Environment, Materiality, and Firearms

Abstract The role of firearms in African history has been extensively studied, but rarely from an environmental history perspective. Three examples from twentieth-century Mwinilunga in north-west Zambia, related to hunting, guerrilla warfare, and witchcraft, argue for the importance of considering environmental factors and materiality in histories of firearms. A focus on environmental history better illustrates the appropriation, use, and power of firearms across African localities. Such an approach helps explain why in Mwinilunga the use of guns in hunting was highly ritualised, how guerrillas could make use of terrain as well as weaponry to outsmart their enemies, and why rituals frequently deployed the symbolic and material power of guns to make sense of an unpredictable environment. The gun as a technological artefact was profoundly embedded in existing environmental, material, and ritual practices. Examples of firearms in Mwinilunga, thus, show the dynamic and interactive relationships between technology, nature, and humans in African history.