Elephants For Ivory Research Articles

Andaluzyjska convivencia

ANDALUSIAN CONVIVENCIA: INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS IN MEDIEVAL ANDALUSIA IN SELECTED HISTORICAL NOVELS The article aims to demonstrate that scientific concepts related to convivencia are present in historical novels about Andalusia. Although research on this topic is popular, it has not gained much attention in Poland. This study analyzes and compares the theories of Américo Castro, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Thomas Glick and Oriol Pi Sunyer, María Rosa Menocal, and Brian Catlos with the portrayal of Andalusia in the following novels: The Scarlet Manuscript by Antonio Gala, The Hand of Fatima by Ildefonso Falcones, Ivory Elephant by Nerea Riesco, and The Muse by Jessie Burton. Furthermore, it explores the impact of medieval Andalusia’s culture and history on Spanish identity.

Giacomo Macola. The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics.

With The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics, Giacomo Macola has made a major contribution to the history of Africa, and a small one to the history of technology. The book begins by criticizing the histories of guns in Africa written in the 1970s and 1980s for concentrating exclusively on the functional uses of guns for hunting and warfare. The social construction of technology that followed in the 1990s, which stressed the role of users in determining the function of guns, represented a partial advance. In this book, Macola claims to offer a further advance by presenting what he calls the “domestication” perspective (6), in which African guns are embedded in social relations and in personal identities and statuses, as well as in functional uses. The heart of his book, and by far the most significant contribution, is Macola’s description and analysis of the many diverse ethnic groups, from traditional kingdoms to small-scale stateless societies, that occupied south-central Africa—the region between the Great Lakes to the east, Angola to the west, the Congo to the north, and South Africa to the south—in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this savanna region where there were no clear borders, widely scattered populations moved in search of pastures for their cattle, elephants for ivory, and slaves.

The political ecology of hunting in Namibia’s Kaokoveld: from Dorsland Trekkers’ elephant hunts to trophy-hunting in contemporary conservancies

ABSTRACTThroughout the past 120 years, hunting has linked the semi-arid Kaokoveld (northwestern Namibia) to global trade networks simultaneously embedding it within global aspirations to preserve African fauna untrammelled. The hunting of elephants for ivory, of endemic species for scientific inventories, of large game for the leisurely hunt, and clandestine poaching by South African officials and military, as well as contemporary forms of legalised hunting for trophies and saleable game meat, have continuously connected local pastoral communities, the environment, the state, and external globally operating actors. Flows of trophies, commodities, services, knowledge, and weapons between hunters, carriers and scouts, scientists and translators, intermediary traders and operators, state officials, and experts of international organisations have contributed not only to the dynamic development of a specific local–global interface, but also to the continuous re-shaping of biocultural frontiers between game species and humans. These flows have been strongly driven by the shifting tides of commodification of game, its state-enforced de-commodification, and its recent recommodification. This paper first addresses the elephant hunts of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, and the hunting for scientific purposes in the first half of the twentieth century. It then proceeds to look at ‘subsistence’ hunting, and leisure hunting by colonial officials, and finally deals with modern trophy-hunting in the context of community-based natural resource management.

Native Words Learned by American Soldiers in India and Burma in World War II

5 ^ tORLD WAR II sent 4oo,ooo or more American soldiers to India and V v Burma in connection with two vital military operations. One was flying supplies to China via the Hump. The other, a twin operation, was driving the Japs out of Upper Burma in a diEcult military campaign and at the same time building and operating the Ledo Road, which was later renamed the Stilwell Road. Contact between these Americans and the natives of India and Burma amounted to considerably more than that involved in haggling over the price of an ivory elephant or a teakwood box. For one thing, a whole army of natives labored for the American army in building brick and bamboo buildings, constructing drainage ditches, unloading ships, trucks, and railu-ay waggons, and countless other tasks. Gangs or crews of such native labor were usually placed in charge of American enlisted men who were able to handle them very well with a scanty vocabulary of Hindustani. Another important fact was that a river of Indian goods flowed by reverse lend-lease from Indian factories, warehouses, and retail sources to Americans, both in rear echelons and on the Sghting front. Procurement of these goods called for countless contacts between American supply troops and Moslem and Hindu manufacturers and merchants. A third fact was that nearly all American oEcers had their own native bearers and servants, and enlisted men would often group together to hire bearers. American soldiers, always notably democratic in mixing with foreign populations, came to know their bearers extremely well. In addition to these contacts there were those which Americans had with the Chinese army which was secretly trained by General Joseph Stilwell at Ramgarh, India, and which fought side by side with American troops at the head of the road against the retreating Japs. The result of these varied contacts was the acquisition by the Americans of a group of Indian, Anglo Indian, Burmese, and Chinese words which became a standard part of their daily vocabulary for many months. The return to civilian life in America relegated this small vocabulary to disuse, except for an occasional involuntary teek hai or atcha, to be sure, but the best known and most used words are worth recording before they pass