ABSTRACT
This chapter brings the scientific and humanities approaches to analysis together to understand the outbreaks of rinderpest in Britain in the eighteenth century. It will attempt neither to explore the politics nor the veterinary medicine and its practice, nor its history, but rather will focus on the attitudes of three eighteenth-century writers on cattle plague which explore their understanding of their relationship with the ecosystem in which a plague can thrive. Cattle plague is and always has been enzootic in much of Asia and Africa, but was always an unwelcome guest in Britain where it caused nearly 80% fatality among cattle, if left to itself, and 100% fatality of infected herds when government policy was brought into action. Ultimately, the chapter asks if there's anything we can learn from how people responded to the possible extinction of cattle in Britain. Most obviously, history allows us an overview, showing that government policy of 100% slaughter with compensation worked in 1714 and 1786, but not in 1746, when the second Jacobite rebellion seemed more important to the government than the extinction of a species. Thus, the 1746 plague lasted for 11 years, while the other two endured no more than 11 months.
