Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America ISBN: 9780199788538 Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited Subjects: History;
Anderson (history, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) here joins scholars such as Jeffrey Lockwood (Locust) and Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) in demonstrating that key animals and plants crucially shaped human history. According to Anderson, livestock--specifically cattle, pigs, and sheep--deserve a place in any account of American history, having "produced changes in the land... [and] in the hearts and minds and behavior of" Native Americans and English colonists. With this provocative thesis, Anderson argues that livestock were pivotal historical actors that continually altered Native American-English settler relationships in 17th-century southern New England and tidewater Virginia. Drawing extensively from historical sources to illuminate English beliefs that livestock husbandry epitomized civilization, Anderson richly details Native Americans' and colonists' competing conceptions of nature, land use, and property rights and settlers' domesticated and feral livestock, which provided the pretext for lethal conflicts between the English and Native Americans. Though the thesis is debatable, scholars and interested lay readers will enjoy Anderson's lively, readable narrative. Recommended for academic and public libraries.--Charles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State Coll., PA (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
Virginia DeJohn Anderson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of New England's Generation and co-author (with David Goldfield, et al.) of The American Journey: A History of the United States.
