The Inhuman Empire

The Inhuman Empire

Author: Sadhana Naithani

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-05-20

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1040023487

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This book is a study of selected texts of British writings on Indian wildlife published between 1860 and 1960. Set in the context of British colonial rule in India, this book also reflects on similar situations across the British Empire and other colonial empires. The destruction of wildlife in the making of empires is a subject not yet fully explored in scholarship. This book aims to speak to global concerns regarding the extinction of several species and shows that the crisis has international roots. The Inhuman Empire breaks new grounds as it juxtaposes colonial narratives to folk narratives. These two types of narratives treat nonhuman animals very differently – folk narrative considers them sentient beings, while colonial narratives see them as ‘game’ and do not care for their sentience. Both types of narratives are further evaluated with reference to the contemporary position of natural sciences regarding animal sentience and of anthropologists and philosophers regarding the relationship between nature and culture. Analyzing colonial accounts of hunting, the author looks at the pain and suffering of nonhuman animals and combines statistics alongside narratives of British writers, Indian populace and nonhuman animals in order to show narratives' reflect and impact reality. This book will be of great value to those interested in Animal Studies, Folkloristics, the history of Colonialism and India.


Book Synopsis The Inhuman Empire by : Sadhana Naithani

Download or read book The Inhuman Empire written by Sadhana Naithani and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-05-20 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of selected texts of British writings on Indian wildlife published between 1860 and 1960. Set in the context of British colonial rule in India, this book also reflects on similar situations across the British Empire and other colonial empires. The destruction of wildlife in the making of empires is a subject not yet fully explored in scholarship. This book aims to speak to global concerns regarding the extinction of several species and shows that the crisis has international roots. The Inhuman Empire breaks new grounds as it juxtaposes colonial narratives to folk narratives. These two types of narratives treat nonhuman animals very differently – folk narrative considers them sentient beings, while colonial narratives see them as ‘game’ and do not care for their sentience. Both types of narratives are further evaluated with reference to the contemporary position of natural sciences regarding animal sentience and of anthropologists and philosophers regarding the relationship between nature and culture. Analyzing colonial accounts of hunting, the author looks at the pain and suffering of nonhuman animals and combines statistics alongside narratives of British writers, Indian populace and nonhuman animals in order to show narratives' reflect and impact reality. This book will be of great value to those interested in Animal Studies, Folkloristics, the history of Colonialism and India.

Inhuman Empire

Inhuman Empire

Author: Christopher Michael Blakley

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation examines how material interactions between slaveholders, enslaved people, and nonhuman animals shaped the territorial expansion of the British Empire in the era of the Atlantic slave trade. My project is an environmental history of slavery and slaving from the Royal African Company's entrance into the castle trade in 1672 through the American Revolution to the abolition of the trade in 1808. I argue that human-animal entanglements generated by slaving constituted a decisive factor in expanding the political, scientific, and economic networks of the empire. Inhuman Empire challenges the predominantly European frame fo ecological imperialism by interrogating the ecological, social, and cultural interplay between English enslavers, Atlantic Africans, and animals. I use the theoretical frameworks of eco-cultural networks and modes of interaction to draw out how these relations shaped the expanding geography of slavery in the British Atlantic world. English and African traders exchanged animals as propitiatory sacrifices, gifts, and media of exchange to forge bonds of alliance and commerce on the Gold Cost and the Bight of Benin. Naturalists studying the faunal environments of slave depots from New Spain to North American plantations became slaveholders or relied on the judgement and collecting efforts of enslaved people to gather specimens for natural history collections. On Caribbean and Chesapeake plantations, enslavers raising sugar and tobacco harnessed the labor and bodily energy of slaves and draft animals. However, many animals proved difficult to control in the pursuit of imperial profits. Intractable vermin ruined plantations at alarming rates, and planters produced the category of pests to describe the animals beyond their control. Most importantly, enslaved people resisted their bondage and undermined the institution of slavery by injuring, starving, or stealing animals for their own purposes, while black intellectuals produced critiques of slavery as the foundation of an 'inhuman" empire as central to the campaign to abolish the slave trade. The centrality of human-animal networks that supported slaving and slavery is one conclusion of this dissertations, which intervenes in early American environmental history. A second conclusion is that this environmental history provides a valuable materialist account that supports formerly enslaved people's narratives and experiences of becoming less-than-fully human animalized subjects in the long eighteenth century.


Book Synopsis Inhuman Empire by : Christopher Michael Blakley

Download or read book Inhuman Empire written by Christopher Michael Blakley and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation examines how material interactions between slaveholders, enslaved people, and nonhuman animals shaped the territorial expansion of the British Empire in the era of the Atlantic slave trade. My project is an environmental history of slavery and slaving from the Royal African Company's entrance into the castle trade in 1672 through the American Revolution to the abolition of the trade in 1808. I argue that human-animal entanglements generated by slaving constituted a decisive factor in expanding the political, scientific, and economic networks of the empire. Inhuman Empire challenges the predominantly European frame fo ecological imperialism by interrogating the ecological, social, and cultural interplay between English enslavers, Atlantic Africans, and animals. I use the theoretical frameworks of eco-cultural networks and modes of interaction to draw out how these relations shaped the expanding geography of slavery in the British Atlantic world. English and African traders exchanged animals as propitiatory sacrifices, gifts, and media of exchange to forge bonds of alliance and commerce on the Gold Cost and the Bight of Benin. Naturalists studying the faunal environments of slave depots from New Spain to North American plantations became slaveholders or relied on the judgement and collecting efforts of enslaved people to gather specimens for natural history collections. On Caribbean and Chesapeake plantations, enslavers raising sugar and tobacco harnessed the labor and bodily energy of slaves and draft animals. However, many animals proved difficult to control in the pursuit of imperial profits. Intractable vermin ruined plantations at alarming rates, and planters produced the category of pests to describe the animals beyond their control. Most importantly, enslaved people resisted their bondage and undermined the institution of slavery by injuring, starving, or stealing animals for their own purposes, while black intellectuals produced critiques of slavery as the foundation of an 'inhuman" empire as central to the campaign to abolish the slave trade. The centrality of human-animal networks that supported slaving and slavery is one conclusion of this dissertations, which intervenes in early American environmental history. A second conclusion is that this environmental history provides a valuable materialist account that supports formerly enslaved people's narratives and experiences of becoming less-than-fully human animalized subjects in the long eighteenth century.

Slaves of One Master

Slaves of One Master

Author: Matthew S. Hopper

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0300213921

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In this wide-ranging history of the African diaspora and slavery in Arabia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Matthew S. Hopper examines the interconnected themes of enslavement, globalization, and empire and challenges previously held conventions regarding Middle Eastern slavery and British imperialism. Whereas conventional historiography regards the Indian Ocean slave trade as fundamentally different from its Atlantic counterpart, Hopper’s study argues that both systems were influenced by global economic forces. The author goes on to dispute the triumphalist antislavery narrative that attributes the end of the slave trade between East Africa and the Persian Gulf to the efforts of the British Royal Navy, arguing instead that Great Britain allowed the inhuman practice to continue because it was vital to the Gulf economy and therefore vital to British interests in the region. Hopper’s book links the personal stories of enslaved Africans to the impersonal global commodity chains their labor enabled, demonstrating how the growing demand for workers created by a global demand for Persian Gulf products compelled the enslavement of these people and their transportation to eastern Arabia. His provocative and deeply researched history fills a salient gap in the literature on the African diaspora.


Book Synopsis Slaves of One Master by : Matthew S. Hopper

Download or read book Slaves of One Master written by Matthew S. Hopper and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging history of the African diaspora and slavery in Arabia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Matthew S. Hopper examines the interconnected themes of enslavement, globalization, and empire and challenges previously held conventions regarding Middle Eastern slavery and British imperialism. Whereas conventional historiography regards the Indian Ocean slave trade as fundamentally different from its Atlantic counterpart, Hopper’s study argues that both systems were influenced by global economic forces. The author goes on to dispute the triumphalist antislavery narrative that attributes the end of the slave trade between East Africa and the Persian Gulf to the efforts of the British Royal Navy, arguing instead that Great Britain allowed the inhuman practice to continue because it was vital to the Gulf economy and therefore vital to British interests in the region. Hopper’s book links the personal stories of enslaved Africans to the impersonal global commodity chains their labor enabled, demonstrating how the growing demand for workers created by a global demand for Persian Gulf products compelled the enslavement of these people and their transportation to eastern Arabia. His provocative and deeply researched history fills a salient gap in the literature on the African diaspora.

The Inhuman Race (Commonwealth Empire #1)

The Inhuman Race (Commonwealth Empire #1)

Author: Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2018-12-10

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9353023327

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The year is 2033. The British Empire never fell. Communism never happened. The Commonwealth flies the flag of the Empire. Many of the Empire's colonies are stripped bare in the name of British interests, powerless to resist. Upon this stage is Ceylon - a once-proud civilization tracing itself back to the time of the Pharaohs, reduced but not dead. The Great Houses of Kandy still control the most lucrative trade routes, since even dust and ashes can serve a purpose. In this surreal landscape, where technology and humanity intersect, we meet The Silent Girl - a survivor, an explorer.


Book Synopsis The Inhuman Race (Commonwealth Empire #1) by : Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

Download or read book The Inhuman Race (Commonwealth Empire #1) written by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2018-12-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year is 2033. The British Empire never fell. Communism never happened. The Commonwealth flies the flag of the Empire. Many of the Empire's colonies are stripped bare in the name of British interests, powerless to resist. Upon this stage is Ceylon - a once-proud civilization tracing itself back to the time of the Pharaohs, reduced but not dead. The Great Houses of Kandy still control the most lucrative trade routes, since even dust and ashes can serve a purpose. In this surreal landscape, where technology and humanity intersect, we meet The Silent Girl - a survivor, an explorer.

Inhuman Bondage

Inhuman Bondage

Author: David Brion Davis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-06-05

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 0195339444

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Davis begins with the dramatic "Amistad" case, and then looks at slavery in the American South and the abolitionists who defeated one of human history's greatest evils.


Book Synopsis Inhuman Bondage by : David Brion Davis

Download or read book Inhuman Bondage written by David Brion Davis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-05 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Davis begins with the dramatic "Amistad" case, and then looks at slavery in the American South and the abolitionists who defeated one of human history's greatest evils.

Sugar in the Blood

Sugar in the Blood

Author: Andrea Stuart

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2013-01-22

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 030796115X

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In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart’s earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way: the farming of sugar cane, and the swiftly increasing demands for sugar worldwide, would not only lift George Ashby from abject poverty and shape the lives of his descendants, but it would also bind together ambitious white entrepreneurs and enslaved black workers in a strangling embrace. Stuart uses her own family story—from the seventeenth century through the present—as the pivot for this epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery and the making of the Americas. As it grew, the sugar trade enriched Europe as never before, financing the Industrial Revolution and fuelling the Enlightenment. And, as well, it became the basis of many economies in South America, played an important part in the evolution of the United States as a world power and transformed the Caribbean into an archipelago of riches. But this sweet and hugely profitable trade—“white gold,” as it was known—had profoundly less palatable consequences in its precipitation of the enslavement of Africans to work the fields on the islands and, ultimately, throughout the American continents. Interspersing the tectonic shifts of colonial history with her family’s experience, Stuart explores the interconnected themes of settlement, sugar and slavery with extraordinary subtlety and sensitivity. In examining how these forces shaped her own family—its genealogy, intimate relationships, circumstances of birth, varying hues of skin—she illuminates how her family, among millions of others like it, in turn transformed the society in which they lived, and how that interchange continues to this day. Shifting between personal and global history, Stuart gives us a deepened understanding of the connections between continents, between black and white, between men and women, between the free and the enslaved. It is a story brought to life with riveting and unparalleled immediacy, a story of fundamental importance to the making of our world.


Book Synopsis Sugar in the Blood by : Andrea Stuart

Download or read book Sugar in the Blood written by Andrea Stuart and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart’s earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way: the farming of sugar cane, and the swiftly increasing demands for sugar worldwide, would not only lift George Ashby from abject poverty and shape the lives of his descendants, but it would also bind together ambitious white entrepreneurs and enslaved black workers in a strangling embrace. Stuart uses her own family story—from the seventeenth century through the present—as the pivot for this epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery and the making of the Americas. As it grew, the sugar trade enriched Europe as never before, financing the Industrial Revolution and fuelling the Enlightenment. And, as well, it became the basis of many economies in South America, played an important part in the evolution of the United States as a world power and transformed the Caribbean into an archipelago of riches. But this sweet and hugely profitable trade—“white gold,” as it was known—had profoundly less palatable consequences in its precipitation of the enslavement of Africans to work the fields on the islands and, ultimately, throughout the American continents. Interspersing the tectonic shifts of colonial history with her family’s experience, Stuart explores the interconnected themes of settlement, sugar and slavery with extraordinary subtlety and sensitivity. In examining how these forces shaped her own family—its genealogy, intimate relationships, circumstances of birth, varying hues of skin—she illuminates how her family, among millions of others like it, in turn transformed the society in which they lived, and how that interchange continues to this day. Shifting between personal and global history, Stuart gives us a deepened understanding of the connections between continents, between black and white, between men and women, between the free and the enslaved. It is a story brought to life with riveting and unparalleled immediacy, a story of fundamental importance to the making of our world.

Stone

Stone

Author: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2015-05-06

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1452944652

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Stone maps the force, vivacity, and stories within our most mundane matter, stone. For too long stone has served as an unexamined metaphor for the “really real”: blunt factuality, nature’s curt rebuke. Yet, medieval writers knew that stones drop with fire from the sky, emerge through the subterranean lovemaking of the elements, tumble along riverbeds from Eden, partner with the masons who build worlds with them. Such motion suggests an ecological enmeshment and an almost creaturely mineral life. Although geological time can leave us reeling, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that stone’s endurance is also an invitation to apprehend the world in other than human terms. Never truly inert, stone poses a profound challenge to modernity’s disenchantments. Its agency undermines the human desire to be separate from the environment, a bifurcation that renders nature “out there,” a mere resource for recreation, consumption, and exploitation. Written with great verve and elegance, this pioneering work is notable not only for interweaving the medieval and the modern but also as a major contribution to ecotheory. Comprising chapters organized by concept —“Geophilia,” “Time,” “Force,” and “Soul”—Cohen seamlessly brings together a wide range of topics including stone’s potential to transport humans into nonanthropocentric scales of place and time, the “petrification” of certain cultures, the messages fossils bear, the architecture of Bordeaux and Montparnasse, Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste disposal, the ability of stone to communicate across millennia in structures like Stonehenge, and debates over whether stones reproduce and have souls. Showing that what is often assumed to be the most lifeless of substances is, in its own time, restless and forever in motion, Stone fittingly concludes by taking us to Iceland⎯a land that, writes the author, “reminds us that stone like water is alive, that stone like water is transient.”


Book Synopsis Stone by : Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

Download or read book Stone written by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stone maps the force, vivacity, and stories within our most mundane matter, stone. For too long stone has served as an unexamined metaphor for the “really real”: blunt factuality, nature’s curt rebuke. Yet, medieval writers knew that stones drop with fire from the sky, emerge through the subterranean lovemaking of the elements, tumble along riverbeds from Eden, partner with the masons who build worlds with them. Such motion suggests an ecological enmeshment and an almost creaturely mineral life. Although geological time can leave us reeling, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that stone’s endurance is also an invitation to apprehend the world in other than human terms. Never truly inert, stone poses a profound challenge to modernity’s disenchantments. Its agency undermines the human desire to be separate from the environment, a bifurcation that renders nature “out there,” a mere resource for recreation, consumption, and exploitation. Written with great verve and elegance, this pioneering work is notable not only for interweaving the medieval and the modern but also as a major contribution to ecotheory. Comprising chapters organized by concept —“Geophilia,” “Time,” “Force,” and “Soul”—Cohen seamlessly brings together a wide range of topics including stone’s potential to transport humans into nonanthropocentric scales of place and time, the “petrification” of certain cultures, the messages fossils bear, the architecture of Bordeaux and Montparnasse, Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste disposal, the ability of stone to communicate across millennia in structures like Stonehenge, and debates over whether stones reproduce and have souls. Showing that what is often assumed to be the most lifeless of substances is, in its own time, restless and forever in motion, Stone fittingly concludes by taking us to Iceland⎯a land that, writes the author, “reminds us that stone like water is alive, that stone like water is transient.”

Plants and Empire

Plants and Empire

Author: Londa Schiebinger

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 0674043278

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Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life yet they are often at the center of high intrigue. In the eighteenth century, epic scientific voyages were sponsored by European imperial powers to explore the natural riches of the New World, and uncover the botanical secrets of its people. Bioprospectors brought back medicines, luxuries, and staples for their king and country. Risking their lives to discover exotic plants, these daredevil explorers joined with their sponsors to create a global culture of botany. But some secrets were unearthed only to be lost again. In this moving account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the "peacock flower" into an abortifacient, to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean populations.


Book Synopsis Plants and Empire by : Londa Schiebinger

Download or read book Plants and Empire written by Londa Schiebinger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life yet they are often at the center of high intrigue. In the eighteenth century, epic scientific voyages were sponsored by European imperial powers to explore the natural riches of the New World, and uncover the botanical secrets of its people. Bioprospectors brought back medicines, luxuries, and staples for their king and country. Risking their lives to discover exotic plants, these daredevil explorers joined with their sponsors to create a global culture of botany. But some secrets were unearthed only to be lost again. In this moving account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the "peacock flower" into an abortifacient, to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean populations.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Author: Edward Gibbon

Publisher:

Published: 1882

Total Pages: 602

ISBN-13:

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Book Synopsis The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by : Edward Gibbon

Download or read book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire written by Edward Gibbon and published by . This book was released on 1882 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Author: Edward Gibbon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-02-14

Total Pages: 565

ISBN-13: 1108050751

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J. B. Bury's authoritative seven-volume edition (1896-1900) of Edward Gibbon's magisterial account of the relationship between Roman imperialism and Christianity.


Book Synopsis The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by : Edward Gibbon

Download or read book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire written by Edward Gibbon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-14 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. B. Bury's authoritative seven-volume edition (1896-1900) of Edward Gibbon's magisterial account of the relationship between Roman imperialism and Christianity.