Book Review

It would be an understatement to say that there are many books that deal with the French Revolution and its social and cultural context. However, books that link these events with the tradition of keeping exotic pets like parrots and monkeys are probably not as abundant. One that does is Louise Robbins's Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots, where she shows that exotic animals had a clearly stated, if not very large, place in the discussions on slavery (both physical and mental) and freedom.	1
But Robbins aims higher than this. Through eight chapters she describes the Parisian habit of keeping exotic pets—how these animals were transported to France in the first place, where they came from, who traded in them, who mainly bought them, and what their place was in contemporary writings. Chapters also deal with the Versailles Menagerie of the Louises and its successor Jardin des Plantes. They are summed up in an epilogue where she points to the symbolical value of caged animals as "metaphorical representations as slaves, prisoners, native people, or the oppressed masses" (p. 233).	2
Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots is a job very well done. Robbins forcefully uses her sources of diaries, letters, and not least newspapers to drive home the importance of exotic animals in eighteenth-century French imagination. The book also looks at the guild of "oisileurs" which had a long and honourable history in France. The problems this guild experienced in trying to keep the exotic bird trade for itself not only highlight the increasing interest of bird-keeping among the French but also move the subject of exotic animals into the realm of labour while most studies focus on animals as a part of leisure.	3
Robbins mentions Harriet Ritvo's The Animal Estate in her introduction and this is also the work that seems to bear the most resemblance to Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots in outline and sources. However, Robbins is not quite as categorical as Ritvo and feels more nuanced in her conclusions about French attitudes toward exotic animals. Robbins gives the trade around the globe a prominent position in the first chapter and discusses the possible impact of meetings with foreign peoples and environments, but this never gets the upper hand.	4
All in all, this book is a delight to read with well-chosen illustrations from Buffon, Petrus Camper, and posters. The language is clear and concise and well suited for a non-academic public. Robbins raises many interesting points about the attitudes toward and keeping of exotic animals and her descriptions of the Versailles menagerie and Jardin des Plantes makes a welcome contribution on the history of these institutions, of which there are far too few in the English language.	5
Reviewed by Sofia Åkerberg, a biologist and a historian of science and ideas by training who works in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Umeå (Sweden). Her recently finished Ph.D. dissertation is titled, "Knowledge and Pleasure at the Regent's Park: The Gardens of the Zoological Society of London during the Nineteenth Century."

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