What If: No Rinderpest Outbreak in 1887

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

This is mostly based on Wikipedia, so I'll probably get some facts wrong.

The tsetse fly that causes sleeping sickness supposedly had a much smaller range before a rinderpest plague killed massive numbers of cows in 1887. This led to a famine, and the lack of livestock allowed plants to grow that were ideal for tsetse fly habitats.

After that, big game animals flourished in the area, and the tsetse fly was nicknamed "the best game warden in Africa".

If this rinderpest outbreak never happened for some reason, how might Africa develop? Would there be more resistance to European colonialism in certain areas due to a higher indigenous population? Might certain animals become endangered sooner?

(The inspiration for the topic came when I read a silly Phantom comic and wondered "How does he have a horse? Don't they have sleeping sickness in Bangalla?")

 

[Escape Zeppelin]

“Never before in the memory of man, or by the voice of tradition, have the cattle died in such vast numbers; never before has the wild game suffered… The enormous extent of the devastation can hardly be exaggerated... Everywhere the people I saw were gaunt and half-starved, and covered with skin diseases. They had no crops of any sort to replace the milk and meat which formed their natural diet.” wrote Frederick Lugard, a British army captain who traveled the caravan routes of northern Kenya in 1890.

This is a really interesting article about the aftermath and how it enabled European colonization while at the same time creating our perception of wild (and sparsely populated) Africa, something that really didn't exist in 1880. There was little resistance to European expansion around the turn of the century partly because so many people were dead. Millions of people are estimated to have died in Ethiopia alone.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/why_africas_national_parks_are_failing_to_save_wildlife

It's funny, such an important event I'd literally never heard of it before your question.

 

[TRH]

Very fascinating. I can certainly make use of this knowledge in my own timeline, in however many years it takes for me to get up to the late 19th Century.

I'm pretty sure I have heard about this before, but I don't think I knew how crippling it was for Africa, or else it would have stuck in my memory more firmly.

 

[markus meecham]

“Never before in the memory of man, or by the voice of tradition, have the cattle died in such vast numbers; never before has the wild game suffered… The enormous extent of the devastation can hardly be exaggerated... Everywhere the people I saw were gaunt and half-starved, and covered with skin diseases. They had no crops of any sort to replace the milk and meat which formed their natural diet.” wrote Frederick Lugard, a British army captain who traveled the caravan routes of northern Kenya in 1890.

This is a really interesting article about the aftermath and how it enabled European colonization while at the same time creating our perception of wild (and sparsely populated) Africa, something that really didn't exist in 1880. There was little resistance to European expansion around the turn of the century partly because so many people were dead. Millions of people are estimated to have died in Ethiopia alone.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/why_africas_national_parks_are_failing_to_save_wildlife

It's funny, such an important event I'd literally never heard of it before your question.

just a product of our (mine included) ignorance about certain parts of the world.
lots of biases, conscious, unconscious and historical involved, i also guess but idk

 

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

The rinderpest case reminds me of the book 1491, where it's suggested that the large population of passenger pigeon and buffalo in the U.S. was due to European diseases.