Introduction: Disease Reservoirs: From Colonial Medicine to One Health.

The introduction of the special issue "Disease Reservoirs: Anthropological and Historical Approaches" sets out the origins and trajectories of disease reservoir frameworks. First, it charts the emergence and elaborations of the reservoirs concept within and across early 20th-century colonial contexts, emphasising its configuration within imperial projects that sought to identify, map and control spaces of contagion among humans, animals, and pathogens. Following this, it traces the position the reservoir framework assumed within post-colonial practices and imaginaries of global health, with particular reference to the emerging infectious disease paradigm. The introduction shows that, in contemporary usages, while the concept continues to frame animals, humans and their bodies as containers of previously identified pathogens, it also emphasises the imperative of anticipating as-of-yet unknown diseases, harboured in the bodies of certain animals, through networks and techniques of surveillance. Consequently, the introduction argues that the notion of disease reservoirs remains intimately intertwined with concerns over the classification, organization, and management of peoples, pathogens, animals, and space. Finally, the introduction outlines the seven papers that form this special issue, stressing how they dialogue, complement, and challenge previous historical and anthropological approaches to disease reservoirs, with an eye to opening up new avenues for cross-disciplinary exploration.

Preventing Plague, Bringing Balance: Wildlife Protection as Public Health in the Interwar Union of South Africa.

This article proposes a new line of enquiry in the history of animal conservation by suggesting that African wildlife protection was a form of public health in the early twentieth century. Through examining the activities of South African epidemiologists, politicians, bureaucrats, farmers, and zoologists in the 1920s and 1930s, the author argues that wildlife was integrated into epidemiological strategies and agricultural modes of production. Against the backdrop of a series of plague outbreaks, carnivora once deemed "vermin" were legally protected as sources of human health and agricultural wealth. As public health, food security, and carnivore populations were imbricated, the categorical boundaries between human and animal health also began to blur. Ultimately, this case suggests the need to bridge environmental and medical history and to broaden the history of environment and health beyond canonical figures such as Rachel Carson. Paying attention to colonial "peripheries" and African thought is critical in understanding the origins of twentieth-century environmentalism.