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Recent years have seen a rapid growth in the field of colonial conservation history. However, there are still relatively few studies looking at how conservation policies were applied to individual protected areas. My research undertakes an exploration of some of the key themes in this conservation history through an analysis of the creation and development of Tsavo National Park in Kenya. My study of Tsavo builds on the growing literature examining the origins and evolutions of colonial wildlife policy, as well as attempting to integrate the political and social themes that are discussed in studies of natural resource management in the colonial period. I question the power of ideas of Eden and nostalgia in shaping the development of conservation thinking, arguing that Kenya’s political economy, as well as the perceptions of the European officials who managed Tsavo, played as important a role in shaping Tsavo into the park as it exists today. The research analyses the different ways in which the prevailing political climate allowed the space that became Tsavo to be appropriated for wildlife conservation, and how wildlife came to be seen as a vital part of Kenya’s post-war economy in much the same way as other natural resources. It also looks at how the park’s supporters adapted the narrative construction of the park to ensure its survival in a rapidly changing political, social and economic climate. I explore four themes in the study of the historical development of Tsavo. First, I examine how the Tsavo area was initially portrayed as economically useless and devoid of human use and settlement. I then look at how this early narrative was challenged in the climate of economic development and the ‘second colonial occupation’ after the Second World War. At this stage the part was pictured as a site for economic development, predominantly through tourism. The third theme I explore is Tsavo as African space, and how the previous two narratives were challenged by the presence and claims of Africans in the area who continued to make use of the park’s resources up to and beyond independence. Finally, I analyse Tsavo as an ecological space and consider how the park’s ecology impacted the political constructions of the park and how political events threatened the park’s ecology. Pragmatism, political acumen and fear drove the development of the narratives that guided Tsavo’s development throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The staff in Tsavo believed that they were fighting not only for survival of wildlife in Kenya, but for the survival of the very concept of national parks in the face of a myriad of competing demands on the land as well as Government indifference, African loathing and the petty power struggles of local officials.

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The primary objective of this study is to identify the Sudanese socio-political structure at independence. This has necessitated an examination of very early forms of the development of this structure to find the roots of more recent developments. Implied in this is the central idea that the above development is an ongoing process and that what seems interruptions under technico-environmental constraints are conditions of the local-historic nature of society. In the light of this hypothesis it is possible to draw a taxonomy consistent with the forms of mode to modes of production as successor events asserted by a form of state whose roots lay in the economic, the political and the ideological spheres. This form of development is at once analogous to and anamolous with African/Mediterranean types. Starting with Nubia, which is believed to have incubated the origins of this development, in turn branching from the pre-dynastic Horizon Groups, the Funj, the Mahdia, and even the Condominium could be comparable. Certain similarities, especially in the state, the ideological or cult manifestations and most importantly the property relationships, are possible to draw. The Kushite pharaoh, like the Iamite and Wawaite chiefs of the eastern desert rudimentary states, the band leaders on the rivers of the pre-dynastic period up to the Sultan of Sennar, the Khalifa, all were the sole owners of the soil, the chief merchant, organiser, financier and sole monopolists of long distance trade. They all were 'charismatic' and exchanged possession of land for tribute as they conscripted slaves in the state army and kept splendid courts. Ideololgy and the arm cemented the state's vertical role in the economy. The Turkia and the Condominium stepped into the role of the traditional state and extracted surplus labour or production in the form of tribute, while land remained even in the 19th. and the 20th. centuries unsaleable and tribute continued to be the condition of 'ownership' in the land. The Condominium was in charge of the long distance trade and great public works to be seen in the 'modern sector' of agriculture. Both the Condominium and the Turkia, like predecessor traditional states deployed surrogate agents on the local level and recreated the neo satraps who shared in power and surplus production extraction. The former 'feudal areas' of the earlier times became under colonialism planned devolutions. The dynastic families regained their royal positions under the auspices of the central state. The Condominium, however, introduced cash crop production and valorisation processes set in as production became commodity production linked to the world market. Peripheralization of the Sudan's economy meant that the Sudan stopped being a self-sufficient unit, while the capitalist sector was not entrenched enough to produce more than distorted forms of merchant capital based as before on the traditional institution of the Sheil; the usurer's capital. Theoretical tools for the analysis of the sudanese reality were probed among which were the class model, the Elite/mass dichotomy, the non-capitalist development theory and the Asiatic or Oriental Mode of Production. Among the conclusions reached are: <i>(a)</i> development of the above structure pronounced a cyclical pattern. The rise of the central state and the consequent devolution of power to the local power centres manifested the recurring centripetal/centrifugal migrations. Careful definition of these migrations shows that centrifugal migrations are not necessarily concommittent with the rise of the paramount central state; the evolutionary cycle. <i>(b)</i> The impact of the vastness, the arid and semi-arid environmental constraints produce pressure on the system much as increased demand on tribute by the tribute collecting groups does, at the inception of the devolutionary cycle. <i>(c)</i> The central continuity mechanism behind the successive pattern of the state, is the existence of an internal dynamic within the state formation of certain individuals who are trained in and entrusted with sustaining the state; these are the royal hostages, the military slaves, the Arabs, the Bazinja and the detribalised Sudanese; they are mobile, capable of self manumism and liberated from the apathy of the self-sufficient village or dar members. They are king-makers, control the state from behind the scene and usurp the state as a godly act of cementing what nature has prescribed.

Crocker was Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1981 to 1988. This thesis presents an evaluation of his policy of ‘constructive engagement’ in South Africa, Namibia and Angola. The policy was ostensibly designed to influence Pretoria away from apartheid. Under the auspices of constructive engagement, Crocker also linked the granting of Namibian independence from South Africa to the removal of Cuban troops from Angola. A number of writers agree that Crocker failed in his attempts to persuade Pretoria to abandon apartheid, but that his ‘linkage’ of the situations in Namibia and Angola was a success – achieving both regional goals. This thesis questions these conclusions by identifying an implicit, Cold War-driven agenda behind Crocker’s policies. His real priority in South Africa was to present a policy which would allow Washington to continue its strategically important relationship with Pretoria without the <i>appearance</i> of endorsing apartheid. Crocker’s failure in South Africa was two-fold: neither his explicit nor his implicit agenda was achieved. The success of Crocker’s regional agenda is also called into question. A variety of factors achieved in the final Namibian settlement, some of which had their roots in Crocker’s policy, but also some which were directly contradicted by it. Regarding the withdrawal of Cuban troops, Cuban military strength was vital in convincing South Africa that it could not longer occupy Namibia and support UNITA in Angola without facing an increasing cost. Cuban technical superiority also brought home to Pretoria the implications of sanctions, a policy which Cocker has also opposed. Crocker’s policy did contribute to his explicit goals of Namibian independence and to removing the Cubans. The credibility gained by Cuba through this settlement, however, and the hostility that constructive engagement and linkage generated towards Washington, meant that Crocker largely failed in his implicit, anti-communist, regional agenda.

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No description available.