Livestock and veterinary health in southern Mozambique in the beginning of the twentieth century: the case of the fight against East Coast fever

Abstract

Drawing on the example of southern Mozambique, this article proposes a contribution to the historiography of the social dimensions of veterinary health in colonial contexts and their effects on livestock. More specifically, it analyses the way East Coast fever, a protozoonosis of cattle, was fought in this region in the first decades of the twentieth century by highlighting the repressive nature of the sanitary police measures put in place by Portuguese authorities, how they were contested by different agents and how they opened the way for the introduction of new modes of population and spatial control.