Imperial Creatures

This book covers a century and a half of human-animal relations, narrated from a historical perspective, with varied themes, centered around Singapore, a small but economically-and civilizationally (p.116)-significant region of Southeast Asia.It begins with the arrival of Thomas Stamford Raffles in 1819 and ends with the country's capture by the Japanese Imperial Army in 1942.Covering these dates, Barnard weaves a roughly chronological series of six chapters that could stand alone as well-developed essays.These chapters resonate with intersecting themes from benchmark works in the genre of animal studies: the 'ecological imperialism' of Alfred Crosby, the "estate" and "creatures" of Harriet Ritvo, the "changing attitudes" to the "natural world" of Keith Thomas, and even the grand politico-economic and socio-ecological vistas of William Crononalthough Cronon is not referenced in the book.Barnard updates these classics by referencing the burgeoning number of historical and sociological/anthropological studies of the empiricities of animal lives as approached from the humanities and environmental history.With its story-telling strengths, the book can easily be enjoyed by anyone curious about how a "history of animals" can be done in the early twenty-first century.A major strength of the book is its singularity of focus, which is "the interaction of humans and other animals in [...] the period of high imperialism" (p.13).This "empire and animals" matrix is presented quite strongly in the opening chapter: "This study will begin with an exploration of what imperialism meant for the natural landscape of Singapore.As the island fell under colonial rule, so did all of the creatures that lived on it" (p.13, emphasis added).Such a totalizing view (all creatures), coupled with an emphasis on the role of an "outside economic and political force" that would "completely transform a tropical island economically, socially, and physically" (p. 5, emphasis added), can be read as underlining the dramatic effect of imperialist/colonial exploits in altering a broad range of Singapore's life and realities.In the succeeding chapters, "imperial" activities are examined through particular animals: dogs (in Chapters 2, 3, and 5) and cattle (in Chapters 4 and 6), as well as birds, chickens, elephants, fishes, tigers, buffaloes, and many others are highlighted in public, colonial, and imperial lives and spaces.Such a framing allows Barnard a good analytical handling of the dynamics between, and vagaries of, political economy (the workings of British East India Company) and human affects ("cruelty") as these relate to animals.For example, Chapter 4 (titled "Defining Cruelty") is a meticulous resurfacing of

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• History of Animals

  Oxana Timofeeva, Slavoj Žižek•History of Animals•2018

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