ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Charting the Currents of Knowledge, Technology, and Regulation in British Colonial Fisheries Development

• In Event: Contested Fishscapes: Fisheries, Science, and Development in the Twentieth Century

English Abstract

In the late colonial period (c. 1930-1965), a series of fisheries development programmes were instituted across the British empire, and especially in British African colonies. In colonial visions for fisheries development, nutritional concerns were paired with commercial development and conservationist regulations, in which marine and freshwater fisheries were recognised as crucial sources of protein for coastal and inland communities but were perceived to be underexploited or harvested using inefficient methods. To inform these programmes, British scientists were seconded to colonial waters to survey watery environments while a whole new network of fisheries research institutions were established in colonial sites to act as hubs of scientific research and experimentation. In their investigations, scientists engaged closely with local fishing communities, drawing on situated knowledges of environments and effective fishing methods, while feeding into colonial blueprints centred on technological change and regulatory control. At the same time, scientists warned about a persistent lack of catch and effort data needed to assess the sustainability of fishing activities. This paper explores the currents and countercurrents of knowledge shaping colonial fisheries programmes in the mid-twentieth century, demonstrating how fisheries science and post-war colonial development converged in attempts to control colonised water bodies. By doing so, the paper explores how colonialism worked to ensnare fisheries governance—and, by extension, watery environments—within the nets of colonial regimes, the ramifications of which continue to haunt fisheries governance programmes to this day.

Author

• David Wilson, University of Strathclyde