Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 June 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 June 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0131
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 June 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 June 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0131
Introduction
While some might think that the study of pets and domesticated animals in the Atlantic world is a relatively recent phenomenon, there were a few pioneering efforts prior to the discipline-defining work of Alfred W. Crosby Jr., William Cronon, Harriet Ritvo, and Keith Thomas. Today, under the influence of individuals like Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Helen Cowie, and Erica Fudge, the field is expanding through a willingness to study the agency of nonhuman animals and the relationships that were formed between them and humans of different ethnicities and estates. In the spirit of James Serpell’s call to seek out instances of pet-keeping beyond the 19th-century European bourgeoisie, there is also a focus on the roles and attitudes of Africans and Indigenous Americans in the development of an Atlantic matrix of traditions regarding pet-keeping and domestication. Evidence is mounting that behaviors we associate with pet-keeping today were present from 1492 on, and were not only displayed in the homes of members of the elite. While the comfort and longevity of companion animals might very well have been determined by the status of their humans, the concern demonstrated by humans of lower economic and social standing for companion animals has been found in the archives and early printed works by scholars like Sonya Lipsett-Rivera and Marcy Norton. As with other aspects of this growing line of research, more remains to be done. In any relatively new field or subdiscipline, terminology and periodization remain in flux. However, regular interactions in an Atlantic world certainly only began with Columbus’s first voyage in 1492, while the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals and Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, both in the 1870s, marked a victory for what had been two human perceptions of other animals that may have always been there, but that were frequently muted: that humans and other animals share the same feelings and similar methods of communication in their common sentience, and that the cruel use of, at the very least, domesticated animals is morally reprehensible and wrong. As much as our interactions with our pets and domesticated animals have shaped them, they have also shaped us in the Atlantic world and, indeed, globally.
General Overviews
These general overviews, either Anthologies, Surveys, or Reference Resources, are broad in scope, dealing with multiple continents and/or centuries in the Atlantic world. Serpell 1996 (first published 1986) (cited under Surveys) links the four continents of the Atlantic world to larger global trends. Crosby 1972 and Alves 2011 (both cited under Surveys) deal with transatlantic material and cultural changes over the course of a few centuries, with Alves especially focused on animals in the Spanish empire. Camphora 2021 (cited under Surveys) adds information on Brazil from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries to the discussion, while Cooley 2022 (also cited under Surveys) enters the conversation to show links between the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds in the long sixteenth century. Barnes 1997 (cited under Anthologies) is not as focused on animals, but it includes multiple references to their cultural importance in Africa and the African diaspora. Other works deal with animals in one particular region of the Atlantic world over the course of multiple centuries. Kalof and Resl 2007 (cited under Anthologies) provides background for Europe, while Few and Tortorici 2013 (cited under Anthologies) elaborates the themes needed to be explored in order to “center” animals in Latin American history. Blench and MacDonald 2000 (cited under Anthologies) centers domestication as a theme to be explored in African history, and Grier 2006 (cited under Surveys) surveys pet-keeping in the United States. There is still need for a textbook approach to pets and domesticated animals in the Atlantic world.
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- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
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- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
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- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
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- Insurance
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- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
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- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
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- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
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- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
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- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
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- Quilombos
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- Race, The Idea of
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- Red Atlantic
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- Religion
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- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
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- Rum
- Rumor
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- Salvador da Bahia
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- Science, History of
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- Shakers
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- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
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- Slave Rebellions
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- Slavery, Atlantic
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- Slavery in Africa
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- Slavery in British America
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- Slavery, The Origins of
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- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
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- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
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- Sugar in the Atlantic World
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- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
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- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
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- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
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