In my textbooks, it says rinderpest, by killing African cattle, broke local economies and made colonial conquest easier. They call it an "ecological accident." But from where I sit, studying in a city built by the British, I see it was not just an accident. When the Madras famine of 1876-78 killed millions, the colonial rulers still exported grain for profit. So, when I read of rinderpest in Africa, I see the same pattern: a disaster becomes a tool for control. The connection is that colonisation does not just exploit people, it first breaks their lifelines.
#olympics#ioc
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