Why did you choose to study the history of veterinary and nutrition sciences in colonial Nigeria?

The choice stems from various encounters I had while pursuing my undergraduate studies at the University of Lagos, Nigeria (UNILAG) from 2009 to 2013. During those years, I frequently commuted between my hometown of Badagry and the university campus in Akoka, Yaba at the heart of the city. In the course of those journeys, I would pass by a particular slaughter-slab that permanently emitted a pungent smell of fresh blood, raw flesh, and animal waste. Furthermore, at a point during my sophomore year, I had to put up with a friend whose one-storey apartment overlooked the public abattoir in Bariga community, close to UNILAG. For the few weeks I spent there, I was awakened every morning by the abattoir’s strong smell, sound and sight. These routine experiences left an indelible mark on my mind, sparking my curiosity about the long history of public abattoirs and meat markets in Lagos, as well as the connection between meat production and veterinary public health in the city. My doctoral research proposal was initially based on this subject, but my extensive research in multiple archives across Nigeria and the United Kingdom led me to expand the scope of the study both spatially and thematically.

Can you describe your thesis questions?

The thesis critically addresses the following questions: What was the place of the livestock sector in Nigeria’s colonial economy? How did colonial public health systems bear on food cultures — particularly cattle production, and meat production and consumption — in colonial Nigeria? How were notions of “good”, “safe” and/or “healthy” food/animal shaped and reshaped throughout the era of British colonisation of Nigeria? How did colonial veterinary science and indigenous health systems impact each other in twentieth-century Nigeria? What significance did colonial public health have for human–animal relations and inter-imperial affairs in Nigeria and the Central Sudan region? What roles did various actors — nonhuman and human, expatriate and local — play in the cause of nutritional and veterinary public health in colonial Nigeria?

What methodology did you use to address all these questions?

Methodologically, the study relies heavily on troves of colonial documents, official correspondences, annual reports and other occasional publications, newspapers and other materials held at various archives in different parts of the world. I trailed the faint hoof-prints and moos of the Nigerian cattle into the three arms of the National Archives of Nigeria (viz. Ibadan, Kaduna and Enugu); the National Archives of the United Kingdom in London; the repository of the Nigerian National Veterinary Research Institute, Vom, Jos; the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection’s Oral History Archive held at Bristol Archives in the UK; as well as Unilever Archives at Port Sunlight in the UK. I equally consulted online repositories such as the British Online Archives, Wellcome Collection, Center for Research Libraries, and Internet Archive. I excavated previously neglected records and amplified marginalised historical actors and narratives, reading the archives both along and against the grain.

In constructing this multispecies story, I took the colonial veterinary and nutritional laboratories, the quarantine and immunisation camps, the abattoirs and slaughter-slabs, as well as the cattle and meat markets to be important sites of history and contact zones within which human, animal, plant and microbial agents met and interacted in various ways.

What are your major findings?

My thesis makes three important contributions to the global historiographies of medicine and public health, livestock economies, pastoral ecologies, and colonial capitalism. First, it pushes the scope of the historical scholarship on health and medicine in Nigeria and West Africa by underscoring the inherently multispecies character of public health. In other words, the study foregrounds the interconnectedness of various aspects of human, animal and environmental health. The thesis centres nonhuman beings as veritable colonial subjects and historical agents that play indispensable roles in world-making. Beyond being the first study on veterinary public health history in British West Africa, the thesis establishes that livestock health, and by extension, pasture and environmental health, were as critical for the colonial state as was human well-being.

Secondly, the study contributes to knowledge production on colonial capitalism and commodity history by unravelling the socio-economic processes that made for the intensive commercialisation of cattle and other livestock (what I called “cattle capitalism”), as well as the mainstreaming of meat eating (which I termed “meatification”) in the Nigerian area. Fundamentally, I argue that colonial veterinary and nutrition sciences were political and capitalist sciences mobilised for the imperial control and material exploitation of the livestock economy and living systems of the Central Sudan.

Thirdly, the dissertation centres non-Western knowledge systems and disease management practices. It underscores the stock-breeding and ethnoveterinary expertise of the indigenous Fulani pastoralists, as well as the contributions of African colonial personnel and colonial nonhumans alongside those of European expatriates in promoting veterinary public health in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Nigeria. Whereas many of the laboratory vaccines developed by the colonial veterinary department proved to be very effective for arresting epizootic diseases like rinderpest, blackquarter and anthrax, there were remarkable episodes, such as during a campaign against contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, where colonial interventions failed woefully while indigenous (or vernacular) science continued to achieve appreciable results.

What could be the socio-political implications of your thesis?

I hope that my thesis will inspire well-intentioned public authorities, corporate establishments, private investors and agricultural scientists to further explore the viability of ranch-based stock-breeding and meat production on a large scale across Southern Nigeria beyond what was accomplished during the colonial and immediate postcolonial eras. In the face of tsetse fly endemicity across the region, this may entail investigations involving trypano-resistant or trypano-tolerant cattle breeds as well as tsetse eradication programmes, and would require strong political will on the part of the critical stakeholders. Similar initiatives are imperative in Northern Nigeria as well, but those would necessitate different approaches. Developing sustainable commercial stock production and meat industries across Nigeria would go a long way in mitigating the long-running armed violence and wanton carnage that continues to plague the cattle economy of Nigeria and the Central Sudan region.

What does it mean to you to win the Pierre du Bois Prize for your thesis?

For me, winning the Pierre du Bois Prize is not merely about finding validation or personal fulfilment for a fine, ambitious project; it is a feat that also serves to fuel my passion for excellence in my research and scholarship going forward. Over the course of my doctoral study, the Pierre du Bois Foundation has supported my career development in various forms, so it feels really great that the product of that endeavour has been deemed worthy of this esteemed prize. I am profoundly grateful to be a beneficiary of the legacies of the late professor Pierre du Bois.

What are your plans for life after your thesis? Are you going to continue your research?

Exactly three months after successfully defending my thesis, I secured appointment as an Ad Astra Fellow/Assistant Professor in One Health at University College Dublin’s School of History. I will take up the position in September 2025, where I will continue to pursue my passion for teaching, researching and writing on topics at the intersection of human, animal, plant and environmental health.

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Oluwaseun Otosede Williams (middle) defended summa cum laude avec félicitations du jury his PhD thesis in International History, titled “The Meat of the Story: Cattle Capitalism and Veterinary Public Health in Colonial Nigeria”, on 27 February 2025. Associate Professor Nicole Bourbonnais (right) presided over the committee, which included Associate Professor Aidan Russell (second from the left), Thesis Co-Supervisor, Professor Vinh-Kim Nguyen (second from the right), Thesis Co-Supervisor, and Professor Susan D. Jones, Program in the History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota.
For the excellence of his doctoral research, Dr Williams is co-recipient of the 2025 Pierre du Bois Prize, awarded each year for the best PhD thesis in International History defended at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

Citation of the PhD thesis: 
Williams, Oluwaṣeun Otọsede. “The Meat of the Story: Cattle Capitalism and Veterinary Public Health in Colonial Nigeria.” PhD thesis, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 2025.
Access:
Anyone interested in reading the thesis can write to Dr Williams via otosedewilliams@gmail.com, or on the major social media platforms using the handle @WheelHelms. The thesis is also available to members of the Geneva Graduate Institute via this page of the Institute’s repository.

Banner image by Frederick Adegoke Snr./Pexels.
Interview by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.