Elephants, Agriculture, and Ecological Change in Unyamwezi (West-Central Tanzania), 1850s–1910s

This article takes a multispecies approach to analyze the causes of ecological change in the region of Unyamwezi, located in present-day west-central Tanzania, between the 1850s and 1910s. It is inspired by two scholarly canons. First, it draws on environmental histories of Asia, which have linked agricultural expansion to the gradual extinction of elephants in several locales. Second, it draws on Africanist research in the natural sciences, which has emphasized the importance of elephants themselves as agents of ecological change. The latter canon of research has argued that the depletion of elephant populations can contribute to dramatic woodland recovery, leading it to suggest that the extinction of elephants in much of nineteenth-century Unyamwezi may have affected woodland and bush regrowth. Through close analysis of European-authored documentary sources, this article puts this hypothesis to the test. It argues that although the extinction of elephants may have played a role in woodland and bush regrowth in Unyamwezi during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, changes in agricultural systems likely played a more significant role. Ecological change in Unyamwezi during this period can be understood as the function of a shifting human-elephant nexus.