‘Forty strokes with the rhino whip’: Violence, collecting & eastern African caravan journeys in the late nineteenth century

Tuesday, 19 May 2026, 4pm to 5.30pm

This paper explores the nature and role of violence on white-led collecting caravans during eastern Africa's late nineteenth century. Violence undergirded imperial collecting. Without physical force and threat, collections would not be made. Communities who experienced the most violence at the hands of imperial caravans were also those from whom the most was collected. These travelling men were not just products of but contributed to this most prolific era of imperial violence and the ‘scramble’ for Africa. From the Mahdist wars to the decimation of Kikuyu communities, they did not tread lightly on the earth. It was in the aftermath of the 1884-1885 Berlin conference that Europe’s major powers began ‘sponsoring systematic collecting expeditions’, leading to a surge in white-led caravans and a subsequent escalation of violence. This paper examines how men from Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the USA and UK, travelling in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and the Great Rift Valley, utilised violence for their own ends, the impact upon caravan workers and local communities, and how this resulted in today’s museum collections in Europe and the USA. It will begin by addressing the violence experienced by caravan workers, before moving on to battlefield violence, and the continued resale market in such weaponry. The final section presents a study of intimate violence on caravan journeys, encompassing the home and sexual violence; nothing was held sacrosanct by the imperial will to use brute force against racialised peoples. This violence was not just endemic but punitive, a tool for the maintenance of European honour, as well as mission success and collection creation. The collecting aspects of these accounts has been marginalised, but with critiques of museum contents entering popular discourse, how these travellers collected in the context of violence requires interrogation.

Fleur Martin is a historian of nineteenth century imperial and global history at the University of Warwick. Her thesis, ‘Looting, Trade & The Gift: Imperial Collecting in Eastern Africa c.1860-1914’, examines the history of why and how travellers collected in Eastern Africa in the mid to late nineteenth century.

Speaker(s): Fleur Martin (Warwick)

Series: Northeast Africa Forum

Venue: African Studies Centre - Seminar Room - Seminar Room African Studies Centre 13 Bevington Road Oxford Oxfordshire OX2 6NB United Kingdom

Department: African Studies Centre (Unit)

Host: Norman Aselmeyer

Register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/d74c58ea-91f7-4304-8e21-54a72ab8ec5f@cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91