Reflections on a Complex (and Cosmopolitan) Archive: Postcards and Photography in Early Colonial Uganda, c.1904–1928

Abstract

This article examines a collection of picture postcards that were published in Uganda between c. 1904 and 1928. Drawing upon recent developments in the anthropology of photography, the article attempts to reconstruct the extended “social archive” of this collection, by exploring the range of relationships through which these image‐objects were produced, and through which they have been subsequently circulated and consumed. The approach reveals something of a “concealed” archive of meaning within this collection, one which is indicative both of wider cosmopolitan imaginaries that were at play in the British Empire during this period, and of the official view of the new Uganda colony as an inclusive, even collaborative, social project. A focus on the social agency of the postcards themselves then reveals how these meanings became later “overwritten”, to produce a more recognizable semiotics of colonial representation and power.

Keywords:

• Anthropology
• Photography
• Postcards
• Colonialism
• Uganda

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Anthropology of Africa Seminar, London School of Economics (October 2009), at the African Studies Seminar, University of Oxford (November 2009) and in a session entitled “Photographs as a Resource in Anthropology: The Eyes See Then, but What, and Who, Gives Them Meaning”—organized by Joanna Cohan Scherer, Smithsonian, and Sergei Kan, Dartmouth—at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (Philadelphia, December 2009). I would like to thank the audiences at all of these venues, as well as my co‐editor Marcus Banks, my colleague Terry Austrin, and one anonymous reviewer for History and Anthropology, for their useful comments and suggestions. Any mistakes or omissions remain my own.

I would also like to thank Rachel Rowe and Don Manning of Cambridge University Library for all of their help with the preparation of this article.

Finally, I would like to thank the family of the late Mr Evans for making the postcard collection available for research.

Notes

[1] All of the postcards referred to in this article are from a collection that was originally put together by the late P. C. Evans, who also published a comprehensive catalogue of all known postcards published in Uganda during this period (the catalogue includes listings of thirty‐five postcards which Evans himself had not seen, yet which he had deduced must exist, based on the gaps in existing sequences of serial numbers). The catalogue classifies all of these postcards into sixteen categories, defined in terms of publisher, date of circulation, font and typesetting, and so on.

[2] The most notable missionary‐photographer of this period was the Church Missionary Society’s (CMS’s) Charles Hattersley, who between 1898 and 1906 produced a quite stunning set of images of Buganda and its surrounds. Some of these images were later published in Hattersley 1906, 1908.

[3] For example, Jill Dias (Angola, 1988), Oscar Norwich (South Africa, 1986), Paul Azoulay (also Algeria, 1980), and especially Phillipe David (French West Africa, for example 1978, 1986a, 1986b, 1987). For an introduction to the wider anthropological literature on picture postcards, see Edwards 1996.

[4] For example, from the inscriptions on the back of one postcard in this collection, “Wellcome Dispensary, Mengo”, we learn that the sender, Y.L.S., is a close personal friend of Helda Newson and family, and is particularly concerned about the failing health of Newson’s father. From the postmark, and address, we learn that the card was sent from Croydon, on 26 November 1907, to Isleworth, in Middlesex. We also learn, from the pencilled inscriptions at the top and bottom of the card, that it was recently sold (for GBP 5) at a postcard fair, for which the dealer had classified the card as belonging to the category “Landscapes, Farming and Animals” (perhaps rather oddly, given that the image itself is of an urban dispensary).

[5] Seventy‐two of the postcards—about a quarter of the overall collection—bear postmarks of some description, although only fifty‐five of these are of East African origin (the remaining seventeen having been postmarked in Britain or elsewhere). It is quite possible, of course, that other postcards in this collection were also mailed, yet do not bear postmarks. For example, they may have been sent with a letter (in a stamped addressed envelope) or as part of a package.

[6] The classmark for this album is RCS/Fischer/Y3045C.

[7] The postcards that have been produced from photographs contained in the album are those entitled: “Kampala Road, Entebbe”, “High Court, Entebbe”, “Entebbe, Uganda. Pier” (the photograph is the same as that of Figure 6), “Surveyors on the March with Porters” (the photograph is the same as that of Figure 3), “Four Kings of Uganda Protectorate and their Prime Ministers”, “Group of Kings and Chiefs” (the photograph is the same as that of Figure 7), “King’s Lake, Mengo”, “Cathedral Church of Saint Paul, Namirembe”, “Interior, Namirembe Cathedral. Mengo”, “Prizing off the Bark” (Figure 21), “Bark Cloth Beating” (Figure 22), “A Typical Homestead”, “Native Dance” (Figure 27), “Typical Scenery”, and “Bridge Near Sezibwa Falls, Kyagwe”.

[8] This is available online at: http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FFisher

[9] Mackinder’s plan was for all of COVIC’s visual material to be published as a series of lantern‐slide lectures with accompanying textbooks. However, due to a lack of funds, these were very slow in production, and although several volumes did eventually appear—for example, those on India (1910), Australia (1913) and Canada (1914)—the proposed lecture on Tropical Africa was apparently finished. Thus, none of the photographs in this Ugandan album was ever actually used for the purpose for which they had been collected (see the section on “Context and content” at the above website).

[10] This, and the subsequent, quotes from Bronson are taken from a series of articles he wrote for the Uganda Argus (n.d.), clippings from which are incorporated into another album in the RCS collection (Y3011D). This is a personal photograph album made by Henry Bell.

[11] Cf. Geary’s discussion of the re‐captioning of the photograph of a Pö poure girl on a postcard produced by the Mission Evangéliques, c. 1920 (1998: 154–155).

[12] Against this, none of the album’s captions uses the words “type” or “types” at all. Indeed, only two of its captions—in an album of 155 images—use any sort of generic ethnic term (the images entitled: “Lendu woman and baby”, and “Acholi youth”). In addition, the album’s captions do not refer to any of their subjects as just “natives” (although it does contain one reference to a “native workshop”, and one to a “native made swamp‐crossing”). Instead, most of the album’s images of indigenous subjects are captioned in more specific ways.

[13] The album also contains photographs which include both European and African subjects. However, in a majority of these images, these semiotics of power are not as sharply drawn as they are in the postcard views. This may be understood in terms of the general narrative of the album as a whole, of the Uganda colony as something of a collaborative project (above).

[14] Having designed the photographs in this way, the studio would then send them off to Germany for printing. At this time, German printing machines in general, and those in Saxony in particular, were the best in the world for mass‐producing miniature photographic prints (of the sort that were used for picture postcards). Thus, Saxony soon became the global centre of picture postcard production (it remained so until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914; see Holt & Holt 1971: 41). See, for example, Figure 27, which bears the inscription “Printed in Saxony”. The printed postcards would then be sent back to Uganda for sale.

[15] In some cases, it is possible to draw the conclusion that a particular image was produced in this way with some certainty. For example, at least four photographs in the album that then reappear as Lobo postcards were definitely taken by the missionary photographer Charles Hattersley (and were later made into the following postcards: “Surveyors on the March with Porters”—the image of which is the same as that of Figure 3—“Cathedral Church of Saint Paul, Namirembe”, “Prizing off the Bark”, Figure 21, and “Bark Cloth Beating”, Figure 22). In other instances, the evidence is less conclusive, and it is instead through inference that I have reached the conclusion that they were “second printed” in this way.