The Rinderpest Campaigns
A Virus, Its Vaccines, and Global Development in the Twentieth Century

Examines the struggle against rinderpest - a devastating cattle disease - and explores the history of international development.

Amanda Kay McVety (Author)

9781108434065, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 July 2021

308 pages, 13 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

'This is a very timely book, told in a masterful way.' Alain Touwaide, Doody's Reviews

Amanda Kay McVety has written the first history of the international effort to eradicate rinderpest - a devastating cattle disease - which began in the 1940s and ended in 2011. Rinderpest is the only other disease besides smallpox to have been eradicated, but very few people in the United States know about it, because it did not infect humans and never broke out in North America. In other parts of the world, however, rinderpest was a serious economic and social burden and the struggle against it was a critical part of the effort to fight poverty and hunger globally. McVety follows the deployment of rinderpest vaccines around the globe, exploring the role of the environment in the understanding of development, internationalism, and national security. She expands the standard Cold War narratives to show how these concepts were framed not only by economic and political concerns, but also by biological ones.

Introduction
1. Rinderpest and the origins of international vooperation for disease control
2. GIR-1: rinderpest in World War II
3. 'Freedom from want': UNRRA's rinderpest campaigns
4. The machinery of development: FAO's rinderpest campaigns
5. Back to Grosse Île: biological warfare in the postwar world
6. 'Freedom from rinderpest'
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Veterinary medicine: infectious diseases & therapeutics [MZM], History of medicine [MBX], General & world history [HBG]