Historical Reconstruction of Guano Production on the Namibian Islands

News & Views South African Journal of Science 99, January/February 2003 13 end of the decade.11 The latter’s shares in Ichaboe Island passed to three Cape Historical reconstruction of Town merchants in the 1850s, who set about exploiting the islands to produce an annual guano crop. Their success, guano production on the coupled with a rising demand for guano in Mauritius, led to mounting challenges Namibian islands 1843–1895 to their tenure in the late 1850s from rival colonial traders, the revenue-hungry a* b Cape Colony and the United States.12 Lance van Sittert and Rob Crawford These threats prompted the incumbents to seek annexation by the imperial (British) government, which was granted his paper presents data on guano produc- the Second World War.5 Records of collec- in 1861 and confirmed in 1868. By the Ttion on the Namibian islands from 1843 to tions of seabird guano are available for latter date the firm of De Pass, Spence and 1895, reconstructed from the nineteenth- many of the southern African seabird Company had bought out the two other century customs records of the Cape Colony breeding localities from 1896.1,3,4 For shareholders (Granger and Thomson, and United Kingdom. As the latter was the primary market for Namibian guano during Namibia, this paper extends the record Watson & Co.) in Ichaboe Island and this period, the data series can be considered back to the mid-nineteenth century. The received a 27-year lease on all the islands to encompass the global production on the is- pelagic fish populations off Namibia and ‘between the two civilized boundaries’ lands. Interpretation of the records as a proxy South Africa are relatively discrete.4 which lasted until 30 June 1895.13 index for fish stock abundance is complicated Guano production was hostage to both by the interplay of cultural and environmen- A brief history of the Namibian environmental and market forces. Heavy tal factors in influencing annual production. rain during the breeding season or the When compared with rainfall records from islands in the nineteenth century disappearance of the sardine or pilchard the Royal Observatory in Cape Town (1846– The prolific bird life and huge guano 1895), the guano data are suggestive of a rela- caps of the Namibian islands were known (Sardinops ocellata) and anchovy (Engraulis tionship between guano production and envi- well before the nineteenth century,6 but capensis) shoals from the immediate ronment, but firm conclusions must await the first published and hence widely vicinity of the islands could severely better proxy records, perhaps based on fish disseminated account was that of the deplete or entirely destroy the season’s scales in seafloor sediments off the Namibian American mariner, Benjamin Morrell.7 He crop. The harvesting and distribution of coast. reconnoitered the southwest African the crop was in turn governed by price coast in 1828 in search of seal ‘jackets’ and and quality. Guano from Ichaboe Island The Benguela upwelling system off the made passing mention of an island ‘liter- was widely held to be of superior quality west coast of southern Africa supports ally covered with jackass-penguins and owing to the island’s massive gannet large populations of shoaling pelagic gannets [and] bird’s manure to the depth (Morus capensis) colony, but instead of fishes that are fed upon by several of the of twenty-five feet’.8 By the early 1840s his being sold in pure form it was routinely region’s abundant seabird species. The observations, circulated in an account of mixed with inferior guano from other seabirds breed at islands and on specially the voyage published in the United islands, fossil deposits from the mainland constructed platforms, where the guano States, had acquired new significance in at Hottentots Bay and even, according to they produce has formed the basis of an the context of British “high farming’s” critics, generous amounts of sand. The industry that has persisted for more than hunger for fertilizer and the Peruvian gov- result was a product that failed to find a 150 years.1 The region is one of only two ernment’s conversion of its guano islands market in the United Kingdom, where worldwide where seabird guano contin- into a state monopoly.9 It was brought to scientific analysis was the norm by the ues to be harvested annually on a com- the attention of Liverpool merchants, end of the 1840s, and was sold instead to mercial basis, the other being Peru.2 eager to profit from the burgeoning the less sophisticated sugar planters of Records of guano harvests have value in domestic demand by undercutting the Mauritius.14 By the end of the 1850s, how- providing proxy indices of fish stock Peruvian monopoly’s attempts at price ever, the Mauritian market had become abundance that give useful insight into fixing. They despatched vessels in search equally quality conscious and the practice fluctuations in the abundance of the fish of Morrell’s island at the end of 1842. The of admixing was discontinued in favour stocks on which the birds prey.3 For pelagic arrival of the first consignment of guano of supplying a better quality product. This fish stocks, it is often difficult to separate from Ichaboe Island to Britain in July 1843 trend was reinforced by the granting of a the effects of fishing and the environment touched off the African guano rush that 27-year monopoly over the islands to De on trends in abundance.4 Proxy records of lasted until 1845 and stripped the accu- Pass Spence and Company in 1869, and abundance that pre-date the onset of mulated deposits of millennia, more than the steady improvement in guano prices commercial purse-seine fisheries are 330 000 tons, from the offshore islands in the United Kingdom in the 1870s. therefore of particular value. The south- between Saldanha and Walvis bays.10 ern African purse-seine fisheries that ex- In the south, the then Cape Colony im- Reconstructing nineteenth-century ploit pelagic fishes began in earnest after posed a leasehold system on the islands Namibian guano production within its territorial waters, but Ichaboe The total quantity of guano produced in aDepartment of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa. Island and its ‘little dependencies’ north South Africa is known from 1896 E-mail: [email protected] of the Orange River were in ‘no man’s onwards, when all the islands passed bMarine and Coastal Management, Private Bag X2, land’. There the British navy imposed from private into state hands and annual Rogge Bay 8012, South Africa. E-mail: [email protected] order in 1844 and Liverpool merchants reports were produced detailing each *Author for correspondence. retained speculative interests until the island’s harvest. Production during the 14 South African Journal of Science 99, January/February 2003 News & Views half century of private leasehold, how- ever, is unknown owing to the dearth of public records. The chief South African source of nineteenth-century guano production is the Cape Colony Blue Book/Statistical Regis- ter,15 which records both the quantity of guano exported from the colony (from 1850 onwards) and the quantity imported into the colony from Namibia (1857–1886). These are only partial measures of annual production, the exports not reflecting the guano sold to farmers in the colony and the imports eliding the amount exported Fig. 1. United Kingdom guano imports. Average price per short ton (£/2000 lb): 1844–1899. Thick line from the Namibian islands to places other represents imports from Namibia, the thin line shows imports from the Cape Colony; 1 short ton = 907 kg. than the Cape Colony. We cannot reconstruct Cape domestic obvious omission is that of the Mauritian The German claim to the territory consumption of guano from the islands in trade, embedded in the Cape Colony’s ‘between the two civilized boundaries’ in Cape territorial waters, because it left no export figures as re-exports (guano of the early 1880s19 reinforced the shift in permanent customs trace. The same is not ‘Other Produce and Manufacture’). The customs practice reflected in the way both true of guano production on the Nami- assumption made here is that this guano the British and Cape authorities recorded bian islands, which can in theory be was of Namibian origin in the absence of Namibian guano movements. completely reconstructed because the other regional sources and unlikelihood After 1880, British guano imports from guano originated in a colonial ‘no man’s of imports from further afield. The the ‘Western Coast of Africa, not particu- land’ until the mid-1880s and thus all had Mauritian trade flourished briefly before larly designated’ show a marked decline, to pass through customs in order to reach the planters began subjecting South with several years in which no imports markets. Provided all the markets can be African guano to the same scientific were recorded, before stopping com- identified, the global production of the analysis as in Britain, and discovered that pletely after 1891. Cape guano imports Namibian islands can be reconstructed they were recipients of a heavily adulter- from Namibia also peter out after 1880, from diverse customs records for the half ated fertilizer.17 In addition to Mauritius, with only the value of guano imported century prior to 1896. small quantities of Namibian guano were recorded for 1884–86, after which all The single most important market for re-exported to other regional markets. records cease. What appears to have South African guano in the nineteenth The third adjustment is necessitated by happened is that British customs started century was the United Kingdom (Fig.

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