Congolese Ecology in the Archive of James Chapin

• In Event: Knowing Global Landscapes: Field Science and Local Society in Brazil, Congo, and India

Abstract

This paper reviews the work of James Chapin, staff ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, who specialized in the birds of the Belgian Congo for half a century. Chapin’s Birds of the Belgian Congo (1932, 1939, 1953, and 1954) is a work of ecology as well as systematic ornithology. In contrast to some science produced in colonial context, Chapin portrayed individual Africans as observant and knowledgeable and he frequently credited their contributions. Drawing on this four-volume study and his archive at the AMNH—including a rare set of letters from his former assistants written in French, Lingala, and Swahili—this paper will critically examine three forms of Congolese ecological knowledge in the archive of James Chapin: summaries by Chapin in the four-volume ornithological study, which I will systematically track according to subject and individual credited; contents of the letters from his assistants; and characterizations by Chapin in his conservationist writing. The discrepancy between the knowledge expressed through these three channels is noteworthy. Even in this one archive, Congolese ecological knowledge is not one stable thing. I explain the tension by discussing Chapin’s different relations, with fellow scientists, African subordinates, and the colonial and post-colonial state.

Author

• Nancy Jacobs, Brown University