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Paper short abstract:

Focusing on German model farms in newly independent Tunisia, we analyze the informal imperialism of postwar development aid in a postcolonial setting, showing the ambitious agenda of German and Tunisian actors to transform the economic basis of (rural) Tunisian society as well as its social fabric.

Paper long abstract:

The end of formal imperialism in Mediterranean countries after World War Two was not the end of Western-European influences in the region. Especially West Germany’s foreign policy aimed to transform the Mediterranean basin into its economic backyard. This went hand in hand with new forms of political and economic advisory and expertise, in which agricultural experts played a prominent role. Reaching independence from French colonial rule in 1956, Tunisia seemed to be an “open space” for Western developmentalists and quickly became one of the most important receiving countries of West German developmental aid. This led (among other things) to the establishment of an “Animal breeding teaching and demonstration farm” in Bejaoua in 1957, and a few years later of a second model farm focused on animal husbandry in Sedjenane. Those German model farms are a perfect example of how breeding cattle can be understood as a way of maintaining imperial power structures after the end of colonialism. As a site of development action, they also allow to think about the complex interactions of human and non-human agency. They bring together the ambitious agenda of German and Tunisian actors to transform not only the economic basis of the local society, but also the social fabric of rural Tunisia: intensifying animal husbandry aimed at transforming a semi-nomadic society into a settled farmers society, while engineering local environments accordingly. However, they also open insights in the way, animals “resisted” this new logic of “breed engineering”.