Veterinarians as Humanitarians: Multispecies Welfare and Livestock Production in Colonial Nigeria

This paper examines four episodes in which colonial veterinary experts advanced welfarist arguments in justifying specific colonial agenda or policy in early twentieth-century Nigeria. Colonial authorities deployed some humanitarian logic in their bid to castigate indigenous therapeutic approaches while valorising colonial science. In another instance, they used a similar reasoning to call for the restructuring of the local cattle trade, and for transforming slaughter methods and abattoir practices. Humane motives equally featured in the colonial initiatives towards the capitalist exploitation of the livestock sector and the meatification of local foods. Relying on rich archival data, I examine how, in all of these, humanitarian ideals shaped intricate inter-species relations in colonial Nigeria. Fundamentally, I argue that beyond the professed humanitarian pretext, veterinary interventions in colonial Nigeria were largely tethered to the imperial economic interests of the colonial state.