The possibly humorous effects of the undertaking shouldn’t keep us from exploring what was actually at stake. To complement his vision of sperm fluxes fertilizing local ewes and cows, Bonadonna’s institute developed mobile artificial-insemination units that included “an artificial vagina, needle, forceps, a thermos, a microscope, sperm-physiologic dilution solutions, and disinfection material.”[116] Basic training courses were considered enough to prepare technical personnel to operate artificial-insemination centers. Although these centers would be located in the newly projected white settlements, the herds of native populations were also to go through “obligatory passage points.” Bonadonna didn’t hesitate to recommend the use of force if natives resisted the application of the technique. Combining Bonadonna’s words and the jargon of Science Studies, we can say that artificial-insemination centers worked as obligatory passage points for the performance of colonial relations. Determining which animals would be allowed to reproduce and which would be eliminated from a herd meant intervening at the core of indigenous life. As the above comments on the relations between the Herero and cattle or Sanusi and sheep made clear, colonial domination meant breaking the relations between natives and their animals. In terms likely to be familiar to present-day scholars of Science Studies, control of animal reproduction constituted an obligatory passage point translating questions of colonial power and political independence.[117]
Artificial insemination, whether done to supply newly established white settlers farms or to intervene in indigenous traditional herding practices, centralized animals for reproduction. The most valuable animals were kept under highly controlled hygienic and sanitary conditions, were fed well, and were under constant surveillance by experts.[118] To prevent sexual transmission of diseases, they were kept isolated and only their sperm was allowed to travel to the places in which it was needed. One could thus imagine, as Bonadonna and Maiocco did, that a few elite animals could have big effects over vast territorial areas. It was under such presuppositions that a large experimental Karakul sheep farm was projected for the Giggiga Plain in the Harar region (eastern Ethiopia) of Africa Orientale Italiana (Italian East Africa).[119]
By late 1939, the director of the agrarian office of Italian East Africa approved the building of a gigantic facility occupying at least 25,000 hectares (49,000 acres), destined first and foremost to launch Karakul farming on a grand scale in Italian East Africa. The brevity of Italian control of the area didn’t allow for its completion, but the project illuminates the significance of Karakul for Mussolini’s African empire. The largest expense was, not surprisingly, the acquisition of the first thirty pureblood Karakul rams and ewes, which cost about 250,000 lira (one fourth of the total expenses). Needless to say, the cost of land was not computed in the budget, since it was taken by the colonial administration as a result of the occupation of the territory. The climate and the altitude at Giggiga (1,600 meters above sea level), and the existence of underground water, were allegedly perfect for raising Karakul. The proximity to a railway line and the short distance to the cities of Harar and Dire Daua were also obvious advantages. But the choice of the place was decided first and foremost by the presence among indigenous herds of large numbers Somali sheep, a breed that had been shown to be suitable for crossing with Karakul by Maiocco’s experiments in Alexandria. Although local populations were reticent to sell their sheep to white buyers, and asked exorbitant prices, the project of the experimental farm trusted in the power of the colonial administration to impose lower prices. “National and colonial interests” justified such measures and the overtaking of land from the local economy.
The results achieved at the Giggiga experimental farm with crossing, artificial insemination, feeding diets, and pasture rotations were to demonstrate the viability of such an enterprise for white settlers in the whole territory. Settlers maintained close relations with experiment stations in order to guarantee the success of their own farms. To respect and follow the mating decisions made by the technical experts was a pre-condition for owning a Karakul farm. The experimental station would supply a pureblood Karakul ram or its sperm, and the settler had to keep good records of all the progeny, using forms supplied by agricultural officials.[120] Each farm was assigned a series of numbers to mark its animals resulting from crossings, using the right ear for the register number and the left one for its degree of purity—for example, a mark of 1/2 would mean half-blood Karakul. Male descendants were to be slaughtered after the first three days, or castrated if kept for meat production. Females could be kept for further crossings, their number limited by the carrying capacity of pastureland, a number also defined by the agriculture technicians. The owner had to record each animal’s date of birth, genealogy, grade of purity, register number, general physical features (tail and neck), and quality of fur, following the University of Halle’s standards based on the nature of curly hair (form, density, brightness, etc.). It didn’t prove easy to find Italian settlers able to conform to such demands. Needless to say, there was no possibility that indigenous people would own Karakul farms.
As the dimensions of the Giggiga undertaking suggested, the experimental Karakul farm was conceived both as a scientific site and as a demonstration exercise. Besides acquisition of land and animals, the farm also had to deal with labor relations. German South West Africa was invoked explicitly in the Giggiga project as having developed an exemplary virtuous indigenous labor regime responsible for freeing natives from their indolence and leading them to discover the virtues of wage labor.[121] The experimental farm should thus be seen as an outpost of colonization experimenting with every dimension of colonial life: taking pasturelands by force, acquiring local animals at low price, crossing them with pureblood Karakul following the rules and recording practices established by the experimental station, and dealing with indigenous populations as a pool of cheap labor for white settlers’ commercial farming operations.
Much of the construction work was to employ military resources. Military personnel were to help with the building of stables, and military vehicles were to be used for all transportation needs. More tellingly, Karakul farms demanded great quantities of barbed wire, which was readily available in Ethiopia as a result of the military occupation. If originally the military had adapted barbed wire to war aims from cattle ranching, the experiment station was now to take the opposite direction and use it to demarcate land establishing colonial settlement.[122]
Circulating Karakul III: South West Africa and Angola
World War II would abruptly end Italy’s imperial dreams, and on May 5, 1941—less than a year and a half after the approval of the Giggiga project—Emperor Haile Selassie reentered Addis Ababa. Grande Italia soon disappeared from the map, and the Karakul farm with it. But while Italians were losing their empire, Salazar’s regime in Portugal, profiting from its neutrality in World War II, was engaging in southwest Angola, in the Namib Desert, in a late war of pacification.[123]
From the very early stages of the dictatorial regime that came out of the military coup of 1926, the empire had been one of its central features, as was confirmed by the appointment of Salazar as Minister of the Colonies in 1930 and the issuing of the Colonial Act that same year. As mentioned above, the law put the colonies under stricter control by metropolitan interests, curtailing any intentions of autonomous policies and affirming that the “organic essence of the Portuguese Nation” entailed “undertak[ing] the historical function of possessing and colonizing overseas dominions and of civilizing indigenous populations.” The Colonial Act made colonialism a constitutional obligation of the regime.[124] Through its implementation, Salazar was able not only to satisfy Portuguese capitalists and industrialists who saw African colonies as source of cheap raw materials and as a protected export market but also to please the most radical supporters of the new regime: the young army officials for whom the nation existed only if it had colonies.[125] The plea of the latter for a more aggressive colonial policy was justified by invoking the ambitions of expanding their countries’ possessions at the expense of Portuguese territories that Italians and German had held since the end of World War I. In order to counter such intentions, a consensus was formed around a need to demonstrate that Portugal effectively controlled its empire either by extracting more resources from its colonies or by increasing the white presence in them. And indeed, with the Colonial Act came new plans for white settlement of Portugal’s colonies.[126]
117
Michel Callon, “Elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay,” in
119
The following description of the Giggiga Karakul experimental farm is based on G. Schultze, “Allevamento delle pecore Karakul e del bestiame in generale. Rapporto sul mio viaggio di studio attraverso il Territorio dell’Impero,” 1938–39, AIAO, fasc. 553. The experimental farm was also to raise cattle and merino sheep.
120
On the details of creating a Karakul farm under Italian colonial administration, see “Disciplinare per l’allevamento degli ovini Karakul,” 1939, AIAO, fasc. 1972.
122
See Reviel Netz,
123
René Pélissier,
124
Valentim Alexandre, “Ideologia, economia e política: a questão colonial na implantação do Estado Novo,”
126
Cláudia Castelo,