Cattle in the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 24 May 2018
- LAST MODIFIED: 24 May 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0297
- LAST REVIEWED: 24 May 2018
- LAST MODIFIED: 24 May 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0297
Introduction
There is more flesh in the history of cattle than meets the eye because there is probably more culture and politics than biology in its past. For this reason, the historiography about cattle is exuberant, and, due to the radical socio-ecological impact of European expansion and cattle’s main role in it, Atlantic history should invariably include livestock. The concept “cattle” (in early modern English “chattel,” “catals,” or “capital,” like the French cheptel) was defined as property (livestock), commonly a mobile and personal one, from which Western capitalism’s terms (such as stock) are derived. They frequently referred to “four footed” animals, especially bovines and horses (but not leaving aside other species). The Spanish translation ganado (gained) meant benefit and included bovines, sheep, horses, and pigs, while pecuaria and pecuniario (pecuniary) derive from the proto-Indo-European language (originally meaning the possession or not of cattle). Thus, “cattle” is a complex concept, so crucially linked to capitalism and embedded in the creation of the Atlantic world that their histories could barely be understood without knowing its diverse and changing meanings as well as the practices and uses of the animals covered by it. Paramount commercial activities in the early Atlantic were both agricultural trade (for which cattle trade was crucial) and “chattel slavery,” and thus, the pivotal Atlantic concepts of “cattle” and “livestock” connect the profits from massive human and animal commodification, exploitation, and trade with concepts of property, gender, class, race and species, their social practices, and their devastating global environmental impact. The most innovative studies derive from animal, slavery, and gender studies, due to the close historical relations between cattle, slaves, and women. It is both noticeable and unsurprising that many of the leading scholars in the field share a feminist approach (being many of them females). Legal history, history of science, and history of emotions link cruelty to rights acquisition also through livestock. Recent Marxist analyses are revealing as well by building a history of cattle in which they are agents (in fact, they would have been part of the working class) instead of passive subjects of the narratives about the past. The works quoted here cover both the most conservative and the widest Atlantic historical chronologies and themes because Atlantic economies and cultures were largely created due to the Atlantic cattle, and because the topic is of outmost importance for past and present ethical, political, cultural, and ecological debates. Nowadays, animal studies (cattle being the most important concept and reality studied) are remaking the historical discipline from their postcolonial-decolonial approach.
Theory—Animal Studies
Animal studies, as a postcolonial method for several disciplines to study traditional topics through the lens of human/animal relationships, challenge effectively human-Western-centered research perspectives. From the earliest historical work to the latest compilations, all these studies show a concern about what it means to be human, and thus, the relationship between humanity and animality. Some of these works are focused on French intellectual and social history (such as Boas 1933), which largely shaped Western debates and conceptions of human-animal definitions and relations. Other studies are transdisciplinary compilations and deal with major theoretical problems in Western thought from a Big History perspective, such as Segerdahl 2011 and Fudge 2017. There are some brief works with a contextualized philosophical approach, like Haraway 2003 and Descola 2013 (cited under Ecology), not only defying many disciplinary boundaries when dealing with animal studies but also providing some answers to major theoretical transdisciplinary questions and placing them within an ecological perspective. There are also specific historical studies discussing the new field of “animal history” (Domańska 2017), some of which, like Fudge 2017, are focused on cattle as a paramount category for such an approach. But even when, in general, animals under the narrow meaning of “cattle” are not the main characters of these works, they always play a prominent role in them, given the special and close relationships between them and humans throughout Atlantic history’s past, being the case of Bourke 2011, Manning and Serpell 1994, and Kalof 2007. Likewise, although Atlantic history is not the nucleus of these studies, they cannot avoid taking into consideration the European colonization of Africa and the Americas as a milestone in their narratives due to the tremendous ecological and cultural impact of the Atlantic’s biological and cultural exchange. The current selection includes theoretical works, but always with a contextual ground and historical examples serving as the basis of the new discipline. This is a short selection of the essentials for discussing and researching about Atlantic cattle nowadays.
Boas, George. The Happy Beast in French Thought of the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933.
A classic work within intellectual history about the debates on the nature of humanity and bestiality during the 17th century, in which all sorts of animals are mentioned as examples. The authors and themes studied are crucial for later debates. Its bibliography and erudition make it unavoidable reading.
Bourke, Joanna. What It Means to Be Human: Historical Reflections from the 1800s to the Present. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2011.
A magnificent research about the political and scientific changing concepts of humanity and animalhood from postcolonial and gender perspectives. Defining humanity and animality depended on circumstances because it involved exclusion or inclusion in political and legal concepts of personhood. Cattle was relevant in arguments, being protected by anti-cruelty laws.
Domańska, Ewa. “Animal History.” History and Theory 56 (2017): 267–287.
DOI: 10.1111/hith.12018
An excellent and original review of the collection of essays The Historical Animal, edited by Susan Nance (2015), in which Domańska not only explains the book but also discusses it around major themes of postcolonial history, such as the animal’s point of view, animal agency, animal’s historical sources, the historicization of animals, and the field of animal history. Its bibliography and methodological reflections are very useful for every historian.
Fudge, Erica. “What Was It Like to Be a Cow? History and Animal Studies.” In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. Edited by Linda Kalof, 258–278. Oxford Handbooks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199927142.013.28
This sound chapter claims that the inclusion of animals in the study of the past might change the way in which past and present are understood. Historians studying animals as historical agents (instead of passive postcolonial subjects) and deploying diverse sources challenge the ways in which human-animal encounters were conceived.
Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2003.
In an accessible work contextualizing animal, post-humanist, postcolonial, and ecofeminist studies, Haraway defines the concept of nature-cultures and rethinks the fluid relationships among companion species (“becoming with”), including cattle, and its mutability as a category. Being “the freedom-hungry offspring of conquest” (p. 2), the entanglement is a consequence of the Atlantic legacy.
Kalof, Linda. Looking at Animals in Human History. London: Reaktion, 2007.
A comprehensive overview of the cultural representations of animals (especially cattle) in context from a Big History perspective (chapters 4, 5, and 6 covering Atlantic chronology), using a wide range of sources and bibliography to show how animals and humans have been sharing paradigms of gender, class, and race.
Kalof, Linda, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies. Oxford Handbooks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199927142.001.0001
A handbook of “animal studies”: an interdisciplinary postcolonial field studying the diverse historical and cultural commodification and humanification of animals, including its environmental consequences, and intends to rethink human-animal relations in this planet. It includes relevant articles regarding Atlantic cattle, such as the chapters by Chris Pearson, Boria Sax, and Erica Fudge. Available online by subscription.
Manning, Audrey, and James Serpell, eds. Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives. London: Routledge, 1994.
In this work, prominent scholars consider animals (crucially cattle; Schwabe) both across time and cultures, placing major Atlantic topics, like the Four Stages Theory, the standard of civilization and domestication (Ingold), the forging of Western disciplines in the late 19th century, or Maehle on “cruelty” and Western ethics.
Segerdahl, Pär. Undisciplined Animals: Invitations to Animal Studies. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2011.
This compilation within animal studies defies the Western-anthropocentric approach to the research problems, revealing new paths for old disciplines. In addition, the chapters place the authors’ engagement in their own research. Although the book is not focused on Atlantic cattle, it provides a rich theoretical ground for their study.
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Article
- 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
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- 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
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- 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
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- 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
- New England in the Atlantic World
- 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
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- 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
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- 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
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets