ABSTRACT
Drawing on Veracini’s distinctions between colonialism and settler colonialism this chapter proposes to uncover the discourses of published and unpublished narratives of a German settler, Carl Landgrebe, and Boer (ex-South Africa British subjects) settlers who arrived and farmed in the Arusha/Moshi districts of German East Africa at the start of the 20th century. This area, close to the border with British Kenya, was the scene of numerous skirmishes and battles during the First World War and caused severe dislocations to the settlers, Indian communities and the indigenous populations. Settler colonists inhabit structurally distinct narrative spaces that ‘influence the way in which colonizers and settler colonizers interpret their respective enterprises’ (Veracini 2010: 99), and metaphors of identity, relocation, land, containment and the visual are analysed accordingly. Sources include M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets, a diary by Martha Pienaar, a memoir by Grieta Malan and unpublished memoirs and cartographic representations by Carl Landgrebe. These sources provide insights into colonial and settler visions of order and landscape, and responses to the war, internment, containment and deportation, as well as attempts by settlers to dictate their own independence and sovereignty.
