Knowledge and information about Africa

Junior Research Group, Head: Dr. Benjamin Steiner

The junior research group “Knowledge and Information about Africa” investigated, against the background of the cluster’s common research question, how ventures of discovery, exploration and subsequent colonization of the world since the 15th century have attempted to overcome the contradictions between the different cultures and environments by means of information and knowledge acquisition. The group researched the history of knowledge in Africa from the perspective of various historical actors and institutions and asked about the specific knowledge and information systems from which the justification narratives for the respective claims to power over other cultures, people, norm and value systems and thus for orders of inequality could be constructed.

The project of the group leader (Benjamin Steiner) dealt with the implementation of an information and knowledge system about Africa in early modern France. Using the example of exploration and information gathering by French traders, explorers and researchers, the focus of interest is on the recording of the continent through reports, descriptions, cartographies and proto-statistical data collection. The aim is to explicitly trace how the normative structure of information collection, archiving and distribution in the institutions of knowledge processing (academies, ministries, trading companies) functioned in practice. In their archived form, knowledge and information thus prove to be evidence of a long-lasting process that documents the development of a very specific discourse and a specific idea of order in the relationship between Europe and Africa.

The projects of the doctoral students in the junior research group addressed this question with three contrasting research approaches in different spatial and temporal contexts. The first dissertation project (Esther Ries) was dedicated to Africans in 18th century Europe. Interestingly, it also examined the accounts of people from Africa who came to Europe, especially to Great Britain, of their own free will in order to learn the language, to study or, for example, to work as translators for trading companies. In this way, the dominant narrative of a history of oppression of Africans by Europeans was broken and, among other things, the influence that these positive examples of mirrored cultural contact had on the image of Africa in Europe was examined.

The second project on memory cultures in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal in the 20th century (Tina Kramer) introduced a further variation on the common theme. Here, a historiographical-ethnological perspective was used to investigate Africa’s own culture of memory and history, which deals with the colonial past. The mobility of the actors in the field of tension between colony and colonial power was also the focus of interest here. The question was how students, travelers, traders or politicians experienced and still experience the gap between the respective normative orders of the orally mediated culture of remembrance in Guinea-Bissau and the official historiography in Portugal.

Finally, a third doctoral project (Felix Schürmann) dealt with a transcultural community that could almost be described as a preliminary form of a global subculture. It concerns the settlements of whalers on the African coast in the 18th and 19th centuries, whose social composition and global sphere of activity represent a counter-image to the European seafarers. The main source here were the private logbooks of crew members who reported on their experiences on the coasts with the foreign continent and its inhabitants, not only from the eyewitness accounts of Europeans, but also from the perspective of black officers and harpooners who were either former slaves from North America or the Caribbean or were hired as African workers by the whaling ships en route.

The junior research group was able to achieve many of its goals over the three-year period. All research projects were able to successfully carry out their respective archive, library and field research visits and produce results that mostly met and sometimes even exceeded expectations. Overall, the group’s work can be considered successful, as not only was it possible to carry out individual research projects, but also to sustainably promote young academics in the field of Africa-related sciences. The academic location of Frankfurt, with its collection and research focus on Africa, not only served the work of the group, but also helped to intensify and consolidate networking between the academics.

Initially, the project of the head of the junior research group to complete a monograph entitled Colbert’s Africa. A history of knowledge and encounters in Africa in the age of Louis XIV. which was published by de Gruyter-Oldenbourg Verlag in 2014. The work also served the author as a qualifying thesis for the habilitation process at Goethe University, which was completed in May 2013. The study is dedicated to the problem of state formation in the context of European expansion using the example of the French presence in West Africa, Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands from their beginnings to the first third of the 18th century. While the emergence of states and forms of knowledge-based rule was previously considered a phenomenon limited to Europe, this finding is questioned on the basis of the integration of European history into the events of the Atlantic world. In order to explain the genesis of France as a model state of the 17th century, it is argued here that the seemingly modern administrative structures in particular are inconceivable without the challenge of rule at a distance. Africa was not yet regarded by contemporaries as ‘different’ in principle; rather, they recognized similarities and opportunities for integration into an emerging system of states that allowed for encounters on an equal footing.

The projects of the doctoral students in the junior research group were also successfully completed during the term.
Overall, the work of the junior research group can be seen as valuable not only in terms of publications and successful academic qualifications, but also in terms of networking between junior researchers and public relations work for Africa-related research in the Cluster of Excellence. The cooperation with the Frobenius Institute and the Institute for Ethnology in Frankfurt should be emphasized here. Finally, it should be emphasized that this success is also due to the cooperation with Stefanie Michels’ junior research group in the Cluster. This has resulted in extraordinarily fruitful discussions, which have found expression in workshops, conferences and joint publications.

Most important publications:
Schürmann, Felix (2017): Der graue Unterstrom: Walfänger und Küstengesellschaften an den tiefen Stränden Afrikas, 1770-1920. (=Globalgeschichte, vol. 25.) Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 2017 (awarded the Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte prize for the best first monograph on world/global history of the last three years, 2018)
Schürmann, Felix: “Ships and Beaches as Arenas of Entanglements from Below: Whalemen in Coastal Africa, c. 1760-1900”, in: InterDisciplines. Journal of History and Sociology 3/1, 2012, 25-47
Steiner, Benjamin (2014): Colbert’s Africa. A history of knowledge and encounters in Africa in the age of Louis XIV. Munich: de Gruyter
Steiner, Benjamin (2013): “Normative Ordnungen im Konflikt. Die Genese von Staatlichkeit und Administration in Frankreich und Begegnungen in Afrika während der Frühen Neuzeit”, in: Andreas Fahrmeir/Annette Warner (eds.): The diversity of normative orders. Conflicts and dynamics from a historical and ethnological perspective , Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 309-341

The most important events include: Steiner, Benjamin, together with Susanne Rau: Grenzmissverständnisse in der Globalgeschichtsschreibung. Section event as part of the 48th Historikertag in Berlin from September 28 to October 1, 2010; Steiner, Benjamin, together with Stefanie Michels: Colloquium of the Africa-related junior research groups “Knowledge and Information about Africa” and “Transnational Genealogies”, event from winter semester 2009/10 to winter semester 2011/12, with guests Susanne Friedrich, Arndt Brendecke (both Munich, Silesia), Susanne Friedrich and Arndt Brendecke (both Munich, Silesia), among others.with guests Susanne Friedrich, Arndt Brendecke (both Munich), Silke Stickrodt (London), Joseph Agbakoba (University of Nigeria), Marco Platania, Nikita Dhawan (both Frankfurt) and Steiner, Benjamin, together with Felix Schürmann: Bewegte See. Filmic Narratives of Maritime History in the Early Modern Period, event in the summer semester 2012.