The “African Horse Sickness” and the Threat of Movement

This talk centers on the “African Horse Sickness” that plagued the Middle East for the first time in 1944, resulting in the termination of thousands of animal lives. In that context, equines were cardinal to agricultural work and economy, to connecting rural and urban areas as transporters of goods, but also to the governing rule and its policing powers under the Mandate system. The disease hit the region in a transformative period, moreover, as the role of animals as global migrant-laborers was shifting. Soon after, automated machines relieved their burden, and transformed the relations between farmers, veterinarians, the state, and the global market. Debates about the nature and management of this disease, which never threatened human lives, but influenced them in fundamental ways nevertheless, ultimately contributed to new ideas about energy, work, and migration, and to studies in epidemiology and agricultural production.