Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how anthrax shaped the capitalist cattle frontier in colonial Madagascar (1895-1960). While French veterinary policy relied on mass vaccination and neglected ecological approaches, frontier expansion processes arguably reshaped the distribution and ecology of the disease.

Paper long abstract:

In the late nineteenth century, many a European observer imagined Madagascar as the next Argentina, whose immense, yet underexploited cattle herds could be transformed in profitable commodities. Madagascar’s disease environment seemed particularly amenable to such a new cattle frontier, as the island was (and would remain) free from key deadly cattle diseases such as rinderpest, animal trypanosomiasis and East Coast Fever. However, upon colonial conquest in 1895, veterinary doctors quickly grew aware that many parts of the island suffered from anthrax, an often lethal disease caused by contact (through inhaling or ingesting) with the spores of the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, able to survive in the soil for decades.

Focussing on the colonial period (1895-1960), this paper examines how anthrax, by killing animals and corrupting hides, affected the cattle frontier in Madagascar, and how French veterinary policy dealt with this challenge. It argues that, although anthrax was conceived as a telluric disease tied to particular soils and environments, the response was not ecological in approach. Profoundly influenced by Pastorian modes of conceptualizing and dealing with infectious disease, veterinary doctors adopted what Aro Velmet has called a more narrow “technopolitical” approach mainly consisting in the mass vaccination of cattle. Accordingly, this paper analyses (trans)imperial networks of anthrax vaccine development and the practicalities of large-scale vaccination campaigns mostly conducted by ‘indigenous’ vaccinators. Yet, it also asks to what extent changing range management, new trade routes and the mass production of hides under colonial rule reshaped the distribution and ecology of the disease.