Keywords

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The contributors to this volume share several common discussion threads and themes in their research. These include:

  • Concepts of maritime landscape and defining maritimity or maritime-ness in African communities

  • Challenges of revising heritage management agendas focused on shipwrecks and an African colonial past and opportunities presented by the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage

  • Development of infrastructure in historic African ports where high incidences of shipwrecking depleted colonial resources

  • Stewardship and monitoring environmental and human impacts on African maritime heritage sites

  • Researching iconic shipwreck sites underwater and on beaches that represent sea power and imperialism, especially Dutch, British, and German

  • Recognition of maritime cultural manifestations within tangible and intangible maritime heritage beyond shipwrecks, like gravestones, song, drama, and oral history

  • Community memorialization of their heritage through exhibits, displays, and tourism trails

Ichumbaki argues that the maritime landscape of Africa has a much earlier time frame extending back to the Neolithic and the Stone Age that is neglected by some scholars. The concept of maritimity needs to be revisited and should include not only seafaring but habitation, exploitation of resources and trade along the Swahili coastline. Like other contributors he calls upon archaeologists and anthropologists to investigate understudied areas in the maritime landscape such as the physical nodes at which intangible and material elements intersected one another through time. Such studies will reveal ancient locales and maritime activities such as river-crossings, communal washing and swimming spots, baptismal pools, rock-shelters with historical value for traditional healing, and favored patches of medicinal plants. Early maritime trade is apparent from archaeological assemblages listed in African authored reports that many researchers have ignored or have been unaware of the existence of these works.

All authors utilize a variety of interdisciplinary data sets. Using archaeology to supplement or contradict historical research is often challenging. Mollema successfully navigates between ship construction data of early 1900s British and Dutch shipwreck, in African waters , to draw conclusions about sea power. He explores quality of timbers, strength of construction, and composition of metals to reinforce and conclude that the British ship was superior, playing into concepts of sea power in a strategic African colony. Borrelli’s chapter analyzes the risk effects of Table Bay and the British official’s behavioral responses to it during the nineteenth century. He uses a range of theories and methodologies to demonstrate risk perception of the local officials and how Table Bay was transformed over the period. He emphasized that risk and risk management defined the construction and use of the harbor. These conclusions are further validated with empirical data correlating the volume of shipwrecks and additions of port structures like breakwaters, docks, jetties, and wharfs at certain time periods. This author stresses that perceptions of risks are not static, but have changed through time. Different officials conceived of risk as more or less urgent, requiring a certain response in terms of infrastructure. Examining the set of historical and archaeological records provides insights as to whether there was actually a dividend. Ultimately, the high losses incurred by shipwrecks depleted the nation’s investments in sea power.

Harris’ study addresses the naval port in the Cape Colony, Simon’s Town in False Bay, also administered by the Dutch and British. In contrast, this port was neglected in terms of infrastructure. The Dutch officials abandoned the idea of building a channel between Table Bay and False Bay because it was too costly. It was logistically extremely difficult to find and transport building materials to the area and the first British admiralty complex was constructed from shipwreck timbers of HMS Sceptre. More importantly, the chapter highlights critical players, other than the British and Dutch settlers, who contributed to the local workforce and global economy. A significant portion of the naval community in Simon’s Town comprised Kroomen from West Africa serving on British naval vessels , who often retired here. Slaves, fishers, whalers, and port workers supporting the naval community who were deserters from American ships are originated from Indonesia and the Swahili coastline. Although the Cape was the Africa base for the Royal Navy, the larger population was not Anglophile, but a mosaic of cultures from Atlantic and Indian Ocean seaboards, indigenous peoples, with new subcultures emerging. Only in the last two decades has the South African community begun to study, showcase, and celebrate this diversity as an integral part of the historical narrative and tourism ventures in False Bay.

Jones examines remains of ships on beaches and their importance towards tourism. She opines that these remains, though sometimes neglected, could provide useful information toward maritime history and critical data on coastal changes over time. She advocates a sound management approach for the preservation, studying, and interpretation of these remains. Finally, she rallies all stakeholders to consider the remains not only as symbols of the past but also as part of the present and the future as well. Oyediran touches on this point too when he discusses the contemporary beliefs and philosophy of the indigenous people of Badagry about the slave trade. He also highlights how a community takes ownership of their history through the selection of tourism sites and associated histories. Similarly, Mjema’s study is a call to action to research, protect, publish, and showcase archaeological sites for tourism, Tanzania’s maritime heritage , especially those sites that represent global history and sea power, namely WWI shipwreck sites.

Both Mjema and Jones’ case studies are German ships, iconic symbols of sea power. Eduard Bohlen served as a mail, cargo, and passenger steamship between Germany and West Africa. In 1898 Eduard Bohlen was sailed again under the German flag to West Africa, an area at the time fraught with turbulent colonial and indigenous conflict. During a period of colonial wars, the Herero living in Swakopmund were captured and incarcerated aboard Eduard Bohlen , and the male prisoners sent to work as slave laborers in the South African mines. After use as a prison ship, Edward Bohlen returned to passenger service combined with delivery of diamond mining supplies, the mainstay of the German economy in south West Africa. In Tanzania, German and British shipwrecks represent stark reminders also of a national power play in the colonies. German occupation in Tanzania lasted from 1880 to 1919 followed by British from 1919 to 1961. From 1884, Namibia was a German colony called German South-West Africa. The League of Nations mandated its administration by the British Union of South Africa after WWI.

King, like Jones, addresses site formation processes of an iron shipwreck, representing sea power, stranded on a dynamic coastal zone. Both call attention of the urgency to document and study these sites which are disappearing rapidly due, primarily, to natural forces. These variables include metal corrosion, algae, wind scouring actions, strong surf, bird nests and guano, and wildlife habitats for baboons, hyenas and jackals. Fortunately, beach wrecks are accessible to stewards beyond the small number of scuba divers. The authors discuss the roles of local groups in shipwreck management in the local park system, namely the Cape Point Nature Reserve and Namib-Naukluft National Park. In particular, the roles are the Windhoek Diving Club members and Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programs in Namibia. King points out the value of the geocache activity as monitoring public access on the wrecks. The cache contains a logbook, where finders can log their names and hometowns, and a link to a website where visitors can comment on the cache. The comments on the website allow an archaeologist or heritage site manager to monitor activity and comments on the site to keep abreast of any changes, such as African Oystercatcher (Haematopus moquini) birds nesting within parts of the wreckage. Jones advocates more experimentation with noninvasive technology to record endangered beach wrecks, for example, in conjunction with photogrammetry and LiDAR, unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs)—all techniques that provide potential data on coastal landscape change.

American heritage on African shores is another theme present in both King and Harris’s studies. Two shipwrecks, a Confederate raider and WWII Liberty ship, are emblems of global warfare and tangible heritage that left reminders in the Cape and wider sphere of South Africa. These topics deserve more attention of historians and archaeologists. Songs are often the most poignant signatures of memorable events in a community. For example, the song devoted to CSS Alabama celebrating its meaning to the African hosts is a popular component of choral, folk, and big band music festivals today. Oyediran in his chapter identifies how slave memories are preserved in Badagry, Nigeria through songs. These songs project the narratives of slaves in a foreign land and how they cherished their homeland and longed to return. He also discusses how the indigenous people of port Badagry have preserved the slave trade history through the dramatization of the slavery experience. This experience is relived during special occasions like the Badagry festival and entertainment of dignitaries at significant community celebrations.

Oyediran also traces the origin of the slave trade from the hinterland to the point of no return. These hinterland communities are of great significance to the narrative. The ports can be viewed as administrative centers radiating, economically, both inward and outward. Future studies in maritime landscapes could address this connection in more depth. Examples related to the topics in the book include inland and riverine colonial warfare with indigenous combatants like Zulu war and Yoruba war. Railways were important part of the infrastructure bringing trade, war goods, and people to port cities in Africa in the late 1800s. Other modes of inland maritime transportation that could be further explored are African-built canoes, war crafts, river barges, and steam boats all contributing to expanding imperialism. Building upon Ichubaki’s call for a more expansive and earlier framework, another productive theme would be the non-European trade links and networks along the coastlines, in estuaries, on lakes, and up the river systems of Africa in a second edition of African maritime landscapes! Sharfman, Gribble, and Boshoff’s chapter also endorses the agenda of a less European or colonial era focus for heritage practitioners, with the view that it is a historical topic that will be more meaningful to the majority of South Africans and garner more Government support.