Western Activism and the Veiling of Primitive Accumulation in the East African Ivory Trade

Abstract

This article explores themes of morality and capitalist exploitation within the context of the East African ivory trade. Through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates object-based, archival analysis and critical heritage studies, this article traces how morality-tinged, Western-driven narratives concerning the ivory trade mobilize asymmetrical relationships of capitalist exchange in both the past and present. In the late 19th century, the abolitionist movement conflated the East African ivory and slave trades by narrating the forced coercion of Africans made to carry ivory tusks in the interior, only to be sold into slavery upon reaching the coast. This discursively erased histories of active African engagement with mercantile capitalism as well as emerging labor culture among professional porters of the caravan trade. The vilification of “Arab” slave traders through stories of extreme cruelty within the ivory trade was used to justify formal British colonialism in the region, which led to more expansive capitalist integration and extraction. In a circuitous fashion, contemporary Western conservation activists blame African corruption, Islamic extremism, and Asian consumption for rampant elephant and rhino poaching across East Africa, making way for neoliberal appropriation of East African heritage under the guise of moral interventionism. In both cases, moral (and Orientalist) arguments advocating liberation, heritage preservation, and economic development veil processes by which unequal exchange is facilitated and maintained.