Saving African Nature: An Ecological Mission and the Violence of History

During the colonization of Africa, European colonists set about creating game reserves in Africa, convinced that they would find in Africa a nature that no longer existed in Europe.After independence, and with the help of UNESCO and the WWF, African leaders continued to 'protect' the same nature, a nature that the whole world wanted to be pristine, wild and without humans - a timeless Garden of Eden.The consequences of this story are well known: millions of Africans were expelled from the land on which they had lived for generations. But how did this happen? Who organized this continuity between the colonial era and the era of independence?Guillaume Blanc answers these questions by immersing himself at the heart of a strange global ecological mission, launched in 1961: the 'African Special Project'.He tells the story of this project by bringing to life four worlds: the world of gentleman experts who saw Africa as the world's last natural refuge; the world of East African colonists who