Forming an lsland Wilderness in Times of Extinction: A More Than Human History of Rubondo lsland (Tanzania), 1880-1980

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Felix Schürmann
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 565181295

This book examines the history of the oldest and still largest island nature reserve in Africa, Rubondo Island (Tanzania), which lies in the southwest of Lake Victoria. While the lake is widely regarded as an example par excellence of the destruction of biodiversity through the introduction of invasive species, Rubondo has the reputation of being one of the last remnants of a largely untouched primary nature on the African continent. The book shows, however, how the species structure on Rubondo has changed drastically since the 1880s due to human activities and in particular due to the introduction of previously non-native species. The book begins in the years around 1880, when raids and enslavement campaigns by Buganda deeply disrupted the fishing economy on Rubondo. After the establishment of German colonial rule, an epidemic of sleeping sickness drew the interest of the authorities to Rubondo in the 1900s. Their efforts to interrupt the chains of transmission led to interventions in natural and cultural conditions in the south-western part of the lake. In 1911, these developments culminated in the first eviction of the island population, the Nyarubondo, and the classification of the island as a forest reserve. After the end of German rule in the First World War, the new British administrators maintained the forest reserve as a protective space for a nature considered as threatened, but accepted the return of the Nyarubondo. During the disruptions of decolonization, conservationists brought around one hundred large mammals to Rubondo from 1963 onwards in order to transform the island into a modern Noah's Ark for the threatened fauna of East Africa. The Nyarubondo had to leave the island again. From 1966 onwards, the German zoo director Bernhard Grzimek and the Frankfurt Zoological Society associated with him expanded the animal settlements to include other species with a high rarity, show value and encounter value in order to prepare Rubondo for commercialisation as a tourist destination. After many years of conflicts over financing and responsibility, this phase came to an end in 1977 when the Tanzanian parliament classified the island as a national park in order to make it more valuable for the post-colonial tourism industry. As the first monograph on the history of Rubondo, the study embeds these events in current debates about the mass extinction of species. It shows how human interventions in the species structure under the conditions of colonial rule and decolonisation have changed the conditions for the life of many species. By looking at the island world on a small scale, the book invites to think about big issues: about the controllability of wilderness and the naturalness of a nature regulated by human intervention. About the role of tourism and non-governmental organizations in post-colonial architectures of conservation. And about the agency of animals and plants to influence historical change.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants