Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World

334 Pages·2020·6.58 MB·English

by  Martha Chaiklin, Philip Gooding, Gwyn Campbell

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
Montreal, QC, Canada
Gwyn Campbell
Indian Ocean World Centre
McGill University
Montreal, QC, Canada
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
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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.
C
ontents
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 Century 125
Steven Serels
vii
viii CONTENTS
6 The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World in the
Long Nineteenth Century 147
William Gervase Clarence-Smith
7 Commercialisation of Cattle in Imperial Madagascar,
1795–1895 181
Gwyn Campbell
8 Ayutthaya’s Seventeenth-Century Deerskin Trade in the
Extended Eastern Indian Ocean and South China Sea 217
Ilicia J. Sprey and Kenneth R. Hall
9 The Ivory Trade and Political Power in Nineteenth-
Century East Africa 247
Philip Gooding
10 The Flight of the Peacock, or How Peacocks Became
Japanese 277
Martha Chaiklin
Index 315
n C
otes on ontributors
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