Livestock has emerged as an important new vista for historians concerned with imperial societies, politics, and economics. This is warranted by the crucial role played by the expansion of animal husbandry that frequently accompanied the expropriation of land via setter colonialism. As such in many cases, different animals were vital to colonial conquest and exploitation. Furthermore, livestock and the commodities they generated, including dairy, meat, wool, wax, eggs, and hides, were traded and consumed throughout empires and between them. These processes of commodification involved not only livestock production by settlers and (colonial) entrepreneurs, but also the transformation of indigenous knowledge systems, livestock economies, and local environments. Moreover, they were also intimately tied to the development of global capitalism, thereby also affecting non-colonial and post-imperial spaces.

The “Livestock as Global and Imperial Commodities“ workshop began with a panel concerned with the production of livestock in relation to different societies and ecological systems. KATHLEEN BURKE (Toronto) examined the consequences of interactions between the Dutch East Indian Company and indigenous pastoralists, the Khoikhoi, at the Cape of Good Hope in relation to the production and control of commodities derived from sheep. PAUL VAN DIJK (Amsterdam) considered the agricultural transformation of the Russian empire at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by examining the peripheral regions of Livland and Ufa in order to highlight tensions between the imperial state and nomadic pastoralists. DEREK BYERLEE (Georgetown) closed this panel with his paper that explored the two-way flow of technology and agricultural knowledge between the Australian state of South Australia and countries in the Middle East and North Africa during the twentieth century. These papers stimulated a general discussion that touched on a number of themes including how to conceptualise animal agency, the interaction between different knowledge systems, and the role of capitalism and colonial states in relation to pastoralism.

The second panel was opened by HEINRICH HARTMANN (Konstanz) who explored West German informal economic influence in Tunisia during the 1950s and 1960s through the use of investment and agricultural experimentation as a means to draw level with French and British late colonial zones of influence. ANGÉLICA MÁRQUEZ-OSUNA (Cambridge, Massachusetts) presented a paper on how human-bee relationships were transformed during the twentieth century in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico through industrialisation and the standardisation of environments, which in turn altered the production and circulation of honey in different markets. ANDREW CRAIG (Athens, Georgia) explored transnational discourses of hog breed improvement and the trade of pedigreed hog breeding stock between agriculturalists and political economists in Britain and the United States during the early nineteenth century. These individual papers then gave way to a broader discussion that touched on the changing relationships between different commodities, sometimes produced by the same animal; the wider environmental impact of animals whether as invasive species, pests, or pollinators; and the transference or instrumentalisation of knowledge via settlers, indigenous peoples and patents.

The third panel considered settler colonialism in relation to livestock production. MARTIN KALB (Bridgewater) discussed the emergence of anxieties around beef supplies in pre-First World War Germany and efforts to improve cattle production in Southwest Africa in response. NATHAN CARLOS NORRIS’s (Ithaca) contribution uncovered how islands around the Southern Cone became vital settler colonies that supplied animal products to meet European and North American demands while also changing social relations in the service of capital accumulation. EFRAT GILAD (Bern) explored the impact of growing Jewish migration to Palestine under the British Mandate, which increased the demand for beef in the region leading to new infrastructures and trading circuits intended to (but not fully managing to) displace Palestinian producers and traders. Following these papers, a general discussion ensued which foregrounded several key issues. The influence of nationalism working on different levels in relation to livestock was considered alongside the differing concerns of colonies and metropoles. Additionally, the role of infrastructures, such as slaughterhouses, was considered which provided a means to talk about the intersection of various locations and forms of knowledge, such as slaughtering practices, butchery, and veterinary science, all connected to processes of livestock commodification.

REINALDO FUNES-MONZOTE (Havana) delivered the keynote lecture on the subject of livestock and commodity frontiers in Latin America. This lecture highlighted how the movement of cattle between different environments in Europe was repeated in the Americas. Moreover, this movement was also accompanied by concerted efforts to change these environments through the introduction of other new species, such as grasses, in order to standardise the environment and increase livestock productivity. Although initially commodities such as gold, diamonds, sugar, and coffee were considered more economically important to Latin American setter colonies, livestock nevertheless played a crucial role in local diets, often far outstripping European consumption, and by supplying labour power. The production of livestock helped to form new cultural identities across the Americas, such as cowboys in the North and gaúchos in the South, which would play an important role in shaping politics. Furthermore, social inequality in Latin America was also heavily determined by livestock, especially in the case of cattle, which, owing to the large amounts of land required, produced highly unequal patterns of consumption.

The fourth panel explored the trade and commodification of animals. ZHENGFENG WANG (Dublin) considered a highly gendered story of Chinese egg production that highlighted themes of racial hygiene and economic protectionism on the part of Europeans and North Americans in response to the scale and success of this supply chain. BÁRBARA DIREITO (Lisbon) surveyed beef markets in Southern Mozambique in the early twentieth century by charting the growth and oversupply of cattle in response to market controls and demand produced by the First World War followed by the consequences of the Great Depression. SAMUEL UWEM UMOH (Durban) examined different perceptions of cattle in Nigeria by colonial and indigenous groups that highlighted the importance of commodities, such as leather and meat, and taxation as a mechanism for wealth extraction. The discussion focussed on several topics, including how the existence of different standards and scales can lead toward standardisation, the necessity of human labour in conjunction with mechanical labour in order to produce commodities, and how aesthetic criteria can shape patterns of consumption.

The final panel of the workshop considered different histories of consumption. TATSUYA MITSUDA (Tokyo) explored the growth of beef consumption in Imperial Japan which involved the importation of live Korean cattle that were fattened under Japanese supervision, thereby extinguishing their Koreanness and rendering them indistinguishable from Japanese beef. TASHA RIJKE-EPSTEIN (Nashville) presented a paper that traced how debates about cattle, especially over their value as exported meat in a hungry global market, unfolded and were instrumentalised to reshape bodies and landscapes in the emergent, independent nation of Madagascar during the 1960s. OSCAR BROUGHTON (Berlin) charted how the growth of the Brazilian beef industry led to the development of new forms of culinary and scientific knowledge that were tied to the construction of Brazilian nationalism and the pursuit of capital accumulation during the twentieth century. The discussion considered how the most dominant players in the contemporary global meat market are all based in the Global South, the transformation of European breeds in tropical environments, and how different forms of knowledge were created.

A final discussion revisited many of the workshop’s topics, while also adding new aspects that had not yet received much attention. These included the use of different sources in order to recover indigenous knowledge and better understand animal agency; considering livestock commodities under non-capitalist modes of production in particular under socialist systems; the comparative value of commodity chain analysis and commodity frontiers as methodological approaches; and the transformation of environments through industrialisation.

Conference overview:

Panel 1: Producing Livestock, Transforming Societies and Ecologies
Chair: Jean Stubbs / Discussant: Simon Jackson

Kathleen Burke (University of Toronto): A Tail of Sheep: The Politics of Meat and the Enduring Influence of the Khoikhoi at the Cape of Good Hope

Paul van Dijk (University of Amsterdam): Grazing or Ploughing for the Empire? The Politics of Livestock Production in the Imperial Russian Peripheries of Livland and Ufa, 1861‐1905

Derek Byerlee (Georgetown University): A Global North‐South Mediterranean Exchange 1891‐1990: Pastures for Dryland Crop‐Livestock Systems

Panel 2: Histories of Breeding
Chair: Helen Cowie / Discussant: David Pretel

Heinrich Hartmann (University of Konstanz): Breeding Cattle, Engineering Society: the Modernization of Tunisian Agriculture in the Context of Postcolonial Informal Imperialism (1950s and 1960s)

Angélica Márquez‐Osuna (Harvard University): Colonizing Honeybees in the Tropics: Modern Apiculture in 20th‐century Yucatán Peninsula

Andrew Craig (University of Georgia): Improving the Pig: Hog Breeding, Biopower, and Agricultural Improvement in the United States and Britain during the Early Nineteenth Century

Panel 3: Settler Colonialism and Livestock Production
Chair: Simon Jackson / Discussant: Helen Cowie

Martin Kalb (Bridgewater College): Beef Fantasies? Germany’s Meat Crisis and Southwest African Cattle Farming

Nathan Carlos Norris (Cornell University): Sheep Circuits in Rapa Nui, Southern Chile,
and the Falklands or Malvinas

Efrat Gilad (University of Bern): Cattle Ecologies and Economies in British Mandate Palestine

Keynote Lecture
Chair: Samuël Coghe
Reinaldo Funes‐Monzote (University of Havana): Livestock and Commodity Frontiers in
Latin America since Colonial Times to the Present

Panel 4: Trading Animals and Commodities
Chair: Corey Ross / Discussant: Jean Stubbs

Zhengfeng Wang (University College Dublin): Techno‐power in Food Supply Chain: A Story of Eggs from China, 1910s‐1930s

Bárbara Direito (NOVA University Lisbon): Commodifying an “Inert Fortune”: Beef Market Control Strategies in Southern Mozambique, 1900s‐1930s

Samuel Uwem Umoh (University of KwaZulu‐Natal): British Control of Cattle Commodification in Colonial Nigeria

Panel 5: Histories of Consumption
Chair: David Pretel / Discussant: Samuël Coghe

Tatsuya Mitsuda (Keio University): From Colonial Hoof to Metropolitan Table: Imperial Biopolitics and the Commodification of Korean Bovine Bodies

Tasha Rijke‐Epstein (Vanderbilt University): Consumption, Value, and the Politics of Cattle Commodification in Socialist Madagascar (1960‐70)

Oscar Broughton (Free University of Berlin): Knowledge, Nation and Capital: The Development of Brazilian Beef in the Twentieth Century

Final Discussion