Colonizing Animals

Jonathan Saha's Colonizing Animals weaves animals into many of the key events in the modern history of Myanmar (formerly Burma), including British colonization (1824–1948) and Japanese occupation (1942–45). Colonial Myanmar, often overlooked in histories of the British Empire, is shown to be a context in which “myriad” nonhuman animals participated in the “making and maintenance” of the empire (184). Pushing beyond the single-species focus of much animal history, Saha demonstrates how the plethora of elephants, crocodiles, monkeys, dogs, and other animals clash and collide with humans throughout the text's six chapters.While many cultural histories have long embraced a multispecies approach, Saha deploys an interspecies approach to encompass the interconnections between the colonizers, the colonized, and the nonhuman animals. As a result, Colonizing Animals moves away from the typical prioritization of the animal-centered approach within the field, building instead a case for a greater understanding of history as an interspecies process. Throughout the introduction, Saha proposes that due to the overwhelming focus of animal historians on Europe and North America, new theoretical frameworks are needed in order to understand interspecies relationships in more-than-European contexts. In a meticulous and detailed discussion of historiography, Saha argues that concepts of humanism within animal studies are ruptured and fragmented in the colonial context, where the animal was dehumanized alongside colonized peoples. While postcolonial theory has addressed this marginalization and sought to recover the agency of the subaltern, the framework of the interspecies empire proposes to unify theoretical approaches.Drawing upon environmental, social, posthumanist, and postcolonial theory, Saha demonstrates how both humans and animals were commoditized and marginalized, while ultimately playing a key role in both sustaining and threatening the interspecies process of empire. The significance of interspecies relations as commodities is most potently demonstrated during the opening chapters, in which working elephants and their Burmese oozie riders are shown to be crucial undead capital in the functions of empire. Oxen, too, were living commodities, “vital resources” in the economic operations of the imperial state and the migrant Indian workers who reared them, themselves products of the empire (81). In both instances, control over the labor of animals was interconnected with governance over the colonized.In the third chapter, Saha shows how governance over big game mammals and venomous reptiles branded as vermin was an important symbol of authority for the imperial rulers. These species were not solely perceived to be a threat to the British colonizers, well known for their anxiety about and physical and mental aversion to tropical environments. The value of a dead crocodile was also connected to its threat to plow cattle, an agent of empire. The endangered rhinoceros, by contrast, became in imperial eyes a symbol of Burmese neglect and lack of value in wildlife, in spite of the clear correlation between British imperial hunting and the near extinction of the species.Saha further demonstrates how racial divisions were tied to interspecies relations in the fourth chapter, in which British affection toward pets was contrasted with perceptions of unnatural relations between animals and colonized humans. Oozie elephant riders were dehumanized, yet their “domestication” by the empire rendered them “good animals.” Inversely, human-snake relationships were a cause of great alarm, with snake charming a trope of racial and speciesist discourses in Orientalist literature. In the fifth chapter, the text turns toward the role of animals in Burmese nationalism, looking at how animal welfare was connected to the revival of Buddhist thought. This is followed by an exploration of primatology as an anti-colonial discourse as well as negative connections between animals and nationalist leaders. Finally, the sixth chapter discusses the role of animals as symbols of colonial authority, during key events such as the Hsaya San rebellion of 1930–32 and the collapse of imperial control during World War II, particularly with efforts to control nonhuman escapees from Rangoon Zoo.Pioneering studies have provided significant ventures into the environmental, material, and cultural histories of non-European contexts. Colonizing Animals adds to this field while calling for greater engagement with interspecies dynamics. When read in conjunction with posthumanist and postcolonial theory, Saha's work offers an important insight for scholars and students, pushing future proponents to embrace multispecies approaches. Moreover, his work challenges histories of colonialism globally to recognize the significant engagements and entanglements of colonizers and the colonized, both human and nonhuman

Ancient history · Biology · Empire · Geography · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · History