'The Seed Blows About in Every Breeze': Noxious Weed Eradication in the Cape Colony, 1860-1909

Abstract

Crosby has portrayed the plants and 'weeds' that accompanied European colonial expansion as often beneficial to settlement. In fact, many settlers throughout the temperate zones expended vast amounts of capital and labour on the eradication of those imported plants designated as 'noxious weeds', which they deemed a direct threat to the development of the new colonies. This paper explains the spread of key weed species in the nineteenth century Cape Colony where the number of livestock soared, cultivation was extended, and some plants thrived in conditions of rapid environmental change. It analyses the problems experienced in defining plant species, understanding their spread, and devising systems of extirpation. The colonial state, without the finances or powers to impose its will on the rural populace or the technology to re-engineer the environment without their assistance, increasingly focused its attention on changing the culture of settler agriculture, instilling a work ethic, and demonising weeds through a mixture of military, medical and moral metaphors. Nevertheless, weeds sometimes directly imperilled the settlers' tenuous hold on the land. Europeans experienced protracted wars of attrition not only with indigenous people but with drought, pathogens, vermin, and the like. Weed history further qualifies the prevailing picture of colonialism by casting a very different light on the colonial state.