‘Clean’ and ‘Dirty’: Cattle Disease and Control Policy in Colonial Kenya, 1900–40

This article traces and contextualizes the development of veterinary policy in Kenya from 1900 to 1940, with particular reference to three diseases: East Coast Fever, bovine pleuro-pneumonia and rinderpest. Disease affected almost every aspect of society and economy in Kenya, but the threat that it posed was constructed and confronted differently by the various constituencies – official, settler and African – that made up the divided pastoral economy. Policy emerged and changed from containment to eradication as the result of continuous argument, in which the Colonial Office played a key role, about both the nature of disease and the most effective way of combating it.