Rare Photos of Colonial East Africa Online
An online collection of thousands of rare photographs chronicling Europe’s colonisation of East Africa went live last week, on June 25th, on the website of the Library of Northwestern University (Illinois). The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860-1960 includes approximately 7,610 photographs. It was assembled by the British collector Winterton over about 30 years and organised in 76 separate albums, scrapbooks or loose collections. The collection was acquired by Northwestern University’s Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies in 2002.
The photographs were mostly taken by explorers, military officers, colonial officials, settlers, missionaries, travellers and early commercial photographers and depict the breadth of African life during the colonial era. They include formal and informal portraits of Africans and their colonisers, photos of slaves and slave traders, of the British bombardment of Zanzibar in 1896, as well as images depicting the building of the east African railway and daily life in Africa. One of the oldest photographs in the collection shows a Zanzibar slave market in approximately 1860...
Read entire article at History Today (UK)
The photographs were mostly taken by explorers, military officers, colonial officials, settlers, missionaries, travellers and early commercial photographers and depict the breadth of African life during the colonial era. They include formal and informal portraits of Africans and their colonisers, photos of slaves and slave traders, of the British bombardment of Zanzibar in 1896, as well as images depicting the building of the east African railway and daily life in Africa. One of the oldest photographs in the collection shows a Zanzibar slave market in approximately 1860...