Abstract
In this article, I explore how the twin forces of imperial and entomological power allowed Britain to shape locust research and control across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia from the 1920s to the early 1950s. Imperial power came from the size of the formal and informal empire, and alliances with other colonial powers to tackle a common threat to agriculture and trade. Entomological authority came primarily from the work of Boris Uvarov and his small team of museum and fieldworkers based at the Imperial Bureau of Entomology (IBE), later the Imperial Institute of Entomology (IIE). I begin by discussing how Uvarov's phase theory of the origin of swarming changed the prospects for the control of locust plagues. The imperial gaze and networks of the IBE and IIE were suited to a problem that was transnational and transcontinental. In the 1930s, Britain was drawn into plans for international cooperation on locust organizations that met the needs of science, to give better sharing of knowledge, and the needs for science, to secure the resources for research and control. However, such organizations were only created during the Second World War, when new plagues threatened military operations, as I show in relation to the measures taken to control the red locust and desert locust. In the final section, I follow the fate of the wartime cooperation in initiatives to establish permanent control organizations. It is a story of the decline of British political power in locust affairs as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and regional agencies took over. My account of British locust research and control reveals a neglected aspect of histories of entomology and imperial/colonial science, especially their international relations and the continuing importance of metropolitan research centres.
Highlights
In the spring of 2020, East Africa was affected by two plagues, one modern, one ancient
Entomological authority came primarily from the work of Boris Uvarov and his small team of museum and fieldworkers based at the Imperial Bureau of Entomology (IBE), later the Imperial Institute of Entomology (IIE)
The modern plague was SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), the ancient was locusts. Had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the news, the world would have heard and seen more of the devastation of crops and serious hardships caused by the desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria)
Summary
Boris Uvarov was born in Uralsk in south-eastern Russia ( in Kazakhstan) in 1886.14 He studied at the School of Mining at Ekaterinoslav and at the University of St Petersburg His interest in insects developed through attending meetings of the Russian Entomological Society, where students mixed freely with senior figures. ‘The four children underwent a period of acute deprivation, witnessing untold horrors Their uncle, the entomologist Boris Uvarov, who was working at the Imperial Bureau of Entomology in London, heard that the children were still. His appointment as the first head of the bureau illustrates the varied routes to a career in entomology at the time.[21] After failing entry into the Indian civil service, Marshall went to South Africa and worked in farming and mining He continued the family tradition of serious work in natural history, taking a particular interest in insects. It should be possible to develop preventive measures in geographically limited permanent outbreak areas that were far more practical and less costly than waiting to attack swarms in potentially huge invasion areas.[27]
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