Paper long abstract:

My paper focuses on the relationship between animal diseases and transhumance in South Africa during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Livestock were of great economic and social importance both to settlers and Africans in the country over a long period. Environmental conditions underpinned many local systems of transhumance in which people moved seasonally with their livestock to water resources and natural pastures. The paper explores the variety of these movements, their linkages with an expanding pastoral frontier, and with increasing commodification of livestock production. It will explore the idea, perhaps counterintuitive, that transhumance actually increases with commodification. And it will also discuss the paradox that while many transhumant practices were pursued to avoid disease, increasingly transhumance became associated with the spread of disease. Veterinary surgeons argued against multiple movements of livestock. Such views, as well as specific disease control measures, contributed to the gradual curtailment of transhumance. This had significant social and environmental impacts and became intertwined with `modernity' in the countryside as well as new patterns of investment and livestock management.