Imperial Ecologies

This article argues that although national parks were instrumental to colonial rule, they were not unilaterally shaped by imperial authorities. While the historiography on colonialism and national parks has usually focused on Eastern and Southern Africa, this study uses original archival material to examine French West Africa, through the example of Niokolo Koba National Park (PNNK) created in 1954 in Senegal. It analyses the PNNK as a contested site of power in which various actors were intertwined in complex and ambivalent relationships. It challenges the idea of a “colonial consensus” among Europeans, as well as the binary opposition between coloniser and colonised. It shows that, in the post-war context, the PNNK offered the colonial administration new opportunities for social control and economic development, yet its evolution was also decisively shaped by other forces. The nascent international network of ecological scientists developed a new rhetoric of nature protection which both legitimised and criticised French colonial policy. Local African villagers significantly contributed to the development of the PNNK, despite Europeans’ efforts to remove them. Others resisted the creation of the park either locally or at the imperial level, crucially constraining the possibilities of colonial forestry. Finally, the natural environment additionally conditioned administrative agency and proved influential to the colonial perception of the region.