E-Book Overview
Healing the Herds: Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicineoffers a new and excitingcomparative approach to the complex interrelationships of microbes, markets, and medicine in the global economy. It draws upon fourteen case studies from the Americas, western Europe, and the European and Japanese colonies to illustrate how the rapid growth of the international trade in animals through the nineteenth century engendered the spread of infectious diseases, sometimes with devastating consequences for indigenous pastoral societies.At different times and across much of the globe, livestock epidemics have challenged social order and provoked state interventions, which were sometimes opposed by pastoralists. The intensification of agriculture has transformed environments, with consequences for animal and human health. But the last two centuries have also witnessed major changes in the way societies have conceptualized diseases and sought to control them. The rise of germ theories and the discovery of vaccines against some infections made it possible to move beyond the blunt tools of animal culls and restrictive quarantines of the past. Nevertheless, these older methods have remained important to strategies of control and prevention, as demonstrated during the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain in 2001.From the late nineteenth century, advances in veterinary technologies afforded veterinary scientists a new professional status and allowed them to wield greater political influence. In the European and Japanese colonies, state support for biomedical veterinary science often led to coercive policies for managing the livestock economies of the colonized peoples. In western Europe and North America, public responses to veterinary interventions were often unenthusiastic and reflected a latent distrust of outside interference and state regulation. Politics, economics, and science inform these essays on the history of animal diseases and the expansion in veterinary medicine.
E-Book Content
Edited by Karen Brown and Daniel Gilfoyle
Healing the Herds Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine
S E R I E S
I N
E C O L O G Y
A N D
H I S T O R Y
Healing the Herds
Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History James L. A. Webb, Jr., Series Editor Conrad Totman The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saiku, eds. Encountering the Past in Nature: Essays in Environmental History James L. A. Webb, Jr. Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800–1900 Stephen Dovers, Ruth Edgecombe, and Bill Guest, eds. South Africa’s Environmental History: Cases and Comparisons David M. Anderson Eroding the Commons: The Politics of Ecology in Baringo, Kenya, 1890–1963 William Beinart and JoAnn McGregor, eds. Social History and African Environments Michael L. Lewis Inventing Global Ecology: Tracking the Biodiversity Ideal in India, 1947–1997 Christopher A. Conte Highland Sanctuary: Environmental History in Tanzania’s Usambara Mountains Kate B. Showers Imperial Gullies: Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Mark Cioc, and Thomas Zeller, eds. How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich Peter Thorsheim Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain since 1800 Joseph Morgan Hodge Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism Diana K. Davis Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa Thaddeus Sunseri Wielding the Ax: State Forestry and Social Conflict in Tanzania, 1820–2000 Mark Cioc The Game of Conservation: International Treaties to Protect the World’s Migratory