Environmental Perception in Southern Africa

Abstract

In the understanding of the cultural landscape it is necessary to investigate the past and examine the decisions which were taken in the various .stages of the landscape’s evolution. In southern Africa the influx of Europeans and their settlement of large tracts of land in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries profoundly affected the landscape. A study of the colonisation movement necessitates the investigation of the imagined environment of the colonists rather than the modern scientific account, in order to comprehend their actions. Accounts, of varying origin, presented a bewildering range of information, much of it erroneous. Upon them major decisions had to be made. The decision once taken, however, was implanted upon the landscape and could only be modified as a more accurate perception evolved.