ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Racial Hypotheses to the History of East Africa: Insights into European Practises of Colonial Knowledge Production

• In Event: Racialising Humans

English Abstract

While John Hanning Speke is well known for the discovery of the source of the White Nile and his conflict with Richard Burton, very little research has been done on his influence on subsequent travels into East Africa and the colonial usage of his Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, 1864. As an early post-colonial approach Edith Sanders proclaimed in 1969, that Speke was seminal to the emergence of the so-called Hamitic Hypotheses; the idea “that everything of value ever found in Africa was brought there by the Hamites, allegedly a branch of the Caucasian race” (Sanders p. 521 / before p. 528). The manuscripts of Speke’s travel diary and the revisions of the Journal – archived at the National Library of Scotland (MS. 4872-4) – show, that this reduction of his writings is over simplified as the Victorian publishing practices and motives of the Scottish publishing house William Blackwood and Sons interfered.
A close examination of the reception of Speke’s Journal and specifically the chapter on the “History of the Wahûma” (Speke pp. 246-260) present ever changing and shifting interpretations. In British, German and French sources, from the fields of geography, ethnology and anthropology, the reception ranges from total denial and ridicule in the 1860s, to full acceptance, amplification and integration into racial theories during the imperial phase from the 1880s, to a post-colonial explanation for the genocidal violence in Rwanda and Burundi in the second half of the 20th century.
Taking a closer look at publishing practises, historical reception and allocation of epistemic authority enables us to see wider practises of colonial knowledge production and mechanics of imperial canonization of such. Detaching from the streamlined usage of authors and narratives offers insight into the twists and turns of knowledge formation and over all a new approach on how African history was written by Europe.

Sanders E (1969) The Hamitic Hypothesis; Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective. The Journal of African History, Vol. 10. 4 (1969), pp. 521-532.
Speke JH (1864) Journal of the discovery of the source of the Nile, Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.

Author

• Lena Filzen, University of Wuppertal