Historic Wildlife Trade

The blog I posted the other night was pretty random. I got really geeky excited over a bunch of old weights and measurements with no explanation. So now I'll try to explain.

Ivory - Museu da História Natural (Maputo). The tip of the tusks is at least 70".

Two summers ago, I got a small research grant to travel to Portugal to collect archival data from the colonial archives about the historic wildlife trade in Delagoa Bay (now Maputo Bay). It was a way for me to look for data about historic plant use, Ronga culture, and landscape descriptions as well.

I found old customs records containing information about a wide range of plants and animals being exported out between 1845 and 1906. The records provided monetary values (in Reis), number of tusks, teeth, and horns, packaging sizes, and weights, but not in a form that I could understand. This made it difficult to calculate the potential sizes of animals killed for their ivory, skin, or horns.

White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum) - Museu da História Natural (Maputo)

Why bother trying to figure out how animals were hunted or how big they were? Or how many trees were harvested? It all goes back to my questions about the African savanna landscape we see today has been shaped by human activities and decisions in the past.

Hippo skull - Museu da História Natural (Maputo). Hippo ivory was used for dentures in the nineteenth century.

I now have some real numbers to crunch. In July, I will be presenting my preliminary results at the Society for Conservation Biology meetings in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. This makes me more than a little nervous (the talking part), but I am hoping for some good feedback so that I can polish up my "little project" into something worth publishing.

The following is my abstract for the presentation:

Wildlife Trade Exports from Delagoa Bay and Its Hinterland 1845-1906

While previous investigation of East African export records has focused on the social, political, and economic changes generated by the slave and ivory trade in this region, these same records could be used to document regional long-term ecological change. This study analyzes available export records for Delagoa Bay (now Maputo Bay, Mozambique) and its hinterland from 1845 to 1906 in order to understand the potential ecological impacts of historic natural resource extraction on this region. Types, amounts, and values of exported biological, non-agricultural resources were collected from the alfândega registers held at the Archivo Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon, Portugal. Published accounts of nineteenth century explorers and travelers were used to identify unusual items and the extent of Delagoa Bay’s hinterland. Information on the ecological niche of identifiable exports was drawn from the literature to determine potential ecosystem impacts. Elephant ivory, rhinoceros horn, and hippopotamus teeth comprise the top three exports from 1845-1906. Other listed exports include pelts, skins, bones, and horn of various wild animals, sea turtle shells, cowry and conch shells, whale oil and ambergris, fresh and dried fish, specialized timbers (Diospyros kirkii, Spirostachys africana, Dalbergia melanoxylon), mangrove bark, rubber (Landolphia kirkii), and a lichen (Roccella montagnei).

Cracking the Code

It’s 10 pm. The electricity is out in the Coop neighborhood, so I am writing this armed with a 3-hour laptop battery and Petzl headlamp. Despite the darkness, I’ve finally cracked a code that has been teasing me for almost 2 years. A code that with some better language skills, I might not have had to figure out on my own. This "code" of Portuguese weights and measures was used by alfândega (customs) record keepers in Mozambique in the 19th century. Not terribly exciting for most people, but it means that I can now analyze some of the effects of historic wildlife trade on the landscape surrounding Delagoa Bay.

This symbol (above), as well as the @ symbol cover the pages of a notebook I carried daily during my visit to Lisbon, Portugal in the summer of 2005. I was there on a small research grant collecting data on historic wildlife exports from Delagoa Bay and its hinterland. Delagoa Bay is the old name for Maputo Bay.

Tonight, I finally figured out that the symbol is shorthand for libra (pound). Now that I know what the symbol stands for, it seems so obvious. The @ symbol refers to arrobas. What are libras and arrobas? And all the rest of the archaic weights I found?

1 bar/baar/bare = 229 kg
1 arroba = 14.9 kg = 32.41 lb
1 faraçola = 12.4 kg
1 mane = 0.95665 kg
1 arrátel = 0.459375 kg
1 libra = 0.4536 kg
1 marco = 0.2368 kg
1 onça = 0.02835 kg
1 matical = 0.00441346 kg
1 oitava = 0.0037 kg
1 panja = 5.175 to 5.52 L
1 panella = 8.4 L

These values varied depending on the port. A bar in Sofala was not the exact same weight as a bar in Ilha de Moçambique. I translated everything into kilograms because commie units, I mean SI metrics, are used for science. (BTW in doing all these weight and measure searches I learned that only 3 countries in the world do not use metrics – Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States. Interesting). I'm posting them in case someone else ever needs to track this all down. I've done many searches on the web but found nothing.

These values came from the following 2 major sources (again, just in case you ever need to cite them):

Alpers, Edward A.. 1975. Ivory and Slaves: Changing Pattern of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century. University of California Press: Berkeley.

Nunez, Antonio. 1868 [1554]. O livro dos peços, medidas e moedas. In de Lima Felner, Roderigo J., ed. Collecção de Monumentos Ineditos Para a Historia das Conquistas dos Portuguezes em Africa, Asia e America. Tomo V. Serie 1. Historia da Asia. Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias: Lisboa.

A big thanks go to Dr. Antonio Sopa of the UEM Archivo Histórico de Moçambique for directing me to the Nunez document.

Now, anyone know what species of southern African cat was called a "tigre" in the late 1800s in Portuguese East Africa?

5/9/07 - I discovered this morning that a "tigre" is a Large spotted genet (Genetta tigrina). The tails and skins were used as part of Tsonga and Zulu soldiers (impis) uniforms.