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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Boundaries of power: colonialism and territorial domination in Ovamboland after 1927
| Panel |
86. Invited AEGIS panel: Borderlands Identities and Bureaucratic Practices: Emerging Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
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| Paper ID | 729 |
| Author(s) |
Dobler, Gregor
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The border between the Portuguese colony Angola and the South African mandated territory South West Africa was finally demarcated in 1927. Until then, a neutral zone between the territories had been disputed by the colonial powers. From the beginning, the new border was far from irrelevant. A large number of people from the former neutral zone moved into South West Africa in order to avoid the Portuguese colonial regime. This led to an overpopulation in the Southern part of the Ukuanyama kingdom and to new boundary disputes - not between colonial states, but between the different Ovambo kingdoms. A year after the colonial border, the border between Ukuanyama and Ondonga was demarcated in the same way as the colonial border: as a strip of land cleared of bushes and trees and kept open as a visible marker of spheres of political domination. Starting from this double demarcation, the paper will explore local notions of territorial domination and boundaries in these two Ovambo kingdoms during the early colonial rule. |
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