Negotiating Development in Ethiopa

During the early 1950s, U.S. government efforts to “develop” Ethiopia began with environmental concerns and ended with economic ones. “Both crop and pasture lands are being damaged by erosion,” lamented a 1952 Technical Cooperation Administration report, “the pasture lands are overcrowded with unimproved breeds of cattle and sheep, and there is a great need for (1) crop diversification, (2) introduction of new varieties of grains and vegetables, as well as of improved livestock breeds, and (3) improvement of the preparation and processing of agricultural products for both the domestic and export markets.” The “export” part was key. TCA administrators readily acknowledged that they had determined Ethiopia’s “needs” after first determining the needs of “the free nations of world.” “Ethiopia,” they insisted, “can make a significant contribution in the way of providing foodstuffs to the food-short countries in the Middle and Near East,” but only if it modernized both its agricultural processes and its agricultural products. Those “products” were, of course, living things. American development efforts in Ethiopia began with attempts to alter the nation’s living landscape: its nonhuman populations. Alteration came in many forms: cross-breeding programs, seeds, vaccines, pesticides, and more. Many nonhumans were experimented upon, some were “improved,” and some were killed. Development did not mean just building roads, schools, and dams; it also meant altering ecosystems.  Historians studying development have often focused on its most tangible (and most immediately apparent) physical artifacts, but foreign technicians left more than buildings behind. They also left transformed nonhumans. This paper will examine the complex negotiations between the State Department, Point Four technicians, members of the Imperial Ethiopian Government, and Ethiopian farmers that surrounded those transformations.