The elegant plume: ostrich feathers, African commercial networks, and European capitalism

Abstract

Ostrich feathers have long been an important export from Africa to different European markets. The ostrich plume was a key part of the luxury trade across Mediterranean shores for centuries. The main source of ostrich feathers was from wild ostriches especially from North and West Africa. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the rising economic value of ostrich plumes triggered colonial French and British competition over this luxury commodity, leading to the establishment of domesticated ostrich farms by the French in North and West Africa and by the British in South Africa. This article uses an economic historical framework to understand colonial ostrich feather trade and its impact on French and British relations during the nineteenth century in Africa. We examine the ostrich feather commercial networks that began to emerge particularly by the middle of nineteenth century, and focus on the sources of ostrich feathers and the local practices for hunting and raising ostriches. We argue that by looking at the need for ostrich plumes in European markets and the rise in public consumption of fashion goods based on the ostrich plume, nineteenth-century European capitalism destroyed not only the wild African ostriches, but also local African livelihoods based on wild ostriches.

Keywords:

• ostrich feather
• ostrich domestication
• fashion
• Africa
• European colonialism

Acknowledgements

We thank Patricia Lorcin, Daniel Schroeter, Thomas Park, Diana Davis, and Norma Menozda-Denton for their valuable comments and editing. We are responsible for the ideas and opinions made in the final version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Available at: www.ostrichemporium.co.za/index.htm (last checked on 15 March 2014). There are other websites that provide a great deal of information about the growing ostrich meat industry and its markets across Europe and the Americas.

2. Many tutorials including fashion magazines and webpages offer new trends of how to wear the ostrich feather and use it in home decorations. An example is the Sydney Style A-Z Trend Guide for Fall/Winter 2013 posted on YouTube and last accessed on 29 March 2014. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B77HgAWYT-c.

3. Quoted in Aschman (1955, 121).