Environment at the Margins: Literary and Environmental Studies in Africa

Chapter 3: “Hunter of Elephants, Take Your Bow!”: A Historical Analysis of Nonfiction Writing about Elephant Hunting in Southern Africa

Chapter 3 “Hunter of Elephants, Take Your Bow!” A Historical Analysis of Nonfiction Writing about Elephant Hunting in Southern Africa Jane Carruthers The purpose of environmental history is to probe the nexus between humans and nature (the environment). Like all historical studies, environmental history relies on the critical evaluation of sources, usually but not exclusively the written word. Moran asserts that literary studies and history have had a close but problematic relationship, and this may well be evident in what follows.1 This chapter is based on a selection of nonfiction relating to elephants in southern Africa produced over the course of more than a century.2 Considering how hunting,killing,and managing elephants has been expressed in nonfiction elucidates changing attitudes toward this species, the environment, and ecopolitics and demonstrates transformations within our constructions of nature and culture. Elephants seem to be particularly appropriate subjects for such an analysis because they are the largest of the charismatic African land mammals and bear a special burden of cultural constructs and ethics.3 As arguments about the future of elephants clearly show, people are polarized, debates around conflicting value systems are sharpened, and emotions are highly charged.  | Jane Carruthers Discussing African elephants in terms of current environmental historiography is also appropriate. The “animal turn” in the social sciences has proliferated in the field of ecocriticism,4 although a good deal of this literature is avowedly political, even polemic.5 Nonetheless, Harriet Ritvo argues that there is currently more “animal history” because of the political purchase and high profile of animal-related causes as well as the growth of environmental history.6 Both Ritvo and Keith Thomas have pointed out that the history of the treatment of animals tells us a great deal about human societies.7 Thomas (Man and the Natural World, 166) identified the contexts in which an anthropocentric tradition was eroded, while John Mac­ Kenzie gave the natural world a dominant role in the imperial enterprise.8 Considering elephants provides a rich gateway into aspects of human thinking, especially in connection with current changes in interspecies ethics .9 Elephants, together with a number of other animal genera, are spearheading the increasingly vocal animal rights movement, a development that historian and wilderness advocate Roderick Nash foresaw many years ago. On the basis of an ever-extending network of rights that he suggested had incrementally included slaves, women, and indigenous people, Nash argued that animals would be “liberated,” and eventually so would the environment itself.10 In some respects these debates can be encapsulated by considering the growing political relevance of nonhuman animals (and the radicalization of the animal rights movement) as well as the contrasting philosophies of sustainable use and the primacy of any animal’s right to life. Moreover, Jamieson has referred to the opposition between “animal values” and the “value of nature” (or ecocentrism). Critics of the animal rights ethical framework have referred to its ideas as equal to anthropomorphism, that is, as similar to the obsession with humans.11 African and Asian Elephants:The Wild and theTame In past centuries African elephants were used for entertainment in Roman games and circuses and played their part in warfare. There are also isolated records of African elephants being tamed as beasts of burden, and today some captive elephants are used for safari treks. However, they have never been domesticated to the extent that they have in India and elsewhere in South Asia. Asian elephants are tamed, are helpers in a number of work environments, have status as domestic stock, and are economically useful. In his powerful anti-imperial essay Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell expressed something of their utilitarian value. After an elephant, a male in “Hunter of Elephants, Take Your Bow!” |  musth, had killed a man, Orwell was obliged to shoot the animal. Orwell lamented that“Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly.”12 What a contrast there is between this Burmese elephant and Africa’s herds! Unlike the Asian elephant of which little is heard globally today, Africa ’s elephants are a topical subject because they are worth so much more dead than alive. It is their ivory that has international value, and there seems to be no diminution in how avidly it is sought after.Although mostly fenced into national parks and other protected areas, Africa’s...