Developments in international trade, colonialism, and conquest created the military needs (healthy army horses) and economic needs (controlling great animal plagues) that shaped the professionalization of modern veterinary medicine in Europe and beyond. This chapter analyzes how the circulation of veterinary knowledge was organized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, amidst the challenges of animal disease outbreaks and battlefield injuries that had accompanied war and trade. It examines how modern veterinary schools emerged from European Enlightenment pragmatism and French physiocrat economics, and why and how this model of education spread around the world. State promotion and regulation of veterinary education and professionalization of veterinary practitioners increased, augmenting the traditional roles of herders and healers in many areas. Veterinarians educated in this formal European tradition slowly expanded their share of the market for veterinary services as their numbers and state-sponsored influence grew. The development and spread of the eighteenth-century European veterinary regime was a product of its time. It fulfilled crucial social, political, military, and cultural needs during subsequent decades of increasing industrialization and imperialism affecting the globe.

Scientists had a distinctive part to play in the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign relations prior to it coming to power as well as during the early decades of the People’s Republic. The Conclusion considers the significance of this sustained party and party-state interest in scientists’ international activities for subsequent developments from the 1970s through China’s rise as a science and technology power by the early twenty-first century. These relations did not just spring out of nowhere, fully formed, and ready to go with the onset of rapprochement. Nor were they simply a product of long-term Americanisation. Consequently, the Conclusion explores notable areas of continuity and others of revived relevance when it comes to the party-state and the spectrum of international activities undertaken by scientists.

Elite Chinese scientists’ prominence within the World Federation of Scientific Workers during the 1950s opened many new opportunities for those scientists and the Chinese party-state alike. Examining the origins and evolution of the on-again off-again relationship between China and the early Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Chapter 2 discusses the decision-making processes and key episodes that shaped this relationship. From Chinese policymakers and officials’ internal debates over the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955 through to the end of Mao-era engagement with Pugwash at the fateful Moscow Conference in 1960, Chinese involvement in Pugwash during this period shows the shifting dynamic tension created by a system in which foreign policymakers expected scientists to act as state agents in their international activities. Much of the time, this saw senior Chinese Communist Party leaders or foreign relations officials able to actively shape the Chinese side of these international encounters; however, particularly in the case of those taking place in person and overseas, scientists were the ones who were carrying out the interactions, creating the potential for them to exercise some agency in how they were conducted and reported back.

In the late twentieth century, the global human population grew dramatically. Global meat production more than doubled as industrial animal production rapidly accelerated. Mechanization, artificial insemination, growth promoters in feed, and disease control contributed to successful "factory farms," while smaller farmers adopted vaccines and antimicrobials. By 2000, 90 percent of the mammals living on earth were humans and their domesticated animals. Veterinarians became "herd health" managers and worked for governments around the world to carry out vaccination programs, provide medications and anthelminthics, and complete inspections and certifications. The OIE and WHO coordinated international campaigns against rinderpest, foot and mouth disease (FMD), and swine fever; but outbreaks of FMD resulted from disagreement over the value of vaccination versus testing. Prion diseases (scrapie and BSE) became major sociopolitical problems after people acquired a form of BSE from infected meat in Britain. Public concerns about food safety, antibiotic resistance, and animal welfare began to challenge intensive livestock production and veterinarians’ role, but most veterinarians in wealthy areas focused on companion animals. By 2000, racial and ethnic diversity in the veterinary workforce was slowly increasing, while the profession rapidly feminized after 1980 in most parts of the world. Responding to client demand, veterinary schools began offering courses in complementary and alternative veterinary medicine (CAVM).

This chapter highlights traditions of animal healing around the globe, from South American, to Islamic and Ottoman, to Ayurvedic, Chinese, and European. The domestication of elephants, horses, poultry, bovines, and other animals, supplied animal bodies for food, transport, power, and cultural status. Many societies incorporated animals into their sacred traditions and developed elaborate systems of knowledge about animals, including animal healing. Keeping animals close to or inside people’s houses effectively altered the environments of both. People and their domesticated animals shared microorganisms (which also co-evolved with them over time). A major problem with the closeness of human and domesticated animal populations was the spread and evolution of pathogens, forcing healers for both humans and animals to confront the challenges of emergent diseases. Early veterinary activities are analyzed, including professionalization, and linked to the more well-known histories of military animal healers and writings on animal anatomy and medicine by the 1500s.

The numbers of pets, availability of goods and services for them, and the veterinary profession’s attention to companion animal medicine are increasing (especially in Asia and Latin America). The concept of "anthropomorphism" (attributing human characteristics to animals) contributes to the idea that family pets are worthy of expensive care. Animal welfare activism expanded in Western societies and became politicized in Europe. These changes led to reductions in the use of laboratory animals and veterinarians’ increased attention to animal suffering. While traditional healing systems are often combined with Western veterinary medicine around the world, in some places the standard of animal care was based on that of human hospitals. Veterinarians adopted new technologies, including CT and MRI scanning and genetic testing. Personal computers, the internet, and mobile phones have revolutionized veterinary practice in some areas; this required veterinarians to learn new skills. In 2011–2012, veterinarians celebrated the World Veterinary Year, (250th anniversary of the first European veterinary school) and the eradication of rinderpest from the world (a triumph for veterinary international cooperation). Veterinarians have been major drivers of "One Health," the most recent effort to combine all aspects of health care for animals, the environment, and humans to address ecosystem destruction and prevent disease outbreaks.

The Introduction maps out the book’s central arguments, contribution, and structure, in addition to contextualising key issues and providing essential background information. It considers the relevance of science diplomacy for understanding China’s international scientific relations under Mao and, in turn, the ways those activities deepen our understanding of the range of actors and approaches involved in science diplomacy. Important ideological concepts and foreign relations strategies underpinning these outreach activities, particularly ‘united front work’, were central to the CCP’s outreach practices involving scientists. The chapter further considers the importance of transnational science in modern China and international science in the post-Second World War period, as well as introducing the key scientists, organisations, and events that sit at the centre of this study.