Foraging, Fishing and Hunting as Agency in Colonial Central Africa (c. 1885 - c. 1960)

Project Information

FORAGENCY

Grant agreement ID: 101075882

DOI

10.3030/101075882

EC signature date 7 February 2023

Start date 1 October 2023

End date 30 September 2028

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 497 190,00

EU contribution

€ 1 497 190,00

Coordinated by

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FORAGENCY (Foraging, Fishing and Hunting as Agency in Colonial Central Africa (c. 1885 - c. 1960))

Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2026-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

FORAGENCY aims to study the lived experiences of colonialism and capitalism in Central Africa between the late 19th century and the early 1960's, at the crossroads of microhistory and environmental humanities. It focuses on three cities and their immediate hinterlands: Brazzaville, Stanleyville (present-day Kisangani), and Usumbura (present-day Bujumbura). Team members study how Central Africans could manage to counter, alleviate or minimize their encroachment by colonial states, Christian missions and private companies, by practicing hunting, fishing and foraging. Furthermore, the project regards these activities as complex ecological entanglements, involving multilayered relationships between humans and non-humans. The team is composed of historians and anthropologists, and uses archival research, oral history and participant observation as its main methods. It is divided into four sub-studies: on the production and consumption of intoxicants; on hunting, fishing and foraging for food production; on plant-based healing; and on the multispecies dimension of colonial dynamics. 
Taken together, these complementary endeavours allow us to address important blind spots in our knowledge of Central African societies, to expand the scope of historical and anthropological research beyond the human, and to historicise the pressing ecological challenges. First, we have next to no information on the continuities and transformations of hunting, fishing and foraging practices during the colonial era. These practices are well-studied before the arrival of colonial forces in the late 19th century, they almost disappear from scientific records throughout the existence of colonial empires, only to reemerge in present-day anthropological studies as a menace for the fragile ecosystems of the Central African rainforest. FORAGENCY thus aims to fill this important gap, which will help us better understand how people and communities who were the targets of colonial processes managed to maintain and transfer pre-existing ecological knowledge across generations. Second, most research in social and human sciences are resolutely anthropocentric. We aim to render a more complex picture of historical dynamics, by showing how the agentive capacities of animals, plants and ecosystems could weigh on the course of events, and push human actors to take specific measures or counter-measure to address the unexpected challenges posited by non-humans. Finally, FORAGENCY brings historical depth to the ongoing ecological issues experienced across Central African environments. Deforestation, biodiversity loss, or climate change-related disruptions have a history, which is often rooted in the global expansion of industrialisation and large-scale extraction of primary resources through colonisation. Our project will contribute to better understand the roots and chronological deployment of the ecological issues, and can thus help sharpening their mitigation measures.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

FORAGENCY team members collect four different types of data:
- Archival data collection in Belgium, France, Italy, Burundi and the Republic of Congo. These documents have been produced by colonial institutions, such as administrations, Christian missions and scientific bodies between the late nineteenth century and the early 1960's. They are of varied nature, and comprise reports, exchanges of letters, enquiries, judicial proceedings. Expected size of the dataset: around 3.000 handwritten or typewritten documents of several pages (1 up to 100), digitized in pdf format, and catalogued by team members.
- Published sources: articles and reports published in scientific journals between the late nineteenth century and the early 1960's, in tropical medicine, zoology, botany, ethnobotany, agronomy, ethnography, anthropology, history. Articles taken from approximately 25 different journals. Estimated size of the dataset: around 500 publications, ranging from 2 to 25 pages, digitized in pdf format, and catalogued by team members.
- Oral interviews: interviews performed in the Republic of Congo, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Interviewees are elderly people (60+ years old) who hold information on the past and present ecological practices under study (eg: hunting, fishing, gathering, or the processing, selling and consumption of hunted, fished and foraged foodstuffs). Expected size of the overall oral history dataset: around 150 interviews in French, Kirundi, Lingala, Kituba and Kiswahili made available in the form of a mp3 recording and a brief summary of their content. Around a third of the dataset - c. 50 interviews - will be thoroughly transcribed in their original language and translated into French or English.
- Qualitative ethnographic data, collected through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and life-histories in the Republic of Congo and Burundi. Data collection will be carried out mostly in 2026; the postdoctoral researcher will conduct long-term fieldwork in the Republic of Congo (January 2026; April-June 2026) and Burundi (October-November 2026). Participant observation is considered as the hallmark of anthropological research, and as a long-term engagement with local communities. These observations, made during participation in communities’ daily life, are archived in fieldnotes in the form of writing and drawing. Semi-structured interviews (C. 50 interviews) and life-histories (c. 7 life-histories) will be recorded and translated by the postdoctoral researcher with the help of a local research assistant.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

FORAGENCY sits at the crossroads of two conceptual approaches. On the one hand, it pursues a decolonial research agenda, bent on upending Eurocentric perspective by studying colonial dynamics both from the bottom-up and through the lived experiences of Central Africans. On the other, we replace our study objects in more-than-human analytical frameworks. Moving beyond anthropocentric confines, we aim put the agentive capacities of non-humans (animals, plants, ecosystems) front and centre of our research. Crossing these perspectives in the fields of environmental humanities, Central African studies and colonial history do contribute to the advancement of the state of the art, in two intertwined ways. More-than-human approaches in social and human sciences have remained, so far, essentially confined to three spatial ensembles: industrialised societies of the Global North, (former) settler colonies of America and Australasia, and present-day tropical plantation economies. With its focus on Central Africa, FORAGENCY expands this field both geographically and thematically. The project focuses on environments and societies deemed to be “peripheral” from imperial and capitalist vantage points. our ongoing research helps demonstrate how exploitation colonialism in resource-poor regions generated specific modes of multispecies engagements, different than in plantation-based economies or in agrarian settler societies.