Beastly Encounters of the Raj

Many and varied themes about the relationships between domesticated animals and humans in India are to be found within the six chapters that constitute Beastly Encounters of the Raj, but sacred cows are not among them. Rightly pointing out that cattle and religion are inextricably linked, especially in the popular western imagination but also in histories of South Asia (145), Saurabh Mishra has consciously moved beyond the religious to examine different aspects of the integral role of livestock in military, rural, and urban life in India from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, to provide what he calls a “social history of livestock” during the British Raj (4). Why livestock? In part, argues Mishra, because livestock is relevant for but has been ignored by, agrarian scholars, economic historians, historians of medicine, and other branches of historical scholarship. Mishra's own project began primarily as a medical history, but as his research progressed, “it became clear that medical issues could not be divorced or completely separated from other themes” (3). Examples include horse-breeding and military history, which reared up when Mishra was examining the concerns of early veterinarians (chapters 1 and 2) and famines, which captured Mishra's attention when he was investigating animal mortality and epizootics (Chapter 4). Embedded as it is in the India of the British Raj, this book is also a colonial history. Indeed, one of Mishra's expressed aims was to demonstrate the strong links between veterinary health and the public health policies instituted by the British in India. Furthermore, financial concerns proved to be a strong thread throughout his narrative, making the end product as much a work of economic history as medical or social.

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Ancient history · Archaeology · Colonialism · Domestication · Ethnology · Geography · Historiography · Livelihood · Livestock · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Veterinary medicine · History · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · Livestock Management and Performance Improvement · Medicine

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