The Making and Unmaking of a Colonial Cattle Frontier. Capitalism, Science and Empire in Madagascar, 1870s-1970s

Project Information

COLCAT

Grant agreement ID: 101061290

DOI

10.3030/101061290

Project terminated on 31 May 2023

EC signature date 13 July 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2024

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 191 760,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COLCAT (The Making and Unmaking of a Colonial Cattle Frontier. Capitalism, Science and Empire in Madagascar, 1870s-1970s)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Due to the expansion of global capitalism, colonial rule and veterinary science, cattle production and trade, as well as pastoralist societies and cattle environments, in 19th and 20th century Africa were subject to important changes. These have not been sufficiently researched. My project wanted to change this by analysing the transformations processes in the livestock sector in Africa through the case of Madagascar, a French colony from 1895 to 1960 with a huge cattle population that became the theatre of a whole series of transformative cattle policies that historians have not yet accounted for. By doing so, and by using the concept of “cattle frontiers”, my project pursued 4 major research objectives:
1. To bring pastoral economies and commodities into the discussion about commodity frontiers and the expansion of global capitalism, particularly in Africa. This discussion had thus far mainly focused on cash crops and minerals, excluding livestock;
2. To tease out the tensions between global capitalism and French colonialism, and between metropole and colony, by showing where rationales and actions diverged and converged;
3. To assess the social, economic and ecological conditions and effects of the cattle frontier in Madagascar;
4. To explore the role of new knowledge, scientific practices and technologies at the cattle frontier.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

As I won an ERC Starting Grant and was appointed Associate Professor at Ghent University, I had to stop my two-year MSCA project prematurely after five months. Consequently, many of the planned activities could not be performed. During the five months, I have mainly focussed on the role of veterinary science in transforming animal bodies (work package 2), in particular breeding experiments in experimental stations to make cattle more productive (in terms of meat and milk). I also started inquiring into campaigns against cattle diseases. Therefore, I have consulted published sources and done archival research in the French colonial archives (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence, the French diplomatic archives (CADN) in Nantes and the archives of the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
I have presented my project and first results on breeding experiments at various research seminars and workshops and am preparing a journal article on cattle breeding in colonial and postcolonial Madagascar.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This project contributes to the historiography on livestock development in Africa under the combined conditions of global capitalism, European colonialism and new scientific developments. Due to the short duration of this grant, it has only been a small first step, however. The research performed over the five months of COLCAT shows how French and Malagasy veterinary scientists managed to crossbreed a new and more productive cattle breed, but how they (and other economic and political actors) failed to make local Malagasy cattle breeders accept it as a better breed than local zebu in the 1960s-80s.
I will continue my research on Madagascar over the next years and tackle a series of other case studies on changing cattle economies in 7 different (post)colonies in Southern and Central Africa in my forthcoming ERC Starting Grant CATTLEFRONTIERS.