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‘CLEAN’ AND ‘DIRTY’: CATTLE DISEASE AND CONTROL POLICY IN COLONIAL KENYA, 1900–40

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2004

RICHARD WALLER
RICHARD WALLER
Affiliation:
Bucknell University
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Abstract

This article traces and contextualizes the development of veterinary policy in Kenya from 1900 to 1940, with particular reference to three diseases: East Coast Fever, bovine pleuro-pneumonia and rinderpest. Disease affected almost every aspect of society and economy in Kenya, but the threat that it posed was constructed and confronted differently by the various constituencies – official, settler and African – that made up the divided pastoral economy. Policy emerged and changed from containment to eradication as the result of continuous argument, in which the Colonial Office played a key role, about both the nature of disease and the most effective way of combating it.

Keywords

Eastern AfricaKenyaagricultureanimal husbandrycolonialstate
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 45 - 80
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

A first sketch of this paper was presented at the ASA Conference in 2000. My thanks to Nancy Jacobs and my fellow panellists; to the editors of the Journal; and, especially, to David Anderson, John Lonsdale and Tom Spear, who helped clarify my ideas. Research was generously supported by grants from the APS and the NEH.