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PALGRAVE SERIES IN
INDIAN OCEAN WORLD STUDIES
Animal Trade Histories

in the Indian Ocean World
Edited by
Martha Chaiklin
Philip Gooding
Gwyn Campbell
Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies
Series Editor
Gwyn Campbell
Indian Ocean World Centre
McGill University
Montreal, QC, Canada
This is the first scholarly series devoted to the study of the Indian Ocean
world from early times to the present day. Encouraging interdisciplinarity,
it incorporates and contributes to key debates in a number of areas including
history, environmental studies, anthropology, sociology, political science,
geography, economics, law, and labor and gender studies. Because it breaks
from the restrictions imposed by country/regional studies and Eurocentric
periodization, the series provides new frameworks through which to inter-
pret past events, and new insights for present-day policymakers in key areas
from labor relations and migration to diplomacy and trade.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14661
Martha Chaiklin • Philip Gooding
Gwyn Campbell
Editors
Animal Trade
Histories in the Indian
Ocean World
Editors
Martha Chaiklin Philip Gooding
Historian Indian Ocean World Centre
Columbia, MD, USA McGill University
Gwyn Campbell
Indian Ocean World Centre
McGill University
Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies

ISBN 978-3-030-42594-4 ISBN 978-3-030-42595-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42595-1
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
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Cover illustration: © Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Joseph B. Chaiklin (1929–2019), devoted to dogs and good writing.
And to Émilie, Adèle, and Mathis, two of whom gave us the pleasure of
joining us during the writing of this book.
Contents
1 Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their Products,

and Their Trades in the Indian Ocean World 1
Martha Chaiklin and Philip Gooding
2 The Dutch East India Company and the Transport of

Live Exotic Animals in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries 27
Ria Winters
3 Can the Oyster Speak? Pearling Empires and the

Marine Environments of South India and Sri Lanka,
c. 1600–1900 65
Samuel Ostroff
4 Chank Fishing in South India Under the English East

India Company, 1800–40 99
Sundar Vadlamudi
5 Horses and Power in the Southern Red Sea Region Since

the Seventeenth Century125
Steven Serels
vii
viii Contents
6 The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World in the

Long Nineteenth Century147
William Gervase Clarence-Smith
7 Commercialisation of Cattle in Imperial Madagascar,

1795–1895181
Gwyn Campbell
8 Ayutthaya’s Seventeenth-Century Deerskin Trade in the

Extended Eastern Indian Ocean and South China Sea217
Ilicia J. Sprey and Kenneth R. Hall
9 The Ivory Trade and Political Power in Nineteenth-

Century East Africa247
Philip Gooding
10 The Flight of the Peacock, or How Peacocks Became

Japanese277
Martha Chaiklin
Index315
Notes on Contributors
Gwyn Campbell is the founding Director of the Indian Ocean World

Centre at McGill University, Canada, General Editor of the Palgrave Series
in Indian Ocean World Studies, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of
Indian Ocean World Studies. He holds degrees in Economic History from
the universities of Birmingham and Wales; has taught in India, Madagascar,
Britain, South Africa, Belgium, and France; and was an academic consul-
tant for South Africa in inter-governmental negotiations that resulted in
the formation of an Indian Ocean regional association in 1997. He held a
Canada Research Chair in Indian Ocean World History from 2005 to
2019, a Humboldt Award from 2017 to 2019, and directs a major inter-
national research project entitled “Appraising Risk, Past and Present:
Interrogating Historical Data to Enhance Understanding of Environmental
Crises in the Indian Ocean World.” His publications include Africa and
the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to 1900 (2019), David Griffiths
and the Missionary “History of Madagascar” (2012), and An Economic
History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750–1895 (2005).
Martha Chaiklin received her PhD from Leiden University, the
Netherlands. She first became interested in animals when researching her
first book, Cultural Commerce and Dutch Commercial Culture (2003)
and noticed many references to birds in Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie
(VOC) documents. This resulted in “Exotic Bird Collecting in Early
Modern Japan,” in JAPANimals, Greg Pflugfelder and Brett Walker eds.
(2005). Since then she has combined her interest in material culture and
animals with publications on elephants, live animal gifts, tortoiseshell,
and ivory.
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
William Gervase Clarence-Smith is Emeritus Professor of History at

SOAS (the School of Arts, Sciences & Education), University of London,
UK. He has written on the history of various animals around the world,
notably on the trade and transport of equids in the Indian Ocean, the rais-
ing of equids in Mainland Southeast Asia, and the global spread of
Trypanosoma evansi (surra) as a disease of equids and camels. He is
researching a global history of mules from around 1400 CE.
Philip Gooding is a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Ocean World
Centre, McGill University, Canada, and a course lecturer in McGill’s
Department of History and Classical Studies. He holds a PhD in History
(2017) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London. He has written articles in Slavery and Abolition and The Journal
of African History, among other journals, and is broadly interested in
examining the commercial, cultural, and environmental linkages between
the history of the East African Great Lakes and the history of the wider
Indian Ocean World.
Kenneth R. Hall is Professor of History at Ball State University, USA. He
studies the history of the Indian Ocean and South China and Java Seas
with a focus on India and Southeast Asia. He has written several mono-
graphs, most recently A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade
and Societal Development 100–1500 (2010); and Networks of Trade, Polity,
and Societal Integration in Chola-Era South India c. 875–1400 (2013). He
has also written many academic journal articles and book chapters, and has
edited several volumes that are focal on revisionist historiography with
specific focus on transitional Asian urban and societal networking. These
include The Growth of Non-Western Cities: Primary and Secondary Urban
Networking in the Non-West c. 900–1900 (2011); Secondary Cities and
Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm c. 1400–1800 (2008); and
Cross-Cultural Networking in the Eastern Indian Ocean Realm, c.
100–1800 (2019).
Samuel Ostroff holds a joint PhD in History and South Asia Studies
from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He holds an MA in South Asia
Studies from the University of Pennsylvania; an MA in Middle Eastern,
South Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University; and a BA in
History from Bucknell University. Based on primary archival research in
India, England, and the Netherlands, Ostroff’s dissertation examines the
intersection of the pearling economy, Dutch and British imperialism, and
the marine environment in the Gulf of Mannar in the eighteenth and
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
ineteenth centuries. He is the Publications Officer at the Institute for

n
Health Metrics and Evaluation and an affiliate lecturer in the Henry
M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington,
Seattle.
Steven Serels is a research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient
in Berlin, Germany. He holds a Master’s (2007) and a PhD in History
(2012), both from McGill University, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from
The Cooper Union (2005). He is the author of Starvation and the State:
Famine, Slavery and Power in Sudan 1883–1956 (2013) and The
Impoverishment of the African Red Sea Littoral, c1640–1945 (2018).
Ilicia J. Sprey is Professor of History and the Dean of the School of Arts,
Sciences & Education at Ivy Tech Community College, Lafayette Campus,
Indiana, USA. She focuses on fifteenth- through eighteenth-century
Cochinchina, the Vietnamese littoral, and the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya,
and she is particularly interested in these regions’ contributions to com-
merce and the political treatment of minority populations within them.
Her work has been published in Southeast Asian- and European-focused
journals, and she has contributed to multiple edited volumes related to
maritime trade, cultural influences and exchanges, and the ecological and
human impact of trade on indigenous peoples. These volumes include
India and Southeast Asia: Cultural Discourses (2018), Subversive Sovereigns
Across the Seas: Indian Ocean Ports-of-Trade from Early Historic Times to
Late Colonialism, Asiatic Society (2017), Rethinking Connectivity: Region,
Place and Space in Asia (2016), and Vanguards of Globalization: Port-
Cities from the Classical to the Modern (2013).
Sundar Vadlamudi is Assistant Professor of History at the American
University of Sharjah, UAE. He is a historian of South Asia and the Indian
Ocean World. His research areas include Islam in South Asia, Indian
Ocean trade, economic history of South Asia, and socio-religious reform
movements in India. His current research focuses on the participa-
tion of Tamil-speaking Muslims in the maritime trade in the Indian
Ocean during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Ria Winters is a Dutch historian and artist who specialises in animal his-
tory and the culture of the Dutch Golden Age. She works at the Allard
Pierson Museum and Institute of the University of Amsterdam. Her most
recent subjects involve the history of South African society and literature,
for which she is developing a deeper understanding by attending master
classes at the African Studies Center of Leiden University.
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Boyd Smith, ‘The Arab and the Camel.’ From Aesop’s Fables
(New York: Century Company, 1911), 159. Collection of the
Library of Congress3
Fig. 2.1 A rare instruction written in 1624 from the central
management of the VOC (Heeren XVII), with the request to
bring back rare animals—‘Rare gedierten’—on the ships. The
heading is captured in the rectangular outline. National
Archive, The Hague. NL-HaNA, VOC, 1.04.02,
inv.nr. 5001, unfoliated manuscript 33
Fig. 2.2 Engraving of a cassowary by Crispijn van den Queborn,
approx. 1614. The bird was a gift of shipmaster Willem
Jacobsz to Prince Maurits of Orange. Rijksmuseum
Amsterdam, inv.nr. RP-P-OB-79.498 34
Fig. 2.3 Zebu, gouache by Jan Velten, Amsterdam, approx. 1700.
Artis Library of the University of Amsterdam, Collection
Jan Velten, inv.nr. 17R 41
Fig. 2.4 Chukar partridge, gouache by Jan Velten, Amsterdam,
approx. 1700. Artis Library of the University of Amsterdam,
Collection Jan Velten, inv.nr. 7R 46
Fig. 2.5 Engraving of the Dutch in Mauritius, published in the travel
narrative published in 1601, the ‘True report,’ by Jacob van
Neck and Wybrant van Warwijck: Het tvveede boeck, iournael
oft dagh-register, inhoudende een warachtich verhael ende
historische vertellinghe vande reyse, gedaen door de acht schepen
van Amstelredamme, gheseylt inden maent martij 159852
Fig. 3.1 Oysters. De Jonville Manuscript, British Library 74
Fig. 3.2 Oysters. De Jonville Manuscript, British Library 74
xiii
xiv List of Figures
Fig. 7.1 Cattle horns ritually displayed. From: Louis Catat, Voyage à
Madagascar (Paris: Hachette, 1895), 165 184
Fig. 7.2 Fattening cattle. From: William Ellis, History of Madagascar.
Comprising also the Progress of the Christian Mission
Established in 1818; and an Authentic Account of the Recent
Martyrdom of Rafaravavy; and of the Persecution of the Native
Christians, vol. I (London: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1838), 46 189
Fig. 7.3 Fandroana bullock c. 1896. From: 5.3 IMP-NMS-A02-104
in: Gwyn Campbell, David Griffiths and the Missionary
‘History of Madagascar’ (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 559 191
Fig. 7.4 Embarking cattle at the port of Tamatave, Madagascar.
From: Illustrated London News (17 September 1864), Neg
No: 58_2303, National Maritime Museum 202
Fig. 8.1 Eastern Indian Ocean trade, c.1600–1850, ‘Map showing
the early European agencies, factories & Settlements [sic] in
the Indian archipelago, to illustrate [the] Report of the India
Office Records by Fered; Chas, Danvers, 1887. Collection of
the British Library 224
Fig. 8.2 French map of Ayutthaya (1686) showing the various
resident communities. From: ‘A Map of the City of Siam,’ in
La Loubère, A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of
Siam (London: Thomas Horne, Francis Saunders, and
Thomas Bennet, 1693), 7 235
Fig. 9.1 Sketch map of major commercial centres in nineteenth-
century East Africa 252
Fig. 10.1 Archaeopteryx. The Thermopolis specimen found in Bavaria.
Jurassic Period. Photograph by Dr. Burkhard Pohl.
Collection of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center 280
Fig. 10.2 Tengu with feather fan, centre. Tengu nado [Tengu and
miscellaneous]. Hokusai school, mid-nineteenth century.
Collection of the Library of Congress 286
Fig. 10.3 Utagawa Toyoharu. Kyo¯to Sanjūsangendo¯ no zu [Illustration
of Kyoto Sanjūsangendō]. Between 1764 and 1772.
Collection of the Library of Congress. The archery target can
be seen at the end of the veranda 287
Fig. 10.4 Kubo Shunman, Hama-Yumi, and Buriburi-Gitcho, Boy’s
Toys, for the New Year Celebration, nineteenth century.
Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 288
Fig. 10.5 Torii Kiyotomo, Woman with Battledore and Shuttlecock,
1815–1820. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 290
List of Figures xv
Fig. 10.6 Brush with peacock feathers. Feather-brush with Doran

(a kind of medicine case) with a Netsuke of a Rat. Toyota
Hokkei, c. 1816. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 292
Fig. 10.7 Stage one from Ehon takara no itosuji [Picture Book of
Brocades with Precious Threads] showing use of feathers.
Katsukawa Shunsho and Kitao Masashige 1786. 1917
reprint owned by D.G. Wittner 293
Fig. 10.8 Detail of figured silk jinbaori with peacock feathers. c.
1700–1800. ©Victoria and Albert Museum. Given by
T. B. Clarke-Thornhill 298
Fig. 10.9 Writing desk with feather brush. Peacock feathers are partially
visible to the left. From the series: Yoshiwara keisei bijin
awase jihitsu kagami [The actual mirror of a group of
beauties from the Yoshiwara]. 1784. Collection of the
Library of Congress. Gift of Crosby Stuart Noyes 300
Fig. 10.10 Kubo Shunman. Courtesan Dreaming of the New Year’s
Procession. 1814. Collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art 301
Fig. 10.11 Japonesque birthday cards depicting peacock feather and
other fans. c. 1884. Publishers Proofs of the Publications of
L. Prange & Co. Collection of the New York Public Library 306
Fig. 10.12 James McNeill Whistler. The Peacock Room. Oil paint and
gold leaf on canvas, leather, mosaic tile, and wood. Freer and
Sackler Gallery of Art. Gift of Charles Lang Freer 308
List of Tables
Table 4.1 EIC proclamation issued by the district collector of Tinnevelly

announcing the fishery for fasli 1229 (July 1819–June 1820) 105
Table 4.2 Terms of cowle (grant) issued for chank fishing in Tinnevelly
for fasli 1217 109
Table 4.3 List of offers made for renting Ramnad chank fishery (1800–01) 111
Table 4.4 Names of renters of chank fishery in Tuticorin from
1801 to 1833 112
Table 4.5 List of offers made for renting Tinnevelly chank fishery
(July 1819–June 1820) 113
Table 4.6 Government’s revenue from chank fisheries conducted
in Tinnevelly and Tanjore 117
Table 7.1 Mauritius: Malagasy cattle, meat and rice imports, 1824–26 196
Table 7.2 Morondava: Exports in October 1879–October 1880, &
1882 ($ Malagasy) 210
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their

Products, and Their Trades in the Indian
Ocean World
Martha Chaiklin and Philip Gooding
Introduction
Aesop may be as much a fable as the stories attributed to him, but some
place his origins in the Indian Ocean World (IOW), in Ethiopia to be pre-
cise.1 He was described as ugly, almost bestial, and in the early part of his
life, like an animal, unable to speak, but very wise. His liminal existence
made him both a suitable interlocutor for the various oral traditions about
1
Martinus Scriblerus, ‘In an essay concerning the origin of sciences’ (1741) seems to be
the origin of this idea that thereafter spread widely as fact. This collection of essays and paro-
dies were written by Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and others. It was an attack on ped-
antry and excessive attention to detail.
M. Chaiklin (*)
Historian, Columbia, MD, USA
e-mail: chaiklin@pitt.edu
P. Gooding
Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
e-mail: philip.gooding@mcgill.ca
© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Chaiklin et al. (eds.), Animal Trade Histories in the Indian
Ocean World, Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42595-1_1
2 M. CHAIKLIN AND P. GOODING
human and animal behaviour that are attributed to him and an early
expression of the still common anthropomorphism of animals. In one of
Aesop’s lesser-known fables, a caravan merchant loads up his camel with
merchandise. The so-called ship of the desert can carry as much as a thou-
sand pounds, depending on breed, and were vital to the transport of goods
around the Indian Ocean. The merchant then asked, ‘Camel, would you
prefer to take the uphill road or the downhill road?’ The animal responded
sarcastically, ‘Why, is the flat one closed?’ This is generally interpreted to
mean that one should not ask obvious questions. Another reading is that
one should not purposely make things harder than needed. In this parable,
are we the merchants or the camel?
At first glance, it might seem like we are the merchants, loading up a
rich historiography with more baggage to carry across a road well-travelled.
But we would suggest that in fact we are the irascible camel, pointing out
not so much a gap in this historiography, but a way to shape it that has
frequently been bypassed for different roads. Until the development of
synthetics in the late nineteenth century (the first synthetic polymer was
patented in 1869), nearly everything humans used, like the beginning of
the game of 20 questions, was made from or dependent on animal, vege-
table, or mineral. Animals, domesticated, wild, or no longer animate,
therefore elucidate human history by evidencing their relationship with
their environment. If we take our surly camel as an example, these animals
were integral to trade throughout the IOW. They did not just provide an
efficient mode of transport for commodities over rough terrain, they
themselves were traded, and provided humans with meat, milk, and pro-
tection from the elements through clothing, blankets, and tents made
from their hair. Camel hair was also widely traded, and put to a variety of
uses, even artists brushes.2 Ignoring our brethren of the animal world is
like ignoring the flat road. Trade is only one of many potential avenues in
which to examine this relationship but it is an important one.
This volume is focused on the IOW, a macro-region that stretches from
southern and eastern Africa, through the Middle East, South Asia,
Southeast Asia, and East Asia and Australasia. It is the region that is
affected directly or indirectly by the Indian Ocean monsoon system of
winds, currents, and rains, which underpins agriculture, trade, and animal
2
Thomas Mortimer, A General Dictionary of Commerce, Trade and Manufacture (London:
Richard Phillips, 1810), n.p.
1 INTRODUCTION: INVESTIGATING ANIMALS, THEIR PRODUCTS… 3
Fig. 1.1 Boyd Smith,

‘The Arab and the
Camel.’ From Aesop’s
Fables (New York:
Century Company,
1911), 159. Collection of
the Library of Congress
habitats in IOW history.3 Animals, especially charismatic megafauna, are

central to popular imaginations of this ‘world.’ Whether they be the ‘Big
Five’ (lion, elephant, rhinoceros, leopard, and buffalo) of East Africa,
camels of the Middle East, tigers of South Asia, orangutans of Southeast
Asia, or koalas and kangaroos of Australasia, visions of different IOW
regions are intimately connected with their indigenous fauna.
3
Gwyn Campbell, Africa and the Indian Ocean World from early times to circa 1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 1–21.
Creatures of Commerce
The fauna of the IOW is as diverse as the region is capacious. They never-
theless form a cohesive field of study because they are connected beyond
their natural habitat or migration patterns through their exploitation by
human beings. Animals, their products, and their trades provide this vol-
ume with two key threads. Firstly, they inform historical understandings of
the connections around the IOW and from the IOW to other regions over
the longue-dureé. Secondly, they express how human history has been
shaped by human interactions with the changing natural world. Human
beings are ‘creatures of commerce,’ and animals were an important part of
that commerce. Homo sapiens, as part of the natural world, have interacted
with and utilized animals for their entire existence. The transition from
antagonism to a more complex relationship probably began with the
domestication of dogs some 15,000 years ago. Domestication is the pro-
cess of adaptation to assist human needs, and is generally considered to
involve physiological change. It occurs through a symbiotic relationship
based on mutual benefit, a pragmatic relationship that was until modern
times, the dominant relationship. Hunting is the most likely reason dogs
were domesticated. Ungulates like camels were not domesticated until
perhaps 6000 years ago. As Jared Diamond noted, domestication of ani-
mals as part of food production was ‘a prerequisite for the development of
guns, germs, and steel.’4 In other words, the domestication of animals was
not an abstract expression of power, but the foundation upon which pop-
ulation growth and technological development occurred. Thus maritime
trade, which is an element of each of the chapters in this book, is partly a
result of domestication of animals.
Intellectually, one significant way of understanding animals was through
classification, principally as a way to deal with human health. Animals are
found in many early texts because many of them were partially written
about medicinal practice. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) in the West and The
Classic of Mountain and Seas from China (third- to second-century BCE)
show the age and universality of classification. From the late Renaissance,
most intellectual engagement with animals was focused on their classifica-
tion, as exemplified perhaps by Konrad Gessner’s (1516–1565) De historia
animalium (1551–1558). At the same time, there was a developing
4
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germans and Steel (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1997), 86.
discourse on the existence or lack of animal souls and what that ethical
concern would imply towards their treatment.5 Modern taxonomy is usu-
ally considered to date from Linnaeus. Nevertheless, it was Charles
Darwin’s The Origin of the Species (1859) that bridged the philosophical
gap to create a wider public discussion about what is human and what is
animal. The idea that humans were related to apes was considered demean-
ing and conflicted with biblical dogma. Darwin expanded on his position
in later, lesser-known works such The Expression of Emotions in Man and
Animals (1872), where he argued that expressions of emotion are univer-
sal across humanity and in the animal kingdom.6 The outrage that Darwin’s
contemporaries felt at being related to the animal kingdom in general and
apes in particular led to a deeper consideration of just what defined
humanity.7
Modern approaches to animal studies derive largely from the philo-
sophical approaches that evolved from Enlightenment thinkers, spread
through the work of Darwin, and accelerated through the environmental
consciousness and animal rights activism of the last half century.8 These
works often focus on moral or ethical perspectives, opposing the ‘specie-
sism’ that places human beings above other sentient beings to focus on the
emotional lives of animals, their agency, and the ‘anthropomorphisation’
of animal existence. This book was neither conceived nor executed to
advance these particular debates, although they will nonetheless contrib-
ute to them. Rather, it is a book about the IOW framed around animals.
This collection had its origins in a conference in October 2014, entitled
‘Trade in Animals and Animal Products in the Indian Ocean World from
Early Times to c.1900,’ organized by Omri Bassewich-Frenkel as part of
the Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University. It lies more firmly in
trends in world history through its environmental elements, chronological
5
See, for example, the various works in: Aaron Garrett, ed. Animal Rights and Souls in the
Eighteenth Century (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000), 6 vols.
6
Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species (London: John Murray, 1859); Charles Darwin,
The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872).
7
Contemporary critics included Adam Sedgwick, John Herschel, and John Stewart Mill,
but also included many anonymous pamphlets and articles.
8
For a summary of existing output in one IOW region, see: Sandra Swart, ‘Animals in
African history,’ Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (2019), 1–16. Richard
Grove also traces aspects of this ‘environmental consciousness’ to the deeper past. See:
Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the origins
of environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
span, and transnational and transregional nature than in animal studies,

despite its subject matter. Nevertheless, as the following chapters show,
the intersection of humans and animals is a distinctive way to examine the
world. As the 2014 conference announcement phrased it, ‘By exploring
the long-distance trade in animals and animal products as economic, cul-
tural, and ecological phenomenon, this [work] … will seek to interrogate
the concept of the Indian Ocean as a “world.”’ In other words, the study
of animals is fundamental to the conceptualization of the IOW.
Animals are the concatenation of much human activity based on their
perceived value or threat. As historical subjects, animals provide insight
into many important historical processes like capitalism, imperialism, reli-
gious and cultural practices, and power dynamics: it has been said that,
‘Until the lion has his historian, the hunters will always be hero.’9 History
is a human construct for human knowledge. In an anthropocentric uni-
verse, animals are ‘integral to global exchange systems’ like the IOW.10
Through their exploitation, animals affected not just animal-to-animal
relationships, but human-to-human ones, too. One of the most significant
motives for human interference in the lives of animals, except as food, was
for commerce. Moreover, excess comestibles, whether accidental or pur-
poseful, were also traded or sold. Commerce in animals and their parts
could significantly impact material cultures far from their place of origin.
It showed ‘the commercial, material and symbolic networks’ created
through demand in distant markets, physically shaping the contours of
human activity.11 Trading patterns were influenced by where animals lived,
where they could survive, and locales that lacked the proper habitat.
Diplomatic gifts were often used to facilitate trade. Thus, the examination
of the human-animal interactions of the IOW with a focus on commerce
can help us understand the characteristics of the IOW, the human motiva-
tions for these interactions, and the way they affected the various regions
and living things in the macro-IOW.
9
Inscription on the wall in Elmira observed by James Huffman. James L. Huffman, Down
and Out in Late Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 1.
10
Susan McHugh and Garry Marvin, ‘Human-animal studies – global perspectives,’ in
Human-Animal Studies, eds. Susan McHugh and Garry Marvin, (London and New York:
Routledge, 2018), 1.
11
Christine Guth, ‘Towards a global history of shagreen,’ in The Global Lives of Things: The
material culture of connections in the early modern world, eds. Anner Gerritsen and Giorgio
Riello (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).
Understanding the IOW Through Trades in Animals

and Animal Products
Trades in animals and animal products are a relatively understudied feature

of IOW historiography. Although individual animals and animal products
occasionally feature prominently, they rarely feature as a distinct category
of trade. This is somewhat surprising given many animals’ intimate asso-
ciations with different IOW regions and given commerce’s centrality to
early and ongoing IOW historiography.12 Spices, tea, porcelain, and pre-
cious metals have received significantly more attention. This is perhaps
because it reflects European demand for these products as they first entered
the region at the end of the fifteenth century and the somewhat recent
conceptualization of the Indian Ocean as a region. Moreover, when ani-
mals and their products have been considered an integrated feature of the
IOW’s commercial history, they are often either divorced from their con-
dition as living organisms or from living organisms, or they are ornamen-
tation to political events like diplomacy without any centrality to the
process. Yet, there are several ways in which a categoric focus on animals,
their products, and their trades can elucidate additional layers of historical
understanding of the IOW.
With regard to trades in live animals around the IOW before the eigh-
teenth–nineteenth centuries, most is known about exchanges of ‘charis-
matic megafauna’—large animals with symbolic value, such as elephants,
ostriches, or giraffes, because of their singular nature.13 Important animal
products, meanwhile, included ivory, pearls, rhinoceros’ horns, and tor-
toises’ shells, which have provided a subtext for commercial interactions in
the region.14 The prominence of these animals and products is at least
partly a result of the nature of the available archival material. Charismatic
12
See, for example: K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An eco-
nomic history from the rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985);
Michael N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (London: Routledge, 2003); Edward A. Alpers, The
Indian Ocean in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
13
Alan Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013),
109–36; Thomas T. Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 233–64.
14
Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean: A history of people and the sea (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 41; Himanshu Prabha Ray, ‘Early maritime contacts between South
and Southeast Asia,’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 20, 1 (1989), 46; Ian C. Glover,
‘The archaeological evidence for early trade between South and Southeast Asia’ in The
Indian Ocean in Antiquity, ed. Julian Reade (London: Routledge, 2009), 368; Lionel
megafauna were demanded most significantly by elites, who have histori-

cally been the most likely to leave archival traces of their transactions.15
Additionally, keeping charismatic megafauna alive on oceanic voyages was
a significant undertaking, requiring as they did food, care, and often more
space than other commodities, which could be packed closely together.
The logistics involved in this process again led to the creation of docu-
ments, which have since been collected into archives. Smaller-scale trades
of smaller and domesticated animals or animal products over terrestrial
spaces do not feature so prominently in documentary records. Often, they
were private undertakings by individuals; or they involved trades in meats
or working animals—the kinds of animals and animal products that the
general populace needed to survive or to complete everyday tasks. The
types of animal and animal product trades we know most about in the
deeper past from documentary sources, therefore, were notable for their
symbolic rather than their profitable impact.
The combination of elite demand and symbolic value led to the presen-
tation of charismatic megafauna and animal products in diplomatic
exchanges, in what has since been referred to by Halvard Leira and Iver
B. Neumann as ‘beastly diplomacy.’16 Gifting animals could curry favour
with peers or stronger regional powers, or project superiority over rivals.17
South Asians exported ivory and pearls to China and an elephant to France
via the Middle East during the first millennium CE for these purposes.18
After c.1500, the earliest Europeans in the IOW also gave ‘exotic’ animals
of both European and IOW origin to rulers in efforts to gain preferential
Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with introduction, translation, and commentary
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 61
15
Thomas R. Trautmann, Elephants and Kings: An environmental history (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 2015), 107; Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, 109–36.
16
Halvard Leira and Iver B. Neumann, ‘Beastly diplomacy,’ The Hague Journal of
Diplomacy, 12 (2016), 347–52.
17
Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, 110; Leira and Neumann, ‘Beastly diplomacy,’
346–9; Erik Ringmar, ‘Audience for a giraffe: European expansionism and the quest for the
exotic,’ Journal of World History, 17, 4 (2006), 389–93; Julie E. Hughes, Animal Kingdoms:
Hunting, the environment, and power in the Indian princely states (Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 2013), 123–5.
18
Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The realignment of Sino-Indian relations,
600–1400 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), 41, 164; Mikhail, The Animal in
Ottoman Egypt, 113–4; Janet Nelson, ‘The settings of the gift in the reign of Charlemagne,’
in The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages, eds. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 133–4.
commercial arrangements.19 The recipients of such presents sought to use

them as symbols of their authority and prestige, displaying them in menag-
eries and sparking awe from their subjects.20 On the receipt of a giraffe in
Ming-dynasty China, for example, the emperor’s ‘officials prostrated
themselves before [him] and the animals and offered their congratulations.’21
What is known about early exchanges of animals and animal products in
the IOW shows them to be intimately connected to perceptions of and
connections between political elites.
In some ways, then, early animal and animal product exchanges follow
similar patterns to trades in other ‘luxury’ items in which certain goods
had what Pierre Bourdieu called ‘symbolic capital.’ This meant that their
ownership, display, and distribution was associated with political power,
and often led political leaders to seek to restrict their circulation.22
However, rulers had further reasons to limit the circulation of at least
some charismatic megafauna. This was because they could be used in war.
Rulers in Northeast Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia all
sought at various times to limit the export of horses, because they could
be used as cavalry.23 Also, the use of Indian elephants in war coupled with
19
Michael Gorgas, ‘Animal trade between India and western Eurasia in the sixteenth cen-
tury – The role of the Fuggers in animal trading,’ in Indo-Portuguese Trade and the Fuggers
of Germany, Sixteenth Century, ed. K.S. Mathew (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997), 207; Martha
Chaiklin, ‘The merchants ark: Live animal gifts in early modern Dutch-Japanese relations,’
World History Connected, 9, 1 (2012); Ria Winters, ‘The Dutch East India Company and the
transport of live exotic animals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,’ (this volume).
20
Ringmar, ‘Audience for a giraffe,’ 392; Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, 110.
21
Ringmar, ‘Audience for a giraffe,’ 392.
22
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), Ch. 4
and later works; Jane Schneider, ‘Was there a pre-Capitalist world system?,’ Peasant Studies,
6, 1 (1977); Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester, ‘Introduction,’ in Luxury in Global
Perspective: Objects and practices, 1600–2000, eds. Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016), 1–26; Richard Gray and David Birmingham,
‘Some economic and political consequences of trade in central and eastern Africa in the pre-
colonial period,’ in Pre-Colonial African Trade: Essays on trade in central and eastern Africa
before 1900, eds. Richard Gray and David Birmingham (London: Oxford University Press,
1970), 3; Martha Chaiklin, ‘Imports and autarky: Tortoiseshell in early modern Japan,’ in
Luxury in Global Perspective: Objects and practices, 1600–2000, eds. Bernd-Stefan Grewe and
Karin Hofmeester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016), 223–6.
23
Steven Serels, ‘Horses and power in the southern Red Sea region since the seventeenth
century,’ (this volume); Simon Digby, War-horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate: A study
of military supplies (Oxford: Orient Monographs, 1971), 48–54; R.B. Azad Choudhary,
‘The Mughal and the trading of horses in India, 1526–1707,’ International Journal of
History and Cultural Studies, 3, 1 (2017), 1–18; Trautmann, Elephants and Kings, 213–4;
their royal symbolism in parts of South Asia probably meant that their
circulation was ‘doubly’ restricted. Elephants were at one time symbols of
the ‘primacy of the king’ and carriers of humans and weapons to and
across the battlefield.24 Both these features meant that they were revered
and highly demanded by political elites, but also protected from reaching
non-elite or enemy hands. This led, in some cases, to hunts for elephants
taking ‘royal’ connotations and meant that gifts of elephants had especially
strong diplomatic connotations—of both the recipient’s prestige and of
the urgency of gifter’s motives.25 Exchanges of charismatic megafauna,
especially those that could also be used in war, were highly symbolic
events, and represented power relations between elites in different parts of
the IOW.
Beyond the archive, work focusing on animals and animal products in
the natural sciences can shed light on previously unknown or debated
IOW connections. For example, archaeological evidence for animals native
to South Asia in East Timor that date from the middle of the third-
millennium BC gives a tantalizing glimpse into a potentially ancient
exchange network that transcended the Bay of Bengal.26 More recently,
while examining the ivory trade using a ‘multi-isotope approach,’ Coutu
et al. analysed the chemical composition of surviving ivories and ivory
products that emanated from East Africa in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.27 They were able to establish within varying degrees
of certainty the provenance of much of the ivory, thereby indicating where
elephants were hunted and thus also the degree of connection between
those regions and the wider IOW. They further contended that this
method could be applied to older ivories and ivory products.28 Research
Hedda Reindl-Kiel, ‘No horses for the enemy: Ottoman trade regulations and horse gifting,’
in Pferde in Asien: Geschichte, Handel Und Kultur, ed. Bert G. Fragner, Ralph Kauz,
Roderich Ptak, and Angela Schottenhammer (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 2009), 43–49; Jos Gommans, ‘The horse trade in eighteenth-century South
Asia,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 37, 3 (1994), 248–50; Xiang
Wan, ‘The Horse in Pre-Imperial China’ (Unpublished PhD diss., University of
Pennsylvania, 2013).
24
Trautman, Elephants and Kings, 68.
25
Allsen, Royal Hunt, 14–33.
26
Glover, ‘Archaeological evidence,’ 377.
27
Ashley N. Coutu, Julia Lee-Thorp, Matthew J. Collins, and Paul J. Lane, ‘Mapping the
elephants of the 19th century East African ivory trade with a multi-isotope approach,’ PLoS
ONE, 11, 10 (2016), 1–23.
28
Ibid., 3.
along these lines could help to resolve a debate about the degree of con-
nection between East Africa’s interior and the wider IOW in the deeper
past. In this context, some Africanist scholars have recently contested pre-
vailing trends of IOW historiography that only consider East Africa’s
coastal and island regions as integrated parts of the IOW.29 They contend
that interior regions of East Africa have had significant connections to East
Africa’s Indian Ocean littoral, potentially since antiquity. While there is
significant archaeological and linguistic evidence for this, chemical analysis
of ivories may—or may not—support their assessments.
From c.1700, working animals and ‘bulk’ animal products enter the
archive more frequently for some parts of the IOW. Again, this is partly a
symptom of the nature of written sources. This process is associated with
the increasing prominence of Europeans in the region, who left extensive
archival traces in forms such as inventories, letters, missives, and journals.
However, it is also a result of a gradual change to the nature of trade across
much of the IOW. Plantations on East Africa’s coast and Indian Ocean
islands, for example, increased demand for food to feed enslaved people
and other workers. This necessitated the exchange of cattle and meat on
larger scales than previously.30 Additionally, increased global connectivity
gave non-elites access to goods that had previously been reserved for
elites. Tortoiseshell in Edo-period Japan, for example, ceased being a rare
commodity with an unreliable supply, and became a ‘necessity’ in the eyes
of the Japanese consumer through its use in hair ornaments, eye-glass
frames, and dildos.31 Similarly, products made of East African ivory, such
as piano keys and billiard balls, became widely sought after amongst North
America’s and Europe’s middle classes.32 This came hot on the heels of a
29
Felix Chami, ‘Graeco-Roman trade link and the Bantu migration theory,’ Anthropos, 94,
1/3 (1999), 205–15; Chapurukha Kusimba and Jonathan R. Walz, ‘When did the Swahili
become maritime?: A reply to Fleisher et al. (2015), and to the resurgence of maritime myo-
pia in the archaeology of the East African coast,’ American Anthropologist, 120, 3 (2018),
429–43; Gwyn Campbell, ‘Africa, the Indian Ocean world, and the ‘early modern’:
Historiographical conventions and problems,’ Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, 1, 1
(2017), 24–37.
30
Gwyn Campbell, ‘Commercialisation of cattle in Imperial Madagascar, 1795–1895,’
(this volume); Helge Kjekshus, Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African
History: The case of Tanganyika 1850–1950, Second Edition (London: James Currey,
1996), 118–9.
31
Chaiklin, ‘Imports and autarky,’ 218–41.
32
John Frederick Walker, Ivory’s Ghosts: The white gold of history and the fate of elephants
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009), Ch. 4.
similar process that occurred in South Asia, in which bangles made from
East African ivory were increasingly worn by women of all religious
denominations during marriage ceremonies.33 Thus, commerce in certain
IOW animals and animal products became increasingly linked to general
demand, rather than the demand by political elites.
This process has conventionally been associated with the increasing
prominence of Europeans and the rise of Capitalism. Indeed, these asso-
ciations have been given renewed energy in recent years through the con-
ceptualization of the ‘Capitalocene’ in world history. According to Jason
W. Moore, its central proponent, the Capitalocene literally translates as
‘Age of Capital.’ As a framework, it contests theories of the Anthropocene,
which trace the beginnings of the current climate crisis to human activities
from the mid-eighteenth century, or to the beginning of the industrial
revolution in Britain. Capitalocene scholars argue that Anthropocene the-
ories are wrong on two counts. Firstly, they argue that it is not humanity
that has instituted the current climate crisis, but a particular set of
humans—namely European Capitalists. Secondly, they argue that the
structures that underpinned the current climate crisis can be observed
through changes in human–environment interaction during the late fif-
teenth century—namely, an agricultural revolution in Northern Europe
and Europeans’ exploitation of resources (human, animal, and other natu-
ral) in the wider Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds. In this latter process,
they provocatively argue that European Capitalists put distant peoples,
environments, and animals to ‘work,’ which denied them their humanity,
which thus blurred the human/nature binary. In short, the Capitalocene
describes the process through which humans, landscapes, and animals
were exploited for European Capitalist expansion from c.1500.34
Although revolutionary for its centring of environmental change in
world history over the longue-durée, the Capitalocene builds most notably
33
Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African com-
mercial empire into the world economy, 1770–1873 (Oxford: James Currey, 1987), 78.
34
Jason W. Moore, ‘The Capitalocene Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological
crisis,’ The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44, 3 (2017); Jason W. Moore, ‘The Capitalocene Part
II: Accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy,’ The Journal of
Peasant Studies, 45, 2 (2018); Jason W. Moore, ed. Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature,
history, and the crisis of Capitalism (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016); Jason W. Moore,
Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital (London: Verso, 2015);
Donna Haraway, ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making kin,’
Environmental Humanities, 6 (2015), 159-65.
on Immanuel Wallerstein’s concept of world-systems.35 Both the

Capitalocene and world-systems begin in the late fifteenth century, they
centre Europe and Capitalism in world history, and they seek to use the past
to understand the present. For Wallerstein, the ‘present’ meant the Capitalist
world system; for Moore, it is the current climate crisis. Nevertheless, these
parallels mean that the Capitalocene can be criticised on similar grounds to
world-systems. World historians, particularly of the IOW, were uneasy with
world-systems for its centring of Europeans, especially in the early modern
period.36 For example, scholars critiqued Wallerstein’s view of Portuguese
influence as ‘uncontested hegemons’ in the IOW as being neither histori-
cally accurate nor representative of wider European experiences in the
IOW.37 One can make similar critiques about Moore’s analysis of the early
modern Euro-Capitalist influence on IOW environments. He bases his
analysis on the Maluku Islands in southeast Asia, where the Dutch ‘organ-
ised the large-scale removal of “unauthorized” clove trees’ to secure a
monopoly on the global clove trade.38 This represented a transformation of
the environment and human relations for the purposes of European
Capitalist exploitation. However, this impact – significant as it was within its
locale – is neither representative of Dutch nor broader European experi-
ences in the wider IOW. Although they certainly tried, the Dutch were
unable (due to production and commercial complexities) to secure a
monopoly on pepper, which was around 25-30 times more valuable than
the clove trade.39 Meanwhile, tropical diseases limited the European imprint
35
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 4 Vols. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1974-2011).
36
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist agriculture and the origins
of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2011), 327. Wallerstein cites: Vitorino Magalhães-Godhino, L’économie de l’Empire
portugais aux XVe et XVIe siècles (Paris : Centre de recherches historiques, 1969). For a sum-
mary of the critique, see: Sanjay Subramanyam, ‘Introduction,’ in The Cambridge World
History Volume 6, Part 1: The construction of the global world, 1400-1800CE, eds. Jerry
H. Bentley, Sanjay Subramanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2015), 11-13.
37
The work of Michael Pearson is key here. See, especially: Michael N. Pearson, Before
Colonialism: Theories on Asian-European relations, 1500-1750 (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1988); Michael N. Pearson, ‘Introduction: Maritime history and the Indian Ocean
World,’ in Trade, Circulation and Flow in the Indian Ocean World, ed. Michael Pearson
(Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
38
Jason W. Moore, ‘The rise of cheap nature,’ in Anthropocene or Capitalocene, 108.
39
Pearson, Indian Ocean, 146.
in inland regions.40 European Capitalistic ideas may have spread to the IOW
in the early modern period, but their impact was uneven.
Centring animals allows for further critiques of the Capitalocene frame-
work in the context of the IOW. This is notable because several examples
in the Atlantic world, through the broader structures of the ‘Columbian
exchange,’ suggest a degree of cogency.41 The European introduction of
livestock to the Americas, for example, is associated with the degradation
of arable land, the exploitation of indigenous populations, and the estab-
lishment of colonial rule in physical and ideological form.42 This was the
animals’ ‘work’ in the construction of broader European-Capitalist struc-
tures.43 Similar patterns, however, did not pervade the IOW. Here,
Europeans encountered diverse animals already put to ‘work’ in various
capacities and in various conditions. Many IOW populations had been
using animal labour in agriculture for centuries before the European
arrival, for example – a divergence from the Atlantic world.44 Additionally,
in the IOW, when Europeans introduced new animals, they usually did so
to supplement or replace the roles of indigenous breeds.45 When they
attempted to exploit animals for new purposes in the IOW, they often
failed due to the macro-region’s distinct micro-environments and disease
profiles, such as with the introduction of elephant, ox-cart, and camel
transport in late-nineteenth-century East Africa.46 Instead of a sharp
40
David Arnold, ‘The Indian Ocean as disease zone, 1500–1950,’ South Asia, 14, 2 (1991).
41
Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and cultural consequences of 1492,
30th anniversary ed. (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2003).
42
Elinor G.K. Melville, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental consequences of the conquest of
Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Virginia DeJohn Anderson,
Creatures of Empire: How domestic animals transformed early America (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004).
43
Erica Fudge, ‘What was it like to be a cow?: History and animal studies,’ in The Oxford
Handbook of Animal Studies, ed. Linda Kalof (New York: Oxford University Press,
2014), 270-1.
44
For a classic summary of some important innovations, see: Andrew Watson, ‘The Arab
agricultural revolution and its diffusion, 700-1100,’ The Journal of Economic History, 34,
1 (1974).
45
William G. Clarence-Smith, ‘The donkey trade of the Indian Ocean world in the long
nineteenth century’ (this volume).
46
Karin Pallaver, ‘Donkeys, oxen and elephants: In search for an alternative to human
porters in nineteenth-century Tanzania,’ Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazi-
one dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 65, 1-4, (2010); Philip Gooding, ‘Tsetse
flies, ENSO, and murder: The Church Missionary Society’s failed East African ox-cart exper-
iment of 1876-78,’ Africa: Rivista semestrale di studi e ricerche, N.S. 1, 2 (2019).
rupture, analyses of animals in the early modern IOW suggests the cre-
ation of ‘hybrid knowledges’ – an intermeshing of European Capitalist
and indigenous IOW ideologies, practices, and environments, which
moreover occasionally influenced the structures of Capitalism in Europe.47
The sense of IOW resilience versus an expanding Capitalocene further
pervades analyses of trades in animals and animal products. The focus on
spices and metals in the historiography has led to an overemphasis on
European demand as a driver of IOW commercial networks. Animals and
animal products, meanwhile, were mostly traded within the IOW, thus
necessitating deeper recognition of IOW demand. In this context, Ria
Winters sees the Europeans not as the principal agents of animal trades in
the IOW, but the ‘couriers’ who helped to facilitate meeting IOW
demand.48 Even later in the nineteenth century, when the European pres-
ence in most IOW regions was much more established, there was a perva-
sive reliance of IOW structures. For example, even though industrial
America and Europe drove increased global demand for East African ivory
during this century, IOW structures were crucial to the trade’s function-
ing. It was reliant on African hunters and porters, African and Omani
traders, and Gujarati financiers—to the extent that Britain mostly chose to
import African ivory from India instead of from Africa itself.49 Additionally,
natural fluctuations in the Indian Ocean monsoon underpinned human–
animal relationships in the IOW. Droughts are broadly associated with
expansions in bushmeat trades, and have at various times decimated pasto-
ralists’ herds, contributing to an expansion in ivory trading in Northeast
Africa, and increased demand for war-animals, such as horses, to secure
scarce resources.50 IOW populations and environments remained central
47
Sujit Sivasundaram, ‘Trading knowledge: The East India Company’s elephants in India
and Britain,’ The Historical Journal, 48, 1 (2005); Anna Winterbottom, Hybrid Knowledge in
the Early East India Company World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Vijaya Ramadas
Mandala, Shooting a Tiger: Big-game hunting and conservation in colonial India (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2019); John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting,
Conservation and British Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 169.
48
Ria Winters, ‘The Dutch East India Company.’
49
Philip Gooding, ‘The ivory trade and political power in nineteenth-century East Africa,’
(this volume).
50
Gufu Oba, Climate Change Adaptation in Africa: An historical ecology (London:
Routledge, 2014), Ch. 4; Angela Nyaki, Steven A. Gray, Christopher A. Lepczyk, Jeffrey
C. Skibins, and Dennis Rentsch, ‘Local-scaledynamics and local drivers of bushmeat trade,’
Conservation Biology, 28, 5 (2014), 1403-14; Marianne Mosberg and Siri H. Eriksen,
‘Responding to climate variability and change in dryland Kenya: The role of illicit coping
to animal trades even as European Capitalist influences began to reach

their zenith.
The result is that applications of the Capitalocene to the IOW and
interpretations of its animal and animal product trades appear rather pre-
sentist. There is a tone that suggests that developments to the human–
nature (or European/Capitalist-nature) relationship in the context of
increased European influence post-c.1500 (but especially post-c.1700)
inevitably contributed to the current climate crisis. However, this was far
from inevitable at the time, especially in the IOW, where European–
Capitalist influence was so uneven. Acknowledging this necessitates stress-
ing the vitality of IOW structures in the face of European–Capitalist
competition, at least until c.1900. Thus, the increased circulation of ‘bulk’
animals and animal products post-c.1700 should not only be interpreted
to be tied to the influence of Europeans and/or Capitalism. There was a
deeper history of IOW networks, belief systems, and environments that
also influenced animal and animal product trades, which intersected with
European Capitalism’s growing influence in the IOW. Thus, analysis of
trades in animals and their products questions the applicability of the
Capitalocene, as the latest longue durée interpretation of world history, in
the IOW. The human–animal relationship (and by extension the human-
environment relationship) in the IOW took on distinct forms, underpin-
ning distinct animal trades around and across the macro-region.
The Creatures
Depending on one’s definition, taxonomy can be dated back as early as the
formation of spoken language, or as deriving from the work of sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century scientists, most notably Carl Linnaeus. This book
has been organized roughly following the principles of modern taxonomy
established by those early researchers because they represent both the state
of knowledge at the time when most of the material focuses, and they are
the basis for contemporary systems of classification. The next guiding
principle was environment. All creatures are shaped by their environment.
strategies in the politics of adaptation,’ Global Environmental Change, 35 (2015), 545-57;

Serels, ‘Horses and power’; Steven Serels, ‘Food insecurity and political instability in the
southern Red Sea region during the ‘Little Ice Age,’ 1650-1840,’ in Famines During the
‘Little Ice Age’ (1300-1800), eds. Dominik Collett and Maximilian Schuh (Cham, CH:
Springer, 2018), 115-129.
Moreover, environment impacts many facets of interaction; hunting or

farming is quite different on land than in water. The final principle in
chapter organization is that domestic animals are followed by wild ani-
mals. Wild and domestic forms are usually given different taxonomic des-
ignations. While these divisions and differences are not always absolute,
domestic animals and wild animals exist in different environments, even
within the same physical space. The lives of mules and goats have more in
common than either would with an antelope, even though they are all
ungulates. Domesticated animals are generally affected more significantly
by their contact with humans than wild ones, so they were placed first.
In Chap. 2, Ria Winters prefaces this taxonomy with a broad-ranging
chapter that examines the role of live wild animals in the Dutch mari-
time empire. She details exchanges between IOW populations and the
Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company, VOC),
and between VOC officials and Dutch stadholders in the Netherlands.
In so doing, she shows not just how important ‘exotic’ animals were
for diplomatic purposes and for currying favour among elites, but also
how their castoffs exposed non-elites in Europe to the IOW. Using
Mauritius and the dodo as a case study, Winters demonstrates the pro-
found impacts of maritime trade on the environment and displays how
European trade resulted in momentous impacts on indigenous fauna
and its environment.
Samuel Ostroff and Sundar Vadlamudi provide insight into aquatic
interactions in the IOW. They focus on South Asia—specifically to the
Gulf of Mannar between present-day southeastern India and northwest-
ern Sri Lanka—to address the contradictions and limits of European power
in the region. Ostroff’s analysis (Chap. 3) of pearl fisheries in this region
demonstrates that even the rather passive oyster was difficult for humans
to conquer for pearl production. At the same time, the obstacles to suc-
cessful harvesting were used by the British Crown and English East India
Company (EIC) to take control of indigenous populations in the guise of
caretaking. Territorialization over pearl fisheries was problematic due to
the long-held mantra of ‘free sea’ in European circles. Issues of territory,
marine resources, and the environment intersected to produce contradic-
tory discourses and a degree of attention in imperial circles that far
exceeded potential profitability to be made from the pearl trade.
Chapter 4 by Vadlamudi explores chanks (Turbinella pyrum or Xancus
pyrum) as the root of some of the frictions caused by the EIC’s attempts
to exert authority over indigenous practices. While chank fishers and
traders used their pre-existing networks and practices to evade colonial

regulations, declines in output were used to justify increasing British con-
trol. This exploration of chanks speaks to the resilience of IOW productive
and commercial practices in the context of the ostensibly regulated,
European, imperial world. At the same time, Vadlamudi shows the failure
of either system to control the natural world of the wild chanks.
The second set of chapters focuses on quadrupeds and their products.
Given that quadrupeds are terrestrial animals, it is perhaps unsurprising
that terrestrial spaces are given more attention in this portion of the book.
Inland and upstream regions feature prominently, thus stressing the
importance of such regions to IOW history, which has, up to now, tended
to focus on littoral and coastal regions.51 Just like studies of littoral regions,
though, ecology and the environment are often key in these histories. But,
where wind and currents have bound IOW commercial histories of mari-
time and littoral spaces, animal diseases, rain, and terrain feature more
prominently in upstream and inland histories. These themes are integral
factors to each of the histories described, often more so than the arrival of
European capitalist influences. It is only from the eighteenth century in
eastern and southeastern parts of the IOW and the late nineteenth century
in western parts that such influences began to significantly re-shape trades
in animals and their products, and human-animal relationships in the IOW
therein.
Steven Serels in Chap. 5 analyses the trade in horses in the southern
Red Sea region (SRSR) in the context of a state/horsepower complex. He
argues that until the end of the nineteenth century, horses employed as
cavalry were crucial on the battlefield, and were therefore essential for the
exertion of political authority. In this context, he builds on the work of
Simon Digby and Jos Gommans for South Asia, by noting political restric-
tions on the horse trade, lest horses fall into enemy hands.52 However, he
also explores the limits of this paradigm: firstly by identifying what he
refers to as a Pax Equistris between the Sudanese Funj Sultanate and the
Ethiopian Empire that enabled relatively peaceful relations and a steady
trade of horses; and secondly by exploring the collapse of the s tate/horse-
power complex and its consequences for human-horse relations in the late
51
Michael N. Pearson, ‘Littoral society: The case for the coast,’ The Great Circle, 8, 1
(1985), 1-8; Michael N. Pearson, ‘Littoral society: The concept and the problems,’ Journal
of World History, 17, 4 (2006), 354; Pearson, The Indian Ocean, 44.
52
Digby, War-Horse and Elephant; Gommans, ‘The horse trade.’
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By this stage, centuries of political

instability and adverse environmental conditions had contributed to the
decimation of horse populations in much of the SRSR. Meanwhile,
European imperial expansion in this period was accompanied by an
increased circulation of cheap firearms, which replaced horses as the prin-
cipal weapon in battle. Since then, horses have taken a more symbolic than
practical value amongst ruling elites, though free trade has not resulted in
horses being circulated more widely.
Chapter 6 by William Gervase Clarence-Smith highlights ecological,
practical, and cultural factors that affected donkey trades in the IOW dur-
ing the long nineteenth century. Donkeys, associated with low-caste status
in South Asia and religious distaste in parts of southeast and east Asia, had
limited circulation in vast swathes of the IOW. Limited exceptions apply to
‘large whites’ (often referred to as Muscat asses), which were used as
mounts by Omani rulers and prominent traders in the Middle East and
eastern Africa, and to ‘dark jacks’ imported by Europeans into the IOW
from the end of the nineteenth century. These breeds were excepted from
social and religious taboos amongst certain populations in the IOW and
could be associated with prestige. It is partly for this reason that there are
more records referring to trades in these breeds than to trades in common
donkeys. This source disparity reflects broader trends in which larger,
more prestigious animals are more prominent in the source material than
working animals. Nevertheless, Clarence-Smith argues that the circulation
of common donkeys likely increased during the nineteenth century. They
were highly sought-after as carrying animals by planters in the Mascarenes
and East Africa from the beginning of the century, and by European mili-
tary forces at the end. Increased demand for working animals, itself associ-
ated with the spread of Capitalistic influences, necessitated their increased
circulation over both maritime and terrestrial spaces.
Like Clarence-Smith, Gwyn Campbell in Chap. 7 primarily deals with
the nineteenth century in his analysis of cattle in the Merina Empire on
the island of Madagascar. He explores a transition in which cattle were at
the beginning of the century valued for their ritual importance, to, by the
end of the century, being valued for their commercial importance as
live cattle, meat, and hides. The crucial human aspects of this history are
the rise of the Merina Empire and increased European-driven demand
caused firstly by the need to feed plantation slaves in the Mascarenes, and
secondly by demand for hides in southeastern and southern mainland
Africa and Europe. Campbell situates cattle and their products as integral
to these broader histories of indigenous and European imperial expan-

sion, and in so doing, demonstrates the importance of animals and animal
products to broader IOW histories. Moreover, he notes cattle’s experi-
ences of this transition, noting the cramped conditions and deaths aboard
small, condemned trade ships referred to as ‘bullockers.’ The cattle’s
protestations on being loaded on these ships speak to the increasingly
exploitative and conflictual human-animal relationship as European
Capitalistic forces became gradually more established in the region during
the nineteenth century.
Chapter 8 by Ilicia J. Sprey and Kenneth R. Hall, in examining the deer-
skin trade from Ayutthaya (in present-day Thailand) and Japan during the
seventeenth century, is the first to deal exclusively with the trade of an
animal product. They build on several studies of contemporaneous times
on, for example, Taiwan and some outer Japanese islands, where the
expanded deerskin trade is associated with severe ecological decline. They
argue that Ayutthaya offers somewhat of a counterpoint to these studies,
as similar levels of habitat destruction and reduction in deer populations do
not appear to have occurred there. This is attributable to both the diversity
of Ayutthaya’s export economy during the period under review and the
robustness of indigenous political structures in the face of European impe-
rial aggression, primarily, in this case, from the VOC. However, during the
early-mid eighteenth century, a decline in the value of deerskins on eastern
IOW maritime trade routes undermined Ayutthaya’s monarchy, while
Europeans significantly diversified their commercial economies, allowing
the latter to adapt and to take a more prominent role in the broader
region’s economic and political affairs. Nevertheless, in this instance at
least, this did not mean increased exploitation of deer in mainland Southeast
Asia, as the maritime trade of their skins was no longer profitable.
Examination of the impact and consumption of animal parts is contin-
ued by Philip Gooding (Chap. 9) in his exploration of the ivory trade in
East Africa. He similarly argues that the acquisition and sale of ivory was a
key component of political power in nineteenth-century East and Central
Africa. In part, by shifting his emphasis from the littoral to the hinterland,
Gooding is able to demonstrate how increased consumption in the West
was instrumental in re-shaping local power structures by privileging those
with access to ivory trade and the economic benefits that it engendered.
Commerce in ivory was an adjuvant of human interaction in the IOW, but
also brought destruction to indigenous life, both human and pachydermal
in a way that has had long-term effects on the IOW.
Chapter 10 by Martha Chaiklin on peacock feathers in Japan, the only

one to focus solely on a bird, acts as the natural conclusion to this volume.
While centred on the early modern period, it also charts the longue durée
history and contexts of peacocks, their feathers, and their trade in Japanese
history. Chaiklin firstly adds to historians’ growing knowledge that ques-
tions the extent of Japanese isolation in the early modern period. Flightless
and originating in mainland and island South Asia, the presence of pea-
cocks and peacock feathers in Japan at this time necessarily shows that they
were there by human agency. Moreover, use of peacock feathers in elite
fashions, objects, and activities shows the importance of IOW commercial
connections for the construction of Japanese elite materiality. The impor-
tance of these connections continued even into the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury after the opening of treaty ports, consequent expansion of trade, and
wider circulation of peacock feathers. The profusion of images of peacock
feathers imprinted on a variety of everyday Japanese objects led to peacock
feathers forming western images of Japan. Thus, the import of an IOW
animal to Japan was integral for wider understandings of Japanese society
at a time of increased global interaction. Chaiklin refers to this process as
a ‘cycle of import, absorption, appropriation, and re-appropriation.’ This
speaks to the centrality of animals to images of the IOW and to the impor-
tance of the IOW’s commercial networks therein.
To conclude, there is an Arabian proverb that states, ‘once a camel gets
his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.’ While this proverb is usu-
ally used with a negative cast, to suggest, something along the lines of
‘give an inch and they’ll take a mile,’ it is the editors hope that this collec-
tion will serve as a sort of entry into the tent of the IOW to positively
expand our understanding of the relationships between animals, human
beings, commerce, and world systems.
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CHAPTER 2
The Dutch East India Company

and the Transport of Live Exotic Animals
in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Ria Winters
Introduction
The geological framework of the Indian Ocean provided the Dutch East
India Company (VOC) with two opportunities. On the one hand, it
enabled them to introduce natural wonders to society at home, and on the
other, they could utilise the resources of the Asian coastal areas as a means
for trade. Although commerce, discovery, and the transformation of
I would like to thank Philip Gooding, Martha Chaiklin, and two anonymous
reviewers, whose comments improved the manuscript. I thank James
C. Armstrong for bringing the conference ‘Trade in Animals and Animal
Products in the Indian Ocean World’ held in October 2014 to my attention; the
Amsterdam Universiteitsfonds for making my attendance to the conference
possible; David Coppoolse for the use of his Natural History Library; Gijs Boink,
archivaris, for his assistance; Hans Mulder, curator of the Artis Library of the
University of Amsterdam, for the permission to include the images of Jan Velten,
Ruud Vlek; Michiel Roscam Abbing, Menno Leenstra, and Dirk J. Tang for
details on cargos and ships; and Karel Schoeman (1939–2017) for information
on the VOC station at the Cape of Good Hope.
© The Author(s) 2020 27

M. Chaiklin et al. (eds.), Animal Trade Histories in the Indian
Ocean World, Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42595-1_2
28 R. WINTERS
science have proven to be closely intertwined, this chapter focuses on the

VOC’s entrepreneurship and what this meant for the animals of the Indian
Ocean World (IOW) that they transported.1
In 1596, the crew of the first Dutch fleet experienced what it was like
to receive a large exotic bird as a gift. The people of Java had noticed the
ships anchored close to their shore and decided to bring them food, fruits,
and a live cassowary. This was the first Dutch encounter in the East with
an existing tradition of using live animals as diplomatic gifts.2 The bird
survived the long journey back to the Dutch Republic. It was displayed in
Amsterdam, and eventually ended up in the possession of members of the
social upper class.3 When the ventures of the VOC into the IOW became
regular, they not only brought back huge cargos of spices but also desir-
able objects like tropical shells, colourful feathers, elephant teeth (ivory),
and more live exotic animals.4 The animals were initially given as gifts to
the Princes of Orange, but subsequently received a wider commercial and
political interest. To own live exotic animals became a sign of status
because they embodied wealth and power that extended to distant lands.5
Animals were a desirable commodity made possible by the Dutch as glo-
balizers in the Indian Ocean.6
1
Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange. Commerce, medicine and science in the Dutch golden
age. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
2
Martha Chaiklin, ‘The merchant’s ark: Live animal gifts in early modern Dutch-Japanese
relations,’ World History Connected, 9, 1 (2012), 2.
3
Johannes I. Pontanus, Beschrijvingh der wijdt-vermaarde Koop-stadt Amstelredam
(Amsterdam: Jodocus Hondius, 1614), 223, 226–7.
4
Ellinoor Bergvelt, Renée Kistemaker, Roelof van Gelder, K. van Berkel and Hinke
Wiggers, De wereld binnen handbereik: Nederlandse kunst- en rariteitenverzamelingen,
1585–1735. (Zwolle: Waanders, 1992), 40–50.
5
Erik Ringmar. ‘The European expansion,’ History of International Relations Cambridge
(Open Book Publishers, 2018), 4.
6
Robert Ross, ‘The Dutch as globalizers in the western basin of the Indian Ocean?,’ in
Globalisation and the South-West Indian Ocean, eds. Sandra J.T. Evers and Vinesh
Y. Hookoomsing. (Leiden: International Institute for Asian Studies and Réduit: University
of Mauritius, 2000), 7.
R. Winters (*)
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: r.winters@uva.nl
2 THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY AND THE TRANSPORT OF LIVE… 29
The VOC not only transported animals to the Dutch Republic but also
within their entire Asian trading network. They brought horses from
Persia and Arabia to Japan, and Persian chukar partridges and elephants
from Ceylon and Siam to Batavia, to name a few. Martha Chaiklin has
published extensively about the otherwise little-known subject of the role
of the VOC in the transport of live exotic animals.7 Also, in 1999, Roelof
van Gelder touched on the subject with his essay ‘Arken van Noach’ (Arks
of Noah).8 I will expand on both Chaiklin and van Gelder’s work. Louise
Robbins’ Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots with France as her focal
point, and Hannah Velten’s book on the English animal merchandise in
London, Beastly London, are also of relevance. A comparative study of
transportation of live exotic animals by the various European merchant
companies has yet to be undertaken.
A focus on the VOC and animals offers an understanding of the IOW’s
faunal diversity and its meaning as seen by contemporary Dutch culture.
For the relation between the ‘East and West Indies’ I have drawn on the
philosophical interpretative work of Natalie Lawrence to conceptualize
the symbolic views of these animals.9 In the first section of this chapter, I
elaborate on the VOC’s logistical system to detail how the trading voyages
from the Dutch Republic to the Spice Islands evolved into a simultaneous
trade between IOW regions, forming an imaginary transport network.
The movement of goods was paralleled by the movement of animals. The
second section analyses how the shipping of exotic animals was stimulated
by the demand of the Dutch stadholders and how the influx of animals
into the Dutch Republic created a commercial demand there for exotic
animals. This touches on the specific form of Dutch mercantilism, which
was characterised by a civic, republican pride and a society that was gener-
ally not very empathetic with the suffering of animals. The third section
7
Martha Chaiklin, ‘Exotic-bird collecting in early-modern Japan,’ in JAPANimals, History
and culture in Japan’s animal life, eds. G.M. Pflugfelder and B.L. Walker (Ann Arbor:
Center for Japanese Studies, 2005), 125–151; Martha Chaiklin, ‘Ivory in early-modern
Ceylon. A case study in what documents don’t reveal,’ International Journal of Asian
Studies, 6, 1 (2009), 37–63; Martha Chaiklin, ‘The Merchant’s Ark: Live Animal Gifts in
Early Modern Dutch-Japanese Relations,’ World History Connected, 9, 1 (2012).
8
Roelof van Gelder, ‘Arken van Noach,’ in Kometen, monsters en muilezels: het verander-
ende natuurbeeld en de natuurwetenschap in de zeventiende eeuw, ed. Florieke Egmond
(Haarlem: Arcadia, 1999), 35–51.
9
Natalie Lawrence, ‘Assembling the dodo in early modern natural history,’ British Society
for the History of Science 48, 3 (2015), 387–408; Natalie Lawrence, ‘Exotic origins: The
emblematic biogeographies of early modern scaly mammals,’ Itinerario 39, 1 (2015), 17–43.
30 R. WINTERS
names the various animals that were transported within the VOC’s Indian
Ocean network. The fourth and last section focuses on the case of
Mauritius. This section explains the fate of an island that happened to be
in the wrong place at the wrong time and the impacts on and meanings of
the animals that lived on it.
The VOC System

The VOC was a joint-stock company formed in 1602 between commer-
cial organizations in six cities of the coastal provinces of Holland and
Zeeland. The VOC copied and eventually replaced many of the Portuguese
and Spanish operations in the Indian Ocean, who, in the first half of the
seventeenth century, were the company’s greatest European rivals. The
central board of directors, the Heeren XVII, were seated in Amsterdam.
Unlike modern shareholder corporations, the VOC enjoyed certain key
powers normally reserved for states. These powers included engaging in
diplomatic negotiations with foreign courts, establishing structures of
government, claiming territory, and defending and administering that ter-
ritory as a colony.10 Although the joint venture did not have imperial
ambitions, to achieve its main goal—making a profit—the company main-
tained several bases of operations.11 They had posts in Batavia (now
Jakarta), which was its Asian headquarters, the Spice Islands (including
Ambon, the Moluccas, and the Banda Islands), and areas towards the
north-east at the coasts of the South and East China Seas, as far as the
island of Deshima in Nagasaki Harbor. West of Batavia, the VOC main-
tained trading posts in Ceylon, and the east and west coasts of India,
Persia, and Arabia. Until the mid-seventeenth century, the fleets on their
way to and from Asia halted at the island of Mauritius to take in fresh sup-
plies. After 1652, when the VOC built a fort and a vegetable garden at the
Cape of Good Hope, the ships made mandatory stops there.12
At least 1821 Dutch ships, built or hired in the Dutch Republic, sailed
the Atlantic and Indian Ocean between 1595 and the dissolution of the
10
Femme S. Gaastra, Geschiedenis van de VOC. Opkomst, bloei en ondergang (Zutphen:
Walburg Pers, 2012), 17–22.
11
See also: Benjamin Schmidt. ‘Inventing exoticism. The project of Dutch geography and
the marketing of the world, circa 1700,’ in Merchants and Marvels, eds. Pamela Smith and
Paula Findlen (London: Routledge, 2002) 356.
12
Robert Parthesius, Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters. The development of the Dutch East
India Company (VOC) shipping network in Asia 1595–1660 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2010), 33–41.
2 THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY AND THE TRANSPORT OF LIVE… 31
VOC in 1798.13 Hundreds of these ships and additional ones built at their
Asian stations or captured from rivals operated in the intra-Asian trade.14
At the time of their founding, the VOC had based their trading activities
on European products, but soon found out there was little interest in Asia
for many of these items. As a solution, the VOC adopted and adapted
existing local trading patterns, which was called country trade. The Dutch
ships moved Indian Ocean products between East and West Asian coun-
tries, making efficient use of the monsoons and exploiting the differentia-
tion of ships in their fleet that allowed them to trade all year round.15 They
became the European couriers of the IOW.
The Indian Ocean network provided the VOC with cargo for the
European market. The system for the organization of the return fleets and
the intra-Asian system met in Batavia. The VOC traded in hundreds of
products, but some of the most profitable ones were spices: pepper, nut-
meg, coffee, sugar, cloves, mace, and cinnamon. Other culturally signifi-
cant products included saltpetre, silk, indigo, aloe, diamonds, silver,
copper, gold, animal skins, and other animal products.16 Exotic objects
13
Jaap R. Bruijn, Dutch-Asiatic shipping in the 17th and 18th centuries, I (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), 54. The number of 1821 consists of 1461 ships that were built in
VOC shipyards, another 120 that were probably built in VOC shipyards, 87 ships that were
purchased from another company, 95 hired, 6 that were either hired or purchased, and 52
ships owned by the Voorcompagnieën.
14
Erik Odegard, ‘Timmeren te Cochin. Scheepsbouw op de VOC-scheepstimmerwerf in
Cochin,’ Tijdschrift voor zeegeschiedenis 36, 2 (2017), 22–39; Parthesius, Dutch Ships in
Tropical Waters, 2–3; Van Gelder, ‘Arken van Noach,’ 38; Gaastra, Geschiedenis van de VOC,
46; Els M. Jacobs, Koopman in Azië. De handel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
tijdens de achttiende eeuw (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2000), 209; Matthias van Rossum,
‘Sampans, hout en slaven. De overzeese infrastructuur voor scheepsbouw en –onderhoud
van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Zuid en Zuidoost-Azië,’ Tijdschrift voor
zeegeschiedenis 36, 2 (2017), 5.
15
Parthesius, Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters, 80, 162–3, 168. Parthesius counted 11,507
ship movements made by 1058 ships that took part in the VOC’s Asian trading network
from 1595 until 1660. In contrast, he counted only 1368 ship movements from Asia to the
Netherlands in the same period (3, 162). Some of the ships, like the Tienhoven, just stayed in
Asia and never sailed back to the Netherlands (Van Rossum, ‘Sampans, hout en slaven,’ 5).
16
Wim Wennekes, Gouden handel, de eerste Nederlanders overzee, en wat zij daar haalden
(Amsterdam: Olympus pockets, 2007). Many examples of animal skins and products can be
found in the Deshima daghregisters. For example, the VOC office in Japan ordered, in 1646,
35 rhinoceros horns, in 1647, 22 elephants teeth, in 1652, elephant fat and spleen, and in
1672, 500 cow and buffalo hides and 1000 big buffalo horns. See: L. P. Blussé and C. Viallé.
The Deshima dagregisters: their original tables of contents Vol. XII (Leiden: Centre for the
History of European Expansion, 2005).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
(1839-51)
I COSTA-CABRAL 143
1. Os ordeiros 143
2. A restauração da Carta 153
3. A Doutrina 158
II A REACÇÃO 170
1. A coalisão dos partidos 170
2. Torres-Novas e Almeida 175
3. A Maria-da-Fonte 183
III A GUERRA CIVIL 197
1. O 6 de outubro 197
2. A Junta do Porto 213
3. O Espectro 227
4. A primavera de 47 239
IV OS IMPENITENTES 259
1. O cadaver da nação 259
2. O conde de Thomar 269
LIVRO SEXTO
A REGENERAÇÃO
(1851-68)
I ALEXANDRE HERCULANO 283
1. A ultima revolta 283
2. O fim do Romanismo 293
3. O Solitario de Val-de-Lobos 302
II A LIQUIDAÇÃO DO PASSADO 328
1. A rapoza e suas manhas 328
2. A conversão da divida 334
3. Os historicos 348
III AS GERAÇÕES NOVAS 360
1. A iniciação pelo fomento 360
2. O iberismo 367
3. O socialismo 381
4. D. Pedro v 389
IV CONCLUSÕES 402
1. As questões constitucionaes 402
2. As questões economicas 413
3. As questões geographicas 419
APPENDICES
A. Chronologia 433
B. Os ministerios liberaes 445
C. Os ministros de D. Miguel 451
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Animal Trade Histories in The Indian Ocean World 1St Ed Edition Martha Chaiklin Full Chapter

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Animal Trade Histories

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Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies

Cover illustration: © Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo

1 Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their Products,

2 The Dutch East India Company and the Transport of

3 Can the Oyster Speak? Pearling Empires and the

4 Chank Fishing in South India Under the English East

5 Horses and Power in the Southern Red Sea Region Since

6 The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World in the

7 Commercialisation of Cattle in Imperial Madagascar,

8 Ayutthaya’s Seventeenth-Century Deerskin Trade in the

9 The Ivory Trade and Political Power in Nineteenth-­

10 The Flight of the Peacock, or How Peacocks Became

Gwyn Campbell is the founding Director of the Indian Ocean World

William Gervase Clarence-Smith is Emeritus Professor of History at

­ ineteenth centuries. He is the Publications Officer at the Institute for

Fig. 10.6 Brush with peacock feathers. Feather-brush with Doran

Table 4.1 EIC proclamation issued by the district collector of Tinnevelly

Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their

Martha Chaiklin and Philip Gooding

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Fig. 1.1 Boyd Smith,

habitats in IOW history.3 Animals, especially charismatic megafauna, are

span, and transnational and transregional nature than in animal studies,

Understanding the IOW Through Trades in Animals

Trades in animals and animal products are a relatively understudied feature

megafauna were demanded most significantly by elites, who have histori-

commercial arrangements.19 The recipients of such presents sought to use

on Immanuel Wallerstein’s concept of world-systems.35 Both the

to animal trades even as European Capitalist influences began to reach

strategies in the politics of adaptation,’ Global Environmental Change, 35 (2015), 545-57;

Moreover, environment impacts many facets of interaction; hunting or

traders used their pre-existing networks and practices to evade colonial

nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By this stage, centuries of political

to these broader histories of indigenous and European imperial expan-

Chapter 10 by Martha Chaiklin on peacock feathers in Japan, the only

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

The Dutch East India Company

© The Author(s) 2020 27

science have proven to be closely intertwined, this chapter focuses on the

The VOC System

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

START: FULL LICENSE

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the

Section 1. General Terms of Use and

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1 Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their Products,

2 The Dutch East India Company and the Transport of

3 Can the Oyster Speak? Pearling Empires and the

4 Chank Fishing in South India Under the English East

5 Horses and Power in the Southern Red Sea Region Since

6 The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World in the

7 Commercialisation of Cattle in Imperial Madagascar,

8 Ayutthaya’s Seventeenth-Century Deerskin Trade in the

9 The Ivory Trade and Political Power in Nineteenth-

10 The Flight of the Peacock, or How Peacocks Became

ineteenth centuries. He is the Publications Officer at the Institute for