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Reviews of Books
| Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America. By Virginia DeJohn Anderson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 336 pages. $37.50 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).
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Reviewed by Geoffrey Plank, University of Cincinnati
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In the four years since the publication of Virginia DeJohn Anderson's Creatures of Empire, a growing number of scholars have expanded the agenda of economic and environmental history by placing animals at the center of their analysis. Jon T. Coleman and others have challenged us to consider what history might mean from an animal's perspective.1 In forums such as the H-Animal discussion network, some of the most ambitious advocates of this trend have suggested that historians should join forces with philosophers, literary scholars, and others to create a new coherent discipline of animal studies. Anderson's work is part of an innovative body of literature that has led some to believe that the history of animals will become a distinct thriving field. Nonetheless, this is not a work just for would-be specialists. By emphasizing contingency and the role of livestock as actors in specific historical events, Anderson has demonstrated that animals should concern all historians of early America. |
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Anderson divides her book into three sections. The first discusses the myriad, sometimes contradictory ways in which the members of Algonquian and English societies thought about various kinds of animals at the outset of the seventeenth century. The second section describes the introduction of livestock into the Chesapeake colonies and New England and the development of distinctive animal husbandry practices in those two regions. The final section centers on conflict and culminates with Bacon's Rebellion and King Philip's War, two struggles that erupted almost simultaneously in Virginia and New England in the 1670s. Anderson shows how disputes between Indians and settlers concerning livestock contributed to an escalation of tension and ultimately to the outbreak of widespread violence in both the Chesapeake region and New England. |
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Summarizing the book in this way may make it appear that Anderson has simply presented two parallel stories, with similarly disheartening outcomes for Native peoples. But if that is the case, the summary does not do Creatures of Empire justice. By examining livestock husbandry in detail, paying close attention to many different types of animals and variations in such practices as fencing, sheltering, feeding, and branding, Anderson reveals sharp contrasts between the two colonized regions, some with lasting ramifications. She also makes a powerful argument that difficult choices were constantly being made by both settlers and Indians as the landscapes of eastern North America changed in unexpected ways under the influence of introduced livestock. |
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During most of the seventeenth century, the Chesapeake colonists had little labor to spare for livestock husbandry because the tobacco crop consumed their productive time and energy. The region's warm climate made it possible for domestic animals to survive outdoors even in the wintertime, and this led the colonists, almost despite themselves, to adopt the practice of letting their animals graze free. Anderson describes the impact of this practice on the animals in vivid terms, as free-ranging, nearly feral beasts adapted behaviorally and genetically over generations to life in the American woods. Almost all the region's domestic mammals grew leaner and smaller and became more skittish or aggressive. Sheep, however, did not adapt well, and therefore the first two generations of Chesapeake settlers did not bother to keep many of them. As one observer put it, sheep were ill suited to survive because of "the humility of their nature" (110). |
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