Nature 7

Wonderfully shameless people of both sexes behave towards one another like wild animals, only the pubic area covered, everything else naked, all black
(…) their houses resemble the huts of the poor villagers in our country (…) this people does not yet make use of money.

*Original Source: Balthazar Sprenger (1509). Quoted by: Beate Borowka-Clausberg (1999): Balthasar Sprenger und der frühneuzeitliche Reisebericht. München: ludicium, S. 198. In: Elisabeth Dulko et al: Afrikabilder. Dokumentation einer Tagungsreihe zum Afrikadiskurs in den Medien und zum Alltagsrassismus in Deutschland, p. 10.

Balthazar Sprenger (before 1500-1509 or 1511) was a travelling salesman from Tyrol who travelled to Africa and India on behalf of the Welser bankers. In 1505, he took part in a Portuguese expedition as a representative of the Augsburg Welser trading house to explore new markets. The journey took him around the African continent to India. The quote is from his travel diary.

The annihilation of indigenous societies worldwide was legitimised in moral terms by the fact that they were not real people, but instead, belonged to nature. Being animal-like, colonised people were not granted any human rights. Thus the land they lived on and their resources, which were defined as being ownerless, could comfortably be stolen. The equation of indigenous people with animals still happens today, as current examples from all over the world show (The Guardian, 14.10.2017: “Chinese Museum Accused of Racism over Photos Pairing Africans with Animals”).

*Vandana Shiva (2020): “Ecofeminism and the Decolonisation of Women, Nature and the Future.”

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