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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The 1896 rinderpest disease and its consequences |
Author: | Chigwedere, A.S. |
Year: | 1982 |
Periodical: | Heritage |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 29-34 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
Subjects: | anticolonialism war veterinary medicine 1890-1899 |
Abstract: | The rinderpest disease that invaded Zimbabwe in 1896 should be studied together with the other physical plagues that invaded the country around 1896 such as swarms of locusts and droughts. The physical plagues made 1896 an absolutely abnormal year: to the Europeans the disasters were one of those misfortunes a country might experience from time to time; to the African they reflected something that had gone grossly amiss in the whole system. After examination of the economic consequences of the rinderpest invasion and its economic impact on the African, and on the Europeans, the author draws attention to its political and social consequences, in particular the connexion between the rinderpest invasion and the Chimurenga war of 1896-7, which was a political, economic, social, but also a cultural and religious war. As peace was disturbed in the African religious sphere by the abnormalities of 1896, to the Africans the White man was the source of all the disasters plaguing the country. To get rid of these disasters the Europeans had to be driven out or exterminated. This resulted in the attack on Europeans in Matabeleland in 1897. Notes. |