https://doi.org/10.1086/721179
After the Second World War, colonial veterinary services, entrepreneurs, and
African villagers in French Equatorial Africa (AEF) began to raise cattle in regions
where this had been deemed impossible because of the threat of African
animal trypanosomiasis. The opening of this new pastoral frontier in the
humid savannas of Central Africa was not only a challenging logistical operation,
involving the purchase, transport, and acclimatization of thousands of
trypanotolerant animals. It also hinged on the mobilization of various forms
of expertise, from veterinary medicine to soil science, important financial investments,
and the participation of rural Africans. The article argues that the
specific conditions in postwar AEF generated a frontier that was distinct from
many other global and African cattle frontiers, as it was driven more by latecolonial
development ideas and funds than capitalist expansion, even if these
were sometimes entangled. Shaped by the interplay between local, (trans)imperial,
and globally circulating knowledge, trypanotolerant cattle production
in the AEF took the complementary forms of extensive ranching and smallscale
peasant production. Although the introduction of trypanotolerant cattle
triggered new conflicts, it was further pursued by postcolonial states, transforming
rural economies and ecologies.