Ingrid H. Tague. Animal Companions

In Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ingrid H. Tague is interested in how animals impacted human lives and culture, exploring the movement from early-eighteenth-century attitudes toward pet keeping to an evolving appreciation of companion animals in late-eighteenth-century Britain. She makes her case using period letters and diaries, public historical documents, and art. Caged birds were the most common pets, and the growing globalization of trade brought not only a variety of exotic birds to shore for pet keeping but also other exotic and familiar animals as well: monkeys, squirrels, mongoose, and new dog breeds. Pet stores and pet accessories became more specialized. For example, proud bird owners could purchase tiny ivory buckets on a pulley system so that the bird could be taught to draw up its own water. However, these innovations raised an alarm about moral decay. Commentators wondered whether pet ownership was too much akin to slavery to be tolerated. Here was an uncomfortable crossroads, for if keeping pets was like keeping slaves, and keeping slaves was wrong, then keeping pets might be wrong and pets might be more like humans than eighteenth-century folks were willing to concede.

Ethnology · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies