¹ Ford, J., The Role of the Trypanosomiases in African History (Oxford, 1971).Google Scholar Ford's work was, however, received rather cautiously at first.

² See e.g. Sindiga, I., ‘Sleeping Sickness in Kenya Maasailand’, Social Science and Medicine, XVIII (1984).Google Scholar The best and most sophisticated of these studies probably still remains Vail's, Leroy, ‘Ecology and history: The example of eastern Zambia’, J. Southern African Studies, III (1977), 129–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, ‘The making of the “Dead North”: a study of Ngoni rule in northern Malawi, c. 1855–1970’, in Peires, J. B. (ed.), Before and After Shaka: Papers in Ngoni History (Grahamstown, 1981), 238–42.Google Scholar See also, Vaughan, M., The Story of An African Famine (Cambridge, 1987), 57–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ See e.g. Shenton, B. and Watts, M., ‘Capitalism and hunger in Northern Nigeria’, Review of African Political Economy, 15/16 (1979)Google Scholar, and Sindiga, I., ‘Land and population problems in Kajiado and Narok, Kenya’, African Studies Review, XXVII (1984), 27–31.Google Scholar For a stimulating overview, see Richards, P., ‘Ecological change and the politics of African land use’, African Studies Review, XXVI (1983), esp. 19–22, 41–7, 53–6.Google Scholar Colonial theories of conservation and ecology are carefully appraised in Anderson, D. M., ‘Depression, dust-bowl, demography and drought: the colonial state and soil conservation in East Africa during the 1930s’, African Affairs, LXXXIII (1984), 321–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also in Vaughan, , African Famine, 50–60.Google Scholar

⁴ McCracken, J., ‘Colonialism, capitalism and ecological crisis in Malawi: a reassessment’, in Anderson, D. and Grove, R. (eds.), Conservation in Africa: People, Policies and Practice (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar and Mandala, E. C., ‘Capitalism, ecology and society: The Lower Tchiri (Shire) Valley of Malawi, 1860–1960’, (Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1983), esp. 261–2.Google Scholar

⁵ See e.g. Sinclair, A. R. E. and Norton-Griffiths, M. (eds.), Serengeti: Dynamics of an Ecosystem (Chicago, 1979)Google Scholar, and Homewood, K. and Rodgers, W. R., ‘Pastoralism, conservation and the overgrazing controversy’, in Anderson and Grove, Conservation, 111–128.Google Scholar

⁶ Notoriously, Kjekshus, H., Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History (London, 1977)Google Scholar, but also Vail, L., ‘The political economy of East Central Africa’, in Birmingham, D. and Martin, P. (eds.), History of Central Africa, 11 (London, 1983), 204–5, 228–9.Google Scholar

⁷ Lewis, E. A., ‘Tsetse flies and development in Kenya Colony, Part I’, East Afr. Agri. J., VII (1941/1942), 184–7 and map.Google Scholar

⁸ Glossina swynnertoni and Glossina pallidipes, of the morsitans sub-group. Their principal threat was to the stock population; but both are also vectors of Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense (sleeping sickness) although the mortality among Maasai seems to have been slight–Molyneux, D. H. and Ashford, R. W., The Biology of Trypanosoma and Leishmania (New York, 1983), 121.Google Scholar

⁹ See Lamprey, R. and Waller, R. D., ‘The Loita-Mara area in historical times: patterns of subsistence, settlement and ecological change’, in P. Robertshaw (ed.), Early Pastoralists of Southwestern Kenya (in press). I am indebted to Richard Lamprey for guidance with the literature and for permission to make use of unpublished material.Google Scholar

¹⁰ For the dangers of distortion and selectivity, see Iliffe's review of Kjekshus in J. Afr. Hist., XIX (1978), 130–41.Google Scholar For comparison, see studies based on a far richer body of (documentary) source material: Miller, J., ‘The significance of drought, disease and famine in the agriculturally marginal zones of west-central Africa’, J. Afr. Hist., XXIII (1982) 17–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dias, J., ‘Famine and disease in the history of Angola, C1830–1930’, J. Afr. Hist., XXII (1981) 349–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Discussed in Lamprey and Waller, ‘The Loita-Mara area’.

¹² For details of the controversy, see Cashmore, T. H. R., ‘Studies in District Administration in the East Africa Protectorate’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1965), 275–308.Google Scholar

¹³ Ford, , Trypanosomiases, 272–3.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Woosnam, R. B., ‘Report on a search for Glossina on the Amala (Engabei) River, Southern Maasai Reserve, East Africa Protectorate’, Bulletin of Entomological Research, IV (1914), 271CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson to Macdonald, 6 June 1913, in Bowring to Harcourt, 24 July 1913, (PRO) CO 533/120. Under certain circumstances, cattle can be kept successfully within range of tsetse and calves can recover from trypanosome infection and even acquire a limited immunity. Animals succumb, however, when the intensity of the fly attack increases: Mulligan, H. W. et al. , The African Trypanosomiases (London, 1970).Google Scholar This may have been the case on the fringes of the fly areas in Western Narok during the colonial period. The general intensification of infestation can be gauged from the fact that before 1913, at least, cattle could still be grazed over wide areas where, by the 1930s, even sheep and goats, which are less susceptible, were dying.

¹⁵ One possible alternative food source was in the hippopotamus population of the Mara River which was unaffected by rinderpest. This would have tended to concentrate tsetse in the riverine pocket. For an analysis of the effect in Zimbabwe, see Ford, , Trypanosomiases, 296–300.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ford, , Trypanosomiases, 231.Google Scholar See also, Sinclair, A. R. E., ‘Dynamics of the Serengeti ecosystem: process and pattern’, in Sinclair and Norton-Griffiths, Serengeti, 3–7.Google Scholar Ford's ideas are discussed in more detail below.

¹⁷ Lewis, E.A., ‘Tsetse flies in the Masai Reserve, Kenya Colony’, Bulletin of Entomological Research, XXV (1934) 440–2Google Scholar; Anderson to Macdonald, 6 June 1913, in Bowring to Harcourt, 24 July 1913, CO 533/120; Woosnam, ’Report on a Search for Glossina on the Amala River’, n.d. in Belfield to Harcourt, 30 Oct. 1913, CO 533/123. In mid-1913, White passed through the extreme limits of fly country, well to the south and west of the Kenya Mara Plains. He reported, however, that west of Ikorongo in German East Africa ‘the country north of Mara is full of sleeping sickness’ and that overland travel between Musoma and Shirati was impossible: White, S. E., The Rediscovered Country (New York, 1915), 167, 215, 226, 251.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Hollis to Ainsworth, 11 Sept. 1911, Kenya National Archives [KNA] PC/RVP 6E/1/1; Macdonald to Bowring, 8 March 1913, in Belfield to Harcourt, 15 March 1913, CO 533/117; ‘Report of the Entomological Division’, in Agricultural Dept. Annual Report (East African Protectorate) [ADAR], 1917/18. Tsetse has a tendency to disperse from its foci in the wet season (rather like the Maasai herds on which it preyed) and then to retreat. This made it difficult for Government officers on tour to determine the real extent of infestation with any accuracy and may explain why there is an imperfect correlation between reports of the presence of tsetse and reports of stock mortality. It did, however, enable herders with local knowledge to utilise certain fly areas seasonally–Narok District Annual Report [NDAR], 1928, KNA DC/NRK 1/1/2; ‘Report of the Chief Veterinary Officer’, in ADAR, 1932; Lewis, ‘Tsetse flies in Masai’, 446; NDAR, 1939, KNA DC/NRK 1/1/3.

¹⁹ Masai Province Annual Report [MPAR], 1925, KNA PC/SP 1/2/2; NDARs 1925, 1928, KNA DC/NRK 1/1/2; Kenya Land Commission, Evidence and Memoranda, 11 (HMSO, London, 1934), 1207 (evidence of Count Dornhoff).

²⁰ Kenya Land Commission, Evidence and Memoranda, 1203–4 (evidence of Lentingan ole Lololdigir and of Count Dornhoff); interviews MT/M/P 13, 41; MT/M/UN 5, 8; MT/M/SR 16.

²¹ Lewis, , ‘Tsetse flies in Masai’, 452–3Google Scholar; ‘Report of the Chief Veterinary Officer’, ADAR, 1932.Google Scholar

²² The tendency of fly to ‘wander’ or disperse in wet conditions has been noted. It receded again from Barkitabu during the dry season of 1938. See MPARs, 1936, 1938.

²³ Veterinary Dept. Annual Reports [VDAR], 1936, 1937; NDAR, 1941, KNA DC/NRK 1/1/3. Tsetse did, later, invade the Sotik farms. See VDAR, 1947. The Chepalungu, on the Maasai/Kipsigis border, was a no-man's land or Grenzwildnis par excellence. Within its thickets, it harboured stock thieves and illegal cultivators as well as game and tsetse. For a description of another such ‘refuge’ area, Nindo in Shinyanga, see Ford, , Trypanosomiases, 190.Google Scholar

²⁴ The Lemek Scheme was intended to encourage and stabilise settlement in the area by eradicating East Coast Fever, but failed as the fly proved deadlier than the tick: correspondence and reports in KNA DC/NRK 2/6/2. The intriguing historical connection between ticks (the vectors of East Coast Fever) and tsetse has not yet been studied. In Lemek, the arrival of ticks preceded that of tsetse. Purko, whose herds were susceptible to East Coast Fever, evacuated the area after heavy losses in the early 1940s and it was then occupied by stock-owners from Trans-Mara, whose cattle were immune, until they, in turn, were driven out by tsetse: NDAR, 1941. The expansion of both ticks and tsetse in Maasailand may be the result of similar conjunctions and changes within the ecosystem. For ticks in Maasailand, see Lewis, E. A., ‘Investigations into the Tick problem in the Masai Reserve’, Agricultural Dept. Bulletin, 7 (Nairobi, 1934).Google Scholar

²⁵ ‘General Survey of the Lemek Valley, Narok District’, January 1945 and report by Lewis, December 1946, both in KNA DC/NRK 2/6/2.

²⁶ ‘Narok District Development Plan’, 1955, KNA DC/NRK 1/3/2; Darling, F. F., An Ecological Reconnaissance of the Mara Plains in Kenya Colony, Wildlife Monographs, v (Chestertown, 1960), 13, 15.Google Scholar For the retreat of tsetse in the 1960s and 1970s, see Lamprey and Waller, ‘The Loita-Mara Area’.

²⁷ Ford, Trypanosomiases, passim; Sinclair, ‘Dynamics of Serengeti’, 3.

²⁸ Ford, , Trypanosomiases, 51–5.Google Scholar Tsetse's favoured hosts were nearly all among those animals most susceptible to rinderpest, Ibid. 299.

²⁹ Colonial conservationists, like C. M. Swynnerton and H. E. Hornby who were directors of Tsetse Research in Tanganyika, were well aware of this connection and linked tsetse expansion with the wider problems of overgrazing and poor pasture management. As Swynnerton put it, ‘…the two tsetse species that essentially belong to savanna owe their present distribution to man’. Some officials clearly felt that tsetse was not an unmitigated evil since, by driving away people, it enabled the land to recover from their depredations. Others, however, hoped that the ‘threat of tsetse’ would shake both government and people from their lethargy and stimulate reclamation and better management as a way of breaking the ‘Malthusian’ grip of starvation and disease in the herds: Swynnerton, quoted in Talbot, L. M., ‘The Ecology of Western Masailand, East Africa’, (Ph.D. thesis, Berkeley, 1963), 414Google Scholar; Ford, , Trypanosomiases, 196–8Google Scholar; Hornby, H. E., ‘Pasture management in relation to tsetse reclamation’, East Afr. Agri. J., VII (1941–42).Google Scholar

³⁰ Talbot, , ‘Ecology’, 403–8.Google Scholar

³¹ Talbot emphasises that savanna grassland is not a stable climax and that it was already being modified; ‘Ecology’, 413–5. Osero, the general name for the lower Mara Plains below the Escarpment, which appears in early maps and accounts, has the meaning of ‘scrub-land’ and is contrasted with Olorokoti, the plains grazing above the Escarpment.

³² In 1913, a report on northern and western Trans-Mara, an area which had also been unoccupied, described the grazing as rank and bushy as a result; Hemsted, ‘Report on Trans-Mara’, 3 April 1913, in Belfield to Harcourt, 5 May 1913, CO 533/118. It should be noted here that undergrazing is as potent a factor in pasture change as overgrazing.

³³ Macdonald and Atkinson to Hollis, 19 Sept. 1911, KNA PC/RVP 6E/I/I; Belfield to Harcourt, 30 Oct. 1913, encl. map and report by Woosnam, CO 533/123; White, , Rediscovered Country, 158–63Google Scholar; Diary of J. Healy, entries for 24 Aug. to 17 Sept. 1922, Healy Papers, Duke University Library.

³⁴ Lewis, , ‘Tsetse Flies in Masai’, 444–6Google Scholar; ‘Report of the Agricultural Officer i/c Grassland Improvement’, in ADAR II, 1936.Google Scholar

³⁵ Lewis, ‘General Survey’, Dec. 1946, KNA DC/NRK 2/6/2. I am grateful to Dr R. Lamprey for data on vegetation after the 1940s.

³⁶ See ‘Reports of the Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Survey and Control’, in VDARs, 1949 onwards; Lamprey and Waller, ‘Loita-Mara area’; vegetation map in Glover, P. E., ‘An ecological survey of Narok District in Kenya Masailand, Part I’, 1966Google Scholar, typescript, Agricultural Dept. Library, Nairobi.

³⁷ NDARs, 1931–34, KNA DC/NRK 1/1/2. Rainfall figures in MPARs, KNA PC/SP 1/2/1.

³⁸ NDAR, 1933, KNA PC/NKU 2/1/14; VDAR, 1948. The classic pastoral dilemma greatly increased stock losses during drought and figured prominently in the ‘Malthusian’ thinking of the administrators, e.g. MPAR, 1916/17, KNA PC/SP 1/2/2 and ‘Masai Province, Handing Over Report’, Jan. 1936, KNA PC/SP 2/1/1.

³⁹ During the worst years of drought, for example, the Purko abandoned their wet season dispersal altogether; NDARs, 1932–4.

⁴⁰ For the crucial role played by fire in the ecological succession, see Talbot, , ‘Ecology’, 158–9, 366–72, 391–3Google Scholar, and Norton-Griffiths, M., ‘The influence of grazing, browsing and fire on the vegetation dynamics of the Serengeti’, in Sinclair and Norton-Griffiths, Serengeti, 320–1, 333–41.Google Scholar

⁴¹ E.g. Interview MT/M/P 41.

⁴² For a much fuller treatment, see Lamprey and Waller, ‘The Loita-Mara area’.

⁴³ The rinderpest epidemic in Maasailand is discussed in detail in R. Waller, ‘Emutai: crisis and response in Maasailand 1883–1902’, in Johnson, D. and Anderson, D. (eds.), The Ecology of Survival: Case Studies from Northeast African History (London and Boulder, 1988).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Gorges, G. H., ‘A journey from Lake Naivasha to the Victoria Nyanza’, Geographical J., XVI (1900), 79Google Scholar; Smith, G. E., ‘From the Victoria Nyanza to Kilimanjaro’, Geographical J., XXIX (1907), 256–7Google Scholar; Waller, R., ‘Interaction and identity on the periphery: The Trans-Mara Maasai’, Int. J. Afr. Historical Studies, XVII (1984), 251–2.Google Scholar Smith, who was on the Anglo-German Boundary Commission in 1904, makes no mention of tsetse along the border.

⁴⁵ Sandford, G. R., An Administrative and Political History of the Masai Reserve (London, 1919), ch. 3.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Cashmore, , ‘Studies in District Administration’, 270–1, 298–301Google Scholar; ‘Memorandum on the Masai’ in Ngong Political Record Book, Part A, KNA DC/KAJ 1/2/1. The revision in this paragraph is based mainly on field data which have not yet been fully analysed.

⁴⁷ NDARs, 1928–9, KNA DC/NRK 1/1/2; Waller, , ‘Interaction and identity’, 256–7, 248.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Waller, , ‘Interaction and identity’, 263–4.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Given the high degree of local expertise required to manage stock successfully in the conditions of Western Narok, Purko inexperience may have been responsible for some of their early losses, and their reluctance to settle in the area becomes understandable.

⁵⁰ Maasai grazing management is discussed more fully in Waller, R. D., ‘The Lords of East Africa: The Maasai in the mid-Nineteenth Century (c. 1840–1880)’, (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1979), 28–54.Google Scholar

⁵¹ In this context, the importance of small stock (sheep and goats) to range management as well as to the pastoral economy should be noted. Certain areas, such as the Loita Plains, were especially known as sheep pastures and small stock could be kept in areas effectively closed to cattle by tsetse. Much later, they were used to spearhead the movement to reclaim fly areas in Mara; Waller, , ‘Lords of East Africa’, 35, 62Google Scholar; Darling, , Ecological Reconnaissance, 13Google Scholar; I. Grimwood, ‘The future status of Kenya's National Parks’, Wild Life, 11 (1960) 25–6.Google Scholar

⁵² ‘Notes on a Meeting at Rumuruti’, 27 Aug. 1910, by Collyer, in Belfield to Harcourt, 6 Feb. 1913, CO 533/116; Belfield to Harcourt, 30 October, 1913, CO 533/123; Leys, N., Kenya (London, 1926), 108.Google Scholar The Maasai did not then complain specifically of tsetse and the diseases to which they referred were probably tick-borne. Precisely how the question of fly infestation was raised in connection with the Moves is difficult to determine. The Colonial Office was being pressed on the subject in 1912–13, on the basis of unofficial information, and responded by calling for further reports, although the outlines of the fly areas were already known; Parliamentary Questions by Harvey, 31 July 1912 and 23 Jan. 1913, with correspondence and minutes in CO 533/111 and 128.

⁵³ ‘Memorandum on the Masai’, KNA DC/KAJ 1/2/1; MPARs, 1914/15–1915/16, KNA PC/SP 1/2/2; Sandford, Administrative History, 120–1; NDARs, 1914/15–1915/16, KNA DC/NRK 1/1/1.

⁵⁴ For grazing movements, see Fig. 3 and Lewis, ‘Investigations’, 27 and map.

⁵⁵ This trend is discussed in Waller, , ‘Research on Maasai History, 1914–1939’, unpubl. report to the ESRC, London, 1986, 12.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ For the development of Lemek, see Waller and Lamprey, ‘Loita-Mara area’. The closure of the Mara station, due to economy measures rather than specifically to tsetse, left the area largely unadministered and tended to draw attention away eastwards; Waller, , ‘Interaction and identity’, 258.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Waller and Lamprey, ‘Loita-Mara area’; Collett, D., ‘Pastoralists and wildlife: image and reality in Kenya Maasailand’, in Anderson and Grove, Conservation, 143–4.Google Scholar It would now appear that the cycle is repeating itself with bush and fly once more on the increase in Mara.

⁵⁸ See also, Iliffe, J., A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), 166–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁹ Sindiga, , ‘Land and population’, 37Google Scholar; idem, ‘Sleeping Sickness’, 187.

⁶⁰ Waller, , ‘Research on Maasai History’, 8–10.Google Scholar The official attitude towards Maasai-land was, in fact, much closer to Hornby's exasperated comment on overstocking: ‘I came, I saw, I deplored and I went away’; Hornby, H. E., ‘Overstocking in Tanganyika Territory’, East Afr. Agri. J., 1 (1935/1936), 360.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Discussed in Waller, ‘Emutai’, III–12 and in Waller and Lamprey, ‘Loita-Mara area’.

⁶² Norton-Griffiths, , ‘Influence of grazing’, 346–7Google Scholar; Homewood, and Rodgers, , ‘Pastoralism, conservation and overgrazing’, 117–20.Google Scholar However, whereas the former suggests that these ecosystems have multiple equilibria at different levels, the latter argue for a return to a ‘central equilibrium’.

⁶³ Waller, , ‘Research on Maasai History’, 2–4Google Scholar; Homewood, and Rodgers, , ‘Pastoralism, conservation and overgrazing’, 111–15.Google Scholar For a similar, but not widely held view in the colonial period, see Hornby, , ‘Overstocking’, 353–8.Google Scholar