A New Pastoral Frontier: Colonial Development, Environmental Knowledge, and the Introduction of Trypanotolerant Cattle in French Equatorial Africa, 1945–1960

Abstract

After the Second World War, colonial veterinary services, entrepreneurs, and African villagers in French Equatorial Africa (AEF) began to raise cattle in regions where this had been deemed impossible because of the threat of African animal trypanosomiasis. The opening of this new pastoral frontier in the humid savannas of Central Africa was not only a challenging logistical operation, involving the purchase, transport, and acclimatization of thousands of trypanotolerant animals. It also hinged on the mobilization of various forms of expertise, from veterinary medicine to soil science, important financial investments, and the participation of rural Africans. The article argues that the specific conditions in postwar AEF generated a frontier that was distinct from many other global and African cattle frontiers, as it was driven more by late-colonial development ideas and funds than capitalist expansion, even if these were sometimes entangled. Shaped by the interplay between local, (trans)imperial, and globally circulating knowledge, trypanotolerant cattle production in the AEF took the complementary forms of extensive ranching and small-scale peasant production. Although the introduction of trypanotolerant cattle triggered new conflicts, it was further pursued by postcolonial states, transforming rural economies and ecologies.