namibia even today.  The book combines a macro and a micro-perspective and differentiates between cartographic and physical reality. The analysis explores both the colonial state's agency with regard to veterinary and settlement policies and the strategies of Africans and Europeans living close to the border. The analysis also includes the varying perceptions of individuals and populations who lived further north and south of the border and describes their experiences crossing the border as migrant workers, African traders, European settlers and colonial officials. The Red Line's history is understood as a gradual process of segregating livestock and people, and of constructing dichotomies of modern and traditional, healthy and sick, European and African.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Miescher, G.

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Regionalgeographie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Oral History (Zeitzeugen)
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie

Über Autor(innen)

Giorgio Miescher is a historian of Namibia and Southern Africa and has published on various aspects in the field. He is currently a Marie Curie Fellow of the University of Basel, Switzerland, and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.