Namibia's Red Line : The History of a Veterinary and Settlement Border.

Based on archival sources and oral history, this book  reconstructs a border-building process in Namibia that spanned more than sixty years. The process commenced with the establishment of a temporary veterinary defence line against rinderpest by the German colonial authorities in the late nineteent...

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator: Miescher, G.
Format: eBook Electronic
Language:English
Imprint: New York : Palgrave Macmillan US, 2012.
Series:Palgrave Series in African Borderlands Studies
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Local Note:Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2023. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Online Access:Click to View
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Summary:Based on archival sources and oral history, this book  reconstructs a border-building process in Namibia that spanned more than sixty years. The process commenced with the establishment of a temporary veterinary defence line against rinderpest by the German colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century and ended with the construction of a continuous two-metre-high fence by the South African colonial government sixty years later. This 1250-kilometre fence divides northern from central Namibia even today.  The book combines a macro and a micro-perspective and differentiates between cartographic and physical reality. The analysis explores both the colonial state's agency with regard to veterinary and settlement policies and the strategies of Africans and Europeans living close to the border. The analysis also includes the varying perceptions of individuals and populations who lived further north and south of the border and describes their experiences crossing the border as migrant workers, African traders, European settlers and colonial officials. The Red Line's history is understood as a gradual process of segregating livestock and people, and of constructing dichotomies of modern and traditional, healthy and sick, European and African.
Based on archival sources and oral history, this book reconstructs a border-building process in Namibia that spanned more than sixty years. The process commenced with the establishment of a temporary veterinary defence line against rinderpest by the German colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century and ended with the construction of a continuous two-metre-high fence by the South African colonial government sixty years later. This 1250-kilometre fence divides northern from central Namibia even today. The book combines a macro and a micro-perspective and differentiates between cartographic and physical reality. The analysis explores both the colonial state's agency with regard to veterinary and settlement policies and the strategies of Africans and Europeans living close to the border. The analysis also includes the varying perceptions of individuals and populations who lived further north and south of the border and describes their experiences crossing the border as migrant workers, African traders, European settlers and colonial officials. The Red Line's history is understood as a gradual process of segregating livestock and people, and of constructing dichotomies of modern and traditional, healthy and sick, European and African.
Item Description:Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
Physical Description:1 online resource (335 pages)
ISBN:9781137118318
Author Notes:Giorgio Miescher is a historian of Namibia and Southern Africa and has published on various aspects in the field. He is currently a Marie Curie Fellow of the University of Basel, Switzerland, and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.