Build Out the Rat

Exploring materials from the period of British administration of Tanganyika, this paper examines initiatives at controlling and preventing plague outbreaks in the areas surrounding Mwanza town in the decades following World War I (1920s-1930s). It focuses on various scientific attempts to eradicate rodents, seen as the main vector of fleas and of the plague bacteria, including enforcing urban planning regulations for specific building plans and materials. Such scientific solutions, however, depended on a colonial notion of the "tembe" house, a term used by the British to generally refer to mud-brick and wood frame houses used by a large section of the local rural population. To officers and commissioners in government, eradicating rodents to prevent plague rested on the need to "build out the rat," an argument that drew on colonial ideas about African living conditions and culture. British rodent control programs during a potential plague outbreak can sometimes result in populations of people being forced to move to new areas so that they can re-build in ways that would prevent rodent infestation. Efforts to build out the rat can thus be seen as part of a larger history of colonialism that changed human relationships with their environments and the critters that live among them.