Animal history in the modern city: exploring liminality

Animal History in the Modern City Also available from Bloomsbury A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age, edited by Randy Malamud The History of Animals: A Philosophy, by Oxana Timofeeva New Directions in Social and Cultural History, edited by Sasha Handley, Rohan McWilliam and Lucy Noakes Animal History in the Modern City Exploring Liminality Edited by Clemens Wischermann, Aline Steinbrecher and Philip Howell BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Clemens Wischermann, Aline Steinbrecher, Philip Howell and Contributors, 2019 Clemens Wischermann, Aline Steinbrecher and Philip Howell have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image © Bildarchiv der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Licence. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-5403-5 ePDF: 978-1-3500-5404-2 eBook: 978-1-3500-5405-9 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. Contents List of Figures and Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements 1 Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History Clemens Wischermann and Philip Howell 2 Liminal Lives in the New World Isabelle Schürch 3 Liminal Moments: Royal Hunts and Animal Lives in and around Seventeenth-Century Paris Nadir Weber 4 Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World: Liminality and Nuisance in Glasgow and New York City, 1660–1760 Andrew Wells 5 Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold: An Eighteenth-Century Case Study of Liminal Animal Lives in a Southwest German Hometown Dennis A. Frey Jr 6 The Giraffe’s Journey in France (1826–7): Entering Another World Éric Baratay 7 The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog and the Rise of the Modern Slaughterhouse Annette Leiderer 8 It’s Just an Act! Dogs as Actors in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Europe Aline Steinbrecher 9 Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death: The Problem of the Stray in the Victorian City Philip Howell 10 Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush: Humans, Leopards and Initiation in West African History Stephanie Zehnle 11 Betwixt and Between: Making Makeshift Animals in NineteenthCentury Zoological Gardens Wiebke Reinert 12 Liminality in the Post-War Zoo: Animals in East and West Berlin, 1955–61 Mieke Roscher 13 Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses: Domiciles of the Wild in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Cities Dolly Jørgensen Index vi ix xi 1 25 41 55 75 91 105 127 145 161 181 201 221 239 List of Figures and Tables Figures Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 3.1 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3 From Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, Codex Florentinus (1540-1585), Book XII, The Conquest of Mexico, fol. 1v. Courtesy Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence Detail from Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlán, Praeclara Ferdinandi. Cortesii de Noua maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio, Nuremberg. Impressa in celebri ciuitate Norimberga: Per Fridericum Peypus, Nuremberg 1524. Courtesy Library of Congress, Washington Detail from Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, Codex Florentinus (1540-1585), Book XII, The Conquest of Mexico, fol. 68. Courtesy Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence Louis XIII’s hunts in Paris. 1 Château du Louvre (with annexing gardens). 2 Galleries of the Louvre. 3 Gardens of the Tuileries. 4 Gardens of Queen Marguerite. 5 Hôtel de Luxembourg. 6 Saint-Antoine and La Grenelle near Paris (approximately). 7 Château de Vincennes. Map from Mathias Merian, Le Plan de la Ville, Cité, Université et Fauxbourgs de Paris, avec la Description de son Antiquité, 1615 (digital version provided by Michel Huard, www.paris-atlas-historique.fr) T. Maerschalck, A Plan of the City of New-York (1763), showing locations and dates of tanning activity. Courtesy New York Public Library Brand Mark for New York. Minutes of the Executive Council of the Province of New York, 2 vols, ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1910), i. 28 Brand Mark for New Harlem. Minutes of the Executive Council of the Province of New York, 2 vols, ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1910), i. 28 26 29 32 45 63 65 66 List of Figures and Tables Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4 Figure 7.5 Figure 7.6 Figure 7.7 Figure 7.8 Figure 7.9 Figure 8.1 Figure 8.2 Figure 9.1 Master craftsman’s diploma, Heilbronn 1802. From Hans-Peter de Longueville, Kurt Nagel, Benno P. Schlipf and Theo Wershoven, Kostbarkeiten des Fleischerhandwerks (Heidenheim: Rees, 1986), with permission of Professor Kurt Nagel Georg Emanuel Opiz, ‘Female butcher with servant, lady and hawker’, c.1812. Reproduced from Bruno Brandl and Günter Creutzburg, Die Große Walz: Das Handwerk im Spiegel der Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1974), with the permission of the publishers J.F. Schröter, ‘Rural butcher-wife and rural butcher’, c. 1820. Reproduced from Bruno Brandl and Günter Creutzburg, Die Große Walz: Das Handwerk im Spiegel der Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1974), with the permission of the publishers Septimus Rommel (1778–1846), ‘butcher with ox and dog’. Württemberg State Museum, inventory number WLM 9160 c, with permission of Chris Gebel. Toy draft dogs pulling a butcher and his pig. Copyright Nuremberg Toy Museum Certificate of apprenticeship granted by the German Butchers’ Association. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912) Private slaughterhouse with modern interior. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912) Public slaughterhouse. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912) The modern butcher as business owner. Postcard titled ‘Wurstund Fleischwaren-Fabrik Brunner’. Copyright permission granted by the Municipal Archive Munich Training a dog to recognize who is still a virgin: Lang, ‘Einen Hund abzurichten, zu Erkennen wer noch Jungfrau sei’, in Rudolf Lang, Die von mir auf das höchst gebrachte natürliche Zauberey (Augsburg, 1740) Training a dog to perform a trick: from Rudolf Lang, Die von mir auf das höchst gebrachte natürliche Zauberey (Augsburg, 1740), 9 ff Going into the lethal chamber: from Basil Tozer, ‘The Dogs Home, Battersea’, English Illustrated Magazine, volume 13 (1895): 445–9, 447. Courtesy Cambridge University Library vii 107 108 109 110 114 115 115 116 116 135 138 154 viii Figure 9.2 Figure 10.1 Figure 10.2 Figure 12.1 Figure 13.1 Figure 13.2 List of Figures and Tables Coming out of the lethal chamber: from Basil Tozer, ‘The Dogs Home, Battersea’, English Illustrated Magazine, volume 13 (1895): 445–9, 448. Courtesy Cambridge University Library Initiation authorities visiting a town with their human-animal costumes. Photography by Northcote Whitridge Thomas, Sierra Leone 1914/15. Courtesy University of Cambridge, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, NWT P1150206 The Colonial Government engaged hunters to kill leopards. Photography by Northcote Whitridge Thomas, Sierra Leone 1914/15. Courtesy University of Cambridge, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, NWT P1150251 Clearing up the rubble: making space for the new Tierpark, 1955. Bundesarchiv Berlin 183-29610-002, Zentrabild Quasch. 26.3.1955 Crowd gathered in downtown Austin on the Congress Avenue Bridge, as well as on boats on the river, to witness the nightly emergence of bats from under the bridge, 27 March 2016. Photograph by author John James Audubon, Purple Martin, Birds of North America, vol. 1 (1840). Image released into the public domain by the Audubon Society Figure 13.3 Purple martin house in Mabel Osgood Wright, Gray Lady and the Birds (1907) 155 165 166 205 222 224 227 Tables Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 10.1 Table 10.2 Animals listed in early modern German notary instruction manuals. Source: Mannheims, Wie wird ein Inventar erstellt?, 272, 285, 300 Non-human animals represented in Göppingen inventories. Sources: StAG, Inventuren & Teilungen Categories of liminality in colonial West African ‘humanleopard killings’ Spatial and temporal liminality in human and leopard hunting behaviour in colonial West Africa 81 82 164 169 List of Contributors Éric Baratay is professor of contemporary history at Jean Moulin University, Lyon, France, and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His recent books include Le Point de Vue Animal: Une Autre Version de l’Histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2012) and Biographies Animales: Des Vies Retrouvées (Paris: Seuil, 2017). Dennis A. Frey Jr is associate professor of history at Lasell College, Newton, Massachusetts, USA. Philip Howell is senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of At Home and Astray: The Domestic Dog in Victorian Britain (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2015). Dolly Jørgensen is professor of history in the Department of Cultural Studies and Languages at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She has co-edited New Natures: Joining Environmental History with Science and Technology Studies (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), Northscapes: History, Technology and the Making of Northern Environments (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013) and Visions of North in Premodern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018). Annette Leiderer is a doctoral candidate in history at Albert Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany. Wiebke Reinert is a research assistant in the Tier – Mensch – Gesellschaft project area at the University of Kassel, Germany. She has co-edited, with Mieke Roscher et al., the interdisciplinary volume Urbane Tier-Räume (Berlin: Reimer Verlag 2017). Mieke Roscher is assistant professor for Cultural and Social History and the History of Human-Animal Relations at the University of Kassel, Germany. She is author of Ein Königreich für Tiere: Die Geschichte der britischen Tierrechtsbewegung (Marburg: Tectum, 2009). Isabelle Schürch is senior assistant in the Department of Medieval History at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Aline Steinbrecher is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and editor, with Gesine Krüger and Clemens Wischermann, of Tiere und Geschichte: Literarische und Historische Quellen einer Animate History (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2017). x List of Contributors Nadir Weber is Oberassistent in the Section for Early Modern History at the University of Bern, Switzerland. From 2016 to 2018 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz, working on the project ‘A Tamed Society? Interspecies Interactions at the Royal Court of France, 1594-1715’. He is currently editing, with Mark Hengerer, a book on animals in princely courts. Andrew Wells is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany. He has edited, with Sarah Cockram, Interspecies Interactions: Animals and Humans between the Middle Ages and Modernity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). Clemens Wischermann is chair of economic and social history at the University of Konstanz, Germany. His books include Tiere und Geschichte: Literarische und Historische Quellen einer Animate History (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2017), edited with Gesine Krüger and Aline Steinbrecher. Stephanie Zehnle is research associate at the Historical Institute of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, in the Department of Extra-European History. She has edited, with Winfried Speitkamp, Afrikanische Tierräume: Historische Verortungen (Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2014). Acknowledgements The initial impulse for this book came from a discussion with Dieter Schott, on a long walk with Clemens Wischermann and Aline Steinbrecher in the Spring of 2016 on the Reichenau peninsula in southern Germany. Taking up the challenge of Dieter’s conviction that a focus on animal inhabitants and human–animal relations offered a new perspective on modern urban history, Wischermann and Steinbrecher organized a session at the European Association of Urban Historians (EAUH) conference in August 2016, held in Helsinki, Finland. We are very grateful to the EAUH, especially Marjanna Niemi, for offering us a chance to explore these ideas, and we are equally appreciative of the insights and feedback we received from the participants and commentators. The subsequent journey to publication has been an unusually quick and smooth one, for which we would like to thank our contributors and our excellent editorial team at Bloomsbury, Rhodri Mogford and Beatriz Lopez. We are also grateful to Maria Tauber at the University of Konstanz for finding our cover image. xii 1 Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History Clemens Wischermann and Philip Howell A generation ago animal history was in its infancy, if hard to place historiographically. Was it an extension of growing environmental awareness in the humanities, with nonhuman animals as useful proxies for the fate of ‘Nature’ as a whole? Were animals merely the last and least heralded of the marginalized and oppressed groups whose interests are championed by social historians? Should we understand animals as historical agents in their own right, or simply concentrate on how human beings in different times and places have represented them? Historians and scholars from other disciplines continue to offer different answers, but some of the ideas that once seemed outlandish now appear uncontroversial, and the debates themselves have contributed to what is a lively and rapidly developing field.1 If we concern ourselves specifically with urban history, it is clear that non-human animals did not simply disappear from the burgeoning towns and cities that have been seen as the engines and exemplars of human progress. If we consider humanity to be ‘an urban species’, even to the degree that ‘urban spaces make us human’,2 this cannot be because other species have been banished to the countryside or the wilderness. The reliance of urban populations upon draft animals and in situ slaughterhouses is worthy of emphasis; so too the rise of pets or companion animals in a distinctively bourgeois urban order; likewise the presence of wild, feral or invasive animals.3 There is now a rich historiography of animals in urban life, too rich to do more than gesture at here, except to say that the history of cities should now be unthinkable from the perspective of humans alone.4 The best of this scholarship has highlighted the role that non-human animals have played in the production of social difference. It is a theme to which we will return, but it is worth noting here that animal history is not about ‘animals’ on the one hand, and undifferentiated humanity on the other; rather, we are confronted with debates and struggles about the proper place of animals and the humans who accompany them, willingly or unwillingly. Catherine McNeur’s history of Manhattan, for instance, focuses on struggles over animal husbandry in the city, between poor immigrants, for whom the pig or the cow was a vital resource, and the more privileged classes, for whom urban animals were a threat to health, propriety and real estate values.5 In 2 Animal History in the Modern City contrast, Dawn Day Biehler makes the point that, in the case of rats, flies, bedbugs and cockroaches, it was the poor who suffered most from the unwelcome proximity of other urban species.6 In this book we take a related approach, but developed we hope in distinctive ways. First, we essay a more explicitly theoretical take on urban animal history, specifically considering the concept of liminality, developed initially in anthropology but of great value both in historical research and in animal studies, even if some of our suggestions go against the grain of current discussions of liminality. Second, we have a rather longer time span in mind than competing accounts of animal history, avoiding the temptation to equate modernity with the last couple of hundred years, or with a handful of iconic cities. Third, since we are very aware of the largely Anglocentric and anglophone development of animal history, we have tried also to broaden our coverage to include lesser-known places as well as periods; and if we cannot claim to do justice to the need to provincialize the Western experience, we can offer at least a broader account of European urban history and its animal inhabitants.7 * * * We begin then with the theory and concept of liminality. Liminality derives from the Latin limen or limit and describes the experience of being at or on the threshold. It refers at once to the passage from one state to another and the moment of transition, being in-between, neither one thing nor another, or both one thing and the other, or perhaps best of all caught between the no-longer and the not-yet. In anthropology, the concept has been principally invoked to describe the ‘rites of passage’ that govern such an exhilarating but unsettling condition. In this regard, the greatest debt is owed to the French ethnologist and folklorist Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957), whose remarkable book Les Rites de Passage (1909) offered a brief but brilliant description of ‘primitive’ transition rites, backed up by global observations of initiation ceremonies, weddings, funerals and the like.8 Van Gennep argued that such status changes can be found across cultures, apparently always accompanied by rituals designed to control potentially unruly or dangerous social dynamics. Thus van Gennep famously distinguished three consecutive periods: a separation phase (rites de separation), the liminal phase (rites de marge) and lastly the integration phase (rites de agrégation) where the liminal subject is reincorporated.9 Van Gennep preferred to call the middle stage the liminal period proper, and rites of integration/incorporation may thus be referred to more precisely as post-liminal rites.10 This crucial second phase (sometimes called the threshold or conversion phase) is in many ways the most instructive.11 Here we turn to Victor Turner (1920–1983), the British anthropologist who published in the 1960s and 1970s several important restatements and enhancements of van Gennep’s ideas, focusing on this intermediate phase that is marked by disturbance, but is also gravid with opportunity.12 Liminality was, in Turner’s resonant phrase, a ‘fruitful darkness’.13 ‘In its ambivalence this phase harbours the risk of destruction of the existing social structure; on the other hand it offers the possibility of using its creative potential for a beneficial transformation in society.’14 It is the latter that predominates in Turner’s extended analyses, particularly as Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 3 he turns from the anthropology of ‘traditional’ societies to that of the ‘modern’ world. Here the stress is characteristically placed on culture rather than structure, on the individual rather than the collective, and on freedom and experimentation, expressed, for instance, in play, creativity and art. With an eye on the developed rather than the preindustrial world, Turner contrasted the liminal – as we have described it above, in which society’s rules are reasserted, with what he preferred to call the ‘liminoid’, a situation in which individuals elect to suspend or transgress or simply take a break from communal norms. This is a condition whose manifestations tended to be more ‘idiosyncratic and quirky’ than classic liminal phenomena.15 Such liminality becomes the site where the new and the unfamiliar emerges, ‘the cultural space of human creativity’ itself,16 ‘the in-between location of cultural action’.17 Even a cursory sketch like this shows that liminality has been for scholars a ‘fruitful darkness’, but we must add that the harvest has been a long time coming: van Gennep’s insights were sidelined by competing and seemingly more powerful visions of society and modernity, and Turner’s subsequent contributions have been perhaps only fitfully fashionable, especially as the concept of the ‘liminoid’ competes with as much as complements the ‘liminal’.18 Having been a road not taken for so many years, however, it now appears that liminality’s time has arrived, with a recent revival in its fortunes leading to something like a cottage industry of applications and analyses, in an extremely wide range of contexts, including anthropology and archaeology,19 history and geography,20 politics and sociology,21 literature and cultural studies.22 Some of the most important discussions have taken place under the sign of postcolonialism, where liminality, mimicry, ambivalence and, above all, hybridity have long become common currency.23 In an age famously suspicious of grand narratives, liminality offers itself entirely immodestly as a ‘master concept’, and a universal one at that – ‘Cultures and human lives cannot exist without moments of transition, and those brief and important spaces where we live through the in-between.’24 Bjørn Thomassen, whose words these are, even advertises liminality as a ‘central concept within the social sciences’, not at all paradoxically, since he is at pains to reject the temptation to identify the liminal with the marginal.25 For Thomassen, liminality has the perhaps unique potential ‘to push social and political theory in new directions’.26 It has clearly been extended far out from the ‘small-scale, relatively stable and cyclical societies’27 for which it was originally formulated, and it is applied now to entire societies and polities undergoing profound transformations, including eras and epochs of ‘crisis’.28 It has come to signify the condition of modernity itself, with its ‘permanent’ or ‘boundless’ liminality: Something very different happened from the sixteenth century onwards. Liminality became established at the core of the modern project. Play, comedy, gambling, sexuality, entertainment, violence – in short, all the most evident aspects of liminality linked to human experience – took central stage within cultural, political and economic modernity. Simultaneously, at the level of thought, the human sentiments of fear, anxiety, scepticism and doubt (quintessential liminal sentiments) were established as anthropological foundations.29 * * * 4 Animal History in the Modern City The animating question for this book is whether liminality can be applied to nonhuman animals, to the relations between humans and other animals, and to the spaces and environments and societies that they share, the modern city being the case in point. From classic perspectives, this might seem like a doubling down of academic faddishness, grafting liminality onto the concerns of the ‘animal turn’ and the relatively recent emergence of ‘Human-Animal Studies’.30 It may seem perverse and even proscribed, given the discussion of liminality above, where liminality has been regarded as a fundamentally human condition, and a human condition only. In some ways, this reflects the anthropological genealogy of liminality and the anthropocentrism of its core concerns.31 But it might be felt to be more perverse to think of liminality as an exclusively human dilemma/opportunity. Liminality after all is supposed to question fixed boundaries and categories, putting a premium on the hybrid and the provisional, revelling in the creative potential unleashed by being ‘betwixt and between’. For all this, there is an odd reluctance, in our view, to call into question the divide that separates humans from animals, or the social from the natural – with the signal major exception of Susan Merrill Squier’s account of contemporary biomedicine and biotechnology, Liminal Lives, which we discuss briefly.32 Let us simply assert at this stage that anthropocentric definitions of liminality are entirely out of sympathy with the temper of our times, and that they arguably have more in common with the didacticism of sociology’s founding fathers than the creative eccentrics that liminality’s advocates prefer to celebrate. We believe that we need more liminality, and less of the kind of border security that anthropocentrism represents, and which exemplifies the search for boundaries which has marked the most recent discussions of liminality.33 Bjørn Thomassen moves seamlessly from the magisterial to the minatory in his advice that ‘one must therefore also be conscious of its limits – and limits matter!’34 But in trying to avoid the obvious danger that liminality refers to everything – and thus to nothing – Thomassen appears to close down even the possibility that liminality might be a more-than-human condition. In Thomassen’s ‘world in-between’ we do not find any animals, no non-human being. In a similar example of path dependency, though this time from the perspective of literary studies, Roland Borgards promotes the potential of ‘liminal anthropologies’ for rethinking the nature of the human, focusing on ‘those phenomena and processes of an anthropologic self-placement, which come about in spatial and temporal in-betweens. Humanity turns up not as given, but as becoming.’35 But this ‘becoming’ can hardly be understood without invoking the figure of the ‘animal’, the foil to the emergence of ‘humankind’. We have to approach any ‘liminal anthropology’ in a critical manner, alive to ‘the animal lurking within the well-camouflaged site of the human or the human reemerging out of the animal cocoon’.36 The inseparability of ‘becoming-human’ and ‘becoming-animal’ is surely one of the distinguishing marks of modernity’s permanent liminality.37 Donna Haraway, echoing Bruno Latour, provides the pithy summary: ‘We have never been human.’38 When we speak of liminal phenomena, we are thinking not only of individual beings (whether human or non-human), but also of collectives, including communities and societies undergoing processes of transition. Van Gennep argued, perhaps too blithely, that ‘the operation of rites of passage is the same for groups as for individuals’.39 At Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 5 the highest level we should consider threshold phases/spaces that are the result of the breakup of an existing regime and the emergence of an as yet unknown new one. Here, in the step up from the ‘preindustrial’ to the ‘modern’, the ‘indigenous’ to the ‘industrial’, we might feel we are on firmer footing in excluding animal subjects. Yet Turner’s stress on the ‘cultural’ (and thus for him the exclusively human) is a mistake; and even Thomassen’s impressive attempt to construct a liminality that is fit for the purpose of understanding modern societies may be criticized for its anthropocentric instincts – it is rather telling that Thomassen portrays Descartes as a liminal thinker par excellence.40 This is neither historically nor philosophically adequate. From the perspective of philosophy – or at least the kind of cognitive science that Cartesianism appears to approve – it is increasingly evident that there is no ‘Rubicon’ between ourselves and the other animals that ‘no brute will dare to cross’ (as Darwin’s contemporary Max Müller argued); instead, as Ian Ground has recently written, using a pleasingly liminal metaphor: It is much more of a boggy marsh divided by rivulets and streams and the occasional floodplain in which different kinds of minded species find themselves more or less connected and more or less isolated, shaped in unique ways by processes which arise out of the landscape as a whole.41 From the perspective of history, it looks all the more necessary to emphasize the inadequacy of Cartesian reason, even Cartesian ‘doubt’, when it comes to the separation of humans from other animals.42 Limits are not boundaries, certainly. Our understanding of liminality must still consider the power, however transient and dynamic, of the urge to categorize and organize the world, in discourse and material reality, along with the proliferation of hybrids and monsters that is the inevitable result of such projections of order. As noted above, Susan Squier’s Liminal Lives is an important reference point and resource here, critiquing as she does Victor Turner’s inadequate emphasis on culture and the symbolic rather than on biology or nature. She and others have shown how the distinction between human and animal has ‘come under pressure’ with the development of new techniques such as xenotransplantation, well past the point of no return.43 The kind of hybrids we might most profitably focus on now are not so much Homi Bhabha’s unsettled colonial and postcolonial subjects but rather the intermediate, transgressive, impure ‘things’ that Bruno Latour puts forward as distinctive products of the ‘modern constitution’.44 Simply put, we no longer need to rehearse long-outdated dichotomies such as nature and culture, but rather to point out the numerous parallels, contrasts, interrelations and inseparability of the human and non-human forms of liminality. This is precisely what this book wants to explore. In contrast to Squier, the liminal animal lives we examine are more broadly conceived, and located in history and geography rather than in literature and science and technology studies. Our overriding interest is in the ways in which non-human animals have emerged in conditions of modernity (here understood as the period stretching from the sixteenth century to the present), and in the cities that are the greatest achievement of human ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ but which have never been successfully ‘purified’ of animality in the ways that the ‘modern constitution’ requires. 6 Animal History in the Modern City It may be asked all the same whether liminal animal lives merely repeat the patterns of liminality that can be found with people, or else whether entirely different and novel liminalities are formed between humans and animals. We might in the first case enquire whether animals are also ‘participants in a rite of passage, between everyday life and a higher or different state of existence’.45 We can invoke the transitional civil status of animals, including the ‘actions and reactions between sacred and profane’ that are so vital in the classic discussions.46 That pets may be buried, even married, in the grief or at the whim of their companion humans is perhaps too glib an observation. But rites of passage are clearly in play when (for instance) an animal is sent to slaughter (and not just in what is so misleadingly referred to as ‘ritual slaughter’).47 Animals used in scientific experiments are also in transition from being mere matériel to involuntary but honoured ‘sacrifices’, marking a literal journey from the profane to the sacred.48 We can consider the movement of animals from one place to another, the ‘territorial passage’ so crucial for van Gennep and his followers, which is (for all that it is often evaded) regulated and controlled by legislation, convention, bureaucracy – and by animalian rites of passage of various kinds. We should also think of the host of formal and informal rites governing the liminal civil status of ‘companion animals’, as they are moved for instance from the condition of surplus animality in shelters and refuges (as ‘pets in waiting’), to the emotional and legal property of human beings in their ‘forever home’. And this is only really to think about the Western world, with scant regard for the diverse naturecultures to be found elsewhere.49 There is in short no compelling reason why only humans should be liminal subjects. We should also emphasize that we want not merely to illustrate the figure of the ‘liminal animal’ (‘liminanimal’ is an appealing alternative),50 but to foster an understanding of how and where and why human and animal liminality have developed together. It is essential at this point to acknowledge that liminality is not the same as marginality, particularly as this has come to be understood in terms of (human) social exclusion.51 We have every sympathy with the complaint that to reduce liminality to marginality is to lose any sense of its specificity: There is an extent to which liminality in recent years has invaded our academic (and popular) vocabularies as part of a fashion, identifying ever new forms of social exclusion and renaming existing ones. Used in such away, the term has nothing additional to offer. While liminality and marginality share affinities (being boundary-concepts), they are also very different terms: that which is interstitial is neither marginal nor on the outside; liminality refers, quite literally, to something placed in an in-between position.52 A focus on the liminality of non-human animals must not exclude human animals, however, nor the ways in which human and animal liminality and marginality typically inform each other. It is vital that we do not homogenize ‘man’ or ‘humanity’ in contradistinction to the ‘animal’, as human–animal studies is perhaps wont to do.53 Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as ‘speciesism’, if that is supposed to mean equating the interests of all humans and placing these above the interests of all other animals: Cary Wolfe has consistently and persuasively argued that speciesism instead Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 7 underwrites all forms of exclusion and othering, including the withholding of full ‘humanhood’ from many groups of human beings.54 We need to pay attention instead to the co-production of species and social differentiation: for those who are devalued and oppressed by mechanisms of economic exploitation, political domination and ideological propaganda are not only animals, but also many groups and conditions of people.55 We might argue that the abjection of the animal, including the ‘creatureliness’ of the human animal, is part of the wider transformations of modernity captured by the concept of liminality.56 Any consideration of animals’ liminality must then engage critically with the categories and practices imposed by the powerful upon the less privileged, extending their influence from abject human to animal and back again. We must recognize, however, that non-human animals have liminality thrust upon them in ways that do not exactly correspond with the experience of human beings, however ill-favoured. Here the inadequacy of the human imagination of liminality is acknowledged, along with its discursive and material power to set boundaries. Take the emergence of zoos. As a characteristic modern and urban phenomenon, zoos represent a signal intervention into animal lives, certain animals becoming ‘wild’ or ‘exotic’ by being transported and re-presented in new environments and institutions. The zoo becomes a liminal space not just because imported captive animals are particularly significant liminal subjects, separated as they are from their previous environments and incorporated or reincorporated into a new world. Zoos also construct within modern urban societies a remarkable form of liminal animality, for while human visitors to zoos are clearly an example of the liminality produced in leisure spaces,57 we must read the human encounter with exotic beastliness as one of ‘the rituals we construct around the figures of animals and “the animate”’.58 Zoos have gone on to proclaim themselves participants in the protection and conservation of global biodiversity, individual animals being understood with reference to a wider ‘population’ or gene-pool. Even animals in ‘the wild’ are therefore endowed with a liminal existence – not merely because they are precarious, but because they too inhabit the global landscape of conservation whose management of ‘wildlife’ only serves to disrupt the seeming clarity of wild versus captive animals.59 Here the corrosive effect of liminality means that established categories of differences between types of being dissolve and blur: the seemingly straightforward distinction between what is called ‘in situ’ and ‘ex situ’ conservation – captive breeding versus protection ‘in the wild’ – is quite impossible to sustain. The same is true of a different kind of ‘wildness’ to be found in the humandominated world, especially in ‘civil’ society and in cities. Take the English term ‘feral’, used for animals defined as having escaped from human control.60 This category might include animals understood as more or less under human control, but at the same time half wild, as with the case of rabbits in the dunes of the early modern Dutch Republic: a classic liminal landscape, outside the city but so influenced by humans that it should be seen as an example of the ‘growing grey zone between Nature and Culture’.61 Petra van Dam argues that these rabbits (introduced for meat and fur production) are neither wild nor tame but instead ‘feral’ – living in the dunes in a sort of yard or corral, they could choose their sexual partners, but their reproduction is restricted by, for instance, selective elimination of small females and old males every year, as well as by changing 8 Animal History in the Modern City the land and limiting mobility.62 Such fences are constructed to create distance between animals and humans – and take imaginative and cultural as well as physical form – so that we are clearly looking at the creation of boundaries, limes, at the same time that the wild/domesticated distinction is undercut by these recalcitrant animal subjects. ‘Feral’ here points to liminality rather than a straightforward ‘wildness’. ‘Feral’ may also be used for cats living as family members in urban households, perhaps with their own cat door and unrestricted mobility, but still subject to human beings through their sterilization and neutering. Then, and perhaps most significantly, there is the meaning of feral in regard to those animals who live close to us, without being easily designated as ‘wild’ or ‘domesticated’. These animals are ecologically dependent on people, living in ‘our’ cities, but not under immediate control.63 The warning of Raymond and Lorna Coppinger, thinking about the difficulty of classifying ‘street’ dogs as ‘strays’ or as ‘feral’ from the standpoint of behavioural ecology, is particularly pertinent here: Trying to classify dogs in broad categories such as family dogs or neighborhood dogs or feral dogs is difficult because many dogs change categories during their lifetimes. Many change from the start of the day to the end of it, but wake up tomorrow back in yesterday’s first category.64 From the perspective of political theory, by way of contrast, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka have recently conceptualized these creatures as ‘liminal animal denizens’, with a definitive in-between status, as ‘co-residents of human communities, but not co-citizens. They belong here amongst us, but are not one of us’.65 Such liminal or commensal animals are sometimes welcome, sometimes despised and persecuted, but mostly tolerated or ignored. They live amongst us regardless of whether we invite them, actively support them, or want them as part of the community. Many humans see very few benefits to the presence of these animals and have subjected them to rigorous campaigns of suppression and control. Yet … we must accept that they belong here amongst us: they have no wilderness option. And deportation almost certainly results in death.66 Donaldson and Kymlicka’s influential arguments, referenced by several contributors to this book, deserve further discussion, for all that their political theory of animal rights ignores the anthropological discussions of liminality. Their framing of animal citizenship is curiously static, dominated by the territory of the nation state even when it discusses, say, animal migration. We can note, however, that non-human animals cross national borders not merely as an accidental collision of natural imperatives and political imaginaries but through their entanglement with us: animal passports, for instance, proactively police the ‘liminal zones’ that potentially threaten human cultural orders.67 Liminal citizenship in Donaldson and Kymlicka’s sense concerns precisely the same issues raised in the classic anthropological debates about rites of passage, for all that this connection has not to our knowledge been systematically explored. There is, to repeat, no obvious reason to exclude animals from the analysis of the liminality of the modern, if such a production of such troubled categories as ‘wildness’, Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 9 the ‘feral’, the ‘exotic’, are at all representative. If modernity is seen as saturated with the liminal, it makes no sense to pursue its ‘purification’ of nature, animals, ‘beastliness’ and the ‘creaturely’. We might go further still. If we follow the lead of Thomassen and Szakolczai (and others) in defining modernity as the ‘centralization’ and ‘permanentization’ of liminality,68 it is tempting to see non-human animals as the most modern, most liminal creatures of all, subject as they are to the vicissitudes of anthropocentric reason, the fateful power to approve of their proper places and terms of existence, ever more vulnerable to anthropogenic changes up to and including the spectre of extinction. In this regard, feral designates the space outside our (human) political institutions: ‘These are the animals, after all, who persistently resist human attempts to make them fit into our imagined communities or formations, whether as domesticated animals who submit to our regimes of power, or benign intruders into our spaces who do not threaten our existence, or as valorized “wild” animals whom we have decided we should protect.’69 Dinesh Wadiwel acknowledges the potential of ‘feral’ as a badge of resistance, but pointedly asks ‘Who would actually want to be feral?’, given the vulnerability to violence that comes with such a liminal status.70 Non-human lives have arguably always lived in ‘an in-between or marginal zone’,71 shadowed by death, a liminality that has no precise parallel with that belonging to humans, who can at least appeal to ‘rights’ in the face of appalling ‘inhumanity’. Non-human animals in this view are not merely ‘a highly liminal category possessed of a capacity to disrupt the coherence of the dualist structure of humanist ontology’, but, far more emphatically, iconic liminal subjects.72 * * * What we lack in such abstract discussion is empirical research on the drawing of such demarcations and the nature of such transgressions in concrete historical and social contexts. This is precisely what this book sets out to address.73 There have been some important recent works on animals and the city, including historical ones, but it is fair to say that studies of urban history, urban form and architecture have barely begun to deal with the presence of animals.74 Our leading questions are directed towards the city as the historical site in which human and non-human species met, clashed, uneasily or benignly cohabited, developed new ways of living together, all in ways fundamentally different from the existing alternatives of agrarian exploitation or wildlife predation. Properly understanding the nature of animals in conditions of urban modernity requires us to look beyond such straightforward narratives, humans on one side of the fence, animals as mere use objects on the other. The lack of consideration in such discussion of the agency of animals is particularly striking.75 We certainly need a more dynamic and complex urban history, where the limits that keep one world apart from the other are all the time in flow.76 What we envisage would be akin to the kind of ‘multispecies ethnography’ that has recently achieved a degree of prominence, in which ‘creatures previously appearing on the margins of anthropology – as part of the landscape, as food for humans, as symbols – have been pressed into the foreground. … Animals, plants fungi, and microbes once confined in anthropological accounts to the realm of zoe or “bare life” – that which is killable – have started to appear alongside humans in 10 Animal History in the Modern City the realm of bios, with legibly biographical and political lives.’77 The now familiar focus on when species meet78 is eminently a historical question, and a geographical one too – the issue of where species meet is classically liminal because our focus is on the city as a ‘contact zone’, ‘where lines separating nature from culture have broken down, where encounters between Homo sapiens and other beings generate mutual ecologies and coproduced niches’.79 The challenge to conventional history is obvious, and we do not want to play down the difficulties involved: All this means that it is necessary to expand our current definition of history – ‘the science of men in time’ – still favoured by many historians, where there is nothing sacred about it, as it is a historical construct. The definition of history must now once again be broadened, becoming the science of living beings in time and directing its attention to their evolutions, at least where there is a historical record enabling the historians to do their job and make use of their skills.80 But this is also an opportunity that we as historians cannot afford to miss, if we want, as Baratay suggests above, to do our job properly. All history is animal history of one kind or another. We offer liminality as nothing less than a governing category in any such ‘science of living beings in time’, any putative ‘animal history’ – or ‘animate history’ as we prefer, given the emphatic stress on animals as active agents rather than merely as objects of historical curiosity. This perspective is not confined to history, and of course takes its inspiration from a host of philosophical and theoretical work, but it is developed in the same terms as Éric Baratay’s ‘histoire vivante’, the challenge to historical conventions of a truly enlivened history, in which human beings can no longer be considered insulated from other species and forms of life.81 The substantive chapters that follow are explorative rather than definitive, taking the theoretical insights of liminality as a cue to rethinking the nature of modern urban history and how we might go about researching and writing it. They are presented in rough chronological order, taking us from the beginnings of the modern age to the late twentieth century. Isabelle Schürch begins this book with that monument to modernity, the ‘discovery’ of the ‘New World’, revisiting as she does so some classic questions concerning urban form, cosmography, but also the role of animals as agents of empire. Her account disturbs both anthropocentric and Eurocentric pieties. Instead of the imposition of European urban planning, European categories and taxonomies simply replacing those of the conquered peoples, Schürch shows how the Mesoamerican urban scene became a liminal space or contact zone in which both the Spanish and the indigenous peoples struggled to accommodate themselves to new realities. Schürch takes her stand on the utility of liminality in identifying moments of transition in which normal limits to thought and behaviour are relaxed, and new social and political imaginaries emerge. Questioning the categorical separation of human and non-human lives, Schürch offers an alternative narrative of New Spain, as a dynamic process of incomprehension and accommodation rather than the seemingly decisive ‘conquest’. In the following chapter, Nadir Weber uses liminality to explore the lives of animals caught up in the royal hunting practices of the French ancien régime.82 His Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 11 principal focus is on time: the ‘liminal moments’, as he understands them, in the lives of animals, which act as doors or portals through which an individual animal moves from one category, status or moral dimension to another. These are rites de passage, in the orthodox conception, except whereas anthropology is interested in the transition within a human society, Weber considers the relationships that exist between species. In the amplifying crises represented by the wars of religion, the regency of Marie de’ Medici and the French civil wars, hunting provided a performance of stability and rightful order in the drama of society and nature alike. Hunting is inseparable from the liminal histories of Louis XIII and XIV, the main human subjects of this chapter. What, however, of the animals themselves? Weber argues that they too had their liminal moments – that their status derived not from their spatial locus, and the change from one moral location to another, the ‘wild’ to the ‘domestic’. He shows how misleading these ideas are when read back uncritically in history. In France, hunting was so central to kingly power that animals were provided for the king and his court to pursue – bred and protected and cared for in order that they might be hunted not only in the royal hunting domains but also in the gardens and parks of Paris. Thinking of the elaborate ‘machinery’ at work here, Weber speaks of the industrial farming of livestock – but we might think too of hunting’s rapprochement with conservation, and, more specifically, of the phenomenon of ‘canned hunting’. Whatever the genealogy involves, it is clear that hunting here has little to do with the ‘wild’ or the ‘wilderness’, nor even the country as opposed to the city. Andrew Wells takes the argument about early modern liminal animal lives in novel directions, looking at the liminal presence of animals even after death (he names this ‘zombie liminality’), and also at the role of space in the identification of liminality (the significance of interstitial spaces tending to be neglected in the anthropologists’ sustained interest in rites of passage). His specific theme is the development of nuisance as a legal category in early modern Glasgow and New York. Nuisance is an aspect of tort law that is famously or notoriously confusing; Wells rushes in, however, where even professionals fear to tread, examining how free-roaming animals such as the iconic, irrepressible pig (as well as the more companionable and respectable dog) contributed to legal debates and urban statutes around what constituted a nuisance and what should be done about it. Wells reminds us to always historicize and not to read backwards even seemingly straightforward understandings of what makes an animal ‘liminal’ – as a ‘pest’ or ‘vermin’, for instance (which in this period was a matter of judgement and very flexible in its application, taking in animals as different as pigs or wolves, dependent on circumstance). But perhaps the most startling application of animal liminality here is the transition from life to death, from roaming creatures to rendered things: even after death, animals might yet be a nuisance, along with a variety of their tradesmen and their worksites. By taking us to a consideration of these ‘zombie nuisances’, Wells shows us how inherently unstable were the legal and cultural arguments about animal and human liminality. Dennis Frey similarly examines ‘the more intimate cosmos of early modernity’,83 using the German city of Göppingen to examine a culture caught between the codification of animals – most decisively as property – and the survival, even elaboration, of practices and relationships that put the lie to this similarly only apparently straightforward classification. A world away from the kind of intellectual 12 Animal History in the Modern City precision that the early modern period (another liminal category, of course) would become famous for – under the name of Cartesianism – lay the daily lives of the common sort, men and women whose encounters with non-human animals were more sophisticated and instructive than we are led to believe by some of the grand surveys of the death of nature, the rise of capitalism and rampant commodification, and wholesale animal exploitation. While not denying the force of these narratives, Frey’s microhistory recovers an urban world or habitus in which people lived with and depended on the animals who outnumbered them in the official counts, and which fostered complex and surprising connections. Frey takes the apparatuses of modernity and moves on from their obvious message concerning ownership of animals to the fact that as people in their life courses were subject to the sacraments and rites of passage, their bundled animal property and the relationships with animals these represented underwent their own liminal transformations. The lawyers and the notaries provided a secular version of the pastoral offices, offering the hope of a smooth transition from one state to another, but these were constantly threatened by the vagaries of urban life, the disruptions and disasters that modernity has never been able to banish. In a central chapter Éric Baratay explores the experience of the giraffe presented by the Pasha of Egypt to the new king of France, Charles X. Following the programme set out in his own Le Point de Vue Animal (which we have translated here as the more proactive ‘standpoint’ rather than the somewhat passive ‘point of view’), Baratay projects himself into the psychology of an individual animal separated from him by two hundred years as well as the species divide.84 While some commentators have refused this possibility Baratay refuses to accept the various admonitions, abjurations and reductios ad absurdum that are assembled against trying to see (and for that matter touch, and smell, and sense) the world from the position of the animal other. Armed with contemporary ethology as well as with archival skills, he reconstructs the giraffe’s journey from its landing in Marseilles to its enclosure at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, seven hundred kilometres in space, and eight months in time (or twenty years if we include the rest of her lifetime in Paris). Baratay focuses on the liminal experiences she endured: the stress, anxiety and fear she felt, but also the process of adaptation or accommodation, even habituation, not only for her (she is known today as Zarafa) but also for the humans around her (a motley company of mahouts, naturalists, wranglers, spectators variously awed, frightened, eventually even bored and indifferent). Zarafa’s tale, in the hands of Baratay, is more than just a biography: nor is it a treatise on what it is like to be a giraffe. It is an exploration rather of how what it means to be an animal is dependent on the changing circumstances these particular animals and these particular humans found themselves in – not then the essentially unchanging natural history of giraffa camelopardalis, but the twists and turns of a recognizably individual, necessarily transitional, experience. Annette Leiderer’s chapter on German butcher dogs charts the changing moral and physical status of the animals who were traditional partners in the artisan butchery profession, walking and working side by side with their human companions, and sharing with them their liminal position in German society. Butcher dogs were suspect, as their masters were, for brutality and even cruelty; yet the providers of meat for the community took part in public festivals and enjoyed a professional camaraderie. All Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 13 this changed, however, as Leiderer shows, with a series of developments in the later nineteenth century, including the reorganization of the German meat industry, the rise of the sanitary movement and the new municipal slaughterhouses, legislation in the German states and cities concerning draft animals and public hygiene, and the influence of animal welfare movements. The net result was the differentiation of German butchery, the reincorporation of the artisan and retail butcher into modern urban society – and (no small transformation) the elimination of the butcher dog and his public and private freedoms. Instead of being valourized as part of a human– animal pairing, the butcher dog became a breed, defined by its ‘natural’ behaviour or characteristics, and thus ‘merely’ an animal. It is a salutary reminder of the world we have lost. Aline Steinbrecher also considers the place of the dog in the modern European city, though her conclusions are more encouraging, charting as she does the persistence of working human–animal partnerships in the public sphere. Looking at the phenomenon of trained dog acts from the early eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, Steinbrecher sees these performing dogs as exemplary liminal creatures. Dogs were iconically liminal, as the preceding and following chapters insist, but performing dogs were special because they attest to the complex relationship with human beings necessary for the act to be possible at all. At one level, ‘artistic dogs’ who could perform on command, or mimic human abilities such as reading, calculating or even speaking, appear liminal because the boundary between the human and animal is called into question, whether this is for comic effect or prompting of serious speculation. The ‘scholar dog’ joins the learned pig and the talking parrot in the ranks of creatures whose abilities – or lack of them – shadow the rise of anthropocentric reason.85 But Steinbrecher is less interested in exposing the ‘tricks’ that lay behind such animal ‘frauds’ and ‘freaks’.86 Unlike, say, the famous chess-playing ‘automaton’, the Turk, animal acts were no illusion, but instead the product of careful training and collaboration between animal and human.87 It is the techniques of this trans-species training that constitute for Steinbrecher the real magic of these performances, and which make dogs such exemplary liminal animals. In Chapter 9 Philip Howell puts the focus on the liminal position of the ‘stray’ dog in Victorian Britain, concentrating less on the classic anthropological theories of liminality than on our understanding of ‘commensal’ urban animals and the recent suggestions in political theory that a class of ‘liminal’ animals might be accorded some measure of political inclusion. Howell is cautious about such moves, however, particularly insofar as the theoretical and historiographical imagination on display is so unconvincing: ‘Commensal’ suggests a neat separation between human and animal worlds, nature and the city, say, while the political discussion is curiously incurious about the ways in which liminality has been and is produced. Arguing for a re-inoculation of liminality into these discussions of urban animals, Howell uses the history of the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in London to examine the difficulties in drawing distinctions between ‘wild’ and ‘domestic’ (the dangerous street dog or ‘stray’ as opposed to the properly housed ‘pet’), and even between ‘human’ and ‘animal’, as the category of the ‘stray’ moved from human poor to canine unfortunate and back again. He argues that the political liminality at issue is not a stage or a status so much as an effect of attempts to 14 Animal History in the Modern City address what he refers to as ‘the excessive and unruly anthrozoological quality of the liminal’. The most fateful result is that such street dogs hover precariously between life and death. The grace period that separated a life on the streets from the lethal chamber, the process by which humanitarian ‘rescue’ turns into humane killing, could be as short as a few days – a liminal phase or period, for sure, but also evidence of the permanent liminality in which even favoured animals find themselves in the modern city. In a chapter which steps outside Europe, Stephanie Zehnle uses her research into the killing of humans by ‘human leopards’ in British colonial West Africa to endorse Arnold van Gennep’s and Victor Turner’s discussion of liminal phases or states in rites of passage – but also to critique their lack of interest, implicit or explicit, in nonhuman animals. Despite the formative role of non-human animals and nature in their theorization of initiation rituals in ‘indigenous’ societies, neither of the two great theorists of liminality seem to treat the other-than-human as much more than a foil to their core anthropological focus on the transformation of individual human beings within ‘indigenous’ communities. But van Gennep’s ‘période de marge’ and Turner’s ‘middle stage’ typically necessitate a crossing from ‘human’ to ‘animal’ or to ‘nature’, so that it makes sense to extend the principle of reciprocity to animals as liminal subjects, undergoing liminal periods and inhabiting liminal spaces. The most striking claim here is that not only human youths but juvenile leopards were bound up in initiation rites – metaphorically, as boys became leopards before they could become men (and were expected to predate human communities, sometimes in leopard-guise), but also because leopards too were forced by circumstance (in the dry seasons, for instance) or by ontogeny (adolescent males seeking territories and mating opportunities of their own, say) to transgress the divide between village and bush, the human and natural/ animal/wild worlds. Bringing animals back in is not a sideshow to our understanding of liminal rites of passage – for even if we were only interested in the liminal lives of humans, without this ethnographic/ethological reciprocity we cannot hope for an accurate understanding of what it means to separate and to be reincorporated into a community. Zehnle returns us to human history as well as to animal nature, seeing them ultimately as inseparable. In Chapters 11 and 12 we move to that much-studied, but also much-misunderstood institution, the urban zoo. Wiebke Reinert reminds us that the zoo’s history necessarily invokes its liminality, caught as it is between earlier and overlapping spaces of animal exhibition, and indeed never quite shaking off the necessity to entertain as well as to educate, never quite becoming the idealized institution its boosters promised. Instead of a scientifically authorized ‘modern nature’ presented in improving and bourgeoisifying fashion, Reinert demonstrates how dependent German zoos were on appealing to the emotions, in presenting animals in terms little different from the fairs and the circuses and menageries. The role of wards and keepers as middlemen is also recognized here, vital as they were to the presentation of often uncooperative animals to the paying public, themselves less cooperative and cultivated than zoo promoters touted. If the zoo was a kind of hybrid institution, and its practices too, captive animals were, in Reinert’s terms, ‘makeshifts’, conscripts in the kind of social and cultural transformations that the zoo was supposed to effect, but even when docile and goodnatured endowed with only precarious lives. The idea that animals are agents or actors Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 15 has become a familiar refrain, but in Reinert’s hands these zoo animals are perhaps merely jobbing actors rather than the ‘stars’ of the animal entertainment industry. Mieke Roscher considers the zoo in her chapter on the political geography of Berlin and Germany after the Second World War. Taking the prominent argument for political liminality in times of crisis to heart, she argues that zoo animals became unwilling participants in the confrontation between West and East, with their distinctive visions of society and of the future development of the state. There are, for Roscher, multiple forms of liminality on offer in the contrasting history of the Berlin Zoo in the Western sector, and the Tierpark in the east, including the transformation of sites and landscapes, the employment opportunities for men and women, and the development of the tourist gaze. But the central argument is that animals become liminal not in the general sense of being caught between the wild and the domestic, but in particular historical conjunctures – here, a city being rebuilt, divided into zones of control, soon to be cut in half by the Wall, before eventual German reunification (something that was made possible, and was mirrored in, the unification of these once rival zoos). Roscher thus tacks between the more general cultural history of the zoo and the more specific cultural history of Berlin and the two Germanies, informed in particular by Thomasssen’s discussion of liminality as produced by a breakdown of social and political order and the attempted or accomplished transition from one regime to another. We should not see the captive animals as mere symbols or markers but as agents or actors, the liminality of whose lives should not be read as marginal or irrelevant to the grand narratives of political history. Dolly Jørgensen’s final chapter focuses on the ways in which urban animals live with us. She is not so much interested in these animals as marginal ‘denizens’, to repeat Donaldson and Kymlicka’s term, suggesting as it does a very compromised inclusion in our spaces and societies: the kind of skulking, scurrying and scavenging we think of when we think of ‘feral’ animals, ‘pests’ or ‘critters’ that have adapted to the opportunities we have created.88 Instead, Jørgensen reminds us of the long history of aesthetic and pragmatic appreciation for urban companions who are neither ‘domestic’ nor ‘wild’ in the conventional sense. Birds like purple martins, valued for protecting chickens from birds of prey, or controlling the insects that threatened crops, were encouraged to settle and breed from the first peoples of America to the advent of the modern age. Even bats roosting under bridges, once seen as unwelcome and even dangerous migrants, could be rehabilitated, even fêted. Jørgensen flies a flag for the utility of concepts like wild and tame, artificial and natural, for all that we know these are hybridized, mixed-up and unsettled. By placing her stress on the degree of human intentionality and artifice at work in the construction of habitats appropriated for urban animals, which from their point of view or umwelt is an undifferentiated natural opportunity, Jørgensen refuses to choose between the one term and the other. By thinking of cities as second nature, a concept she also rehabilitates, and drawing too on insights from science and technology studies, she shows how various species, groups and individuals have historically domesticated our cities and become themselves domesticated, in the most generous sense. Taking us right up to the present day, bat-watching on a bridge in the Texas capital, we are enjoined to think of how humans and animals have learnt to build urban 16 Animal History in the Modern City modernity together. We are seemingly a world away from the European ‘conquest’ of America where we began, but this more-than-human urban history is likewise best seen as dynamic, never-ending or, better, ‘open ended’,89 marked with misunderstandings and violence, but also with adaptation and even inclusion. It is a fitting conclusion to this book. Notes 1 For an introductory discussion, see Harriet Ritvo, ‘Animal Planet’, Environmental History 9, no. 2 (2004): 204–20. Harriet Ritvo can claim to have begun modern animal history, with her The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). For a recent overview, see Joshua Specht, ‘Animal History after Its Triumph: Unexpected Animals, Evolutionary Approaches, and the Animal Lens’, History Compass 14, no. 7 (2016): 326–36. 2 The first phrase we take from Edward Glaeser, The Triumph of the City (London: Pan Macmillan, 2012). This edition has the cover subtitle, ‘How Urban Spaces Make Us Human’. 3 For introductions to the theme of urban animals in urban history, see Peter Atkins, ed., Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories (London: Routledge, 2012); Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth-Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Hannah Velten, Beastly London: A History of Animals in the City (London: Reaktion, 2013). 4 Frederick L. Brown, The City is More than Human: An Animal History of Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016). 5 Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 6 Dawn Day Biehler, Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014). 7 We should note the development of animal history in France and in Germany, in particular, though there are other examples. Our contributor Éric Baratay is surely the most prominent French animal historian, and the best introduction to his influential work is Le Point de Vue Animal: Une Autre Version de l’Histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2012). In Germany, guides to a flourishing historiography can be found in Dorothee Brantz and Christof Mauch, eds., Tierische Geschichte: Die Beziehung von Mensch und Tier in der Kulter der Moderne (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010), and Gesine Krüger, Aline Steinbrecher and Clemens Wischermann, eds., Tiere und Geschichte: Konturen einer Animate History (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2014). 8 Arnold van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage (Paris: Nourry, 1909). The English edition is Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). ‘Primitive’ is not of course part of the contemporary vocabulary. 9 These are consecutive and distinct, but may of course overlap and blend: a rite of incorporation such as a graduation segues into a rite of separation, for instance. 10 Van Gennep, Rites of Passage, 11; Bjørn Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 3. 11 This discussion draws on Ulrike Stohrer, ‘Väter der Ritualtheorie: Arnold van Gennep und die Übergangsriten und Victor Turners Begriff der “Liminalität”’, journal-ethnolo- Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 17 gie.de. Frankfurt a. M., Museum der Weltkulturen, 2008. Available online: http://www. journal-ethnologie.de/Deutsch/Schwerpunktthemen/Schwerpunktthemen_2008/ Ethnologische_Theorien/Vaeter_der_Ritualtheorie/index.phtml (accessed 23 January 2017). The most accessible introduction to Turner’s ideas is Victor Turner, ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 93–111. Turner, ‘Betwixt and Between’, 110. Stohrer, ‘Väter der Ritualtheorie’ (trans. Clemens Wischermann). Turner, ‘Variations on a Theme of Liminality’, 45. Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern, 10. Arup Ratan Chakraborty, ‘Liminality in Post-Colonial Theory: A Journey from Arnold Van Gennep to Homi K. Bhabha’, 145. Available online: www. Liminality-inpost-colonial-theory-a-journey-from-arnold-vangennep-to-homi-k-bhabha. html (accessed 15 July 2017), emphasis added. Victor Turner, ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 53–92. A critique and alternative is presented in Bjørn Thomassen and Maja Balle, ‘From liminoid to limivoid: Understanding Contemporary Bungee Jumping from a Cross Cultural Perspective’, Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice Volume 4, no. 1 (2012): 59–93. To give just a recent example, Anne Haour, Outsiders and Strangers: An Archaeology of Liminality in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). For instance, Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts, eds., Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-Between (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). For instance, Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary and Frederic Giraut, eds., Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For instance, Thomas Phillips, Liminal Fictions in Postmodern Culture: The Politics of Self-Development (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). A classic account is Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). See also Arup Ratan Chakraborty, ‘Liminality in Post-colonial Theory’. Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern, 4. Ibid., 1, emphasis in original. Ibid. Turner, ‘Betwixt and Between’, 93. See, for instance, Part III in Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra, eds., Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (New York: Berghahn, 2015). Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern, 14. Permanent liminality has long been promoted by Arpad Szakolczai: for a recent discussion, see Permanent Liminality and Modernity: Analysing the Sacrificial Carnival Through Novels (London: Taylor & Francis, 2016). For certain issues and problems in this prospectus, particularly for history and the humanities, see Cary Wolfe, ‘“Human, All Too Human”: Animal Studies” and the Humanities’, pmla 124, no. 2 (2009): 564–75. With regard to human–animal relationships, see Helen Kopnina, ‘Toward Conservational Anthropology: Addressing Anthropocentric Bias in Anthropology’, Dialectical Anthropology 36, nos. 1–2 (2012): 127–46. Susan Merrill Squier, Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). The paradoxes are expressed in Harald Wydra, Bjørn Thomassen and Agnes Horvath, ‘Liminality and the Search for Boundaries’, in Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of 18 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 Animal History in the Modern City Liminality, ed. Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra (New York: Berghahn, 2015), 1–8. Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern, 7. Elsewhere Thomassen cautions against the ‘indiscriminate application of liminality’, including Turner’s elaboration of the ‘liminoid’: see Bjørn Thomassen, ‘Revisiting Liminality: The Danger of Empty Spaces’, in Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-Between, ed. Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 21–35, 28. Roland Borgards, ‘Liminale Anthropologien: Skizze eines Forschungsfeldes’, in Liminale Anthropologien: Zwischenzeiten, Schwellenphänomene, Zwischenräume in Literatur und Philosophie, ed. Jochen Antilles, Roland Borgards and Brigitte Burrichter (Würzburg, Königshausen u. Neumann, 2012), 9–13, 7 (trans. Clemens Wischermann). Catalina Florina Florescu, Transacting Sites of the Liminal Bodily Spaces (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 146. No single footnote could hope to do justice to the conditions of emergence of ‘Man’, but nor could any genealogy avoid invoking Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les Choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966)/The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Pantheon, 1970). For ‘becoming-animal’ we refer loosely to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum, 2004), especially chapter 10. See Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), passim. Van Gennep, Rites of Passage, 39. Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern, 137. Ian Ground, ‘Stupendous Intelligence of Honey Badgers’, a review of Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, Times Literary Supplement 26 May 2017. Available online: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/stupendousintelligence-of-honey-badgers/ (accessed 27 June 2017). The preceding material about Müller’s views and the Rubicon metaphor is taken from this review. For the historical emergence of Cartesianism and its lack of hegemony, see Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). Squier, Liminal Lives, 5. See Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). Squier, Liminal Lives, 4 van Gennep, Rites of Passage, 3. This reliance on ritual as ‘active mythology’ is emphasized by Cydria S. Manette, ‘A Reflection on the Ways Veterinarians Cope with the Death, Euthanasia, and Slaughter of animals’, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 225, no. 1 (2004): 34–8. See Squier, Liminal Lives, but also, particularly, Lynda Birke, Arnold Arluke and Mike Michael, The Sacrifice: How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals and People (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2007). The term is borrowed from Donna Haraway and others: see Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003), passim. Mario Ortiz-Robles, ‘Liminanimal: the Monster in Late Victorian Gothic Fiction’, European Journal of English Studies 19, no. 1 (2015): 10–23. Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 19 51 See, for instance, the discussion of liminal zones and spaces in David Sibley, Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West (London: Routledge, 1995). 52 Bjørn Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern, 7ff. For marginality as a framing conception, see Franz Breuer, ed., Abseits!? Marginale Personen – Prekäre Identitäten (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 1999). 53 See Kay Peggs, Animals and Sociology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 54 Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 55 David Nibert, Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). 56 On ‘creatureliness’, see Anat Pick, Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 57 For this version of liminality (and one that problematically identifies liminality with marginality), see, for instance, Rob Shields, Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London: Routledge, 1992). 58 W. J. T. Mitchell, ‘Foreword’ to Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), ix–xiv, xiv, emphasis in original. 59 For discussions, see Irus Braverman, Zooland: The Institution of Captivity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013) and Wildlife: The Institution of Nature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). In impressive detail Kalli F. Doubleday, ‘Nonlinear Liminality: Human-animal Relations on Preserving the World’s Most Famous Tigress’, Geoforum 8 (2017): 32–44, identifies as many as seventeen sub-categories of ‘nonlinear’ liminality. 60 See Huw Griffiths, Ingrid Poulter and David Sibley, ‘Feral cats in the city’, in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations (London: Routledge, 2007), 56–70. See also Howell’s contribution to this book. 61 Petra J. E. M. van Dam, ‘Rabbits Swimming Across Borders: Micro-Environmental Infrastructures and Macro-Environmental Change in Early Modern Holland’, in Ecologies and Economics in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Scott G. Bruce (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 63–91, 66, citing Emmanuel Kreike’s concept of ‘environmental infrastructure’. 62 Ibid. 63 Clemens Wischermann, ‘Liminale Leben(s)räume: Grenzverlegungen zwischen urbanen menschlichen Gesellschaften und anderen Tieren im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert’, in Urbane Tier-Räume, ed. Thomas. E. Hauck, Stefanie Hennecke, André Krebber, Wiebke Reinert and Mieke Roscher (Kassel: Reimer Verlag, 2017), 15–34. 64 Raymond Coppinger and Laura Coppinger, What is a Dog? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 154. 65 Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 210, 214. 66 Ibid., 221. 67 See Lynda Birke, Tora Holmberg and Kirilly Thompson, ‘Stories of Animal Passports: Tracing Disease, Movements, and Identities’, Humanimalia 5, no. 1 (2013). 68 Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern; Szakolczai, Permanent Liminality and Modernity. 69 Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel and Chloë Taylor, ‘A Conversation on the Feral’, Feral Feminisms 6 (2016): 82–94, 87. Available online: http://www.feralfeminisms.com/aconversation-on-the-feral/ (accessed 10 July 2017). 70 Ibid. 71 Squier, Liminal Lives, 4. 20 Animal History in the Modern City 72 Richie Nimmo, Milk, Modernity and the Making of the Human: Purifying the Social (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 38. 73 Krüger, Steinbrecher and Wischermann, Tiere und Geschichte. 74 But see as an example of new approaches, Brown, The City Is More Than Human. 75 Jopi Nyman and Nora Schuurman, eds., Affect, Space and Animals (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 76 See Hauck et al., Urbane Tier-Räume. 77 Eben Kirksey and Stefan Helmreich, ‘The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography’, Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 4 (2010): 545–76, 545. 78 Haraway, When Species Meet, 3. 79 Kirksey and Helmreich, ‘Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography’, 545. 80 Éric Baratay, ‘Constructing an Animal History’, in Rethinking Nature: Challenging Disciplinary Boundaries, ed. Aurélie Choné, Isabelle Hajek and Philippe Haman (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 232–41, 233. 81 For the detail of this argument, see Krüger, Steinbrecher and Wischermann, Tiere und Geschichte. 82 This chapter might profitably be read in conjunction with the recent ‘historical anthropology’ contribution of Peter Burke, ‘On the Margins of the Public and the Private: Louis XXIV at Versailles’, in Horvath, Thomassen and Wydra, Breaking Boundaries, 130–7. 83 The phrase is also that of Laurie Shannon, The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 35. 84 Baratay, Le Point de Vue Animal. 85 For some discussion of these themes, see (for instance) Monica Matfield, ‘“Genus Porcus Sophisticus”: The Learned Pig and the Theatrics of National Identity in Late Eighteenth-Century London’, in Performing Animality: Animals in Performance Practices, ed. Jennifer Parker-Starbuck and Lourdes Orozco (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 57–76, and Eric Jager, ‘The Parrot’s Voice: Language and the Self in Robinson Crusoe’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 21, no. 3 (1988): 316–33. 86 See Jan Bondeson, Animal Freaks: The Strange History of Amazing Animals (Chalford: Tempus Publishing, 2008). 87 For the Turk, see Mark Sussman, ‘Performing the Intelligent Machine: Deception and Enchantment in the Life of the Automaton Chess Player’, TDR/The Drama Review 43, no. 3 (1999): 81–96. 88 See also Tristan Donovan, Feral Cities: Adventures with Animals in the Urban Jungle (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015). 89 See Tora Holmberg, Urban Animals: Crowding in Zoocities (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 129–46. Bibliography Andrews, Hazel and Roberts, Les, eds. Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-Between (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). Atkins, Peter, ed. Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories (London: Routledge, 2012). Baratay, Éric. Le Point de Vue Animal: Une Autre Version de l’Histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2012). Baratay, Éric. ‘Constructing an Animal History’, in Rethinking Nature: Challenging Disciplinary Boundaries, ed. Aurélie Choné, Isabelle Hajek and Philippe Haman (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 232–41. Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 21 Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). Biehler, Dawn Day. Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014). Birke, Lynda, Arluke, Arnold and Michael, Mike. The Sacrifice: How Scientific Experiments Transform Animals and People (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2007). Birke, Lynda, Holmberg, Tora and Thompson, Kirilly. ‘Stories of Animal Passports: Tracing Disease, Movements, and Identities’, Humanimalia 5, no. 1 (2013). https://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/issue09/birke-holmberg-thompson.html. Bondeson, Jan. Animal Freaks: The Strange History of Amazing Animals (Chalford: Tempus Publishing, 2008). Borgards, Roland. ‘Liminale Anthropologien: Skizze eines Forschungsfeldes’, in Liminale Anthropologien: Zwischenzeiten, Schwellenphänomene, Zwischenräume in Literatur und Philosophie, ed. Jochen Antilles, Roland Borgards and Brigitte Burrichter (Würzburg: Königshausen u. Neumann, 2012), 9–13. Brantz, Dorothee and Mauch, Christof. Tierische Geschichte: Die Beziehung von Mensch und Tier in der Kulter der Moderne (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2010). Braverman, Irus. Zooland: The Institution of Captivity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). Braverman, Irus. Wildlife: The Institution of Nature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). Breuer, Franz, ed. Abseits!? Marginale Personen – Prekäre Identitäten (Münster: LitVerlag, 1999). Brown, Frederick L. The City is more than Human: An Animal History of Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016). Burke, Peter. ‘On the Margins of the Public and the Private: Louis XXIV at Versailles’, in Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality, ed. Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra (New York: Berghahn, 2015), 130–7. Chakraborty, Arup Ratan. ‘Liminality in Post-Colonial Theory: A Journey from Arnold Van Gennep to Homi K. Bhabha’. Available online: www.Liminality-in-post-colonialtheory-a-journey-from-arnold-vangennep-to-homi-k-bhabha.html (accessed 1 July 2017). Coppinger, Raymond and Coppinger, Laura. What is a Dog? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum, 2004). Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Donovan, Tristan. Feral Cities: Adventures with Animals in the Urban Jungle (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015). Doubleday, Kalli F. ‘Nonlinear Liminality: Human-animal Relations on Preserving the World’s Most Famous Tigress’, Geoforum 8 (2017): 32–44. Florescu, Catalina Florina. Transacting Sites of the Liminal Bodily Spaces (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). Foucault, Michel. Les Mots et les Choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Pantheon, 1970). Fudge, Erica. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). Glaeser, Edward. The Triumph of the City (London: Pan Macmillan, 2012). 22 Animal History in the Modern City Griffiths, Huw, Poulter, Ingrid and Sibley, David. ‘Feral Cats in the City’, in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (London: Routledge, 2007), 56–70. See also Howell’s contribution to this book. Ground, Ian. ‘Stupendous Intelligence of Honey Badgers’, a review of Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Times Literary Supplement 26 May 2017. Haour, Anne. Outsiders and Strangers: An Archaeology of Liminality in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003). Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Holmberg, Tora. Urban Animals: Crowding in Zoocities (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015). Horvath, Agnes, Thomassen, Bjørn and Wydra, Harald, eds. Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (New York: Berghahn, 2015). Jager, Eric. ‘The Parrot’s Voice: Language and the Self in Robinson Crusoe’, EighteenthCentury Studies 21, no. 3 (1988): 316–33. Kirksey, Eben and Helmreich, Stefan. ‘The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography’, Cultural Anthropology 25, no. 4 (2010): 545–76. Kopnina, Helen. ‘Toward conservational anthropology: addressing anthropocentric bias in anthropology’, Dialectical Anthropology 36, nos. 1–2 (2012): 127–46. Krüger, Gesine, Steinbrecher, Aline and Wischermann, Clemens, eds. Tiere und Geschichte: Konturen einer Animate History (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2014). Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). McNeur, Catherine. Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). McShane, Clay and Tarr, Joel A. The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the NineteenthCentury (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007; Hannah). Manette, Cydria S. ‘A Reflection on the Ways Veterinarians Cope with the Death, Euthanasia, and Slaughter of animals’, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 225, no. 1 (2004): 34–8. Matfield, Monica ‘“Genus Porcus Sophisticus”: The Learned Pig and the Theatrics of National Identity in Late Eighteenth-Century London’, in Performing Animality: Animals in Performance Practices, ed. Jennifer Parker-Starbuck and Lourdes Orozco (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 57–76. Mitchell, W. J. T. ‘Foreword’ to Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), ix–xiv. Nibert, David. Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). Nimmo, Richie. Milk, Modernity and the Making of the Human: Purifying the Social (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010). Nyman, Jopi and Schuurman, Nora, eds. Affect, Space and Animals (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). Ortiz-Robles, Mario. ‘Liminanimal: The Monster in Late Victorian Gothic Fiction’, European Journal of English Studies 19, no. 1 (2015): 10–23. Peggs, Kay. Animals and Sociology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Phillips, Thomas. Liminal Fictions in Postmodern Culture: The Politics of Self-Development (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Liminality: A Governing Category in Animate History 23 Pick, Anat. Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). Ritvo, Harriet. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987). Ritvo, Harriet. ‘Animal Planet’, Environmental History 9, no. 2 (2004): 204–20. Shannon, Laurie. The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). Shields, Rob. Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London: Routledge, 1992). Sibley, David. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West (London: Routledge, 1995). Specht, Joshua. ‘Animal History after Its Triumph: Unexpected Animals, Evolutionary Approaches, and the Animal Lens’, History Compass 14, no. 7 (2016): 326–36. Squier, Susan Merrill. Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). Stohrer, Ulrike. ‘Väter der Ritualtheorie: Arnold van Gennep und die Übergangsriten und Victor Turners Begriff der “Liminalität”’, journal-ethnologie.de. Frankfurt a. M.: Museum der Weltkulturen, 2008. Available online: http://www.journal-ethnologie.de /Deutsch/Schwerpunktthemen/Schwerpunktthemen_2008/Ethnologische_Theorien/ Vaeter_der_Ritualtheorie/index.phtml (accessed 23 January 2017). Sussman, Mark. ‘Performing the Intelligent Machine: Deception and Enchantment in the Life of the Automaton Chess Player’, TDR/The Drama Review 43, no. 3 (1999): 81–96. Szakolczai, Arpad. Permanent Liminality and Modernity: Analysing the Sacrificial Carnival Through Novels (London: Taylor & Francis, 2016). Szary, Anne-Laure Amilhat and Giraut, Frederic, eds. Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Thomassen, Bjørn. ‘Revisiting Liminality: The Danger of Empty Spaces’, in Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-Between, ed. Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 21–35, 28. Thomassen, Bjørn. Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). Thomassen, Bjørn and Balle, Maja. ‘From Liminoid to Limivoid: Understanding Contemporary Bungee Jumping from a Cross Cultural Perspective’, Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice Volume, 4 no. 1 (2012): 59–93. Turner, Victor. ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 93–111. Turner, Victor. ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: an Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 53–92. van Dam, Petra J. E. M. ‘Rabbits Swimming Across Borders: Micro-Environmental Infrastructures and Macro-Environmental Change in Early Modern Holland’, in Ecologies and Economics in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Scott G. Bruce (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 63–91. van Gennep, Arnold. Les Rites de Passage (Paris: Nourry, 1909). van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Velten, Hannah. Beastly London: A History of Animals in the City (London: Reaktion, 2013). 24 Animal History in the Modern City Wadiwel, Dinesh Joseph and Taylor, Chloë. ‘A Conversation on the Feral’, Feral Feminisms 6 (2016): 82–94, 87. Available online: http://www.feralfeminisms.com/a-conversationon-the-feral/ (accessed 10 July 2017). Wischermann, Clemens. ‘Liminale Leben(s)räume: Grenzverlegungen zwischen urbanen menschlichen Gesellschaften und anderen Tieren im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert’, in Urbane Tier-Räume, ed. Thomas. E. Hauck, Stefanie Hennecke, André Krebber, Wiebke Reinert and Mieke Roscher (Kassel: Reimer Verlag, 2017), 15–34. Wolfe, Cary. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Wolfe, Cary. ‘“Human, All Too Human”: Animal Studies” and the Humanities’, pmla 124, no. 2 (2009): 564–75. Wydra, Harald, Thomassen, Bjørn and Horvath, Agnes. ‘Liminality and the Search for Boundaries’, in Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality, ed. Agnes Horvath, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra (New York: Berghahn, 2015), 1–8. 2 Liminal Lives in the New World Isabelle Schürch Introduction The beach represented in the opening illustration of the twelfth book of the Florentine Codex of the Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España marks not only the starting point of the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, but it is also one of the earliest representations of a liminal space par excellence: the beach (Figure 2.1). In this context the Mexican beach can be best described in Marie Louise Pratt’s conception of ‘contact zone’, which denotes a social space where encounters become highly significant and yet remain liminal.1 The Historia General was compiled by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún during the second half of the sixteenth century and proves to be one of the most intriguing encyclopaedic and historiographical works about the people and culture of central Mexico.2 Written in Spanish and Nahuatl it seems to have been a collective hybrid work influenced by both European and Mesoamerican visual and narrative practices.3 This beach scene sets the tone for the following analysis of the New Spain context and its multiple forms of liminality and coexistence. The beach illustrated here is not only a human contact zone, but also a space for non-human contact. For the first time, various European domestic non-human animals set their feet – or rather hooves – on American ground. What is striking in this arkinspired illustration is the space assigned to non-human animals. On the left-hand side, traditional domestic ‘livestock’ such as cows, pigs and sheep are depicted, whereas the horses are put clearly separated from them on the right-hand side of the picture. Abel A. Alves argues that the only animal lying in the group of livestock animals is in fact a dog. As his argument is based largely on the collar the animal is supposedly wearing, I would argue that this interpretation can be contested. The reclining position and the overall ovine appearance of the animal, on the one hand, but also the very different iconographic rendering of dogs in other visual sources on the other, point to another example of a domesticated species.4 Yet, even this contested interpretation does not change the distinctive order of the picture. Alves’s presumed dog is pictured as a herding dog, and not as the conquistadorial companion animal in its most iconic form as a war dog.5 It still falls within and safely guards the boundaries of livestock. The positioning on the beach indeed marks the clear distinction between two groups of non-human animals. Whereas livestock or species associated with them are set in 26 Animal History in the Modern City Figure 2.1 From Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, Codex Florentinus (1540-1585), Book XII, The Conquest of Mexico, fol. 1v. Courtesy Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence. a pastoral context, horses are marked by contrast as companion animals, as indicated by their close proximity to the human actors, but also by their riding tack and trained comportment. The horses are not depicted simply as horses, note, but as riding horses – a variation that makes in this picture a significant difference between the various non-human animals introduced into the New World. Whereas ‘livestock’ animals are associated with basic settlement, riding horses belong to the conquistadorial elite.6 Therefore, the beach space as it is presented in the Florentine Codex marks the Mexican landscape as a liminal space shared not only by different human beings with different social status (crewmen, office-holders and indigenous people), but where different non-humans are also present in this socially marked space. In what follows I will not just focus on the transitional and ambiguous space the beach represents, but rather on its hinterland: the pre- and post-conquest Mesoamerican townscape which was more or less constantly adapted, built over, sometimes even Liminal Lives in the New World 27 destroyed and reconstructed. The main focal point is the city of Tenochtitlán.7 The Mexica capital city was famously built as an island city-state in Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico and was considered the centre of the expanding empire of the Mexica Triple Alliance. As was clearly noted and remarked upon by historical contemporaries, Tenochtitlán was an extraordinary example of urban development and planning, one of the largest and best organized cities at this time.8 I would like here to discuss visual and narrative representations of Tenochtitlán to identify the strategies by which both the Spanish and the Mexica dealt with the challenges to social order and known boundaries with which they were confronted after 1492, particularly with regard to the place of the non-human inhabitants.9 As a concept in social theory, liminality helps in highlighting the characteristics of the conquest of the ‘New World’, in the sense that ‘liminality refers to moments or periods of transition during which the normal limits to thought, selfunderstanding and behaviour are relaxed, opening the way to novelty and imagination, construction and destruction’.10 The experience of the actors involved and their ways of reacting to this challenge of social boundaries are key to understanding this specific moment of ‘in-between-ness’,11 where neither order nor outcome is certain.12 This approach encourages us to focus on the specific historical setting, and I argue that especially during the early Mesoamerican conquest, these processes of disambiguation questioned and renegotiated social boundaries – such as the differentiation between human and non-human.13 The thesis put forward in this chapter is that the New World context offers a setting where liminality has to be explored, not just as a useful concept, but rather as the general concept. What we have to bear in mind, though, is that ‘liminality does not and cannot “explain” anything’.14 Rather, it should be considered a fait social that needs to be explained in its various historical settings. Whereas the beach might be considered the most obvious space of liminality as it marks a very specific borderland and contact zone, the townscape of Mesoamerica proves to be a no less significant site.15 The Mesoamerican townscape became the socially most dynamic and conflict-laden space of interaction between Spanish and indigenous groups. On the one hand, existing towns were re-formed according to Spanish concepts of urban space.16 On the other hand, the Spanish conquest of the Mesoamerican lands differed from the Portuguese stronghold strategy along the African coast and the comparable early Caribbean fortification outposts as initiated by Christopher Columbus. Cortés’s very first – and unauthorized – action after his landing at the Gulf of Mexico was to found a town and to legitimate his actions by establishing a Castilian urban rule.17 What is today known as a specific Castilian urbanism derived its logic from geographical conditions: the dry and treeless Iberian landscape seems to have favoured a territorial rule founded in a network of towns. So what our beach scene from the Florentine Codex renders in biblical imagery are actually the first steps towards a New Spanish townscape. Liminal lives in Tenochtitlán Interestingly enough, the city which sustained Spanish interest more than any other was also part of a complex urban network: Tenochtitlán.18 Approximately 150,000 28 Animal History in the Modern City people inhabited the imperial capital city in Lake Texcoco, some three times the size of Seville at that time.19 As the city of Tenochtitlán was depicted in the so-called Nuremberg map, it represented an ideal city. The Nuremberg map itself is a curious case. By all appearance, it is the oldest surviving visual representation of the city. The model for the woodcut from 1524 was made shortly after the city’s destruction through Cortés and his men in 1521. The map was first published in 1524 to accompany the Latin version of Hernán Cortés’s famous Second Letter, written to His Sacred Majesty, the emperor Charles V, on 30 October 1520, just before the siege and conquest of Tenochtitlán.20 As such it happened to be the first depiction of the Mexica capital that circulated throughout Europe. Barbara E. Mundy has convincingly argued against the claim that this first published map of Tenochtitlán was a purely European product and pleads instead for its status as cultural hybrid.21 Although several planimetrical patterns can clearly be seen as European style conventions, it is safe to assume that the overall idea of the map to depict Tenochtitlán as the centre of cosmic order is based on Mexica visual traditions. Whereas traditional research had long argued for a European conceptualization of the Nuremburg city map, studies conducted in the last twenty years have shown that Renaissance gridplan city ideals were actually influenced by pre-Columbian town concepts.22 What we detect in this map is the depiction of the ideal city of Tenochtitlán as it was conceived as the centre of the empire.23 Therefore, the map claims nothing less than the supremacy among the Mexica Triple Alliance of the three city-states of Tenochtitlán, Texcoco and Tlacopan. The most characteristic feature of this city map is the circular rendering of the island-town with the temple and ceremonial precinct where the four major avenues converge in its very heart. Apart from the twin temples and the locus of sacrifice, the city’s centre is dominated by Moctezuma’s palace buildings including the royal menagerie (Figure 2.2). On the map it is labelled as domus animalium.24 This domus animalium is depicted as a square divided into several smaller squares containing different human and non-human beings: different kinds of birds, human figures and – in the centrepiece – a lion-like big cat. The domus animalium is presented to the European audience as a specially marked space for imperial creatures, a space which is here conceived in its square form in a subtle analogy to the ceremonial centre.25 Whereas the map is based on the Mexica idea of visualizing the capital not just as centre of the empire, but also of the cosmic order, the woodcut from 1524 places it in a different context. The map was added to Cortés’s published description and justification of the brutal conquest of Mexico and the treasonous acting by the Spanish conquistadors. What we learn from Cortés’s letter to Charles V is that Moctezuma’s domus – or casa as it is called in the Spanish text – was situated close to the living quarters of the emperor and consisted of several houses. Cortés devotes quite some time to elaborate on the menagerie’s content. There is one magnificent and large house with a beautiful garden and ten salt and fresh water pools, in which all kinds of water birds were kept. To make sure of the birds’ diet and sanitary needs, 300 keepers were put in charge. In the surrounding building were rooms reserved for men, women and children ‘who had, from birth, white faces and bodies and white hair, eyebrows and eyelashes’.26 Then there was another beautiful house, which was equippedfordifferentspecies:birdsofprey.Theroofsofeachofthesehouseswerehalfcovered with tiles, half with latticework. In the same house were timber cages where several lions, tigers, wolves, foxes and other cats were kept. Yet another 300 keepers were there to look Liminal Lives in the New World 29 Figure 2.2 Detail from Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlán, Praeclara Ferdinandi. Cortesii de Noua maris Oceani Hyspania Narratio, Nuremberg. Impressa in celebri ciuitate Norimberga: Per Fridericum Peypus, Nuremberg 1524. Courtesy Library of Congress, Washington. after the birds of prey as well as after the feline and canine predators. And finally there was the house where deformed men and women lived – sorted by deformity. Whereas Cortés seems to use the description of the menagerie complex to colour Moctezuma’s luxurious lifestyle and preoccupancy with entertainment, we still gain some idea of the domus animalium. What is important for our analysis is that Cortés describes this space as a space where human and non-human beings lived closely together. These observations made by Cortés are backed up by the more detailed account of the early Mexican Conquest by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. In his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España he also takes considerable effort to describe the royal aviary and the house for the beasts of prey.27 Neither Cortés’s nor Díaz’s account refers to a specific terminology when they describe the domus. Cortés even describes it as ‘una casa poco menos buena que esta’, a house only slightly inferior to the other palace buildings.28 Whereas the modern commentator tends to use the terms ‘zoo’ or ‘menagerie’, Cortés and his contemporaries tellingly refer to it as casa.29 What is added by Bernal Díaz’s description is the sense of wonder at the sight of the artificial townscape the urban network around Lake Texcoco and the rich diversity of the plants, smells and animals experienced: ‘It was all so wonderful that I do not know 30 Animal History in the Modern City how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard of, seen or dreamed of before.’30 Unlike Cortés, Bernal Díaz does not imply a critique of luxury, but concentrates on the cultural and religious meanings of the animals in the town’s heart. The various birds are all kept together, representing the social spectrum ‘from royal eagle, smaller kinds of eagles, and other large birds, down to multi-coloured little birds’.31 The house of the predators, on the other hand, expands the social panoply to include idols of ‘fierce gods’. Whereas the aviary is described as a place of domestication, where male and female keepers take care of the birds and are in charge of their hatching needs, the house of predators has a different, but complementary purpose. Here the idols of ‘fierce gods’ and the predatory animals mark a space for the social cycle of continuation: Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and of war, guaranteed the circular movement of time and prevented the end of the world.32 By sacrificing human beings the cycle of time and the continuation of the world could be held intact.33 The different parts of the sacrificed body had different functions. Whereas, for example, the severed heads were put on display and the limbs were often consumed in honour feasts, torsos were fed to the animals in the domus animalium.34 Although it might have stricken historical contemporaries as a barbarous act, it is specially stressed by Bernal Díaz that the bodies were not given to ‘wild’ animals, but were fed to the carnivorous animals kept and cherished in the royal casa.35 From this perspective, having the body parts consumed by human and non-human citizens can be read as a means of social incorporation through consumption.36 From Díaz’s perspective, it becomes clearer how the domus animalium relates to the characteristics of the centre of the Mexica capital. The sacred area of the Templo Mayor has been identified as ‘the quintessential sacred space within the Aztec Empire’37 of the empire as it is presided by the duality of Huitzilopochtli (the war and sun god) and Tlaloc (the water and rain god).38 On a more abstract level, these two deities stood for the two central economic pillars of the empire, namely tribute and agriculture. Only in recent years has the ritual sacrificing of human and non-human beings been emphasized as a significant part of the economic and social structure of Mexica society.39 The casa and its creatures are therefore not only granted space in this order, but are integrated into the basic economic and social structure of the alliance state. In the ideal city map everything centres on the ritual centre of sacrifice and in that sense, the ideal image of Tenochtitlán might also imply a transcendent function, that of modelling a cosmic order where liminal experiences can find their own space and time.40 Blurring and clarifying the borders of human and non-human lives When the Spaniards finally conquered the city of Tenochtitlán, they brought ‘new’ animals into this urban space.41 Horses and dogs were shipped with brigantines especially made for the Spanish crossing.42 When Cortés describes the wide and straight streets and bridges of Tenochtitlán, his measurement are horsemen riding abreast. The urban space he describes is thus represented through his eyes as a military Liminal Lives in the New World 31 man, but also one who is used to riding and thinking from horseback. It has been often stressed that horse and rider made a great impression – sometimes a supernatural or more-than-human impression – on indigenous spectators. In Spanish accounts we often read about the fear, awe and devotion elicited by the appearance of these ‘centaurs’.43 Although we must be careful in reading these accounts as actual reality, it is at least very telling how much effect the Spanish ascribed to their equine companions and partners in the conquest. In more general terms Cortés’s focus also illuminates the Spanish categorization of animals we have already seen introduced by de Sahagún’s beach scene. The Spanish view reveals their clear-cut distinction between trained horses, common livestock and wild animals. The cultural, social and economic structure they encountered in Tenochtitlán and other Mexican towns challenged this view, however.44 Although smaller herbivores such as rabbits, hares and fowl and also dogs are mentioned as food, it seems that they were usually hunted or raised within populated areas, but they were not raised as livestock as was common in European sheep, pig or cattle husbandry. The distinction here was not one of wild versus domesticated, but one of scale; even though turkeys and dogs were in a broader sense domesticated, domestication as an agricultural and social phenomenon cannot be detected in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.45 The largest four-legged domesticated animal in the Americas yet to be ‘discovered’ by the Spanish was the Peruvian llama.46 The variety and abundance of wild animals such as birds, fish and deer are also often stressed, yet the absence of domesticated animals is almost never explicitly mentioned. It is therefore important not to discuss the Tenochtitlán domus animalium in terms of domestication. There is some evidence that Cortés himself struggled with the concept of domestication when he tried to explain how the water birds were kept in the domus animalium. To introduce the very idea of the domus animalium, Cortés first mentions the water fowl and he adds that all the different types of water birds were ‘domesticated’.47 In order to give his audience some idea of this peculiar casa, Cortés has to revert to an analogy to the Spanish idea of domestication.48 What conquistadors like Hernán Cortés or Bernal Díaz stress is not settlementconnected husbandry, then, but their own experience of being confronted with societies that – unlike their European counterparts – did not know the horse or indeed any other large quadruped. In Iberian culture the horse was considered an indispensable companion animal. Riding and owning a horse not just marked social status, but was closely connected to the experience and narrative of the Reconquista.49 Fifteenth-century Spain has been dubbed a ‘society of conflict’ and its ongoing struggles in the centuries-long Reconquista had only strengthened the status of riders and their horses.50 Unlike their North African or European military counterparts, the Mesoamerican troops lacked any form of cavalry. Hernán Cortés was particularly quick to spot the tactical advantages that horses offered: namely, swiftness and force.51 Their attributes not only challenged tactical considerations on both sides, it also led to wild speculations concerning the nature of riding, alluded to above. The Spanish fantasized that they must appear like ‘centaurs’ to the Indians, whereas the Indians first had to gather basic understanding of these unprecedented quadrupeds.52 In order to elaborate more extensively on the topic of the unity of the Spanish riders and their horses as the Mexica perceived it, another illustration from the Codex 32 Animal History in the Modern City Florentinus might prove illuminating (Figure 2.3). According to the thirty-fifth chapter of the conquest of Mexico, there were ongoing skirmishes between Spanish and Mexica forces and in one of them Mexica troops took several Spanish captives and brought them to a town called Yacacolco. The captives – among which were also horses – were put in rows and led to the local pyramid where they were sacrificed according to the traditional ritual of sacrificing war captives.53 The order of the slaying was important to the ritual: first the fifty-three Spaniards, then their indigenous allies. But for the skull rack, where the severed heads were put on display, a different order was chosen. Here they strung each of the Spaniards’ heads on the rack, then their four horses’ heads, all facing the sun; the heads of the allied native warriors were not put on the rack at all. This collective display of the human and equine heads points to the social significance the Mexica officials attributed to the rider–horse ensemble. Bearing in mind the depiction of Tenochtitlán’s ceremonial centre reflecting the cosmic order of things, we detect a similar arrangement of the sacred centre, including a skull rack, in Yacacolco. Therefore, in the Mexica ‘cosmovision’,54 the decapitating and displaying of Figure 2.3 Detail from Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, Codex Florentinus (1540-1585), Book XII, The Conquest of Mexico, fol. 68. Courtesy Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence. Liminal Lives in the New World 33 enemy heads functioned as a symbolic act of honour, one that explicitly included nonhuman enemies. Cortés eventually banned ritual sacrifice in Mexican towns, on the grounds that it was incompatible with the views held by the Roman Church. Yet – according to Bernal Díaz – he only condemned the killing and sacrifice of human beings, not of all the other living creatures.55 From a Mexican perspective, on the other hand, the ritual sacrificing of war captives had to include all adversaries, human and non-human. From the perspective of the Spanish commentators, ‘Indian’ curiosity concerning the Spanish horses was abundant material for anecdotes. Yet for Mexica officials, the act of displaying the horses’ heads, together with their non-animal companions, and of consuming their limbs collectively, was not an extraordinary act, but one that was absolutely consistent with the spatial, social, imperial and cosmic order of things, reflecting their practices of dealing with liminal situations. In general, animals held an important place in the Mesoamerican world view. They were considered protean beings, powerful entities who were not just able to transform themselves, but who shared essential characteristics with humans and even gods.56 The decapitation of the horses marks an interesting scene in the history of the conquest, in this respect, revealing two different experiences of a liminal situation where known social borders were challenged. The Mexica cosmovision allowed for a social integration of the warhorses, whereas the Spanish commentators had to resort to their shared differentiation of human/animal and to the categorization of animals according to their use (livestock, companion animals, wild animals and so on). When the Spanish conquistadors were confronted with an alien, unfamiliar taxonomy, they themselves resorted to ancient myths and common lore like the hybrid figure of the centaurs, in which animals and humans were fused. Conclusion To end these observations on human and non-human liminal lives in what was about to become New Spain, I would like to argue for the utility of liminality as a concept in the New World context. Whereas the beach with its liminal characteristics represents the ideal human and non-human contact zone between the Spanish arrivals and the indigenous inhabitants of the beach’s hinterland, the pre- and post-conquest towns mark a different kind of liminal space. On the one hand, the exploration, conquest and transformation of pre-existing urban spaces can be seen as liminal stages in which different societies radically transformed each other. From the conquistadors’ point of view, a town such as the Mexica capital Tenochtitlán and its human and nonhuman habitants could only be described by comparing it to the familiar Spanish townscape. The same descriptive mode was employed to characterize human and non-human inhabitants: established social categories, from beggar to emperor, were used to convey the initial assessment of the New World. For non-human animals, the Spanish commentators tried to apply their common-sense demarcation of ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’. A closer look at the presence of animals in Spanish descriptions of Tenochtitlán shows how this categorization was challenged, however. Whereas the 34 Animal History in the Modern City Spanish conquistadors arrived with ‘livestock’ (cattle, sheep and pigs) and ‘companion animals’ (horses and dogs), no Mesoamerican society was built on functionally so different forms of animal domestication like these.57 The concept of an ‘exotic’ zoo or a menagerie, as it was probably known to the Spanish conquistadors, does not then really apply to Cortés’s description of Moctezuma’s domus animalium, as it is dubbed in the Nuremburg map.58 Taking also Bernal Díaz’s description of the conquest into account, I would like to suggest instead that the domus animalium should be seen as a microcosm of the Mexica world view and that its function was more integrative than exoticizing. The same interpretative direction holds true for the Yacacolco skull rack example. From a Mexica point of view, the Spanish conquistadors were perceived in their close connection to their warhorses. Accordingly, the beheading of both riders and horses serves to integrate humans and their ‘companion animals’ in a more general category of war enemies, which at the same time acknowledges and honours their social partnership. Recent research has shown that familiar contemporary categories such as ‘wild’, ‘domestic’ and ‘pet’ animals are far from universal. From what we know of research into pre- and post-Columbian human–animal relationships so far, it seems safe to stress that Amerindian cultures did not employ clear-cut concepts such as livestock, companion animals and pets for understanding human–animal relationships. As Marcy Norton has stressed, Caribbean cultures, to take but one example, highly valued physical contact and emotional affinity with ‘pets’ such as parrots, which nevertheless did not exclude their incorporation through consumption.59 As a concept, then, liminality proves to be a valid approach to historical settings such as the early conquest of the ‘New World’ where the known social orders, for both parties, were challenged. In contrast to the trope of ‘conquest’, which sets the conquerors and the conquered in a specific, but stable, hierarchy and structural unity, and which includes non-human actors only as objects, the focus on ‘liminality’ offers the possibility of looking at the dynamic liminal states arising from an ongoing ‘conquest’, one in which the human and non-human boundaries of all those involved in this process were disturbed, challenged and, ultimately, transformed. Notes 1 See Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Arts of the Contact Zone’, Profession 91 (1991): 33–40. 2 Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, Codex Florentinus (1540-1585), Book XII, The Conquest of Mexico, fol. 1v (Florence, Medicea Laurenziana Library). 3 For an overview of the Florentine Codex, see Enrique Florescano, ‘Sahagún y el nacimiento de la cronica mestiza’, Relaciones 23, no. 91 (2002): 75–94. 4 See Abel A. Alves, The Animals of Spain: An Introduction to Imperial Perceptions and Human Interaction with Other Animals, 1492-1826 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 96. 5 See John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner, Dogs of the Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983). 6 For an introduction to the social status of conquistadors, see Matthew Restall and Kris Lane, Latin America in Colonial Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 98–121. Liminal Lives in the New World 35 7 On the subject of destruction and rebuilding, see Barbara E. Mundy, The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). 8 See Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, 1. 9 For a general discussion of representations of Tenochtitlán, see Barbara E. Mundy, ‘Hybrid Space’, in Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, ed. Jordana Dym and Karl Offen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 51–5. 10 Bjørn Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 1. 11 Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern, 2. 12 Elaborating the concept of liminality and focusing on different forms of liminality are Agnes Horváth, Bjørn Thomassen and Harald Wydra, eds., Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015). 13 On ‘liminality’ as a social concept, see Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern. 14 See Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern, 7. 15 See Felix Hinz, Hispanisierung in Neu-Spanien, 1519-1568: Transformation Kollektiver Identitäten von Mexica, Tlaxkalteken und Spaniern, 3 vols (Hamburg: Kova, 2005). 16 See Jaime Salcedo, Urbanismo Hispano-Americano, Siglos XVI, XVII y XVIIII: El Modelo Urbano Aplicado a la América Española, su Génesis y su Desarrallo Teórico y Práctico, 2nd edn (Santa Fe de Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Facultad de Arquitectura y Diseño, 1996), and Allan Randolph Brewer-Carías, La Ciudad Ordenada (Caracas: Editorial Aranzadi, 2006), but also Setha M. Low, ‘Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean’, American Anthropologist 97, no. 4 (1995): 748–62. On the pre-Columbian urban landscape, see Jorge E. Hardoy, Pre-Columbian Cities (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973). 17 Restall and Lane, Latin America in Colonial Times, 44. 18 Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, 1. 19 Ibid. 20 Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. Anthony Pagden, with an introduction by J. H. Elliott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 47–159. 21 See Barbara E. Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec Capital: The 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlan, its Sources and Meanings’, Imago Mundi 50 (1998): 11–33, 11. 22 David Y. Kim, ‘Uneasy Reflections: Images of Venice and Tenochtitlan in Benedetto Bordone’s “Isolario”’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 49/50 (2006): 80–91, but also Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec Capital’, and Low, ‘Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean’, American Anthropologist 97, no. 4 (1995): 748–62. 23 Richard Kagan and Fernando Marías, Urban Images of the Hispanic world, 1493-1793 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 64–7. 24 Elizabeth Hill Boone, ‘This New World Now Revealed: Hernán Cortés and the Presentation of Mexico to Europe’, Word & Image 27, no. 1 (2011): 31–46. For representational studies on early modern graphic complexity in New Spain, see Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton, eds., Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2011), especially Elizabeth Hill Boone, ‘Ruptures and Unions: Graphic Complexity and Hybridity in Sixteenth-Century Mexico’, in Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton, Their Way of Writing, 197–226. 25 Susan E. Ramírez has suggested we approach native Andean cosmology by taking into account the fact that divine rulership should be understood as a spatial as well as socio-kinship and economic system. The term ‘El Cuzco’ referred not only to the Inca 36 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Animal History in the Modern City ruler, but also to a place. In the Andean worldview, therefore, it is the divine order that holds the centre. See Susan E. Ramírez, To Feed and Be Fed: The Cosmological Bases of Authority and Identity in the Andes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, 110. Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. and with an introduction by John M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1963), 228–9. See Pascual de Gayangos, ed., Cartas y Relaciones de Hernan Cortés al Emperador Carlos V (Paris: Imprenta Central de los Ferrocarriles, 1866), 110. In Europe the concept of ‘domus’ or, in Spanish, ‘casa’, marked an important change in dealing with family, kinship and property rights: see David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher, ‘Kinship in Europe: A New Approach to Long-Term Development’, Kinship in Europe: Approaches to Long-Term Development (1300-1900), ed. David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher and Jon Mathieu (New York: Berghahn, 2010), 1–32. For the context of the Conquista, see Yuen-Gen Liang, Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Diaz, Conquest of New Spain, 241. Ibid. On Aztec philosophy in general, see James Maffie, Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014). For the sacred centre of Tenochtilán, see Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, ‘The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan: Economies and Ideology’, in Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica: A Conference at Dumbarton Oaks, October 13th and 14th, 1979, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1984), 133–4. War captives were the main victims of sacrifice, but instances of slave or child sacrificing are also known, see Herbert Burhenn, ‘Understanding Aztec Cannibalism’, Archiv für Religionssoziolgie/Archive for the Psychology of Religion 26 (2004): 1–14. Burhenn, ‘Understanding Aztec Cannibalism’, 3. Bernal Díaz mentions that the carnivores were not only fed on other animals (such as deer, fowls, dogs), but also on ‘the bodies of the Indians they sacrificed’: see Diaz, Conquest of New Spain, 229. On the subject of incorporation as cultural and social integration and consumption, see also Marcy Norton, ‘The Chicken or the Iegue: Human-Animal Relationships and the Columbian Exchange’, American Historical Review 120, no. 1 (2015): 28–60. Johanna Broda, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and Davíd Carrasco, ‘Introduction’, in The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World, ed. Johanna Broda, David Carrasco and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, 2nd edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 3. Matos Moctezuma, ‘Templo Major’, 134. Amara Solari, Maya Ideologies of the Sacred: The Transfiguration of Space in Colonial Yucatan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), and Nawa Sugiyama et al., ‘Animals and the State: The Role of Animals in State-Level Rituals in Mesoamerica’, in Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World, ed. Benjamin S. Arbuckle and Sue Ann McCarty (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014), 11–32. These studies followed the major excavation project of the Templo Mayor (1978–82), which, in particular, spurred research into ritual and human sacrifice: see Broda, Carrasco and Matos Moctezuma, The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. See Solari, Maya Ideologies of the Sacred, and Sugiyama et al., ‘Animals and the State’, and in more general terms Mundy, ‘Mapping the Aztec Capital’. Liminal Lives in the New World 37 41 For the most comprehensive study so far, see Alves, Animals of Spain. 42 Cortés, Letters from Mexico, 166. 43 For an introduction to centaur myths, see Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 44 For archaeozoological research on Mayan culture and animal-keeping, see Kitty F. Emery, ed., Maya Zooarchaeology: New Directions in Method and Theory (Los Angeles: University of California, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2004) and Kitty F. Emery , ‘Animals from the Maya Underworld: Reconstructing Elite Maya Ritual at the Cueva de los Quetzales, Guatemala’, in Behaviour Behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity, ed. Sharyn Jones O’Day, Wim Van Neer and Anton Ervynck (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004), 101–13. 45 Susan D. deFrance, ‘Zooarchaeology in Complex Societies: Political Economy, Status, and Ideology’, Journal of Archaeological Research 17, no. 2 (2009): 105–68. 46 deFrance, ‘Zooarchaeology’, 109. 47 According to the Spanish text, ‘todas domésticas’: see de Gayangos, Cartas y Relaciones de Hernan Cortés, 110. 48 Cortés’s approach to explaining and translating new phenomena for an absent audience resembles the ‘jigsaw puzzle description’ model suggested by Miguel de Asúa and Roger French in their insightful study on early modern Europeans’ perception and categorization of New World animals: see Miguel de Asúa and Roger French, A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 14. 49 On the narrative tradition of ‘the reconquista’, see Adam J. Kosto, ‘Reconquest, Renaissance, and the Histories of Iberia (ca. 1000-1200)’, in European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 93–116. 50 Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict, 4th edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004). 51 Hernán Cortés instructed the horsemen in his train to attack in specific formations so as to surprise and overrun their Mexican enemies, see Diaz, Conquest of New Spain, 74–6. 52 The comparison to centaurs is, for example, explicitly made in Garcilaso de la Vega’s Royal Commentaries (1539–1616): see El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, ‘Comentarios Reales de los Incas’, in Obras Completas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, ed. Carmelo Saenz de Santa Maria, vol. 2 (Madrid: Atlas 1963), 357. 53 On human sacrifice, see Elizabeth Hill Boone, Ritual Human Sacrifice; on the meaning of sacrifice in the Aztec world view, see Solari, Maya Ideologies of the Sacred. 54 David Carrasco, Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990). The term was coined by Johanna Broda: see Johanna Broda, ‘Astronomy, Cosmovisión and Ideology in Prehispanic Mesoamerica’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 385, no. 1 (1982): 81–110, 81. 55 Diaz, Conquest of New Spain, 222. 56 See León García Garagarza, ‘The Year the People Turned into Cattle: The End of the World in New Spain, 1558’, in Centering Animals in Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 31–61, 44. García Garagarza also mentions the Nahuatl term ‘in yolque, in manenemi’, which translates as ‘those who have a heart, those who walk’ and refers to ‘living, terrestrial creatures’, ibid., 45. 57 Still a landmark study: Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport: Greenwood, 1972). For the radical envi- 38 Animal History in the Modern City ronmental transformation of the American landscape through the introduction of European sheep, see Elinor Melville, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). For a general discussion, see Virginia deJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Focusing on the social implications of dietary transformation, see Heather B. Trigg, ‘Food Choice and Social Identity in Early Colonial New Mexico’, Journal of the Southwest 46, no. 2 (2004): 223–52. 58 See Éric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West (London: Reaktion, 2002) and Robert J. Hoage, Anne Roskell and Jane Mansour, ‘Menageries and Zoos to 1900’, in New World, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Robert J. Hoage and William A. Deiss (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 8–18. 59 Norton, ‘The Chicken or the Iegue’; See also García Garagarza, ‘The Year the People Turned into Cattle’. Bibliography Alves, Abel. The Animals of Spain: An Introduction to Imperial Perceptions and Human Interaction with Other Animals, 1492-1826 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Anderson, Virginia deJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Baratay, Éric and Hardouin-Fugier, Elisabeth. Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West (London: Reaktion, 2002). Bernardino, de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España, Codex Florentinus (1540–85), Book XII, The Conquest of Mexico, fol. 1v (Florence, Medicea Laurenziana Library). Boone, Elizabeth Hill. ‘This New World Now Revealed: Hernán Cortés and the Presentation of Mexico to Europe’, Word & Image 27, no. 1 (2011): 31–46. Boone, Elizabeth Hill. ‘Ruptures and Unions: Graphic Complexity and Hybridity in Sixteenth-Century Mexico’, in Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2011), 197–226. Boone, Elizabeth Hill and Urton, Gary, eds. Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2011). Brewer-Carías, Allan Randolph. La Ciudad Ordenada (Caracas: Editorial Aranzadi, 2006). Broda, Johanna. ‘Astronomy, Cosmovisión and Ideology in Prehispanic Mesoamerica’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 385, no. 1 (1982): 81–110. Broda, Johanna, Moctezuma, Eduardo Matos and Carrasco, Davíd. ‘Introduction’, in The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World, ed. Johanna Broda, David Carrasco and Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, 2nd edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). Burhenn, Herbert. ‘Understanding Aztec Cannibalism’, Archiv für Religionssoziolgie/ Archive for the Psychology of Religion 26 (2004): 1–14. Carrasco, David. Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990). Liminal Lives in the New World 39 Cortés, Hernán. Letters from Mexico, trans. and ed. Anthony Pagden, with an introduction by J. H. Elliott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport: Greenwood, 1972). de Asúa, Miguel and French, Roger. A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of Iberian America (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 14. deFrance, Susan D. ‘Zooarchaeology in Complex Societies: Political Economy, Status, and Ideology’, Journal of Archaeological Research 17, no. 2 (2009): 105–68, 109. de Gayangos, Pascual, ed. Cartas y Relaciones de Hernan Cortés al Emperador Carlos V (Paris: Imprenta Central de los Ferrocarriles, 1866). Díaz, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain, transl. and with an introduction by John M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1963). Emery, Kitty F. ‘Animals from the Maya Underworld: Reconstructing Elite Maya Ritual at the Cueva de los Quetzales, Guatemala’, in Behaviour Behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity, ed. Sharyn Jones O’Day, Wim Van Neer and Anton Ervynck (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004), 101–13. Emery, Kitty F., ed. Maya Zooarchaeology: New Directions in Method and Theory (Los Angeles: University of California, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2004). Florescano, Enrique. ‘Sahagún y el nacimiento de la cronica mestiza’, Relaciones 23, no. 91 (2002): 75–94. García Garagarza, Léon. ‘The Year the People Turned into Cattle: The End of the World in New Spain, 1558’, in Centering Animals in Latin American History, ed. Martha Few and Zeb Tortorici (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 31–61. Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca. ‘Comentarios Reales de los Incas’, in Obras Completas del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, ed. Carmelo Saenz de Santa Maria, Vol. 2 (Madrid: Atlas 1963), 357. Hardoy, Jorge E. Pre-Columbian Cities (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973). Hinz, Felix. Hispanisierung in Neu-Spanien, 1519-1568: Transformation Kollektiver Identitäten von Mexica, Tlaxkalteken und Spaniern, 3 vols (Hamburg: Kova, 2005). Hoage, Robert J., Roskell, Anne and Mansour, Jane. ‘Menageries and Zoos to 1900’, in New World, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Robert J. Hoage and William A. Deiss (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 8–18. Horváth, Agnes, Thomassen, Bjørn and Wydra, Harald, eds. Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015). Kagan, Richard and Mariás, Fernando. Urban Images of the Hispanic world, 1493-1793 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Kamen, Henry. Spain, 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict, 4th edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004). Kim, David Y. ‘Uneasy Reflections: Images of Venice and Tenochtitlan in Benedetto Bordone’s “Isolario”’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 49/50 (2006): 80–91. Kosto, Adam J. ‘Reconquest, Renaissance, and the Histories of Iberia (ca. 1000-1200)’, in European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 93–116. Liang, Yuen-Gen. Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Low, Setha M. ‘Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean’, American Anthropologist 97, no. 4 (1995): 748–62. Maffie, James. Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014). 40 Animal History in the Modern City Melville, Elinor. A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Moctezuma, Eduardo Matos. ‘The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan: Economies and Ideology’, in Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica: A Conference at Dumbarton Oaks, October 13th and 14th, 1979, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1984), 133–4. Mundy, Barbara E. ‘Mapping the Aztec Capital: the 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlan, its Sources and Meanings’, Imago Mundi 50 (1998): 11–33. Mundy, Barbara E. ‘Hybrid Space’, in Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, ed. Jordana Dym and Karl Offen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Mundy, Barbara E. The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). Norton, Marcy. ‘The Chicken or the Iegue: Human-Animal Relationships and the Columbian Exchange’, American Historical Review 120, no. 1 (2015): 28–60. Pratt, Mary Louise. ‘Arts of the Contact Zone’, Profession 91 (1991): 33–40. Ramírez, Susan E. To Feed and Be Fed: The Cosmological Bases of Authority and Identity in the Andes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Restall, Matthew and Lane, Kris. Latin America in Colonial Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Sabean, David Warren and Teuscher, Simon. ‘Kinship in Europe: A New Approach to Long-Term Development’, Kinship in Europe: Approaches to Long-Term Development (1300-1900), ed. David Warren Sabean, Simon Teuscher and Jon Mathieu (New York: Berghahn, 2010), 1–32. Salcedo, Jaime. Urbanismo Hispano-Americano, Siglos XVI, XVII y XVIIII: El Modelo Urbano Aplicado a la América Española, su Génesis y su Desarrallo Teórico y Práctico, 2nd edn (Santa Fe de Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Facultad de Arquitectura y Diseño, 1996). Solari, Amara. Maya Ideologies of the Sacred: The Transfiguration of Space in Colonial Yucatan (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013). Sugiyama, Nawa, Pérez, Gilberto, Rodríguez, Bernardo, Torres, Fabiola and Valadez, Raúl. ‘Animals and the State: the Role of Animals in State-Level Rituals in Mesoamerica’, in Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World, ed. Benjamin S. Arbuckle and Sue Ann McCarty (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014), 11–32. Thomassen, Bjørn. Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). Trigg, Heather B. ‘Food Choice and Social Identity in Early Colonial New Mexico’, Journal of the Southwest 46, no. 2 (2004): 223–52. Varner, John Grier and Varner, Jeannette Johnson. Dogs of the Conquest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983). 3 Liminal Moments: Royal Hunts and Animal Lives in and around Seventeenth-Century Paris Nadir Weber Introduction On 3 November 1649, a boar ran through the gardens of the Palais-Royal in Paris. The boar was followed by a pair of barking hounds and a group of horsemen headed by Louis XIV, the eleven-year-old king of France. To avoid unnecessary risks, his minister, Cardinal Jules de Mazarin, had chosen small, well-appointed, ‘easy and agreeable’ horses as mounts for the king and his high-ranking company: the Duke of Mercœur, the Count of Harcourt, the Dukes of Bouillon, Rohan and Richelieu, and several other ‘lords of mark’ and gentlemen of the royal chamber. Louis rode ‘always first on the beast’, as the anonymous author of a printed account asserted: well-dressed and booted and sitting perfectly on his saddle, the young king was compared in vigour and grace to Adonis, Alexander the Great, Achilles and Hercules. The hunt itself, however, was a modest success at best. On the same day, a hare had disappeared down a hole under a tree trunk, so that the hounds could not reach it, and a single deer and a single fawn had been pursued by the nobles and the pack ‘without taking any more of them than the pleasure of following their traces and ruses’. In the end, the royal hunters sounded their retreat from the scene, shortly after the boar had jumped into the grand basin in the middle of the gardens.1 Since royal propaganda usually tended to emphasize the sovereign’s power by listing impressive numbers of kills, one may reasonably wonder about the intended message of the printed account of the courtly hunt in Paris. Was it really meant to demonstrate the young king’s striking capabilities to ride, lead and govern, whatever the outcome of the chase? Or is its hyperbole rather a parody whose aim was to demonstrate the essential powerlessness of the crown in the face of its many enemies? This hunt was after all conducted at the height of the Fronde, the struggle between the crown, represented by Mazarin, and the combination of rebel princes and urban insurgents. Or perhaps a third reading is plausible: an intention to indicate Mazarin’s benevolence and clemency to those former enemies who had assailed him with all the political means at their disposal during the previous months. Only a few days before the royal hunt took place, on 30 October, the unpopular prime minister, together with the royal family, had 42 Animal History in the Modern City re-entered Paris after temporary exile. Mazarin and the queen-regent Anne of Austria were clearly anxious to re-establish their authority, without provoking any further rebellion by the imposition of unnecessary force – this is what the author of the cryptic print perhaps insinuated by describing the royal hunt in these words: ‘This battle was not undertaken to vanquish, but only to show that one could accomplish it.’2 A second aspect of the event that may surprise is the spot where the hunt took place. According to the printed account, the decision to organize a hunt in the welltended, geometric gardens of the Palais-Royal (also known as the Palais-Cardinal) in the capital, and not in the great hunting parks of Saint-Germain or Fontainebleau, was taken because of the ‘excessive workload and the unforgiving demands on his time’ that ‘confined’ the king to his Paris residence.3 However, the event was less extraordinary than modern observers, familiar with the chase and killing of wild animals in a more or less untouched ‘wilderness’, might think.4 As will be shown below, Louis’s precursor on the throne, Louis XIII, had regularly hunted in the gardens of his palaces in the city during his early years – his pursuit of the game animals that had been specially brought to the place where the hunt was to take place. For the author of the print mentioned above, it appears to be quite natural to report that a hare was ‘released’ in order to be hunted, and that the relatively tame deer and fawn had ‘looked on the running of the hounds and horses with some degree of satisfaction’, before the same dogs were set on them.5 The author continued in the same vein that the same afternoon, immediately after it was decided that the young boar, by becoming the quarry, should ‘taste the sweetness of life’, the king went up to his balcony to watch a combat between some mastiffs and a young bull. This chapter on the royal hunts in Paris considers the interactions and frictions between urban space, court culture and animal lives. Arguing from the ‘animal point of view’,6 it will show that the insensification of royal hunting during the seventeenth century led to the creation of in-between spaces and at the same time to redefinitions of the animals that were being hunted. While open landscapes were transformed into stages in miniature for ritualized courtly hunt performances, a highly ‘civilized’ urban space could become a site of bloody encounter between humans and beasts. Accordingly, the status of the hunted game was especially ambiguous; destined to be chased and killed, they were objects of careful human protection, but in precisely this fact they do not accord with the seemingly straightforward contemporary distinctions between ‘domesticated’ and ‘wild’ animals. In some cases, the sources indicate decisive moments in which the status of an animal suddenly changed – from being protected to being persecuted, or from moving freely to being kept, only in order to be finally released. These are transitions of status that may be defined as ‘liminal’ moments in these animals’ biographies.7 In contrast to interpretations that emphasize the strict moral distinction between domesticated ‘in-group’ animals and wild ‘out-group’ animals in early modern court life,8 this essay suggests that there were also certain portals between these different states, through which individual animals could or should pass during their lives. The first section briefly discusses the social location of the royal court within the city of Paris and the types of human–animal encounters that were associated with the Liminal Moments 43 presence of the king and his household in the capital. Then the nature of hunting in Paris during Louis XIII’s minority is analysed in more detail, with a special focus on the use of urban space and the status of the animals that were hunted. The third section contrasts these somewhat improvised practices with the gradual development of an elaborate apparatus designed to ensure regular and successful courtly hunts in the great urban parks. This development was closely linked, we shall see, with the king’s decision to move the court outside the capital, a major event of course in the political history of France, but one that also, and this is less well remarked, had an impact on animals’ lives and even the biodiversity of Versailles and its environs. Noble horses and stray dogs: City, court and the animal kingdom At the beginning of the seventeenth century, relations between the court of France and the city of Paris with its more than 230,000 inhabitants were particularly intricate, and never free from tension. Under the Valois dynasty in the preceding century, rather than following the sovereign around France, the court had settled in the Louvre, and in the residences on the Île-de-France, a process that reinforced the role of Paris as the capital city of the kingdom of France. The era of civil wars had, however, meant the absence of a large part of the kingdom’s elite from court life. After regaining Paris in 1594, Henri IV of Bourbon was eager to rebuild the relations between court and capital, and to integrate the nobility into court life. The expansion of the royal household and the beginning of the process of ‘curialization’ for the high nobility had profound impacts on the economy, architecture and social structure of Paris: the demand for luxury goods increased; the city walls were extended; new public buildings, squares and gardens were constructed; and new connections were fostered between the ancient families, the noblesse d’épée, and the parvenu parliamentary elites of the city.9 This entanglement of court and urban life was mirrored in and partially produced by an interspecies version of this productive commingling.10 First and foremost, the presence of the court was associated with the presence of a large number of horses – contemporary sources mention up to eight thousand animals.11 This requirement placed heavy and increasing demands on the local horse trade situated in the direct proximity of the royal stables in the Tuileries, and created particular problems concerning the provision of animal feed and the minimizing of neighbourhood nuisance. Horses not only were an important means of transportation, but also played an eminent role in the performance of noble rank and royal glory, ceremonies that required the urban population of Paris as spectators. From 5 to 7 April 1612, for instance, an equestrian carousel involving hundreds of noble riders (including the king) was staged on the Place Royale to celebrate the dynastic alliance between France and Spain, before the eyes of several thousand onlookers.12 Major state ceremonies, such as royal entries to the city, following the sacre in Reims (the anointing of the king), or after royal funerals, involved enormous parades of richly ornamented horses, riders and coaches.13 Even the lower orders joined in: in 1625, a company of the bourgeois were still able to accompany a fille de France to a wedding ceremony on horseback;14 subsequently, they 44 Animal History in the Modern City would more have to pay their respects on foot, the honour of riding or being taken in coaches reserved without fail for the king and the members of the court. Besides horses, other courtly animals helped to populate the urban scene. Exotic mammals and birds lived in the maison des lions and the volières in the Tuileries and could be visited by the local populace.15 Fancy pets such as lapdogs imported from Italy or monkeys from Madagascar accompanied the courtiers in their movements through the streets. Trained dogs and falcons kept for hunting purposes were also partially integrated into the complex of residences. Lastly, all sorts of livestock were regularly brought from the local markets to the Louvre, some of which even kept in the palace itself to serve the royal kitchens.16 Besides their practical functions, most of these animals operated as markers of distinction between the king and his courtiers on the one side, and the common people on the other: because of a species’ innate rarity and expense, or because they had to be specially trained and handled, or because of the special ways they were kept and the attitudes they inspired. All these animals were part of the display of colourful extravagance that the court maintained in the very heart of the city. As far as court life itself went, the capital offered an immense array of resources. The density of interspecies cohabitation also threatened disorder, however. Driving a courtiers’ coach through narrow, crowded streets could be a nerve-racking enterprise. When in the afternoon of 14 May 1610, the king’s coach had to stop in the Rue de Ferronnerie, two carts – one charged with wine and the other with hay – blocking the street, nobody seems to have interpreted this as anything out of the ordinary. But when the king’s escort left the coach to settle the problem, this was the moment for Henri’s assassin, François Ravaillac, to make his move.17 Less momentous, but potentially equally dangerous, was the encounter of Henri’s son and successor, Louis XIII, with a rabid dog, during a promenade in the Tuileries gardens some months later. The stray animal attacked the king’s companion dogs – among them his ‘chien favorit’, Gaïan – before turning to the king himself. A member of the guards was able to stop the dog at the last moment, but one of the king’s servants and all of the dogs that had been hurt were sent away from court following the unsavoury incident.18 One more challenge concerned the integration of specific aristocratic or courtly practices in the city. The rise of closed, but richly ornamented, coaches, and the more occasional public performance of horsemanship in the form of sophisticated horse ballets may be interpreted as examples of adaption of aristocratic horse culture in the more densely populated environment.19 The limited space available in the city represented, however, a distinct and much greater challenge when it came to the business of hunting. From the middle ages, killing of animals in the chase had been a constitutive part of the daily life of kings.20 Much more than a mere leisure pursuit or a means of providing meat, royal hunts fulfilled a series of social and political functions for dynastic rule. They formed, for instance, a vital opportunity for nobles to interact with the sovereign, and thus contributed considerably to the attractiveness of the court. Moreover, many offices were directly related to the organization and practice of royal hunts – a very useful way for the crown to bind members of the noblesse d’épée permanently to the royal household. On a more symbolic level, royal hunts were highly ritualized performances of the sovereign’s position as lord over all the inhabitants of his territory, people and Liminal Moments 45 animals alike. Lastly, hunting was uniformly accepted as a principal opportunity to practise and perform military skills and virtues in times of peace. As a consequence, the king, as commander in chief, was ideally the finest hunter in the kingdom, a quality that necessitated training and regular public demonstration. If the king was not able to leave his main residence on a regular basis for his hunting domains, it was necessary to bring the chase to him, to perform royal hunts in the city itself. Hunting in the city: Louis XIII and the origins of game animals Louis XIII was only nine years old when he became king of France in 1610. For reasons of state, but also in order to hold onto personal control, the dowager-queen Marie de’ Medici stipulated that the king was to stay in Paris. Despite this edict, Louis could pass a major part of his time hunting.21 Falconry was the sport the young king most preferred. In 1610, the king’s physician and tutor Jean Héroard recorded in his diary Louis’s participation in twenty-two hunts with birds of prey; in 1611, there were thirty-two; in 1612, forty-seven; and in 1614, another forty-three.22 Beside the king’s personal taste, the spatial limitations on the sovereign favoured this type of hunt. While Henri IV had Figure 3.1 Louis XIII’s hunts in Paris. 1 Château du Louvre (with annexing gardens). 2 Galleries of the Louvre. 3 Gardens of the Tuileries. 4 Gardens of Queen Marguerite. 5 Hôtel de Luxembourg. 6 Saint-Antoine and La Grenelle near Paris (approximately). 7 Château de Vincennes. Map from Mathias Merian, Le Plan de la Ville, Cité, Université et Fauxbourgs de Paris, avec la Description de son Antiquité, 1615 (digital version provided by Michel Huard, www.paris-atlas-historique.fr). 46 Animal History in the Modern City spent many weeks during the season in Fontainebleau in pursuit of stags and boars, most of Louis’s hunts in the 1610s took place in the more constrained spaces within or on the brinks of the capital, the gardens of the royal residence being the preferred hunting ground.23 There the king hunted crows, larks or sparrows with the assistance of the highly trained falcons. Charles d’Arcussia, author of the most famous treatises on falconry in the seventeenth century, described these ‘flights in the enclosure of the Louvre’ as a personal ‘invention’ of the young king, and saw their success as a sign of the sovereign’s almost magical attraction for all living beings: As soon as His Majesty leaves [the Louvre] in order to go to the garden or the Tuileries, the … kinglets, robins, sparrows, and other small birds resort to the cypresses or in the box trees of the alleys, one envying the other, as if there was an emulation between them who would fall first to his hands. His Majesty flies on them with his shrikes or his sparrowhawks … ordinarily when he goes to the [convents of the] Feuillants or the Capuchins.24 If we add to the hunts with falcons bird hunts with bows and guns (only eight in 1611 and five in 1614, but as many as fifty in 1612), the majority of the animals killed by the king in the 1610s were indeed the small and mid-sized birds that circulated freely in Paris. Besides these pursuits of wild birds, however, Héroard’s diary also mentions several chases of stags, boars, hares, and other animals that did not live within the city’s boundaries. A close reading of this invaluable source provides more information about the nature of the game being hunted. On 29 July 1609, the physician noted that Louis had been brought to the garden of the Hôtel du Luxembourg ‘where he made his little Artois hounds chase two hares’.25 In March 1610, Louis went to La Roquette with his sisters, ‘catching a fox that he had ordered to be brought there with the Artois hounds of Mr Martin’.26 On 2 June, only three weeks after the assassination of his father, the young king was again brought to the Hôtel de Luxembourg to chase a young boar that had been transported there, and went straight on to the gardens of Queen Marguerite, on the south bank of the Seine, to hunt ‘a fox carried into the park’.27 In October, the king directed his dogs to chase two young wolves into the gardens of the Tuileries, and in November, another wolf was harried at the same place until he leapt into a pond where he was killed.28 The list of examples could go on. This record shows that the game involved was not wild animals that had never before been in contact with humans. In some cases the sources explicitly mention that the quarry was brought to the gardens by officers the vénerie, the administrators of the royal hunts. Although reliable information about the background of these animals is lacking, it is clear that all of them had at least for a time lived under human-controlled conditions. The duration of this captivity might have been rather short. The fox, for instance, may first have been chased and cornered in the royal woods surrounding Paris by members of the vénerie, then put into a cage, possibly fed to keep it in good condition, then transported to be released to be hunted once more; this is a practice that is documented in several other contemporary sources.29 In contrast, the wolves that were hunted by the young king possibly lived for extended periods of time in a human-dominated setting, for the royal menageries in Paris and Vincennes certainly housed wolves that were occasionally used for animal combats with other ‘ferocious beasts’.30 There was also Liminal Moments 47 a third group of animals that probably lived even more obviously domesticated lives. In the surroundings of Paris, special compounds for rabbits – the so-called garennes – had been constructed in order to supply the royal table, and the royal hunt too; the two hares in the Luxembourg gardens are likely to have come from such a compound.31 The status of these animals thus changed at least once and in some cases twice within an individual lifetime: from a wild animal to a captive – and possibly tamed – animal, in some cases, and, in every case, from a captured, tamed or partially domesticated animal to a game animal that was only set free in order to die gamely. The boundaries between nature and culture become even more fluid in the case of falconry, where not only the hunted animals, but also the non-human hunting assistants were ‘liminal animals’ whose status changed several times within their lives. In contrast to hunting dogs – the archetype of a domesticated animal – hawks and falcons could not be bred under human supervision. Instead, the birds were taken out of their nests or caught with the aid of traps in order to be tamed and trained to attack specific game.32 Louis XIII soon gained a considerable personal expertise in the delicate handling of these birds of prey. Tutored by his favourite falconer Charles d’Albert, Seigneur de Luynes, he trained shrikes, merlins and sparrowhawks to fly on sparrows, larks or pigeons in the gardens of the Tuileries or in the galleries of the Louvre.33 The idea that making birds useful partners in the hunt was merely a matter of royal will and discipline seems to have become a kind of phantasm in the mind of the young king. Héroard once heard Louis speak ‘of a shrike he had, and he said that he wanted to train it to fly on the sparrow, and a sparrow to fly on the kinglet, and a kinglet on flies’.34 While the young royal hunter thus imagined all wild birds as potential hunting assistants, he felt no constraints from transforming ‘domestic’ birds that lived in his room into game animals. On 9 November 1611, Héroard records that in the early afternoon, the king had entered his cabinet, taken a little bird out of the cage and let his shrike chase it in the grande galérie of the Louvre, and again on 5 November 1614, the king set his merlins on some small birds in the confines of his own apartment.35 There is no detail about the species of the birds that had been hunted here. They might have been canaries or other valuable and exotic birds, but perhaps they were merely the common songbirds that professional bird-catchers (oiseleurs) brought to the city for sale.36 Such birds may even have been caught by the king himself, for as we learn from Héroard, Louis designed traps to catch small birds in the alleys of the Tuileries.37 Ultimately, these practices indicate that in the early seventeenth century, a clear practical and moral separation between wild and domestic animals or even between pets and working animals, hardly existed in the daily life of the French court. Escaping the city: Versailles and the machinery of life and death In the course of the seventeenth century, the French kings began to prefer the castles around Paris to their residence in the city. Hunting remained a key activity at court, and indeed it might be more closely integrated into daily life without the spatial restrictions of an urban setting. 48 Animal History in the Modern City When Louis XIII grew older, eventually escaping the control of his exiled mother, the range of his hunting activities was gradually expanded. In an initial stage, the sovereign was regularly brought by coach to hunting grounds in the immediate surroundings of Paris such as Bourget, La Grenelle, Antony and Bourg-la-Reine, to prey on red kites and herons – forms of falconry that were seen as more appropriate to a king. During these outings, Louis was accompanied by the staff of the grande fauconnerie and by high members of the court; he could fly his gyrfalcons, saker falcons, and other large and highly exclusive imported birds of prey on a range of game.38 Around 1620, the king then began to pass whole days and nights in more distant castles and hunting parks, in the company of only few selected friends. During this period, hunting for him became an evident escape from the intrigues and ceremonial constraints of court life, as well as from the city and its spatial restrictions. In 1623, the king purchased land in a valley some twenty kilometres south-east of Paris, and ordered the construction of a modest hunting lodge to his own design: the château de Versailles.39 In the first years of its existence, Versailles served as a base for the somewhat promiscuous and improvised pursuit of the foxes, boars and deer who lived in the surrounding woods. After 1626, the surroundings were gradually integrated into a hunting park, enclosed by fences and criss-crossed by paths, while the hunting lodge itself was transformed into a more representative château de plaisance. At the same time, the king chose Saint-Germain to be his main residence, where he had a large hunting park at his disposal. Even during his various military campaigns the king hunted at every opportunity, accompanied by his favourite hunting dogs and falcons. This great passion for the hunt was recognized in printed royal propaganda; under the direction of the Cardinal de Richelieu, an image of a restless sovereign, always pictured on horseback fighting foreign enemies, rebels or dangerous predators – such as wolves – was propagated.40 By abandoning the capital, where he had passed the first years of his minority, the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV followed the example of his father. While the separation between the court and Paris is usually explained with the king’s early-established antipathy towards the city, following the traumatizing events of the Fronde, the self-image of the Bourbon kings as rois connétables and passionate hunters (put about in pointed contrast to the ‘effeminacy’ of the last Valois kings) surely played an equally important role. The closeness of the residences of Saint-Germain and Versailles to large hunting grounds made it possible for members of the ruling dynasty to practise their passion on a daily basis and without losing much time and energy on the roads. In the 1660s, Saint-Germain, Louis XIV’s birthplace became his preferred residence. There the king could follow his ‘taste for the promenade and the hunt, which was much more convenient in the countryside than in Paris, which is far away from the woods and sterile for promenades’.41 At this time, the château and park of Versailles were gradually enlarged to host great numbers of people, horses and game animals. When, finally, it was Versailles that became the king’s main residence, in 1682, hunting had become fully integrated into the elaborate rituals of court life, practised almost daily and in different forms by the king or members of the royal dynasty.42 The partial de-urbanization of court life fitted in into the contemporary noble discourses that praised rural life and knightly virtues,43 but it would be wholly Liminal Moments 49 misleading to speak of a return to nature. Once again, the character of the game that was hunted reveals a more ambiguous picture. The masses of stags, deer and pheasants killed in the park of Versailles through the years would simply not have been there if the courtly hunters had exclusively relied on nature’s bounty. Not only were game animals living in the parks secured by fences from predators and poachers and supplied with provisions in winter, they also passed significant parts of their lives in closed compounds, named parcs aux cerfs, parcs aux daims, héronnières or faisanderies: that is, under direct human protection and control. The example of pheasants demonstrates how much the presence of game animals relied on such energetic organizational efforts. These beautifully coloured and delicious birds had originally been imported from Asia, and would scarcely have been able to survive on their own, at the mercy of the wet and cold and the host of predators drawn to the vulnerable birds or their eggs. To ensure a sufficient reproduction of these birds, three pheasantries were created in the park of Versailles: a small one in 1677 in the Petit Parc close to the menagerie, and two larger ones in 1685, in Moulineau and Rennemoulin in the Grand Parc.44 There the dedicated staff fed the pheasants on high-protein food such as ant eggs and cheese and encouraged them to lay their eggs in heated rooms where they were hatched by chickens.45 The pheasant chicks were subsequently raised in boxes covered with grills to protect them against predators, until they were strong and quick enough to circulate freely in the grounds of the pheasantries. From time to time, animals were set ‘free’ to serve as game for the royal hunters. On 25 August 1685, for instance, the courtier Dangeau noted that the king himself, after having been shooting birds in the park of Versailles as usual, had entered the pheasantry ‘where he let pass five thousand partridges and two thousand pheasants at once’.46 A specialized and highly differentiated logistics of nurturing, protection and care thus created a new species of ‘liminal animals’ – animals that were born under human control in order to die as wild game. These activities also had a significant impact on local animal biodiversity. While some delicate, originally imported, species such as pheasants and fallow deer lived in great numbers in Versailles, other species, notably predators such as wolves and foxes, became rare or even disappeared from the region altogether as a result of the royal hunt and its effects. This system remained extremely fragile. In 1722, only seven years after the court had left Versailles following the death of Louis XIV, one observer estimated that the number of game for hunting had diminished by as much as two-thirds.47 When the same year Louis XV and his court returned, however, the machinery of creating and killing large numbers of animals began again. Louis XV’s grandson and successor, Louis XVI, would note in his personal hunting diary the killing of no fewer than 190,525 animals; the diary contains the famous ‘rien’ entry on 14 July 1789.48 In the fall of the same year, the machinery finally collapsed, when the king was forced by the revolutionaries to leave Versailles for Paris. Conclusion A focus on the royal hunts in seventeenth-century Paris demonstrates that animal lives were, in this period, not yet capable of being categorized into the distinct groups of 50 Animal History in the Modern City wild and domestic animals (or those of companion animals and productive livestock) that so shape contemporary discourses on animal protection and ethics. Although it is clear that there was a considerable difference between the social and moral status of a court lady’s beloved lapdog and a wolf living in the surrounding woods, a very wide range of gradual differences can be identified in-between. The status of a species or an individual animal could change, depending on time, place and perspective. We can argue that most animals in contact with human society were ‘liminal animals’, in the sense that they were neither entirely wild nor fully domesticated. This conclusion becomes especially clear if the particular moments in which the status of certain animals changed are looked at more closely, as we have done for the royal hunts in or near the city: these are liminal moments that, in the absence of comprehensive data for individual animals, may help to reconstruct ‘typical’ biographies for members of certain species or populations. It follows in our example that spatial correlates did not determine the character and status of the game animals in royal hunts. In the end, no strict qualitative difference existed between the arranged hunting scene in the stately geometric garden of the Palais-Royal in 1649 and an ordinary stag hunt in the parks of Fontainebleau or Versailles. In both cases, space was modelled and limited through physical boundaries, and in both cases most of the hunted animals were not wild animals in the sense of having never been in contact with human society. Paradoxically, animals may appear to be even more functional in the park of Versailles, although human influence was more artfully obscured than it is in the staged hunts in the Parisian parks and gardens. The creation of specific settings for protection, feeding and care went hand in hand with a stricter regulation of animal lives in the parks, and they became characterized by an idealized sequence of liminal moments, as the case of pheasants illustrates. The chase and killing of thousands of animals every year, up to the French Revolution, was only possible under such highly regulated conditions. By creating the grand park of Versailles as a symbol of nature’s abundance, the hunter-kings and their noble servants thus in a certain sense anticipated the modern practices of industrial livestock farming. Notes 1 Anon, Les Particularitez de la Chasse Royale Faite par Sa Majesté le Jour de St Hubert et de St Eustache, Patrons des Chasseurs. Accompagnée de Plusieurs Seigneurs de Marque de sa Cour (Paris: Alexandre Lesselin, 1649), 7–9. 2 Ibid., 7. 3 Ibid., 6. 4 Matt Cartmill, A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature through History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), chapter 7. 5 Les Particularitez de la Chasse, 7. 6 Éric Baratay, Le Point de Vue Animal: Une Autre Version de l’Histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2012). 7 Thomassen defines a ‘liminal moment’ as a ‘sudden event affecting one’s life (death, divorce, illness) or individualized ritual passage’: Bjørn Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 90. More specifi- Liminal Moments 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 51 cally – but still broader than the original, ritualistic meaning in Van Gennep’s Rites de Passage – it may be defined as any event in which the (social or moral) status of an individual changes. For ‘moral status’, see Peter Stemmer, Normativität: Eine Ontologische Untersuchung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 237–56, esp. 237–40. Rainer E. Wiedenmann, Tiere, Moral und Gesellschaft: Elemente und Ebenen Humanimalischer Sozialität (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2009), 360–77, argues that courtiers rarely came in contact with an intermediary group of domesticated animals that were kept for means of production (363). Other studies of animals at court support this differentiation when they focus exclusively on ‘pets’, without taking into consideration the ambiguous status of the various semi-free species living in the parks around the châteaux: Katharine MacDonogh, Reigning Cats and Dogs: A History of Pets at Court since the Renaissance (London: Fourth Estate, 1999), and Nicolas Milovanovic, La Princesse Palatine, Protectrice des Animaux (Versailles: Perrin, 2012). For an overview, see Jean Favier, Paris: Deux Mille Ans d’Histoire (Paris: Fayard, 1997), esp. chapter IX, and Jean-François Solnon, La Cour de France (Paris: Fayard, 1987), esp. 51–73, 163–249. More generally on the roles of animals and interspecies interactions in court life, see Mark Hengerer and Nadir Weber, eds., Animals at Court (Berlin: De Gruyter, in press). For the number estimated by the Venetian ambassador in the 1580s, see Nicolas Le Roux, Le Roi, la Cour, l’État: De la Renaissance à l’Absolutisme (Paris: Champ Vallon 2013), 46. Margaret M. McGovan, ed., Dynastic Marriages 1612/1615: A Celebration of the Habsburg and Bourbon Unions (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Frédérique Leferme-Falguières, Les Courtisans: Une Société de Spectacle sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: PUF, 2007), esp. 19–79. See the description in the Mercure François, 1625, here cited after a manuscript copy in Archives Nationales, Paris, O 1 3250, describing the ceremonies for the wedding between Henriette Marie de France and Charles I of England. See Gustave Loisel, Historie des Ménageries de l’Antiquité à Nos Jours, 3 Vols (Paris: Doin, Laurens, 1912), Vol. I, 256 ff., Vol. II, 93. Joan Pieragnoli, La Cour de France et ses Animaux, XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris: PUF, 2016), 60–1, and passim. On the food markets – and local breeding practices – in Paris, see Reynald Abad, Le Grand Marché: L’Approvisionnement Alimentaire de Paris sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris : Fayard, 2002), esp. 717–18. Roland Mousnier, L’Assassinat d’Henri IV 14 Mai 1610 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 4–5. Jean Héroard, Journal de Jean Héroard, ed. Madeleine Foisil (Paris: Fayard, 1989), Vol. II, 1867 (20 December 1610). On horse culture in France, see Daniel Roche, La Gloire et la Puissance: Essai sur la Distinction Équestre (Paris: Fayard, 2011). On coaches: Daniel Roche, ed., Voitures, Chevaux et Attelages du XVIe au XIXe Siècle (Paris: Association pour l’Académie d’Art Équestre de Versailles, 2000). Philippe Salvadori, La Chasse sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Fayard, 1996). The same is true for most courts in pre-modern Eurasia; see Thomas T. Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Summarized in Madeleine Foisil, ‘Introduction Générale’, in Journal de Jean Héroard, Vol. I, 33–363, 117–21. For Louis XIII’s biography, see Jean-Christian Petitfils, Louis XIII (Paris: Perrin, 2008). See the figure in Foisil, ‘Introduction Générale’, 127. Ibid. 52 Animal History in the Modern City 24 Charles d’Arcussia, La Fauconnerie de Charles d’Arcussia de Capre, Seigneur d’Esparron, de Pallieres, et du Revest, en Provence. Divisée en Dix Parties, Contenuës à la Page Sixième. Avec les Portraicts au Naturel de Tous les Oyseaux (Rouen: François Vaultier and Jacques Besogne, 1644), chapter ‘Sommaire de la Fauconnerie du Roy, et des Vols que Sa Majesté a Inventez’ (around 1615)), 170. 25 Héroard, Journal, Vol. II, 1641 (29 July 1609). 26 Héroard, Journal, Vol. II, 1745 (27 March 1610). 27 Héroard, Journal, Vol. II, 1777 (2 June 1610). 28 Héroard, Journal, Vol. II, 1825 (23 September 1610); ibid., 1847 (7 November 1610). 29 Game animals were regularly transported from one park to another, or even exchanged as gifts between princes. See Nadir Weber, ‘Zahmes Wild? Zu den Organisatorischen Hintergründen der Spektakulären Jagderfolge Frühneuzeitlicher Fürsten’, Tierstudien 8 (2015): 93–103, 95–96; Pieragnoli, Cour de France, 115–20. 30 Loisel, Les Ménageries, Vol. 1, 269, and Vol. 2, 99. For the practice of animal combats in Paris, see Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 68–99. 31 Abad, Le Grand Marché, 712. 32 On falconry in France, see Corinne Beck and Elisabeth Rémy, Le Faucon, Favori des Princes (Paris: Gallimard, 1990) and the collective volume La Chasse au Vol au Fil des Temps (Gien: Musée International de la Chasse, 1994). 33 See Héroard, Journal, Vol. II, 1952 (11 September 1611); 1957 (30 September 1611); 1970 (14 November 1611); 1972 (21 November 1611); 2230 (3 September 1614); and passim. Sharon Kettering, Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII: The Career of Charles d’Albert, Duc de Luynes (1578-1621) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 5–31. 34 Héroard, Journal, Vol. II, 1955 (23 September 1611). 35 Héroard, Journal, Vol. II, 1972 (19 November 1611); ibid., 2246 (5 November 1614). 36 On the oiseleurs, see Robbins, Elephant Slaves, 100–21. 37 Arcussia, La Fauconnerie (1644/1615), 170. 38 Some of these hunts are described in detail by Arcussia, La Fauconnerie (1644/1615), 166–74. 39 See Jean-Claude Le Guillou, Versailles Avant Versailles: Au Temps de Louis XIII (Paris: Perrin, 2011). 40 The association between war and hunting wolves can also be found in contemporary hunting treatises such as Robert de Salnove, La Vénerie Royale (Paris: Antoine de Sommaville, 1665), 235–7. See also Jean-Marc Moriceau, L’Homme Contre le Loup: Une Guerre de Deux Mille Ans (Paris: Fayard, 2011), 82–97. 41 Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon, Mémoires: Additions au Journal de Dangeau, ed. Yves Coirault, Vol. 5 (Paris: Gamillard, 1985), 521. 42 Salvadori, La Chasse, 193–243. 43 Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 214–67. 44 See Grégory Quenet, Versailles: Une Histoire Naturelle (Paris: La Découverte, 2015), 114. 45 For details on these practices, see Elisabeth Herget and Werner Busch, ‘Fasanerie’, in Reallexikon zur DeutschenKunstgeschichte, Vol. 7 (München: Beck, 1981), 437–461. 46 Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis de Dangeau, Journal, ed. Eudore Soulié et al., 19 Vols (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1854–60), Vol. I, 207 (16 August 1685). 47 Quenet, Versailles, 119. 48 Savadori, La Chasse, 208. Liminal Moments 53 Bibliography Abad, Reynald. Le Grand Marché: L’Approvisionnement Alimentaire de Paris sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Fayard, 2002). Allsen, Thomas T. The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Anon, Les Particularitez de la Chasse Royale Faite par Sa Majesté le Jour de St Hubert et de St Eustache, Patrons des Chasseurs. Accompagnée de Plusieurs Seigneurs de Marque de sa Cour (Paris: Alexandre Lesselin, 1649). Baratay, Éric. Le Point de Vue Animal: Une Autre Version de l’Histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2012). Beck, Corinne and Rémy, Elisabeth. Le Faucon, Favori des Princes (Paris: Gallimard, 1990) Cartmill, Matt. A View to a Death in the Morning: Hunting and Nature through History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). d’Arcussia, Charles. La Fauconnerie de Charles d’Arcussia de Capre, Seigneur d’Esparron, de Pallieres, et du Revest, en Provence. Divisée en Dix Parties, Contenuës à la Page Sixième. Avec les Portraicts au Naturel de Tous les Oyseaux (Rouen: François Vaultier and Jacques Besogne, 1644). de Courcillon, Philippe, Marquis de Dangeau. Journal, ed. Eudore Soulié et al., 19 Vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1854–60). de Rouvroy, Louis, Duc de Saint-Simon, Mémoires: Additions au Journal de Dangeau, ed. Yves Coirault, Vol. 5 (Paris: Gamillard, 1985), 521. de Salnove, Robert. La Vénerie Royale (Paris: Antoine de Sommaville, 1665). Elias, Norbert. The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985). Favier, Jean. Paris: Deux Mille Ans d’Histoire (Paris: Fayard, 1997). Foisil, Madeleine. ‘Introduction Générale’, Journal de Jean Héroard, Vol. I, 33–363. Hengerer, Mark and Weber, Nadir, eds. Animals at Court (Berlin: De Gruyter, in press). Herget, Elisabeth and Busch, Werner. ‘Fasanerie’, in Reallexikon zur DeutschenKunstgeschichte, Vol. 7 (München: Beck, 1981), 437–461. Héroard, Jean. Journal de Jean Héroard, ed. Madeleine Foisil, Paris: Fayard, 1989, Vol. II, 1867 (20 December 1610). Kettering, Sharon. Power and Reputation at the Court of Louis XIII: The Career of Charles d’Albert, Duc de Luynes (1578-1621) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). La Chasse au Vol au Fil des Temps (Gien: Musée International de la Chasse, 1994). Leferme-Falguières, Frédérique. Les Courtisans: Une Société de Spectacle sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: PUF, 2007). Le Guillou, Jean-Claude. Versailles Avant Versailles: Au Temps de Louis XIII (Paris: Perrin, 2011). Le Roux, Nicolas. Le Roi, la Cour, l’État: De la Renaissance à l’Absolutisme (Paris: Champ Vallon 2013). Loisel, Gustav. Historie des Ménageries de l’Antiquité à Nos Jours, 3 Vols. (Paris: Doin, Laurens, 1912). MacDonogh, Katharine. Reigning Cats and Dogs: A History of Pets at Court since the Renaissance (London: Fourth Estate, 1999). McGovan, Margaret M., ed. Dynastic Marriages 1612/1615: A Celebration of the Habsburg and Bourbon Unions (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Milovanovic, Nicolas. La Princesse Palatine, Protectrice des Animaux (Versailles: Perrin, 2012). Moriceau, Jean-Marc. L’Homme Contre le Loup: Une Guerre de Deux Mille Ans (Paris: Fayard, 2011). 54 Animal History in the Modern City Mousnier, Roland. L’Assassinat d’Henri IV 14 Mai 1610 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). Petitfils, Jean-Christian Petitfils, Louis XIII (Paris: Perrin, 2008). Pieragnoli, Joan. La Cour de France et ses Animaux, XVIe-XVIIe siècles (Paris: PUF, 2016). Quenet, Grégory. Versailles: Une Histoire Naturelle (Paris: La Découverte, 2015). Robbins, Louise E. Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in EighteenthCentury Paris (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). Roche, Daniel, ed. Voitures, Chevaux et Attelages du XVIe au XIXe Siècle (Paris: Association pour l’Académie d’Art Équestre de Versailles, 2000). Roche, Daniel. La Gloire et la Puissance: Essai sur la Distinction Équestre (Paris: Fayard, 2011). Salvadori, Philippe. La Chasse sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Fayard, 1996). Solnon, Jean-François Solnon. La Cour de France (Paris: Fayard, 1987). Stemmer, Peter. Normativität: Eine Ontologische Untersuchung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008). Thomassen, Bjørn. Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). Weber, Nadir. ‘Zahmes Wild? Zu den Organisatorischen Hintergründen der Spektakulären Jagderfolge Frühneuzeitlicher Fürsten’, Tierstudien 8 (2015): 93– 103, 95–6. Wiedenmann, Rainer E. Tiere, Moral und Gesellschaft: Elemente und Ebenen Humanimalischer Sozialität (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2009). 4 Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World: Liminality and Nuisance in Glasgow and New York City, 1660–17601 Andrew Wells Introduction: Animals, liminality, space and nuisance In the memorable and unflinching depiction of early modern towns that opened his account of England in the Eighteenth Century (1950), Jack Plumb highlighted the place of animals, both living and dead, in the urban smellscape: The first noticeable thing about these towns would have been the stench. There was no sanitary system. … Most cellars were inhabited, not only by people but also by their pigs, fowls, sometimes even by their horses and cattle. All tradesmen and craftsmen used the street as their dustbin, including butchers who threw out the refuse of their shambles to decay and moulder in the streets.2 The role in which Plumb cast non-humans in his lurid description of town living was as an unsanitary nuisance, a part that could be played not only by live-in livestock or rotting offal, but also by ‘vermin’ in the form of foxes or rats.3 These animals have come to be regarded by scholars as fundamentally ‘liminal’, neither ‘wild’ nor ‘domesticated’ yet somewhat dependent on human civilization. But liminality has spatial as well as ontological applications, making it a powerful category for investigating urban societies and their animal – human and non-human – members. This chapter examines animal nuisances in two early modern cities (Glasgow and New York) as a means of evaluating the use of ‘liminality’ as a concept in historical animal and urban studies. Such studies have tended to neglect early modern cities despite the undeniable importance of animals in urban settings, where they provided a range of products (manure, hides, tallow), food, companionship, transport, labour, opportunities for leisure and entertainment, and could assist in the disposal of garbage.4 Scholars have been more interested in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century ‘great separation’, through which urban animals were increasingly excluded, marginalized or enclosed within public or private spaces (e.g. zoos and the home, respectively). But this was (and 56 Animal History in the Modern City has remained) an incomplete endeavour, not least because of the categorical difficulties it has encountered. Which creatures were to be excluded, which marginalized, and which enclosed depended on a large number of factors, of which perhaps the least important was species. Within broad – yet fluid and provisional – categories of ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’, there remained significant gaps and overlaps. Even the quintessential ‘domesticated’ animal, the dog, might be a favoured pet, a working animal, a lower class cur or an abject stray.5 This explains, perhaps, the growing attention paid to liminality, a concept developed in the early twentieth century by anthropologists such as Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner. It was used to describe an ontological state, most clearly visible in rites of passage, during which a participant possesses neither the status with which they entered the rite nor that which they will acquire as a result. A common application of this ontological perspective maintains that liminal animals are those which are neither completely wild nor entirely domesticated, but are rather wild or domestic species that live in our midst and on anthropogenic food sources, yet are beyond the pale of human control (examples include stray dogs, feral cats, rats, foxes and pigeons). Some recent works have categorized ontologically liminal animals as ‘commensal’ species or as ‘denizens’ to whom humans owe a duty of care, but these efforts to replace the (productive) ambiguity of liminality with the (illusory) certainty of fixed categories are misguided for several reasons.6 This chapter highlights two in particular. First, ontological liminality can be usefully extended to animals that are incapable of being either commensal or denizens because they are no longer alive. They are liminal rather than dead because their bodies are in the process of being used to produce a number of products, from food to candles, leather goods or soap. This sort of zombie liminality features heavily in the cases of nuisance discussed below. Second, the concept has applications beyond ontology. Cultural theorists, especially Homi Bhabha, have gone further than anthropologists in exploring the spatial connotations of liminality. Their studies have shown how ‘interstices’ or ‘in-between spaces’ are crucial to the foundation of individual identities and subjectivities in a range of cultural settings. These scholars have not so much jettisoned ontology as they have shifted attention towards space as an extraordinarily eloquent metaphor and application of the concept. For example, an archetypal liminal space is the beach, described by the Australian historian Greg Dening as a kind of ‘contact zone’, where Europeans and (in Dening’s case, Pacific) natives met and interacted, but which encapsulated and was possessed by neither.7 Just as with today’s human–animal relationships, those of the early modern period could be spatially oriented, whether on an intimate or global scale. Within the home, the meanings associated with pets were bound up with domestic space, whereas in European colonial empires, settlers and native peoples sought to come to terms with unfamiliar species and understandings of animals.8 Between these extremes, cities played host to the greatest variety of liminal spaces and the actors that defined, created, used and violated them. Such actors were human as well as animal: the early modern city created categories of people permitted, tolerated or forbidden to use its spaces. The two most fundamental of these were burgess/citizen and stranger/foreigner; only the former were granted full access to reside and trade within the city. The liminality of Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 57 many urban spaces was exacerbated by the flexibility of the distinction between public and private in the early modern city: public spaces might be suddenly made private (by relocating a market and selling its former site, for example), and private spaces, such as the home, could be unnervingly public. Intrinsically associated with urban space is the phenomenon of nuisance, which can be understood both in a specific, technical, legal sense and more broadly. The general, vernacular understanding of nuisance is focused on pollution, whether by noise, odour or dirt. In Mary Douglas’s oft-quoted formulation, dirt is ‘matter out of place’, and while subsequent scholars have enlarged upon her ideas about the contingency and cultural determination of dirt, this spatial formulation has remained largely intact. Indeed, the modern perception of ‘vermin’ as filthy disease vectors arguably derives from their uncontrolled movement through an urban space that, in the nineteenth century, was increasingly organized around the priorities of sanitation and cleanliness.9 But the tight linkage between space and nuisance was hardly a Victorian development. In general terms, nuisances proliferated in expanding early modern cities because urban growth created sustained pressure on housing, food supply and waste disposal; older animal-keeping habits of newly arrived rural migrants died hard; and the need for employment and demand for goods led to an increase in the number and/or capacity of noxious or dangerous animal trades. Furthermore, the enlargement of such cities was a centrifugal force that repeatedly cast these noisome trades to the periphery; a continual process of reabsorption and expulsion was a result of urbanization. The association of space and nuisance is also enshrined in the common law of nuisance, which only came to be treated as a specific category of law in England and Scotland after 1750. The cases discussed below are typical of those that led to the emergence of the common law of nuisance, which has a much broader purview in English than Scottish law, especially regarding public nuisance (a category potentially without limit).10 There is, however, significant and instructive overlap between the two legal traditions, which both deal with ‘the invasion of one or both of two distinct interests, namely, first, an interest in the use and enjoyment of private land and, second, an interest of a member or members of the public in the use and enjoyment of public places’.11 Urban space was particularly important in this branch of law and, while it came to feature heavily in nineteenth-century definitions of statutory nuisance, it was also central to the common law, as one modern scholar has outlined: Nuisance is the common law of competing land use. In insisting that certain lawful and necessary trades, such as soapboiling, brewing, brick-burning, and calendering, could be closed down and forced to move elsewhere if they were nuisances to the neighborhood, the courts were saying in effect that certain land uses were to be preferred over others. Nuisance therefore had a zoning function, and this function of allocating activities to appropriate areas was explicitly recognized.12 Both the English and Scottish common law of nuisance were shaped by the unique challenges of the urban environment, where a greater concentration of people meant both that neighbours should have a higher threshold of tolerance and that otherwise innocuous activities could suddenly find themselves deemed nuisances.13 One 58 Animal History in the Modern City example is the keeping of hogs: by Aldred’s Case of 1610, keeping a pigsty so close to a neighbour’s house that the smell was unbearable was deemed a nuisance, and by the judgement of R v. Wigg (1706), it was ruled a common (i.e. public) nuisance to keep pigs in a town or city.14 The absence of such cases in Scotland’s higher courts illustrates how common law nuisance was sensitive to local circumstances, and while authorities on the English common law rehearsed the judgement in Wigg throughout the eighteenth century, such cases remained common in both Glasgow and New York. The following discussion seeks not only to examine cases that contributed to the emergent common law of nuisance, but also to draw attention to the ways in which this law functioned avant la lettre in locations (Scotland and America) that have been neglected by scholars who have addressed early modern urban animal nuisances.15 Living nuisances Pigs feature heavily in cases of nuisance in the early modern city. They could inflict substantial olfactory violence, and were always where they should not be, rooting through garbage, trampling or uprooting crops and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Before R v. Wigg made keeping pigs in urban settlements a common nuisance, local authorities in England, Scotland and America had passed regulations to the same effect. In 1655, Glasgow’s city council imposed a fine of £10 Scots for allowing pigs to wander through the streets and into other people’s properties. This regulation was not repeated or strengthened, suggesting that it was successful: the fine, equivalent to 16/8d. sterling, was not insubstantial and is probably comparable to confiscation of the animal, which was the penalty imposed by the 1690 statute for keeping London’s streets clean that nonetheless failed to deter the defendant Wigg.16 This success was not mirrored in New York, where unruly pigs were a constant problem, as they were everywhere in colonial America.17 Pigs were already an irritation in New Amsterdam, where in 1640 fines escalating from half a guilder to two guilders were imposed for allowing them to roam free.18 Sadly this did not solve the problem and city ordinances against fractious swine were made throughout the colonial period. Despite their increasingly exasperated tone, the penalties imposed on the owners of wandering pigs waxed and waned. In August 1673, for example, an order stated that any hogs found roaming south of the Fresh Water Pond – which remained far north of the city until the mid-eighteenth century – would be confiscated. By October the penalty became even stiffer for those animals found in the fortification at the southern tip of Manhattan: in addition to confiscation, a fine of twice the value of the animal would be levied. These draconian regulations were somewhat relaxed in 1675, when only pigs found in the city’s streets were subject to confiscation, and then only on the third offence.19 Beyond the city, the problem of wandering swine was so acute that one of the earliest acts of the colony’s new legislative Assembly, after being called in 1683, was to legalize the killing of trespassing swine. As with the city’s own regulations, however, this was relaxed within two years. But provincial legislation to restrict roaming pigs in various townships and counties was passed throughout the late seventeenth and Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 59 eighteenth centuries. Many of these laws were in force only for a limited period, and so were often renewed or revived. New York City was the subject of an act of 1730 that authorized freeholders and inhabitants of the city who possessed land in which pigs were found roaming at large to impound these animals and to sell them if they received no response from their owner(s) within forty-eight hours.20 Evidently a successful measure, it was revived in perpetuity in 1739; subsequent urban restrictions on pigs (particularly the act against nuisances of May 1744, discussed below) were in response to specific events and acute nuisances.21 As the problem of hogs clearly did not diminish over the years, the fluctuation in the severity of penalties is curious. It can be attributed in part to resistance from the citizenry and from their proverbially unruly hogs. But it also relates to politics and imperial affairs because the damage caused by pigs constituted a security risk. From the earliest pleas for citizens to keep their hogs under control, the most earnest complaints concerned damage to the fortification and earthworks at the bottom of Manhattan Island.22 As the only defensive structure in a strategically vulnerable city, damage to these earthworks was deadly serious in wartime, and the strict regulations of August 1673 were issued barely a month after the Dutch recaptured the city in the Third Anglo–Dutch War. Owing this success to the dilapidation of the fort, the Dutch did not intend to present the English with the same opportunity and so sought to make urgent repairs. Control of a porcine fifth column was therefore imperative. Once the city had changed hands again and the English issued their regulations on hogs in 1675, the war was over and the stringent measures for dealing with the hog situation – never popular in New York, as the swift reversal of the 1683 rules showed – were somewhat relaxed. Pigs remained a problem in New York until well into the nineteenth century, and their damage to the fort continued to be a nuisance, but without the urgency of war, draconian restrictions could not justifiably be applied.23 There existed plenty of other living animal nuisances in early New York and Glasgow. Foxes were deemed enough of a pest to warrant the proposal of legislation to the Scottish Parliament in 1696 for their killing, but this does not seem to have progressed.24 In New York, pigs were not the only trespassers and the colony’s Council felt it necessary to ban the killing of intrusive horses in 1679. Wandering horses, particularly small stallions, were thought to be a reproductive threat by a law of 1718, because ‘a breed of Horses whether for the Saddle or the Draft will be of great benefit to the Inhabitants of this Colony & … cannot be Obtain’d while Stallions of Small Size are Suffered to run at large’.25 This law made it legal for anybody to geld any horses above three years old but smaller than fourteen hands. Revived and restated in 1726 and 1734 (respectively) before being made perpetual in 1741, this law exemplifies one way in which liminality and nuisance are connected, via the spatial transgressions of wandering stallions and their undesirable ontological consequences, namely the creation of less valuable offspring.26 The New York authorities typically dealt with several animal matters at once: just as the Council was forbidding the killing of trespassing horses, it mandated a reward for eradicating wolves;27 this too was placed on a statutory footing on the same day in 1683 as the law permitting the killing of swine was passed by the Assembly. These pest control laws neatly reflected the colonial social order by differentiating between 60 Animal History in the Modern City ‘Christians’ and ‘Indians’ in the size of the reward given for killing wolves. ‘Christians’ were paid 20s. for an adult and 10s. for a pup, while ‘Indians’ received payment in kind worth 12s. and 6s., respectively. This statute was reissued in 1692 and despite complaining that wolves ‘have lately encreased very much to the great discouragement of pasturage and encrease of sheepe and cattle’, it actually reduced the reward payable to ‘Indians’ for wolf pups. Unsurprisingly, therefore, these measures were deemed inadequate by 1702, when another act explicitly blamed the ‘neglect of Killing Wolves within this Colony’ on ‘the inequallity of the Distributcon & Smallness of the Reward’ as well as the reluctance of the authorities to pay it. This law raised and equalized the reward in five counties, but there remained a difference between the amounts payable to ‘Christians’ and ‘Indians’ in a further two.28 Pest control legislation also points to the flexibility of ‘vermin’ as a category. The term first appears in an act of 1708 which imposed seasons on the hunting and sale of game, and offered rewards for the destruction of a wide range of species: alongside wolves were listed foxes, ‘wild cats’, squirrels, crows and blackbirds. The last three species were rehabilitated by an act of 1713, and by 1741 squirrels were prized pets which one New York mother sought to send to her son in Britain.29 Subsequent legislation passed before the Revolution concentrated on wolves, ‘panthers’, and ‘wild cats’, the species that posed the greatest danger to livestock. All these measures support the argument made by Mary Fissell that ‘vermin’ was not a category centred on dirt and disease in the early modern period, but was rather in this case primarily associated with the predation of livestock.30 What counted as ‘vermin’ was therefore variable. But it must be acknowledged that these laws affected more than just New York City: they were passed by the colony’s legislative Assembly and often pertained only to particular counties. Indeed, rewards were often guaranteed only where animals had been killed in named (rural) counties; the killing of wolves, foxes and other named species was rewarded at the discretion of the authorities elsewhere. There were occasions, as in August 1685, when New Yorkers on Manhattan Island were granted licence to hunt and destroy wolves, but the wider legislation could have had its strongest impact only beyond the city.31 Dogs could be a pest in the city as well as the countryside, but they were generally more complained about than combatted (except during times of public health emergency, such as an outbreak of plague, when cats and dogs were routinely massacred).32 One reason why active measures were not taken against canine nuisances was the wide range of roles dogs played in early modern society. As Keith Thomas and others have recognized, their status was often dependent on their function and on the social standing of their owners. Some dogs, particularly the ‘useless’ or those belonging to the poor, were mere ‘curs’ while others were valued for their fidelity and nobility.33 Indeed, laws were passed to protect the dogs of the wealthy from theft in Scotland and to permit the killing of (uncontrolled) dogs that preyed upon sheep in New York.34 These attitudes spread to include even lower status dogs by the nineteenth century, frustrating the efforts of New York’s municipal authorities to deal with stray and particularly rabid dogs.35 Within the city, the failure to curb canine nuisances was too much for one New Yorker, whose angry complaint was printed in late 1752. He aired two grievances in Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 61 particular: the noise of dogs in the city (an issue at the heart of one of the earliest reported cases of common law nuisance in urban Scotland) and the apparent lack of human solidarity, as these animals were treated with overweening affection to the detriment of hungry fellow citizens.36 As he grumbled, dogs with their dismal Howlings, disturb the Repose of the Healthy, break the interrupted Slumbers of the Sick, add fresh Horrors to the Night, and render it perillous to traverse our Streets after the Sun is sunk beneath our Horizon. These Creatures are a perfect Nuisance to the Inhabitants, and, with respect for Fortynine in Fifty, answer not one valuable Purpose in Life. Furthermore, they consumed substantial amounts of food – ‘our Dogs daily consume as much eatable Provision, as would suffice Five Hundred Men’ – that would be better diverted to the poor. The author begrudgingly acknowledged their fidelity, gratitude and value as guard dogs and for farmers. But he called for their banishment, concluding that ‘in a City, they are generally worse than useless: They are noxious and a meer Burden to the People.’37 Urban space – not to mention the sizeable axe this author had to grind – seemed to militate against the canine traits that conferred nobility on the animal, especially those linked to hunting and farming, and left only a noisy mouth to feed. ‘Zombie’ nuisances The association of dogs with slaughterhouses encapsulated this liminal zone between utility and vexation. Although venerable, the tie between butchers and dogs was not to survive nineteenth-century reforms in slaughtering and butchery practices.38 But this relationship was already under scrutiny as early as the seventeenth century in Glasgow and New York. Butchers were often mentioned when complaints about urban dogs were made. This might be expected in the case of Robert Houston, a Glasgow apothecary who complained in 1690 that the yard he shared with butchers had been ruined by their dogs. Nevertheless, butchers were the first (and the only named) dog owners to be mentioned by New York’s Common Council when it complained in 1727 that whereas the Butchers and Other Inhabitants of this City Superabound in A Very great Number of Mischievious Mastiffs Bull Dogs and Other useless Dogs who not only Run at Coaches Horses Chaise and Cattle in the day time whereby much Mischief has Ensued, but in the Night time are left in the Streets of this City, and frequently Bite Tear and Kill several Cows and Render the passage of the Inhabitants of this City upon their lawfull Occasions Very dangerous in the Night time through the Streets thereof by Attacking and flying at them and are become A Publick Nusance and Grievance.39 The city’s constables were ordered to warn dog owners to secure their animals at night to avoid prosecution. Dogs would remain valuable to butchers for a 62 Animal History in the Modern City long time, but the closeness of this relationship clearly had its drawbacks for both participants: humans could be held liable for their animals’ behaviour – to the extent of being indicted for murder – and dogs might suffer from their association with specific individuals and their quarrels.40 Such was the case for the dog stabbed to death in Glasgow by Richard Herbertson in 1612 as part of his conflict with its owners, the brothers and butchers James and John Watson.41 It was not simply their ownership of dogs that made butchers problematic in the early modern city. They performed an essential function in producing both food and the raw materials for a number of other trades, such as tanners and tallow chandlers; however, these crafts were dirty and smelly and produced a substantial amount of noxious waste.42 These nuisances meant that such trades are an ideal example of the ontological and spatial liminality of animals in an early modern urban context. Ontologically, the animals in question were dead, but they were changed substantially post-mortem from a carcass into, ultimately, raw or cooked meat, candles, leather, glue and a number of other products; liminality and nuisance were closely intertwined at all stages between living creature and saleable end product. Such ontological liminality was by no means limited to an urban – or even early modern – context, but the inherent spatial liminality of these animal trades was more closely tied to the expansion of cities, which proceeded apace during the centuries after 1500. These animal trades were, moreover, spatially liminal precisely because they were simultaneously valuable and insufferable. These trades were welcomed by cities because they made substantial contributions to the local economy but they were continually resisted to minimize inconvenience to other city dwellers, in accordance with the emerging imperatives of the law of nuisance. Thus protests against tanning outright or even to suggested improvements, such as those raised by two senior Glaswegian councillors in 1743, were rejected on the basis that ‘the use for which the building a cellar and washing of hydes is now allowed is among the greatest encouragements for the trade of the place and interest of the kingdom which has occurred’. Not merely that, but as Baron David Hume stated in the early nineteenth century, concerning the law of nuisance, ‘the bias of our practice (so far as any general remark can be made on it) is to the side of a free and independent administration of property’.43 And yet tanneries, slaughterhouses and candleworks were continually moved to the outskirts or even beyond the city; once urban development had spread as far as these malodorous outposts, they were again relocated, only to await further movement once the city had once again grown, and so on.44 This continuous cycle of expulsion and (brief) reabsorption took place in both Glasgow and New York throughout the period.45 While the city was still young and small, tanneries in residential parts of New York were tolerated. One complaint about a neighbour’s tannery made in the month before the English takeover in 1664 was met with the apologetic but resigned response that ‘as others have been allowed to make a tannery behind their house and lot, such cannot be forbidden’.46 Within twelve years this attitude had markedly changed as the city council ordered that all tan pits within the city limits were to be abandoned by 1 November 1676. The cycle then began: from the 1670s to the 1730s tanning was concentrated in an area that came to be known as ‘Shoemakers’ Land’ (see Figure 4.1). By 1734 the city had expanded as far as this area, so tanners were again removed to two Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 63 Figure 4.1 T. Maerschalck, A Plan of the City of New-York (1763), showing locations and dates of tanning activity. Courtesy New York Public Library. locations: the Fresh Water Pond, which lay well outside the city, and a closer site known as Beekman’s Swamp. When an act was passed against ‘Noisom Smells’ in 1744, it was explicitly stated that ‘there’s Reason to Believe that the Said Noisom Smell did in Great part Arise from Sundry Tan pitts: Tan ffatts and other Pitts of Tanners Skinners: Leather Dressers Currirs and Glovers within or too near the Populous and Most Inhabited part of this City’.47 As a result, all tanning activity was expelled to at least 100 yards beyond the city, with the sole exception of those currently active around Beekman’s Swamp.48 The same pattern is visible among Glasgow’s slaughterhouses, tanneries and candleworks, although any lingering indulgence towards antisocial industries seems to have disappeared sooner than in New York. Regulations to ban the slaughter of animals in the open street, to mandate the construction of slaughterhouses, and to ensure that markets were kept clean were made already in the 1660s.49 By these ordinances, burghers were permitted to construct slaughterhouses to the rear of their properties, but within two generations, this was no longer deemed acceptable. When Robert Broom’s neighbours complained in 1716 about the changes he was making to his land by constructing out-buildings for a slaughterhouse, the Glaswegian authorities took exactly the opposite perspective to the resigned officials of New York from 1664. Instead of declining to act because to do so would appear invidious, the Glasgow authorities were keen to emphasize that it ‘would be a bad preparative to allow slaughter houses in any closs [close] … quhich [which] ought to be in remoter parts of the city’.50 Nevertheless, Glasgow’s authorities appeared to respond more slowly to complaints than did New York’s. They were still issuing orders to prevent slaughter in open markets in the 1710s, and it was not until 1744 that the magistrates and town council acted to remove slaughterhouses from the city despite ‘the many and frequent complaints 64 Animal History in the Modern City which for many years have been made to them and their predecessors in office of the inconvenience of having slaughter-houses … within the city, and of the prejudice and damage frequently arising to the inhabitants and strangers resorting to the city by the dunghills and dogs from the said slaughter-houses’.51 Slaughterhouses were erected on the north bank of the Clyde to the east of the old bridge, and despite occasional squabbles between the city’s magistrates and its Incorporation of Fleshers, slaughtering activities seem thereafter to have been confined to this location.52 Glasgow’s authorities took a far tougher line with the city’s candlemakers. Already by Christmas 1649 serious consideration was given to removing tallow chandlers from the city, but action was only taken after the devastating fire of 1652 that destroyed the homes of about a thousand families. When another fire (which started at a candlemaker’s premises or ‘crackling house’) struck Edinburgh two years later, the city’s magistrates ordered the removal of all crackling houses to beyond the city and not within hundred yards of any other building. They were again removed in 1679 with the building of a new crackling house that was situated so far to the north of the city that it remained unnecessary to relocate again until the nineteenth century.53 It is clear that, notwithstanding the stench often mentioned in connection with the rending of tallow during the production of candles, it was the risk of fire that made the expulsion of crackling houses an urgent matter for the Glasgow authorities; they were otherwise leisurely in their progressive relocation of slaughterhouses and tanneries, which were equally smelly but less of a fire hazard. Ironically, there is some evidence that tanneries were instrumental in combatting fires in Glasgow: both tanners and sugar boilers who had been granted citizenship of Glasgow were expected to act as a fire brigade. Furthermore, saturated hides – the dressing of which in an inappropriate location was deemed a legal nuisance in 1810 – were draped over houses during fires to quench the flames, for which more than one tanner was reimbursed by the town council during the 1680s.54 Resisting liminality This cycle of expulsion and reabsorption, fuelled by the simultaneous desire for animal goods and disgust at the means of their production, was not without its opponents. Glasgow’s candlemakers, upset at the prospect of distant relocation, bombarded the city council in 1680 with requests to select a more desirable location. By October, their constant petitioning had so exasperated the council that they forbade candlemakers to address them further on the subject, under pain of a £100 fine. When, in 1720, one group of candlemakers unilaterally tore down the crackling house and replaced it with a large and costly building, they did so in the name of minimizing nuisance by ‘preventing … any damage that might happen throw boyling of cracklings and refuse of tallow, and the inconvenience throw the nauseous smell therof ’.55 Yet several of their colleagues protested strongly against their presumption in both high-handedly demolishing a common building and demanding increased duties to pay for this; by complaining to the council, the disgruntled candlemakers secured concessionary rates for using the new crackling house.56 Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 65 New Yorkers also actively resisted their relocation. Ordinances stipulating that no animals should be slaughtered within the city’s limits to produce meat for sale57 were passed between the 1670s and 1730s. Despite these repeated orders and their (re)issue in printed form over the years, people still continued to slaughter animals in unauthorized locations, such as the city’s Out Ward. Perhaps the most brazen rejection of New York’s efforts to banish antisocial industries beyond the city limits came from John Vincent, a tanner who in 1687 and 1697 was tried at the Court of General Sessions for digging tanning pits within the city in blatant violation of the 1676 ban. His indictment mentions one of the most common reasons for expelling unpleasant industries – the danger to public health from noxious stench – and reflects the anger at his indifference.58 As it stated, Vincent’s Pitts & Raw or green hides or skinns in ye pitts so dressed or tanned as aforesd then and there at ye days and times above sd Many Putrid & Nauseous Smells contagious and corrupt smells did proceed were caused and made and hitherto are caused and made to ye Grievous damage and Concern Neusanse & hurt as well of all ye Leig people of our said Lord ye King now there Dwelling and Residing as of all other ye Kings Leig subjects by that way going passing and Labouring to ye great Perrill of Infecting ye Inhabitants of ye Citty aforesd with ye Plague and other contagious diseases against ye peace of our said lord ye King.59 Public health was a major factor behind the later development of statutory nuisance and certainly played a major role in deciding whether something should be deemed a nuisance at common law.60 While it is easy thus to condemn Vincent’s behaviour and the conduct of illicit slaughtermen in New York or Glasgow’s intractable candlemakers, theirs were arguably acts in defence of existing customs by people who sought to resist change.61 One final pair of examples shows the lengths to which the authorities in both cities went to impose order on animals and animal trades. In 1669, the Governor’s Council decided that all animals from New York or New Harlem grazing in the woods of Manhattan were to be marked or branded to specify the community from which they came. The council minutes stipulated the design for each brand mark (see Figures 4.2 and 4.3), which served to preserve the domesticated state of these animals in a wild environment in much the same way as the laws rewarding the destruction of pests and predators preserved the lives of this wild-grazing livestock. Domesticated animals allowed to graze in an untamed environment like seventeenth-century Manhattan Island are neither entirely ‘domesticated’ nor entirely ‘wild’, and indelibly Figure 4.2 Brand Mark for New York. Minutes of the Executive Council of the Province of New York, 2 vols, ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1910), i. 28. 66 Animal History in the Modern City Figure 4.3 Brand Mark for New Harlem. Minutes of the Executive Council of the Province of New York, 2 vols, ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits (Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1910), i. 28. marking these creatures can be interpreted as a means of mitigating liminality and preventing confusion.62 However, it was of limited success as this effort to resist liminality was itself resisted. By 1671 there were so many unmarked animals in Manhattan’s woodlands that the official branders were allowed to auction them. Even this did not ensure compliance, as the law was reissued again in 1677.63 The century-long attempt by Glasgow’s tanners to force butchers and skinners to produce undamaged hides was part of the same problem. Already in the 1650s tanners were complaining that butchers left the substance and strength of the skin on the skinned carcass in order to boost its weight, with the result that the hide was so weakened as to be practically useless. Another underhand practice was ‘blowing’ a carcass, which involved puncturing the skin in one limb of a carcass and blowing air into it, in order to make it appear larger and fatter; this was banned by a city ordinance of 1663. More troubling for tanners were large cuts and gashes in the hides of animals, which ruined the hide but were often undetectable at the time it was sold to a tanner. There were national and local regulations to prevent incompetent or negligent flaying. In England, an act of 1604 made the cutting or gashing of a hide by a butcher an offence that carried a fine of 20d., and instituted a regime of inspection to ensure quality. By a revenue act passed in 1711 and made perpetual in 1718, hides were to be inspected and taxed; guide books were printed and distributed to inspectors of hides, and their work produced statistics that later historians used to calculate meat consumption in Glasgow. Further legislation in 1785 clarified that these acts applied to Scotland, and in 1800 a broader statute for the taxation and inspection of hides was enacted.64 Despite such extensive national regulations, the city council were forced repeatedly to address the issue, culminating in an ordinance of April 1739 that appointed a searcher of hides equipped with ‘a hammer with the word Glasgow upon it, and with which every hide and skin shall be marked … and the hammer to have two ends, the one end with the word Sufficient and the other end with the word Insufficient’.65 Unlike the inspectors appointed by the acts of 1711 and 1800, whose main business was to assess the taxable value of hides (even extending so far, in one notorious case, as charging duty on the flayed and tanned skin of an executed murderer), the city’s searcher of hides focused squarely on quality.66 Yet the persistence of doubts about the quality of this liminal commodity provides another example of resistance to the effort to carve a degree of certainty out of liminality. Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 67 Conclusion This chapter has examined cases of animal nuisance in the early modern city with several goals in mind. The first was to examine the usefulness of liminality as a category in historical urban and animal studies. Cases of animal nuisance highlight both its value and our inability entirely to separate ontological from spatial applications of the concept. Among those animals we might categorize as ‘liminal’ are domesticated species that run amok (e.g. pigs), wild species that raid human food supplies (‘vermin’, including wolves), and animals that are neither alive nor entirely dead, as they undergo transformation from a living, breathing creature into candles, leather or food. Each of these involves both ontological and spatial ambiguity, which sometimes provoked resistance as people sought the comfortable certainty of older customs and practices, or were otherwise too selfish or lazy to produce satisfactory hides or brand their animals. Animal nuisances therefore help to flesh out the complexity of liminality in early modern European and colonial urban settings. Second, animal nuisances also contribute to our understanding of the differences in urban human–animal relations between these two environments. There were naturally significant and substantial continuities between Europe and its colonies. It remained easier to gain support for – if not to enforce – regulations against pigs than it was against dogs, thanks to the associations forged between humans and these species. Dogs were popular among all sectors of society where pigs were strongly linked to the (urban) poor, and while pigs may have caused more persistent and grievous nuisances than dogs, the reluctance to enact measures against canines is striking. Additionally, growing cities throughout European empires exhibited the same repeating pattern of the centrifugal expulsion of the zombie nuisances of slaughterhouses, tanneries and candleworks. Yet the particular circumstances of colonial cities meant that these two cases also manifested substantial differences. There was, for example, greater anxiety about fire in Glasgow than New York, which led to a more intensive effort against candlemakers than tanneries and slaughterhouses in the Scottish city. This obviously has much to do with topography and the availability of adequate water supplies for firefighting (being surrounded on three sides by water was obviously to New York’s advantage), but also to the packed and crowded nature of European cities. The colonial setting also had an impact on measures against pigs, which could be seen as a security risk in New York in a way difficult to imagine in Europe. Another problem with which Europeans did not have to contend was the presence of large numbers of predators that endangered livestock. Furthermore, the perceived need to improve equine stocks in British America made the existence of diminutive roaming stallions a reproductive nuisance. The colonial dimension thus created new nuisances, involved different solutions to those that already existed, and manifested a different set of spaces and species. Finally, this chapter sought to explore the prehistory of the law of nuisance in unusual settings, Scotland and America. The analysis offered here has centred on what in English law is termed ‘public nuisance’, those phenomena that affect a community rather than a particular individual. While this distinction does not obtain in Scotland, it appears that urban societies on both sides of the Atlantic dealt with nuisances in 68 Animal History in the Modern City roughly the same, public, manner during this period. Law-giving bodies existed in Glasgow and New York, which provided swift – if not always effective – remedies to animal nuisances, and which were responsive to presentments and petitions: Robert Broom’s neighbours did not initiate a suit at law against his new slaughterhouse buildings, but rather petitioned Glasgow’s magistrates. Beyond the urban municipal authorities, Glaswegians (to 1707) and New Yorkers (from 1683) were able to promote legislation against nuisances in national or colonial legislatures. All of this contributed to the comparative neglect of the common law of nuisance in these urban settings in favour of a set of legislative and statutory enactments. Yet a statutory definition of nuisance, even within cities, remained for the time being a very distant prospect. Notes 1 I would like to thank the editors and Katrin Berndt, Sheila Docherty and Felicia Gottmann for their help with this chapter. Research for this chapter was supported by the Leverhulme Trust and the Göttingen Graduate School of the Humanities (Graduiertenschule für Geisteswissenschaften Göttingen). 2 J. H. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century (1714-1815) (London: Penguin, 1950), 12. 3 On premodern views of ‘vermin’, see Mary E. Fissell, ‘Imagining Vermin in Early Modern England’, History Workshop Journal 47 (1999): 1–29. 4 Among the exceptions are Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Clemens Wischermann, ed., Tiere in der Stadt, special issue of Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte, 2/2009; Anita Guerrini, The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); and Christopher Plumb, The Georgian Menagerie: Exotic Animals in EighteenthCentury London (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015). 5 See Philip Howell, At Home and Astray: The Domestic Dog in Victorian Britain (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015), 1–24; Peter Atkins, ‘Introduction’, in id. (ed.), Animal Cities: Beastly Animal Histories (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 1–17; Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Kimberly K. Smith, Governing Animals: Animal Welfare and the Liberal State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Ingrid H. Tague, Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain (University Park: State University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 6 Arnold van Gennep, Rites de passage (Paris: Émile Nourry, 1909); Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), esp. ch. 3; Terry O’Connor, ‘Commensal Animals’, in Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, ed. Linda Kalof (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 525–41; Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 7 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); idem, ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in id. (ed.), Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), 291–322; Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourses on a Silent Land, Marquesas 1774-1880 (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1980); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992). Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 69 8 Howell, At Home and Astray, 1–24; Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 9 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1991), 36; Fissell, ‘Imagining Vermin’, 22. 10 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols (Oxford, 1765–9), iii. 216–22; Gordon D. L. Cameron, ‘Scots and English Nuisance … Much the Same Thing?’ Edinburgh Law Review 9 (2005): 98–121; J. R. Spencer, ‘Public Nuisance–A Critical Examination’, Cambridge Law Journal 48 (1989): 55–84. 11 N. R. Whitty, ‘Nuisance’, in The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopedia (Edinburgh: Law Society of Scotland, 2001), para. 2. 12 Joel Franklin Brenner, ‘Nuisance Law and the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Legal Studies 3 (1974): 406. 13 Judgement by Lord Kames in Kinloch v. Robertson (1756), in William Morison (ed.), The Decisions of the Court of Session 42 vols (Edinburgh, 1811), [xxxi–xxxii]. 13163; Ralston v. Pettigrew (1768), in Lord Hailes, Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session, from 1766 to 1791 (Edinburgh, 1826), 234; Baron David Hume, Baron David Hume’s Lectures, 1786-1822, ed. G. Campbell H. Paton, 6 vols (Edinburgh: Stair Society, 1939–58), iii. 213–14; James C. C. Broun, The Law of Nuisance in Scotland (Edinburgh: William Green, 1891), 31–6. 14 77 ER 816–22; William Salkeld, Reports of Cases Adjudg’d in the Court of King’s Bench, 2 vols (London, 1718), ii. 460. 15 Emily Cockayne, ‘Who Did Let the Dogs Out? Nuisance Dogs in Late-Medieval and Early Modern England’, in Laura D. Gelfand (ed.), Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 41–67. 16 2 Wm. & Mar., sess. 2, c. 8, §18. 17 Anderson, Creatures of Empire, chapters 5 and 6. 18 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Glasgow, 11 vols (Glasgow: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1876–1916) (hereafter ERBG), ii (1630–62). 305; E. B. O’Callaghan (ed.), Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland (Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co., 1868), 21. 19 Berthold Fernow, ed., The Records of New Amsterdam from 1653 to 1674, 7 vols (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1897), vi. 406, vii. 36; New York, County Clerk’s Office, Division of Old Records, Mayor’s Court Minutes, vol. 1 (1674–75), 45. 20 Every parish in the Province of New York was required to keep a pound under the ‘Duke’s Laws’ of 1667. PRO: TNA, CO5/1142, fo. 116r. On pounds, see also Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 161–2. 21 The Colonial Laws of New York from the Year 1664 to the Revolution, 4 vols (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1894) (hereafter Laws), i. 134, 177, 616, 811, ii. 95, 301, 424, 468, 641–3 (1730 Act), 704, 919, 924, 992, iii. 1, 459, 501, 778, 881, iv. 40, 393, 398, 808, 844, 872, 1069; Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1675-1776, 8 vols (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1905) (hereafter MCC), v. 118–21. 22 See, for example, Director Peter Stuyvesant’s discussion of the issue in 1651 and 1654, in Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, ed. E. B. O’Callaghan and Berthold Fernow, 15 vols (Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co., 1856–87), xiv. 145–6 and Laws and Ordinances, 170. 23 McNeur, Taming Manhattan, chs 2, 4. 24 K. M. Brown et al., eds, The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 (St Andrews, 2007–17), M1696/9/14, http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/M1696/9/14 (accessed 25 February 2017). 70 Animal History in the Modern City 25 Laws, i. 996. 26 Ibid., ii. 297, 831, iii. 166. 27 On the complex motivations for killing wolves in colonial America, see Jon Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), ch. 2; Andrea Smalley, Wild by Nature: North American Animals Confront Colonization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), ch. 3. 28 E. B. O’Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of the Secretary of State, 2 vols (Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co., 1865–6), ii. 81; Laws, i. 133, 272, 497–500. 29 Abigail Franks to Naphtali Franks, 20 December 1741, in The Letters of Abigail Levy Franks, 1733-1748, ed. Edith B. Gelles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 104. 30 Laws, iii. 58, 74, iv. 812; Fissell, ‘Imagining Vermin’; Coleman, Vicious, 93. 31 O’Callaghan, Calendar, ii. 138; Laws, i. 618ff., 781, 931; MCC, i. 102. See also Peter Coates, ‘“Unusually Cunning, Vicious, and Treacherous”: The Extermination of the Wolf in United States History’, in The Massacre in History, ed. Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (New York: Berghahn, 1999), 163–83. 32 Except, it appears, in New York and Glasgow. Mark S. R. Jenner, ‘The Great Dog Massacre’, in Fear in Early Modern Society, ed. William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 44–61; Cockayne, ‘Who Did Let the Dogs Out?’, 54–9. 33 Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (London: Penguin, 1984), esp. 101–9. 34 1685, c. 25; Laws, ii. 667, 735, iii. 38, 402. 35 Susan McHugh, Dog (London: Reaktion, 2004), 137; McNeur, Taming Manhattan, 11–23. 36 Fleming v. Ure (1750), in Morison (ed.), Decisions [xxxi–xxxii]. 13159. 37 Independent Reflector, 18 January 1753. 38 Ian McLachlan, ‘A Bloody Offal Nuisance: The Persistence of Private Slaughter-Houses in Nineteenth-Century London’, Urban History 34 (2007): 227–54. 39 MCC, iii. 407–8. 40 Cockayne, ‘Who Did Let the Dogs Out?’, 65–6. 41 ERBG, iii (1663–90). 445; Memorabilia of the City of Glasgow (Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1868), 52. 42 See, for example, ‘Gentleman of the Temple’, Public Nuisance Considered Under the Several Heads of Bad Pavements, Butchers Infesting the Streets, … Inconveniences to the Publick, … and the Insolence of Household Servants (London, [1754]). 43 Hume, Lectures, 213. 44 ERBG, vi (1739–59). 147–8. 45 The same phenomenon is visible with the London Common Hunt doghouse. Cockayne, ‘Who Did Let the Dogs Out?’, 48–9. 46 Fernow, Records of New Amsterdam, v. 87. 47 MCC, v. 118–19. 48 The 1744 Act appears to have been inspired in part by the intervention of Cadwallader Colden, New York’s leading intellectual (and later governor). See The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, iii: 1744-1747 (Collections of the New-York Historical Society, 52; New York, 1919), 46; MCC, i. 21, v. 118–21; Alexander Bishop, A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860, 3 vols (Philadelphia, 1866), i. 441; 49 ERBG, iii. 84–5; Memorabilia, 209. 50 ERBG, iv (1691–1717). 602. 51 ERBG, v (1718–38). 4–6, vi. 189. Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 71 52 Glasgow, Past and Present, 3 vols (Glasgow: David Robertson, 1884), iii. 209–213. 53 ERBG, ii. 181, 230, 300–01, iii. 269–70. 54 ERBG, iii. 362, 367, v. 247, 252, vi. 259; Scott, etc. v. Cox, FC (see Whitty, ‘Nuisance’, para. 83). 55 ERBG, v. 93–4. 56 ERBG, iii. 279, 287; v. 70, 93–6. 57 As opposed to individuals slaughtering their own livestock for personal consumption. 58 See, for example, Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (New York: Berg, 1986), 48–56; Constance Classen, David Howes and Anthony Synnott, Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (London: Routledge, 1994), 78–84, 88–92. 59 New York, Municipal Archives, Court of General Sessions Minutes, Vol. 1 (1683–94), 98. 60 It was, however, not necessary to prove a genuine risk to health for something to count as a nuisance. See Lord Mansfield’s ruling in R. v. White and Ward (1757), in James Burrow, ed., Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King’s Bench, 5 vols (London, 1766–80), i. 337. 61 MCC, i. 20, 408, ii. 65, 184, iii. 302, 379, 380, iv. 106; I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 6 vols (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915–28), vi. 503–4; New York, Municipal Archives, Court of General Sessions Minutes, Vol. 1, 98, Vol. 2, 25; Laws, Statutes, Ordinances, and Constitutions, Ordained, Made, and Established, by the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, and Assistants of the City of New-York, Convened in Common-Council (New York, 1749), 31–2. 62 Although marks could be themselves ambiguous, such as the bow and arrow assigned for the Indian village of Natick in Massachusetts, which suggested that ‘no amount of acculturation could fully erase from English minds the sense that Indians remained fundamentally different from colonists’: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 203; Minutes of the Executive Council of the Province of New York, ed. Victor Hugo Paltsits, 2 vols (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1910), i. 28. 63 Fernow, Records of New Amsterdam, vi. 349, 351–2; MCC, i. 47–8. 64 1 Jac. I, c. 22, §1; 9 Anne, c. 12; 3 Geo. I, c. 7; 24 Geo. III, sess. 2, c. 19; 39–40 Geo. III, c. 66; Instructions for Officers who Inspect Tanners, Tawers, &c. (London, 1715); Instructions for Officers of the Duties on Hides, &c. (London, 1775); James Cleland, Annals of Glasgow, 2 vols (Glasgow, 1816), i. 324–7. 65 ERBG, vi. 16. 66 Glasgow, Past and Present, i. 434–5. Bibliography Anderson, Virginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Atkins, Peter. ‘Introduction’, in Animal Cities: Beastly Animal Histories, ed. Peter Atkins (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 1–17. Bhabha, Homi K. ‘DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation’, in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 291–322. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 72 Animal History in the Modern City Bishop, Alexander. A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860, 3 vols (Philadelphia: E. Young, 1866). Blackstone, William. Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols (Oxford, 1765–9). Brenner, Joel Franklin. ‘Nuisance Law and the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Legal Studies 3, no. 2 (1974): 403–33. Broun, James C. C. The Law of Nuisance in Scotland (Edinburgh: William Green, 1891). Brown, K. M., MacIntosh, G. H., Mann, A. J., Ritchie, P. E. and Tanner, R. J. eds. The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 (St Andrews: University of St Andrews, 2007–17). Burrow, James, ed. Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Court of King’s Bench, 5 vols (London, 1766–80). Cameron, Gordon D. L. ‘Scots and English Nuisance … Much the Same Thing?’ Edinburgh Law Review 9 (2005), 98–121. Classen, Constance, Howes, David and Synnott, Anthony. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell (London: Routledge, 1994). Cleland, James. Annals of Glasgow, 2 vols (Glasgow, 1816). Coates, Peter. ‘“Unusually Cunning, Vicious, and Treacherous”: The Extermination of the Wolf in United States History’, in The Massacre in History, ed. Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (New York: Berghahn, 1999), 163–83. Cockayne, Emily. ‘Who Did Let the Dogs Out? Nuisance Dogs in Late-Medieval and Early Modern England’, in Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society, ed. Laura D. Gelfand (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 41–67. Colden, Cadwallader. The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, iii: 1744-1747 (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1919). Coleman, Jon. Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). Colonial Laws of New York from the year 1664 to the Revolution, 4 vols. (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1894) Corbin, Alain. The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination (New York: Berg, 1986). Dening, Greg. Islands and Beaches: Discourses on a Silent Land, Marquesas 1774-1880 (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1980). Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1991). Fernow, Berthold, ed. The Records of New Amsterdam from 1653 to 1674, 7 vols (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1897). Fissell, Mary E. ‘Imagining Vermin in Early Modern England’, History Workshop Journal 47 (1999): 1–29. Franks, Abigail. The Letters of Abigail Levy Franks, 1733-1748, ed. Edith B. Gelles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). ‘Gentleman of the Temple’, Public Nuisance Considered Under the Several Heads of Bad Pavements, Butchers Infesting the Streets, … Inconveniences to the Publick, … and the Insolence of Household Servants (London, 1754). Glasgow, Past and Present, 3 vols (Glasgow: David Robertson, 1884). Guerrini, Anita. The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Antisocial Animals in the British Atlantic World 73 Hailes, Lord. Decisions of the Lords of Council and Session, from 1766 to 1791 (Edinburgh, 1826). Howell, Philip. At Home and Astray: The Domestic Dog in Victorian Britain (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015). Hume, David. Baron David Hume’s Lectures, 1786-1822, ed. G. Campbell H. Paton, 6 vols (Edinburgh: Stair Society, 1939–58). Independent Reflector. Instructions for Officers who Inspect Tanners, Tawers, &c. (London, 1715). Instructions for Officers of the Duties on Hides, &c. (London, 1775). Jenner, Mark S. R. ‘The Great Dog Massacre’, in Fear in Early Modern Society, ed. William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 44–61. Laws, Statutes, Ordinances, and Constitutions, Ordained, Made, and Established, by the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, and Assistants of the City of New-York, Convened in Common-Council. (New York, 1749). Marwick, James D. and Renwick, Robert, eds. Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Glasgow, 11 vols (Glasgow: Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1876–1916). McHugh, Susan. Dog (London: Reaktion, 2004). McLachlan, Ian. ‘A Bloody Offal Nuisance: the Persistence of Private Slaughter-Houses in Nineteenth-Century London’, Urban History 34, no. 2 (2007): 227–54. McNeur, Catherine. Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Memorabilia of the City of Glasgow. (Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1868). Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1675-1776, 8 vols (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1905). Morison, William, ed. The Decisions of the Court of Session, 42 vols (Edinburgh, 1811). New York. County Clerk’s Office, Division of Old Records, Mayor’s Court Minutes, Vol. 1 (1674–75). New York, Municipal Archives. Court of General Sessions Minutes, Vol. 1 (1683–94). O’Callaghan, E. B., ed. Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of the Secretary of State, 2 vols (Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co., 1865–6). O’Callaghan, E. B., ed. Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland (Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co., 1868). O’Callaghan, E. B. and Fernow, Berthold, eds. Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, 15 vols (Albany: Weed, Parsons and Co., 1856–87). O’Connor, Terry. ‘Commensal Animals’, in Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, ed. Linda Kalof (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 525–41. Paltsits, Victor Hugo, ed. Minutes of the Executive Council of the Province of New York, 2 vols (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1910). Plumb, Christopher. The Georgian Menagerie: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century London (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015). Plumb, J. H. England in the Eighteenth Century (1714-1815) (London: Penguin, 1950). Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992). Robbins, Louise E. Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in EighteenthCentury Paris (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) Salkeld, William. Reports of Cases Adjudg’d in the Court of King’s Bench, 2 vols (London, 1718). Smalley, Andrea. Wild by Nature: North American Animals Confront Colonization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). 74 Animal History in the Modern City Smith, Kimberly K. Governing Animals: Animal Welfare and the Liberal State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Spencer, J. R. ‘Public Nuisance – A Critical Examination’, Cambridge Law Journal 48 (1989): 55–84. Stokes, I. N. Phelps, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 6 vols (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915–28). Tague, Ingrid H. Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain (University Park: State University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World (London: Penguin, 1984). Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969). van Gennep, Arnold. Les Rites de Passage (Paris: Émile Noury, 1909). Whitty, N. R. ‘Nuisance’, in The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopedia (Edinburgh: Law Society of Scotland, 2001). Wischermann, Clemens, ed. Tiere in der Stadt, special issue of Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte 2 (2009). 5 Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold: An Eighteenth-Century Case Study of Liminal Animal Lives in a Southwest German Hometown Dennis A. Frey Jr In the last four decades, historical research into animals has, according to Mark Hengerer, ‘increasingly intensified to the point that it is an outright boom industry’.1 Occurring not just in the discipline of history, this boom has been widespread across many fields, including biology, anthropology, philosophy and cognitive science. Indeed, much of the recent research calls into question the traditional, Western conventions that rely on a simple dichotomy of culture, humans and domestication, on the one hand, from nature, animals and wilderness, on the other.2 That work challenges us to take a broader, more interspecific view of our environment, seeing all living creatures, human and non-human alike, as earthlings confined to and integrated in one biosphere. Thus, in the words of Dominick LaCapra, we have recently seen ‘a growing awareness that a decisive, differentiating criterion radically dividing the human from the animal or humans from other animals is nonexistent or at best phantasmatic’.3 Susan Merrill Squier considers this issue in her 2004 book Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine. In this thought-provoking work, Squier wonders how Victor Turner’s mid-twentieth-century concept of liminality might be applied to recent developments in medicine and bioethics. In particular, she argues that Turner, not surprisingly given his era, relied ‘on a foundational opposition between nature and culture’.4 As suggested above, this dichotomy has come under increasing intellectual scrutiny since the end of the twentieth century, and according to Squier, a key role in that scrutiny has been played by scientists whose work in biotechnology has ushered in ‘a new biomedical personhood mingling existence and non-existence, organic and inorganic matter, life and death’.5 For Squier, then, the shifts in how we define existence necessitate a shift in the concept of liminality. It should, she argues, be applied to all ‘those beings marginal to human life who hold rich potential for our ongoing biomedical negotiations with, and interventions in, the paradigmatic life crises: birth, growth, aging, and death’.6 And, in a more recent article, Squier offers up a specific example of this by focusing on the liminality of chickens, who ‘hold a 76 Animal History in the Modern City potent liminal position between backyard and farm fields, between the “egg money” of the farm wife and the formal farm economy, between the private world of women and the public world of men, between the realms of animal agriculture and human reproductive medicine’.7 To be sure, Squier’s work is not without criticism, but even if ‘the conceptual plasticity of liminality’8 renders the term problematic, applying it to contemporary thought, especially as it relates to what defines existence, reminds us that the relationships among non-human and human animals are complex and constantly evolving. This chapter is an effort to describe some of that complexity as it manifested itself in the microcosm of a southwest German city, Göppingen, during the last half of the eighteenth century. In particular, through a close study of various sources, including some rather unconventional ones, I will argue that ordinary folk in this urban, preindustrial environment lived closely with other animals, valued them in manifold ways, and thus remained acutely aware of their shared existence. Not yet fully ‘modern’, but in the process of becoming so, these townspeople stood on a threshold themselves as they had not yet developed the ontological arrogance that would come to permeate urban culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as humans physically and philosophically distanced themselves from other animals. Before describing the microcosm of Göppingen, I should mention that my inquiry borrows heavily from the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and the intellectual historian Dominick LaCapra. From Bourdieu, I borrow the concept of the habitus, as articulated in his ground-breaking 1984 work, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. In this sociological study of twentieth-century French society, Bourdieu analysed closely the ‘field of struggles, the system of objective relations within which positions and postures are defined relationally and which governs even those struggles aimed at transforming it’.9 Arguing against any deterministic theory in which structures triumph over human agency, Bourdieu posited the concept of the habitus, or the system of dispositions, tendencies or inclinations that an individual uses, consciously and unconsciously, to navigate her or his social space. In effect, the habitus provides ‘an objective relationship between two objectivities, [which] enables an intelligible and necessary relation to be established between practices and a situation, the meaning of which is produced by the habitus through categories of perception and appreciation that are themselves produced by an observable social condition’.10 Its synthetic unity provides individuals with an organization, or systematicity, ‘in all the properties – and property – with which individuals and groups surround themselves, … and in the practices in which they manifest their distinction’.11 Since there exists an intrinsic and reciprocal relationship between individuals and the social space that surrounds them, all components of that space whether material (that is, material culture) or immaterial (such as practices) should, therefore, never be considered unrelated to an individual’s position and agency.12 Interestingly, although Bourdieu cites the ‘furious pace’13 of walking that Jean L., a 36-year-old assistant professor, and his pet dog accomplished on a regular basis, he does not explicitly factor non-human animals into his theory. Perhaps the furious pace came less from the human habitus of Jean L. and more from the habitus of the canine that shared his social space. Given that much of his research was carried out before the advent of the animal turn, Bourdieu can be forgiven for this oversight. Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold 77 The recent work of Dominick LaCapra, History and Its Limits (2009), mentions both implicitly and explicitly Bourdieu’s theories on the habitus, contexts and practices. LaCapra argues, for instance, ‘that thought – even what has been seen as thought on its highest, best, or most demanding and provocative level – should not be dissociated from practices and from relational networks that imbricate the human and the animal both within the “human animal” and between humans, other species, and nature more generally’.14 Here, LaCapra has added a significant element to Bourdieu’s theories: that is, the relationships among animals, both human and non-human, are an additional layer of the social fabric and space through which we all move. So LaCapra extends and amplifies Bourdieu’s nuanced theory, calling for judgement that is ‘differential in complex, qualified ways; does not assume a decisive binary opposition or caesura between human and animal; is attentive to complex differences within what is classified as human or animal; and does not have self-serving, anthropocentric, oppressive, or exploitative functions or consequences’.15 I will attempt to adhere to this call as I consider how the human–animal relationships manifested themselves in an urban environment during the last half of the eighteenth century. Also crucial to my inquiry have been the recent investigations by German historians into the conceptualizations and realities of animal life during the earlymodern era. Indeed, three edited volumes of essays should be noted here. Going in order of publication date, the first is Tiere und Menschen: Geschichte und Aktualität eines prekären Verhältnisses (1998). Developed from a 1994 Historikertag session, the essays in this volume revolve around the theme of ‘precarious relationships’ among and between animals, both human and non-human. Viewing their collected essays as ‘not more than a beginning’,16 the volume offers a broad chronological overview from antiquity to the present, problematizing the ways in which humans have conceptualized and related to animals and the changes to those conceptualizations and relationships. Not long after this auspicious ‘beginning’ – two years to be exact – another collection of scholarly essays appeared. Titled Mensch und Tier in der Geschichte Europas, its authors provide an essentially encyclopaedic overview of the human–animal dynamic from prehistory through the twentieth century. Each of the chronological chapters follows a similar pattern, beginning with the fundamental role that non-human animals play in human nourishment (‘Ernährung und Jagd’) and then moving onto political and economic uses (for instance, ‘Arbeitskraft’, ‘Militärische Nutzung’ etc.), as well as the social and cultural appropriations, manifestations and conceptualizations of the human–animal nexus (e.g. ‘Vergnügen’, ‘Religion’, ‘Literatur’, ‘Umgangssprache’ etc.). At the end of each chapter, they offer an overall impression of the epoch (‘Epochentypische Grundeinstellung’). Notwithstanding the broad scope taken by the authors of this volume, the editor, Peter Dinzelbacher, suggests that there remains ‘much to discover in the long history of relationships of animals and humans’.17 The last of the three works is the most recent, published in 2014. Tiere und Geschichte: Konturen einer Animate History, edited by Gesine Krüger, Aline Steinbrecher and Clemens Wischermann, takes a different course than the aforementioned works. Eschewing chronological narratives of how non-human animals have been understood, treated, mistreated and otherwise used by societies in the past, the editors of Tiere und Geschichte instead position their volume differently. Stating upfront that ‘since the [recent] turn of the century the theme 78 Animal History in the Modern City of human–animal relationships has received systematic attention from a globally connected community of scientists and activists’,18 the editors suggest that those discussions and debates over non-human animal rights, cultures and even agency have lacked a connection to the historical research also being conducted. Basically, then, Tiere und Geschichte successfully adds a historical perspective to those conversations and reflections on the nexus that has bound and continues to bind together all animate earthlings, hence the subtitle: Konturen einer Animate History. In many ways, the scholars whose work is collected in this volume share Squier’s fascination with the ‘potent liminal positions’ held and represented by all living creatures, because all ‘are participants in a rite of passage, between everyday life and a higher or different level of existence’.19 And, much like Squier, the contributors to this Tiere und Geschichte remind us that the ‘absence of [other] animals in history books cannot be justified by a lack of source materials, but rather by a more or less conscious decision to ignore animals in their historical significance’.20 What follows, here, is an attempt to give back to non-human animals their historical significance, at least to the history of Göppingen. In its city archives, among the many conventional source materials from the eighteenth century (town council minutes, tax documents, and the like), one can find many instances of non-human animals being discussed or noted. The town council minutes contain frequent deliberations and decisions regarding local livestock like sheep, cows and pigs. For instance, the minutes from 19 January, 1761, describe the council’s efforts to counteract an epidemic among local cattle.21 Basically, the town leadership left the work of sorting through the local herd to two butchers named Johannes Allmendinger and Andreas Löbelenz. Since no further comments were made in the minutes, the epidemic must have been curtailed, but more importantly this is only one of the many instances in which non-human animals appear in the historical source materials from this microcosm. Another example that provides evidence of the shared existence of non-human animals in Göppingen is the document, titled Stadt Statistik 1774.22 This lengthy table, which was more than likely drafted in an effort at enlightened bureaucracy, records all homeowners in the city with an additional twenty-eight different categories in separate columns. The additional categories range from inhabitants, both with rights in the town (Bürgerrecht) and without, to houses with barns and without barns to various types of livestock (such as horses, horned and beef cattle, sheep). According to this document, Göppingen in 1774 had 3,311 inhabitants, living in 480 domiciles. Almost one out of every six of those homes (17.6 per cent) had under ‘one roof ’ both living quarters and a barn. In addition, the table listed 72 ‘other [stand-alone] barns’, 96 ‘horse stables’, 207 ‘animal stables’, 18 combined (‘horse and animal’) stables and 24 ‘sheep stables’.23 When tallied together, this meant that Göppingen had within its city walls just over 500 discrete spaces for housing livestock. And, according to the table, those spaces were filled by the following non-human animals: 172 horses; 571 cattle; 1,942 sheep; 101 pigs; and 83 goats. In total then, there were 2,869 non-human animals officially living in Göppingen, but this of course does not include the other non-human animals that were left out of the official count, like for instance the cats, dogs, pigeons and other birds, and the rodents that could be typically found in towns and cities. Even if we do not widen the circle even further, to include the innumerable Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold 79 insects, then the ratio of non-human to human animals in the city must have been at least, and more likely much higher than, one-to-one. Since this register was the only one of its kind found in the archives, there is unfortunately no opportunity to study closely the dynamics of change and continuity over the period studied. However, whether or not the ratio changed or remained the same is not what matters most here, for what we are truly concerned with is recognizing the historical significance of all animals and the dynamic influence they had – and still have – as all of us negotiate the habitus. At the very least, when this single table of data is combined with the more conventional sources, like the aforementioned town council minutes, it confirms that many different species inhabited, and thus were bound together in, the urban environment of eighteenth-century Göppingen. For all this, and despite the fact that they appear regularly in the sources, most historians of this small, Swabian city have made no mention of this nexus.24 Another, less conventional set of sources that clearly attests to the ever-present role played by non-human animals in this urban environment is a long series of probate inventories. To be sure, these quantitative documents are more typically found in studies of material culture and consumerism, but they can – at least the ones from Württemberg – reveal some of the dynamics at work. Before delving more deeply into those implications, the unique character of these sources should be discussed. Indeed, inventories have a particularly extensive tradition in the duchy of Württemberg, dating back to the Landrecht of 1555, which had been initiated by Herzog Christoph in 1551 and carried to fruition by ‘trained lawyers … with the aid of professors from Tübingen’.25 Passing through two further revisions in 1568 and 1610, this common law code remained, thereafter, unchanged until 1900 when all the states within the German Empire accepted the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (the national civil law code).26 In the simplest terms, the Landrecht stipulated that the property of anyone who died without a Testament, or will, should be fully inventoried. The Inventuren und Teilungen were intended to guarantee the proper distribution of an estate to its heirs, and in many regions of Württemberg, all children, regardless of gender, were considered to have an equitable claim on the inheritance. Scholars are not entirely sure why certain communities of Swabia adopted the tradition of partible inheritance, but some, like David Sabean and Andrea Hauser, point to a strong correlation between this particular pattern of dispensation and labour-intensive activities in densely populated areas.27 Regardless of their origins, these close-to-daily-life sources have provided scholars with the unparalleled opportunity to look deeply into the material culture of the households in the duchy of Württemberg, though up to now very few of those studies have dwelt specifically on what they can tell us about human and non-human animal interactions.28 Besides death inventories, the Landrecht of 1610 also codified marriage inventories for the duchy. It stipulated that all married couples should have a Zubringensinventur, or Beibringensinventar, drawn up within three months of their establishment of a new, joint household.29 These documents guaranteed, to a certain degree, the sovereignty of a wife or husband over her or his personal property. Whether probate or marriage, the inventories were supposed to list the property, including any outstanding loans or debts, found by the state-licensed notary, when he and his assistants, typically an 80 Animal History in the Modern City apprentice and journeyman (Mittel-Scribent), inventoried the property. According to Hildegard Mannheims, in their training and work, notaries relied on a set of instruction manuals, beginning with one created by Nicodemus Frischlin (d. 1590) and eventually published in 1605.30 Going through numerous revisions during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Frischlin’s manual was supplanted in 1761 by Adam Israel Röslin’s Abhandlung von Inventuren und Abtheilungen. Both handbooks instructed the scribes to record each item of property and its corresponding worth in Gulden (fl.) and Kreuzer (x.)31 under a standard set of rubrics, including one for livestock (Vieh).32 Since these instruction manuals called the scribe’s attention to livestock as property, they clearly indicate that Swabian society and its government had, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, commodified the human–animal relationship with certain species. And, as Table 5.1 shows, not only did a wider variety of non-human animals come to be ‘owned’ by Swabians over time, but the notaries also received more instructions on how to classify those non-human animals in the legal documents that they were producing. Missing from these instruction manuals, as well as from the 1774 survey, was one species – Canis lupus familiaris – that had been sharing the human habitus for thousands of years. Indeed, domestic dogs (Hunde) would not appear in the notarial manuals until Albrecht Heinrich Stein decided to list them in his Handbuch des Würtembergischen Erb-Rechts in 1827.33 It seems that this particular interspecific relationship between humans and dogs remained a complex and tightly entangled one that defied easy categorization by notaries until at least the early nineteenth century. All the same, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is evident that state authorities worked out a clear system of codification, and hence structure, to commodify many of the non-human animals that shared their space. Turning to Göppingen, one will find in its archives 1,733 inventories for the dates between 1738 and 1807 (see Table 5.2). Many are probate death inventories, some are marriage inventories, and a few are actually both documents captured in one place as the notary recorded both the death of one spouse and her or his survivor’s remarriage. The collection of inventories represents a wide swath of Göppingen society, from wealthy to modest to poor households. Many different occupations are also reflected in the inventories, from weavers and butchers to bakers and tanners to just about any imaginable handicraft. In addition, some of the inventories come from households that were not primarily engaged in a tradecraft, but rather in other activities, like selling wares or innkeeping. As I gathered a sample set of 467 (or 26.9 per cent) from the collection, I attempted as best as possible to mirror these features of the community. And, while I have usually used these documents for investigating other aspects of everyday life at the local level, I think they reveal certain features of the complex relationships that existed among animals in urban environments. Indeed, as I read more deeply into this field of inquiry, I have searched somewhat in vain for interpretations and analyses of source materials that emanate directly from the everyday level of ordinary folk. To be sure, the inventories are not without their gaps and limitations, but in this case, their strengths outweigh their weaknesses. Capturing much of the material world that comprised the urban environment of Göppingen, they enable a partial reconstruction of that world and, while the past can, of course, never be fully recreated in the present, Table 5.1 Animals listed in early modern German notary instruction manuals Frischlin’s Instruction und Bericht… (1679/1692/1717/1733) Horse (1660: # of yrs) Filly (ditto) Oxen Calves Sheep Billy Goat Ram Goose Chickens Horse, # of yrs Fillies Donkeys Oxen Cows Calves, # of yrs Sheep Billy Goat Nanny Goat House Pigs (LäufferSchwein) Goose Turkey Toms Old Hens Roosters Birds Donkey Yearling Cows Bull Lambs Nanny Goat Pigs Ducks Pigeons Beehives Foals Suckling Foals Mule Bull Calves Suckling Calves Lambs Goats Pig Suckling Pigs Ducks Turkey Hens Young Chickens Pigeons Beehives Röslin’s Abhandlung von Inventuren und Abtheilungen…(1761/1780) Horse, Foals, Fillies. Stallion and Stud Horse. With these the age, colour, also if possible the stud farm from which they come, as well as the height in hands, together with any distinguishing marks should be noted. Mules. Donkeys. Bulls, Oxen. Cows, Calves. Which on occasion have distinguishing markings. (Added in 1780: The condition of the herd, if notable and detailed, should be indicated.) Yearling and Suckling Calves. Sheep, Lambs, Billy-goats, Rams, Goats, Boars, Fattening Pigs, Sows, House Pigs, Suckling Pigs, Geese, Ducks, Pigeons, Turkey Toms and Hens, Local Roosters, old and young Chickens. Capons and Fattening Fowls. Bees or Beehives. Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold Frischlin’s Instruction und Bericht… (1605/1660) Source: Mannheims, Wie wird ein Inventar erstellt?, pp. 272, 285, 300. 81 82 Animal History in the Modern City Table 5.2 Non-human animals represented in Göppingen inventories % of Households with Livestock % of Households without Livestock 1738–47 (n=72) 34.7 65.3 9.79 fl. 28.18 fl. 1748–57 (n=71) 45.1 54.9 16.41 fl. 36.42 fl. 1758–67 (n=45) 33.3 66.7 26.92 fl. 84.59 fl. 1768–77 (n=50) 42.0 58.0 28.49 fl. 67.83 fl. 1778–87 (n=53) 34.0 66.0 19.03 fl. 56.03 fl. 1788–97 (n=92) 31.5 68.5 85.01 fl. 269.69 fl. 1798–1807 (n=84) 36.9 62.1 39.9 fl. 108.12 fl. Decade Avg Value of Livestock (all households) Avg Value of Livestock (households with) Sources: StAG, Inventuren & Teilungen. they at least provide firmer ground for our historical imagination. In addition, since these documents came from household events that were by their very nature liminal (marriage and death), they shed further light on the nexus binding animals – both non-human and human – in this microcosm. An overview analysis of the 467 inventories reveals some broad trends. In fact, as shown in this table, the inventories confirm the findings from the 1774 statistics already discussed. For example, for the period from 1738 to 1807, about a third of all households inventoried had livestock among the possessions assessed by the scribe. To be sure, when broken down by decade, this particular statistic – % of Households with Livestock – fluctuated between 31.5 and 45.1, but it can be concluded that, on average, one in three households ‘owned’ livestock. Interestingly, as the scribes went through the material possessions of each household, they actually listed a wider range of nonhuman animals under the rubric, Vieh, than did the bureaucrat(s) responsible for the 1774 survey. Whereas that document took into account only horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and goats, the scribes apparently followed the aforementioned instruction manuals to the letter and included a wider selection of animal categories. So, for example, when the household of Caspar Schwarz, a dyer, was inventoried in late October of 1750, the notary listed the following under Livestock: Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold 83 1. 7-year-old, brown stud horse .......... 34fl. 1. 2-year-old, colt ................................... 20fl. 1. red cow ................................................ 14fl. 1. ditto with a pasture sore .................... 12fl. 1. 7/4-year-old calf ................................. 15fl. 1. 3/4-year-old [ditto] .............................. 8fl. 2. geese, à 20.............................................40x. 4. hens, à 10 ..............................................40x. 1. house (läufer) pig ................................. 4fl. 1. ditto ........................................................ 4fl.34 Recording not only the condition of the animals, but also their value, the notary found a large number of livestock among Schwarz’s possessions, whose monetary value added up to just over 112 Gulden (fl.). This animal estate eclipsed the averages calculated for the decade between 1748 and 1757 (with 16.41fl. for all households and 36.42fl. for households with livestock) – so that the Schwarz household is a clear outlier – but the average value of livestock was rising, in fits and starts, moving from 28.18fl. in the first decade to 108.12fl. by the last. Some wild fluctuations are recorded, but they were most likely caused by the severe crises that occurred around the turn of the century: a citywide fire (Stadtbrand) in 1782; a ransacking in 1794 by marauding French troops; and a yearlong typhus epidemic in 1805.35 More will be said about the great fire of 1782, but here the analysis of the inventories clearly shows that many of the human dwellers in this urban milieu not only lived with but also ‘possessed’ many of the non-human residents. Of course, we can come at these sources from a different angle, one that aligns itself better with the attempt to recognize more fully the profound roles that non-human animals have had in our shared history. Rather than reading these sources simply for what they tell us about the presence of non-human animals and, superficially, the relationships that they had with humans, we can explore the deeper ramifications involved. As noted above, in this particular duchy, where the constitution guaranteed equal claims to property, the inventories had become a fundamental tool for assuring, or at least promoting, the smooth transfer of both tangible and intangible property. Most human residents of Göppingen would, therefore, have participated in these processes at least twice in their lifetimes. Regardless of whether it was for a marriage or a death, the participants were either directly involved in this liminal stage of transition or were there to observe someone else going through the threshold. At these crucial moments, those gathered had come together to witness and hopefully assure the smooth transfer of individual property and property rights. For about a third of the families in Göppingen this also involved an assessment of the livestock itemized among their other possessions. As these documents were constructed at those crucial moments of human liminality, the townspeople of Göppingen simultaneously objectified and commodified many of the non-human animals that shared their urban world. Of course, the objectification and commodification of livestock had been underway for a very long time in human history; here, though, the significant point is that the processes involved in completing the inventories reified, for all participants but certainly for the town authorities, the long-established dichotomy of human and animal. Not only did people live with and rely on non-human animals in their town, 84 Animal History in the Modern City they also established ways of codifying the inferior status of such animals, writing them into statute and into history. While this broad overview of the inventories suggests a traditional dichotomy at work, a closer look at some of them, as well as a pair of narrative sources, reveals that there was more complexity to the relationships than appears at first glance. Take, for instance, the inventory recorded in 1754 for the Franck household, when the wife (Margaretha Barbara) died. This includes ‘1. parrot cage’, valued at 1fl. 20x., and ‘1. other’, valued at 1fl. 30x.36 Although located under the rubric, ‘Iron Cooking-Utensils’, it is doubtful that these cages were used to keep birds prior to their being consumed by the rest of the household. Instead, given that the Francks were merchants in Göppingen, it is much more likely that they used the cages to hold their merchandise, namely parrots that were up for sale as novelties. While impossible to discern whether these animals were regarded as companions or as an exotic, luxury good, it seems as though a market for them was in place by the middle of the eighteenth century. Birdcages were also listed in the marriage inventory for Ernst Jacob Vayhinger (1729– 91) and Anna Barbara née Schaupp (1727–89), who wed in 1755. According to this document, the groom owned ‘2 bird-cages’ and ‘12 pairs of pigeons’, worth a total of 2fl. 15x.37 The Vayhingers were not, however, merchants like the Francks; rather they wove woollen worsteds as their main economic activity. The Vayhinger family in many ways represented the typical patchwork, flexible household economy found in most of Göppingen during the last half of the eighteenth century.38 Indeed, most families engaged in several commercial ventures besides their main trade. With one in every three households owning livestock (see Table 5.2), one of the more common activities was animal husbandry, and the Vayhingers were no exception. But this could mean more than the familiar livestock. As Ernst Jacob noted in a chronicle of his household economy that he kept from 1755 to 1784, his family raised and sold canaries. In late 1772, he wrote that he had made ‘48fl. from [the sale of] four male canaries’, which as it turns out was nearly a quarter (22.9 per cent) of his annual profit for that year (210fl.). Worth 12 Gulden each, or the same value as that of a small cow, these canaries were presumably sold into the novel market for exotic pets. Canaries were not the only birds that Vayhinger raised, for he also had pigeons. Recall that twenty-four of them were recorded in his marriage inventory. While they do not appear as frequently in his chronicle as the canaries do, they are mentioned in the passages that relate to the Stadtbrand. Indeed, Vayhinger’s chronicle captures the harrowing nature of this personal as well as collective calamity. As he tells it, since the blaze started three blocks away from his house, he initially ‘believed there was no danger’,39 even making his way down to where it began to join the onlookers. Within thirty minutes, however, the fire had consumed everything on that block, and then spreading even more rapidly and in all directions. Within three hours Vayhinger’s house was gone, and he, along with everyone else who had ‘fled their homes, saving whatever they could’, was left to ‘miseries, weeping, and wailing’.40 Several months later during the winter, as he dwelt on the town’s recovery, Vayhinger wrote: In the fire hundreds of pigeons were burned. I had 50 of them, but not more than 5 escaped. Since it is now winter, I have got them in the cellar. As I went out of my Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold 85 house [at the time of the fire], so I thought, you have to also open up the dovecote, because they took me [by surprise]. And I jumped back up the stairs [and released the surviving pigeons]. In retrospect, I wished that I had not opened it up and [instead] let [them] all burn. Because when I saw them flying, my misfortune was renewed, and I shed many tears. They were pure black with white tails. I originally bought them in Ulm, [and] in addition to them, many other animals were burned.41 To be sure, there is no way to know exactly what moved Ernst Jacob to express his emotions and regret in this way, but it is unlikely that he equated the death of his pigeons with that of a human being. Instead his language suggests that he viewed these non-human animals, which he had purchased in the larger metropole of Ulm, as something more than mere property. And, while impossible to tell exactly where the original dovecote was, Vayhinger’s passage suggests that the pigeons lived close by or even in the same building as his family. Certainly, the five surviving pigeons were, at the time of his writing, protected from the winter by being housed in his cellar. The passage also reveals a complicated relationship with his pigeons. On the one hand, he seemed proud of them and even hinted at an anthropomorphic appreciation, but on the other hand, he freely admitted that it might have been better for his emotional health if they had all perished in the blaze. Vayhinger had therefore developed a complicated relationship – one that is played out in his chronicle – with the non-human animals nearest to him. While his canaries were raised to be sold for a hefty profit in the nascent, but rapidly developing, pet market, his pigeons had been purchased and protected as either a foodstuff or perhaps household pets. And, although he may have had in retrospect some regrets about saving them from the citywide fire, at the time of the crisis Vayhinger did exactly that, without second thought. Another witness of the Stadtbrand, who used non-human animals in an effort to make sense of the event, was Martin Steeb, pastor of Dürnau, a small village located a few kilometres to the south of Göppingen, and the author of a pamphlet titled, Das eingeäscherte Göppingen, in der Nacht vom 25. zum 26. August 1782. After providing a straightforward, factual recounting of how the fire started and why it spread so quickly, Steeb moved onto a discussion of the emotional and psychological effects of this disaster, arguing that the suffering was so overwhelming to the senses that even an ‘iron heart would be softened’.42 About half-way through his thirty-page pamphlet, Steeb offered the following observation: The grief was particularly refreshed in the evening, when the livestock came from the pasture and would not be discouraged from passing through the town gates to get to their old stables – the homeless pigeons that hovered over the city and looked for their spouses and young, or wanted to avoid the attacks of the vultures who now located themselves in the area – the swallows, who had lost their nests, and now cling by the hundreds on the few houses [left standing]; everything, everything is for the residents from morning till evening an image of misery!43 While it might be tempting to argue that Steeb is guilty of anthropomorphizing the non-human animals in this passage, it is equally reasonable to argue that he reported 86 Animal History in the Modern City simply what he saw. Indeed, Steeb’s choice of word – ‘Einwohner’ – leaves open the intriguing possibility that he considered the non-human animals mentioned in his account as residents of the city too. In many ways, the nuance of this passage, with even more layers than the one offered by Vayhinger, suggests that Steeb shared with the Göppingen weaver a notably sophisticated understanding of the nexus that entangles human and non-human animals, then and now. Returning to the concept of liminality, we might view the citywide fire as a collective liminal event all of itself. After all, humans have had for quite some time a complex relationship with fire, fearing on the one hand its flames and their all-consuming powers but also simultaneously rejoicing on the other in their warmth and regenerative energy. While we like to think that we have harnessed this powerful force of nature, the risk of losing command of its flames, even in the most controlled environments, always exists. With such a precarious threshold between dread and awe, chaos and control, fire gives, especially when it dances across that fine line, tangible expression to the concepts of contingency and liminality. Such a perspective sheds further light on both passages cited above. In the case of the former, Vayhinger wrote his passage in the midst of a very uncomfortable winter, which surely only reinforced the seemingly insurmountable task of rebuilding his livelihood and restoring his property. Perhaps he wished death had come not only for all of his pigeons but also for himself. There is no way to know exactly what Vayhinger felt, but his words suggest that he was still coming to terms emotionally with the trauma he had experienced, perhaps even leading him to consider unconsciously the liminal and contingent nature of existence for humans and for other living creatures. And when this perspective is applied to the narrative by Steeb, who was a local pastor, it becomes even more compelling: Steeb’s position as a clergyman meant that his daily work was guiding others through the fundamental rituals, such as baptism, marriage and death, that marked moments of transition in the pietistic, Lutheran faith of the duchy. Obliged by his vocation to think about the ultimate threshold that divided the material from the immaterial, Steeb knew well the Holy Scriptures, and not surprisingly his own formal publication mirrored some of the non-human animal motifs found therein. This certainly differentiated Steeb from Vayhinger, but the interesting thing here is that both of them, notwithstanding their distinct backgrounds, offered up observations from non-human animals to give expression to the misery and sorrow caused by the firestorm unleashed on Göppingen. Neither Vayhinger nor Steeb display a simple bifurcation of human from animal in their writing, then. They shared, as this close study of daily life has revealed, an earlymodern habitus that allowed for fluidity and nuance when it came to making sense of complex relationships among all animals. Although they would not have put it this way, the inhabitants of eighteenth-century Göppingen existed in an environment that reflected, in Squier’s words, ‘the complex ways that culture intervenes in and produces nature, while nature undergirds practices that we have come to think of as cultural’.44 Their milieu – one that kept all animals in proximity to one another – meant that their practices remained a complex admixture of nature and culture. To be sure, some impulses, like the rapidly developing commodification of species, most likely pushed folks towards an ontological arrogance, mistakenly privileging culture over nature, but at least during the eighteenth century, they had not yet passed that fateful threshold. Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold 87 Notes 1 Gesine Krüger, Aline Steinbrecher and Clemens Wischermann, eds., Tiere und Geschichte: Konturen einer Animate History (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014), 35. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. 2 For instance, see Felipe Fernández-Armesto, So You Think You’re Human? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), Margo DeMello, Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012) and Susan Nance, ed., The Historical Animal (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015). 3 Dominick LaCapra, History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 155. 4 Susan Merrill Squier, Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 6. 5 Squier, Liminal Lives, 5. 6 Ibid., 9. 7 Susan Merrill Squier, ‘Liminal Livestock’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35, no. 2 (2010): 477–502, 477–8. 8 Jon Adams, ‘Neither One Thing nor the Other’, Metascience 15, no. 3 (2006): 613–15, 613. 9 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 156. 10 Bourdieu, Distinction, 101. For more discussion of the habitus, see 6 and 169–225. 11 Ibid., 173. For the sake of clarity, the first set of ellipses replaced the following text: ‘Houses, furniture, paintings, books, cares, spirits, cigarettes, perfume, clothes’. The second set of ellipses replaced ‘sports, games, entertainments, only because it is in the synthetic unity of the habitus, the unifying, generative principle of all practices’. 12 Cultural anthropologists have long argued for the significance of material culture. For an enlightening viewpoint, see Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), passim, but especially 170, where he argues that ‘no object, no thing, has being or movement in human society except by the significance that men can give it’. 13 Bourdieu, Distinction, 290. 14 Ibid., 9. 15 LaCapra, History and Its Limits, 150. 16 Paul Münch with Rainer Walz, eds., Tiere und Menschen: Geschichte und Aktualität eines prekären Verhältnisses (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1998), 32. 17 Peter Dinzelbacher, ed., Mensch und Tier in der Geschichte Europas (Stuttgart: Kröner, 2000), xiv. 18 Krüger, Steinbrecher and Wischermann, Tiere und Geschichte, 9. 19 Squier, Liminal Lives, 4. 20 Krüger, Steinbrecher and Wischermann, eds., Tiere und Geschichte, 25. 21 Stadtarchiv Göppingen (hereafter StAG), B.II.2.b., Verwaltungsprotokolle: Gerichts- und Ratsprotokolle, 1700-1819, Bd. 1/47 (1758-1762), 393–393.5. 22 StAG, Uncatalogued, Wirtschaftliche Lage in Stadt u. Amt 1622-1819. 23 Ibid. 24 See Alexander Dreher, Göppingens Gewerbe im 19. Jahrhundert. Veröffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs Göppingen. Bd. 7 (Göppingen: Stadtarchiv Göppingen, 1971), Karl Kirschmer, Die Geschichte der Stadt Göppingen, I & II Teil (Göppingen: Johannes Illig, 1953) and Emil Hofmann, Die Industrialisierung des Oberamtsbezirkes Göppingen (Göppingen: Adolf Müller, 1910). 88 Animal History in the Modern City 25 F. L. Carsten, Princes and Parliaments: From the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 35. See also James Allen Vann, Making of a State: Württemberg, 1593-1793 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). 26 For more specifics, see Hildegard Mannheim’s Wie wird ein Inventar erstellt? Rechtskommentare als Quelle der volkskundlichen Forschung (Stuttgart: F. Coppenrath, 1991), 28–9. 27 See David Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 13–17 (the village of Neckarhausen is located about 31 kilometres west-southwest of Göppingen); and Andrea Hauser, Dinge des Alltags: Studien zur historischen Sachkultur eines schwäbischen Dorfes (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde e.V., 1994), 66–73 (the village of Kirchentellinsfurt lies about 52 kilometres west-southwest of Göppingen). See also Jonathan Sperber, Property and Civil Society in South-Western Germany, 1820-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), especially 236 where he argues that ‘property was in everything’. 28 Among many, see Anja Benscheidt, Kleinbürgerlicher Besitz: Nürtinger Handwerkerinventare von 1660 bis 1840 (Münster: Lit, 1985), Peter Borscheid, Textilarbeiterschaft in der Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978); Hans Medick, Weben und Überleben in Laichingen 1650-1900: Lokalgeschichte als Allgemeine Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997); Sheilagh Ogilvie, State Corporatism and Proto-Industry: The Württemberg Black Forest, 1580-1797 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Heilwig Schomerus, Die Arbeiter der Maschinenfabrik Esslingen (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1977); and Sylvia Schraut, Sozialer Wandel im Industrialisierungsprozeß, Esslingen 1800-1870 (Esslingen: Stadtarchiv Esslingen am Neckar, 1989). 29 Mannheims, Wie wird ein Inventar erstellt?, 29. 30 Ibid, passim. 31 During this period, the currency in Württemberg was: 1 Gulden (fl)=60 Kreuzer (xr). According to Sheilagh Ogilvie’s fine work on the weavers of the Swabian Black Forest (State Corporatism and Proto-Industry), one Gulden equaled ‘7-8 days’ average earnings for a weaver in ordinary periods’ (321). 32 For a list of the standard rubrics, see ‘Table 1: Rubrics and Sub-rubrics, 1605-1892’ in Mannheims, Wie wird ein Inventar erstellt?, 98–9. See also the transcriptions of the manuals included in the last third of Mannheims’s work. 33 Ibid., 303–13. 34 StAG, B.II.2.g., Inventuren & Teilungen, Bd. 7, 487.5. 35 See Karl Kirschmer, Die Geschichte der Stadt Göppingen, I. Teil., 254–58, and II. Teil, 37ff. 36 StAG, B.II.2.g., Inventuren & Teilungen, Bd. 9, 384.5. 37 StAG, B.II.2.g., Zubringens Inventuren vom 23. Jan. 1750 biß 20. Febr. 1756., 561b. 38 Dennis A. Frey Jr., ‘Wealth, Consumerism, and Culture among the Artisans of Göppingen’, Central European History 46 (2014): 741–78. 39 StAG, B.I.1.a., Hauschronik des Zeugmachers Ernst Jakob Vayhinger, 49. 40 Ibid. Personal loss of property was not the only thing that left Vayhinger and his neighbours shocked, for there was a human victim, Elisabeth Zendel, who died an agonizing death from her injuries. 41 Ibid., 52: ‘In dem Brand sind viele hundert Tauben verbronnen. Ich hatte gegen 50 Stück, sind aber nicht weiter als 5 davongekommen. Weilen es Winter worden, habe ich sie in der Kellerey bekommen. Als ich aus meinem Haus ginge, so dachte ich, du Canaries and Pigeons on the Threshold 89 mußt den Taubenschlag auch auftun, denn sie dauerten mich. Und sprang wieder die Stiegen hinauf. Ich hatte nachgehens gewünscht, ich hätte nicht aufgetan und alle verbrennen lassen. Denn wenn ich sie sahe fliegen, wurde mir mein Unglück neu und vergoß dadurch viele Tränen. Es sind lauter schwarze mit weißen Schwänz gewesen. Habe den Anfang in Ulm gekauft, sonsten sind auch viele Thier verbrannt’. 42 StAG, B.II.4.h., Stadtbrand-Akten – 2. Brandschriften, Das eingeäscherte Göppingen, in der Nacht vom 25. zum 26. August 1782. Eine Nachricht an Menschenfreunde, nebst einigen Bemerkungen von einem Zuschauer, M.S. Wird zum Besten der armen Abgebrannten verkauft, 1. A copy can also be found in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, A 346 Bü24, Sachakten Göppingen Stadtbrand von 1782–84. 43 Ibid., 17: ‘Besonders erneurt sich auch der Kummer des Abends, wenn das Vieh von der Weide kommt und sich nicht abhalten lassen will, in seine alte Ställe zum Tor hinein zu dringen – auch die wohnlose Taube, die über der Stadt schwebt und ihren Gatten und Junge sucht, oder dem Geier, die sich jetzt in der Nähe befinde, in ihren Schlag entfliehen will – die Schwalbe, die ihr Nest verlohr, und nun zu Hunderten an den wenigen Häusern klebt; alles, alles ist für den Einwohner vom Morgens bis zum Abend ein Bild des Jammers!’ 44 Squier, Liminal Lives, 274. Bibliography Adams, Jon. ‘Neither One Thing nor the Other’, Metascience 15, no. 3 (2006), 613–5, 613. Benscheidt, Anja. Kleinbürgerlicher Besitz: Nürtinger Handwerkerinventare von 1660 bis 1840 (Münster: Lit, 1985). Borscheid, Peter. Textilarbeiterschaft in der Industrialisierung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978). Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 156. Carsten, Francis Ludwig. Princes and Parliaments: From the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959). DeMello, Margo. Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). Dinzelbacher, Peter, ed. Mensch und Tier in der Geschichte Europas (Stuttgart: Kröner, 2000). Dreher, Alexander. Göppingens Gewerbe im 19. Jahrhundert. Veröffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs Göppingen. Bd. 7 (Göppingen: Stadtarchiv Göppingen, 1971). Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. So You Think You’re Human? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Frey Jr, Dennis A. ‘Wealth, Consumerism, and Culture among the Artisans of Göppingen’, Central European History 46 (2014): 741–78. Hauser, Andrea. Dinge des Alltags: Studien zur historischen Sachkultur eines schwäbischen Dorfes (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde e.V., 1994). Hofmann, Emil. Die Industrialisierung des Oberamtsbezirkes Göppingen (Göppingen: Adolf Müller, 1910). Kirschmer, Karl. Die Geschichte der Stadt Göppingen, I & II Teil (Göppingen: Johannes Illig, 1953). Krüger, Gesine, Steinbrecher, Aline and Wischermann, Clemens, eds. Tiere und Geschichte: Konturen einer Animate History (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014). 90 Animal History in the Modern City LaCapra, Dominick. History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). Mannheim, Hildegard. Wie wird ein Inventar erstellt? Rechtskommentare als Quelle der volkskundlichen Forschung (Stuttgart: F. Coppenrath, 1991). Medick, Hans. Weben und Überleben in Laichingen 1650-1900: Lokalgeschichte als Allgemeine Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997). Münch, Paul and Walz, Rainer, eds. Tiere und Menschen: Geschichte und Aktualität eines prekären Verhältnisses (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1998). Nance, Susan, ed. The Historical Animal (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015). Ogilvie, Sheilagh. State Corporatism and Proto-Industry: The Württemberg Black Forest, 1580-1797 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Sabean, David. Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 13–7. Sahlins, Marshall. Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). Schomerus, Heilwig. Die Arbeiter der Maschinenfabrik Esslingen (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, 1977). Schraut, Sylvia. Sozialer Wandel im Industrialisierungsprozeß, Esslingen 1800-1870 (Esslingen: Stadtarchiv Esslingen am Neckar, 1989). Sperber, Jonathan. Property and Civil Society in South-Western Germany, 1820-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), especially 236 where he argues that ‘property was in everything’. Squier, Susan Merrill. Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). Squier, Susan Merrill. ‘Liminal Livestock’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35, no. 2 (2010): 477–502. Vann, James Allen. Making of a State: Württemberg, 1593-1793 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984). 6 The Giraffe’s Journey in France (1826–7): Entering Another World Éric Baratay Introduction A diplomatic gift from the Egyptian Pasha to Charles X, King of France, the giraffe arrived in Europe on 31 October 1826, spending the winter acclimatizing in Marseilles. There she would be taken for a walk every afternoon among the general public; social events would be organized in the evenings in her honour. The winter safely over, the giraffe set off to Paris on 20 May 1827, accompanied by mahouts, police officers and stewards’ vehicles. On her long journey crowds rushed to see her, giving the giraffe a triumphant welcome wherever she was – for all who saw her, this was an event long to be remembered, the animal arousing vivid curiosity, wonder and passion. The press published many accounts of the journey, and kept the king informed as to her progress. After setting hoof in Paris on 30 June, the giraffe was finally introduced to the sovereign on 9 July, in Saint-Cloud. Between July and December, some 600,000 visitors from all across the country witnessed her afternoon stroll at her new home, the Jardin des Plantes. She was a sensation, the first living giraffe the Western world had seen in centuries. She attracted crowds as would an extraterrestrial alien strolling through a park today. The giraffe was the centre of a wild enthusiasm. Her effigy festooned almanacs, calendars, prints. She became the star of plays, pamphlets (La Girafe, ou le Gouvernement des Bêtes, 1872), comic booklets (Dame Girafe à Paris, 1827), songs and music (La Girafe¸ a waltz for piano). Quantities of souvenir crockery were produced, adorned with frankly fanciful portraits of the great beast. Women’s fashion was awash with colours, sleeves, garnitures, necklaces, ribbons, sunshades and even coiffures inspired by the giraffe. It is these essentially human stories – omnipresent in the documentary evidence – that are what historians mainly remember about the giraffe’s adventure in restoration France: the political significance of the gift, the giraffe’s role in the relationship between France and Egypt, the assiduous action of the authorities in moving her to her Parisian home, and the twists and turns of her journey, the enormous popular enthusiasm and the fashions she induced.1 Still, this story is not only human; the general public after all did not come to see a stuffed object, but rather a being whose actions and agency made a difference to 92 Animal History in the Modern City the events narrated. It is, first of all, an encounter between beings from two different worlds – animal and human – an event where the one discovers the other, is surprised and reacts in its own way, and where each creates a relationship that needs to be looked at holistically: for each participant, each side needs to be accounted for, though most particularly that of the giraffe, something which is inevitably alien to us. In this regard, the concept of liminality is an especially fruitful resource, insofar as it sheds light on the transitions from one state to another. It is all the more revealing as the three distinct steps defined by van Gennep and Turner can be identified in the giraffe’s adventure: from a brutal separation from its initial world when captured in Sudan to its definitive integration as a captive zoo animal after arriving in the Jardin des Plantes menagerie in Paris, interrupted by a long period of transition during its trip from Sudan to Egypt (either on hoof or by boat), from Alexandria to Marseilles by boat, and eventually from Marseilles to Paris (again on hoof), where the animal would for the rest of her life be forced to adjust to the bewilderingly mutability of the human world. It is legitimate to wonder then whether the state of liminality, formulated to describe the situation of human beings, might be extended to a non-human animal: in order that we might ask unfamiliar questions, to pay attention to signs and behaviours that would otherwise go unnoticed or quickly be dismissed, and to outline the peculiar aspects of this specific liminal story, if it is indeed one. What, for instance, about the terrible feeling of abandonment during the shocking experience of the giraffe’s capture, the psychological disorientation, the dismantling of its lifeworld, the suspension of its habits, the tension, stress and fear that must have been features of this long and confusing period of transition? And – to a lesser extent – what about human beings? Can we speak about the astonishment of Europeans, as opposed to the Sudanese or Egyptians who were more familiar with the animal? How are we supposed to address such questions about an animal when we have only ever been dealing with stories about human beings? Even under the sign of the ‘animal turn’, as it has come to be known, the humanities (and more particularly history) have been almost exclusively interested in the human perspective, by humans’ practices, actions and representations. We act – or have acted – as if the entire field of relationships between humans and animals actually could be reduced to a unique pole (the human world) and a unique direction (from human beings towards or upon non-human animals) – which leaves a black hole or a black box at the heart of our studies: for animals as beings that feel, react, act and take initiatives are typically forgotten or turned into a mere pretext for the research proper, portrayed as entirely inconsequential objects on which humans’ representations, knowledge and practices are exerted. The history of animals that has been developed now for more than thirty years is actually a human history of animals where the latter – as actual beings – are awkwardly out of place, so much of their reality and complexity forgotten or cast aside. Preamble: Taking the giraffe’s standpoint? A few epistemological and methodological questions thus need to be addressed by way of preamble. I start by suggesting that we look at events from the giraffe’s perspective, The Giraffe’s Journey in France 93 in order better to know this historical actor, a being which deserves to be studied for its own sake, but also – in retrospect – in order to understand its relationships with human beings and their world. Looking at issues from the perspective of the animal means trying to stand alongside them, to adopt their geographic point of view, and to try to understand what they are experiencing, are subjected to, how they act and react. This means attempting to project ourselves into them in order to understand their psychological point of view, what they see but also what they feel. This is obviously an ambitious aim, a strenuous exercise of imaginative projection or phenomenological effort, but it is a method of shifting our focus that ethnologists have pioneered and ethologists have taken up, and a practice that can contribute abundantly to our research as historians. In order to focus precisely on the case of the king of France’s giraffe, I cannot address these questions in any detail, and refer the reader instead to what I have previously written.2 The general features of this argument recognize, inter alia: the broadening of the definition of history itself; the need to go beyond ‘cultural’ approaches that often confine us to the business of deconstructing discourses (which turn the vital prerequisite of speech into a lifelessly deterministic system); a return to searching for ontological realities, armed with the concept of situated knowledge, something that allows for the construction of empirical knowledge while always being aware of the context of its elaboration; the evident necessity of doing away with the peculiarly Western historical construction of animals’ essential passivity and moving towards treating animals rather as feeling, experiencing, acting and adapting beings (note here that ethology is also taking stock of the animal’s perspective, and increasingly insists on individual behaviours, as well as on animals’ sociability and group cultures).3 In order to seek, to see, to show, we need to hypothesize that animals are actors influencing human beings, having an agency and participating in relationships with humans, as anglophone scholarship currently recommends. This is an approach that justifies the observation of human–animal interactions in terms of what animals do to people, but arguably concedes that it is not necessary to go very far in the study of these beasts themselves, nor to attribute much to them in terms of their particular capacities.4 We might also consider animals as individuals with singular personalities, who can be considered as persons with their own distinct behavioural signatures, and even as subjects making choices. These ideas are no longer taboo among ethologists.5 Looking at events from the animals’ standpoint naturally recruits the insights of ethology as a means of understanding animals’ behaviours (especially those schools of thought that are willing to consider behaviour on different scales: specific, social and individual); but we should add that it also requires the support of ecological science, insofar as we need to study animals’ environments and their influence, along with the contribution of the neurosciences with regard to the cognitive abilities of animals.6 These disciplinary crossings are essential prerequisites for dealing with historical documents concerning animals. Our aim here is not simply to validate the latter by the former, for the temptation is often too great to select or distort according to our current biases, but instead to cross-fertilize these viewpoints and situated knowledges. Historical documents are of course, for the most part, human, and questions of their reliability and partiality also arise – humans only being interested in a few themes, 94 Animal History in the Modern City for which they have barely recorded all the available information, keeping in mind only what they could see and wanted to see, always subjecting these questions with their imagination and interests, the certainties they had about a society, an era – or a species. But these problems emerge when considering all history, human or animal. The difficulty for us, approaching the history of animals, is a difference in degree rather than in kind. As regards our giraffe, we have gleaned ample information from the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône, and from two naturalists. The first was Salze, a teacher at the medical school in Marseilles, busy writing a thesis for the Parisian museum. The second was Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, professor at the museum, one of the most renowned naturalists of his time. Saint-Hilaire was vital in the transport of the giraffe – an exceptional scientist was required to pick up this exceptional animal in Marseilles – and he not only wrote numerous letters during the trip but also published an account having, man and beast, arrived safely at Paris.7 As a matter of priority, all authorities and administrators focused on the animal’s anatomy, on her movements, and on her care, such as her diet; but they also considered her behaviour, her attitude, and her reactions. They were certainly not as restricted, as students, as one might suppose or fear: their curiosity was only heightened by this marvellous animal, their minds largely unhampered by prejudicial knowledge, their eyes free to observe. They of course only wrote what they wanted to say, which is only a part of what they saw or what they thought they had seen – which is only of course a part of what happened. Nevertheless, the documents they have left us give us a glimpse of the unfolding of the event of the giraffe’s journey to the Jardin des Plantes – provided that we turn them around and seek to stand beside the animal. Their accounts also need to be confronted with contemporary ethological knowledge (scarce as it is) on giraffidae, knowledge that prompts us to offer explanations, observations and suggestions. Back to the giraffe: Her confusing arrival in Marseilles However, documents only give scarce and fragmentary indications of the first two stages of the giraffe’s journey, in Africa and then in the Mediterranean. Born at the end of 1824 or the beginning of 1825 in Sudan, before being captured at four months old by local agents, she was driven to the Nile and arrived in Alexandria in the bottom of a boat’s hold, her head popping up on the deck through a hole. She was lucky to survive, for the mortality of vulnerable giraffe calves was particularly high at the point of capture – two of her fellows, sent at the same time as embassies to Austria and England, quickly succumbed. In fact, the entrance of wild beasts to the human world always represents an extreme level of liminality, one that puts their lives on the line. Our giraffe probably offered greater resistance, because she was captured young enough to become attached to mother substitutes (animal wranglers, or other animals such as camels and horses) and yet old enough to endure constant changes of circumstance, for she had already learnt how to be independent with other young animals when their mothers went grazing. This specimen was a female, meant to live in a group and thus more apt to bear a sociable existence, even a multi-species one, than males used The Giraffe’s Journey in France 95 to a wandering life.8 These giraffe groups tend to recompose themselves in nature, something that she experienced during her journey, when her captors sold her to a local potentate, who in turn sent it to the Pasha, who offered her as a diplomatic gift to the French Consulate – who himself left her to the care of a ship owner! But her special temperament (at least according to the Arab mahouts who were used to comparing captive animals) was perhaps primarily responsible for her surviving the hardships when her fellows did not. Exceptionally calm and docile, she did not try to run away after being caught, in contrast to others. Accommodating and obliging, she became used to walking freely with her human captors. While doing so, ‘she would never show any desire to flee; but often showed cheerfulness, as young horses do’, but by rearing up, jumping and expressing a desire to exert herself, she seems to have overcome the stress and depression that would lead others listlessly to waste away.9 Our study thus truly begins with the historic meeting between the giraffe and the Europeans, which took place at the end of a quarantine period, on 14 November 1826. This took place in the obscurity of the evening, quite deliberately, as there was an apprehensive rumour concerning the arrival of a gigantic monster, and an evident fear of provoking panic. The giraffe herself came out to meet Marseilles ‘unafraid’, or at least without resisting; she was restrained by the tight lead ropes held by the mahouts, but she was surely impelled by her need to move around, something I will address later on. Certainly, she appeared calm, and probably did not see anything in this new landscape that was disturbing to her; there were few men, in order to avoid scaring her, and a horse placed ahead of her, ridden by a Marseilles notable who wanted to officially introduce the animal to his city. The giraffe seemed reassured by the horse – a species it had become acquainted with since its capture. The men of the escort understood the influence of the horse when, at the city gate, the giraffe ‘stopped abruptly, without wanting to move forward or to turn back: she showed fear, mingled with anxiety’. She was evidently frightened of this dark corridor – as many animals would be – and refused to stoop into the enclosed space; she resisted repeated yanks forward, and then backward, as her handlers eventually and desperately tried to make her turn around. She then discovered the horse that had been pushed forward to pave the way for her, of which it had momentarily lost sight, and whose absence had also disturbed her. The horse’s rider turned back to see what had happened and suggested using his mount as a lead animal, much like the ones used for herd animals such as sheep, horses and cows. This was a successful ploy: as soon as ‘the Giraffe saw the horse again …, it was peaceful’. She entered the city following the horse ‘very closely’ and thus arrived at the prefect’s residence without further mishap.10 This episode shows how the animals she had mixed with since her capture were absolutely necessary for her survival and for her adaptation to the new circumstances that confronted her. They constituted a link to her initial experience in the savannah, where the herd instinct of giraffe groups and their encounter with other species from zebras to antelopes allow the giraffe to accept other animals’ company and even to search for it, particularly in the case of females giraffes. This instinct allowed our giraffe to survive the six months’ overwintering she had endured in an annexe of the prefecture that had been hastily converted into a stable for the occasion: this impromptu animal house sheltered two cows that helped when it came to feeding the 96 Animal History in the Modern City giraffe, two antelopes destined for the national museum and two draft horses that were meant merely to warm up the enclosure.11 The giraffe would still not be fully reassured, since she did not take her favoured position to sleep: lying on her stomach, her head thrown over her right hind leg. Observers would have noticed it if she had taken this stance, even if the species in the wild only uses it for a few minutes each night, to avoid being most vulnerably exposed to predators. The avoidance of this position is now recognized as an important sign of stress. In Marseilles, the giraffe ‘barely lies down’ and is forced to slumber while standing – and only for short periods of time; she remained vigilant, therefore, using the species’ capacity to barely sleep, typically a more accentuated trait in older specimens needing to sleep less. During the day, the giraffe newly brought to France seemed to suffer from the narrowness of the room – both in terms of height and plan – a typical fault of captive environments, since people put animals in places proportional to them, and the spaces available to them, rather than with the animals’ needs in mind, something they anyway barely understood. As a matter of fact, as she stood 3.53 metres tall, she did not stand far from the ceiling height at its highest point of 4 metres. She could not come and go as she pleased. And she would also be ‘almost constantly moving’: she would need to do so to alleviate the pressure on her haunches owing to the height of her neck, which was very tiring when inactive. She moreover moved repeatedly forward and backward, probably out of boredom, and an obvious stereotypical behaviour.12 This was then an individual giraffe exhibiting abnormal behaviour (compared to her wild counterparts); this is the ‘nature’ that these Europeans observed in their wonder and enthusiasm. Winter in Marseilles: Fear, puzzlement, adaptation When inactive, the giraffe would take an interest in the visitors who clustered every day in front of her premises. She would often lower her head to inspect them, or raise it out of the window, and she ‘would happen to lick strangers from time to time and even sniff those who came near her’; but the animal would withdraw when frightened, when she heard shouts or was confronted by abrupt movements from those who were equally apprehensive of her behaviour. Even though it was based on a mutual curiosity, the encounter between these two worlds was admittedly only a partial and momentary alternative to mutual incomprehension. It generated reciprocal adaptations, however, such as during the first walks around the prefecture courtyard, when the animal would want to start galloping to stretch her limbs. She would quickly tire of dragging her mahouts behind her, all the more since giraffes feel discomfort when running as a consequence of their unbalanced bodies and their long necks. Subsequently, she would learn to ‘rise up and drop, motionless, on her legs’, making up for not being able to gallop. She would jump up and down on the spot, or, later, learning to fall in step with her handlers, adopting an easy rhythm with them.13 Similarly, when she was taken to the streets of Marseilles and outside its limits, from around March 1827 onwards, she felt herself constrained by the ropes of the six men who supervised her, bonds that would prevent her from running amok but also more gently and gradually be used to lead her. She felt less and less pressure, as she exhibited The Giraffe’s Journey in France 97 a relatively placid nature, and she quickly became used to her restraints, obediently following the dairy cows that her handlers – having learnt the lesson of the initial entrance to the city – had stationed ahead of her. She would ‘obey their direction’ and felt a strong affinity with these fellow ruminants and members of the bovid family – like the antelopes with whom she had mixed in the savannah, and the two specimens that had been placed its stable. She would not only be interested in these particular cows but in all the specimens she would meet along the way, animals which would not show any sign of fear of her, unlike the horses or the mules that whose anxiety manifested itself in holding their ears out, pawing at the ground if they had to wait, and moving smartly away when the opportunity arose; the equines were particularly sensitive to the giraffe’s scent, whereas the giraffe herself would carefully observe and smell them, would try to follow them, and watched them closely when they moved away.14 The giraffe’s anxious curiosity was not only directed towards humans! She was keen on trees: she would examine each of them, pull on her ropes to stop in front of them, forcing her human companions to let her smell and taste the leaves – which they would allow, as they took interest in her behaviour (one of the few natural behaviours they could actually observe), the two sides here finding common ground. She fulfilled an activity that keeps wild giraffes (mostly the females) busy – slow chewers as they are – but something that captive animals are deprived of. Without this stimulation, the giraffe would express her frustrations in stereotypic behaviour which has long been thoroughly observed: she would lick the walls of the stable or wrap her long tongue around the hands of passers-by during her walks – though the latter would not understand the reasons for this and would wrongly believe her to be indulging in a natural action.15 The giraffe appeared affectionate to human beings, depending on the situation. She ‘would willingly smell’ the closest onlookers she would see on the streets and on paths, whom she would obligingly allow to approach, even as they crowded around her, talked or shouted, astonished, ecstatic, frightened as they were. But the animal ‘did not like to be touched’, ‘seemed fearful, attentive to noise’, and typically stiffened in the event of perceived danger, keeping ‘its head very high when disturbed or frightened’, her neck and ears straight. All the same, over the coming months, she would get more used to the sight and sounds of the crowd: the journalists who reported her skittishness in December would no longer do so in April – either because they no longer perceived it as worthy of comment or, more likely, because she had overcome her fears, evidence of her singular individuality even as the inhabitants of Marseilles became less interested in her novelty.16 On the other hand, the naturalists who continued to take an interest in her, their curiosity rendered more urgent by the real possibility of her imminent demise, proved a constant irritant. On their orders she would time and again be roped into immobility, examined from rump to ears, measured, prodded, rendered into an anatomically accurate portrayal. She would become stressed when these scientists examined her head, when she ‘would not allow herself to be easily touched’. She shook her head vigorously, and bridled when she felt her lips being lifted and her mouth forced open; she held her mouth shut so firmly and with so much stubbornness that it proved ‘pretty hard to count the incisors in the lower jaw’, so that it ‘was impossible to have a notion’ 98 Animal History in the Modern City of its dentition. She would resist even more strenuously when these men tried to feel her ears, her horns and the protuberance behind her head – as we might expect, as she feared an attack from a predator. They were thus reduced to approximate measurements. On other occasions, she was provoked to a flight reaction so that her movements could be observed. She would ‘hurry, get carried away’, becoming frightened in other words, and would quickly run out of breath. She would sometimes become so ‘annoyed’ when naturalists attempted to analyse her defence mechanisms that she would rear up in frustration; at other times she would be more pliable, stretching her neck and raising her head for example to grab twigs and branches waved in front of her and slowly withdrawn, so that her extended tongue could be measured. Even so, she would feel her tongue being grasped and touched – which must have frightened her at first before merely becoming another irritation.17 She also suffered stress (a term which has been used for about thirty years in ethology and includes states from anxiety to pain) in the face of misunderstandings between the two worlds of human and animal.18 She would often have to stoop down, for instance, to grasp the branches deliberately laid on the ground by her captors in order to examine her posture; this was a position thought to be both natural – since they considered eating on the ground as normal – and comfortable for the giraffe: ‘She first sets aside a small quantity of food with one of her front legs, then with the other, before repeating the same manoeuvres several times; it is only after these attempts that she chose to bend her neck and put her lips and tongue on what was being offered.’ In fact, she would become so anxious that she would only consent to do this for the mimosa which she particularly loved – for this posture is risky in the wild, making her bended neck vulnerable to predators, such that giraffes only use this posture to drink quickly, swallowing fifteen litres of water at a time, and never to eat, even going without this food for three or four days in favour of leaves. She would also be physically discomfited, taking considerable time and precaution to spread her front legs, to contract her rump, to push her shoulders out and to stretch her neck – and frequent repetition of this position would clearly disturb her physiological mechanisms designed to control the great variations in blood pressure inevitable in an animal whose head is located two metres above its heart.19 Food was one of the most important elements of the encounter between animal and human. The giraffe was constantly invited to taste different fare – and the incomprehension produced was mutual, a matter of hesitant experiments, surprise and astonishment from one side, and mistrust from the other. The giraffe would ‘more or less’ smell but would otherwise not touch European fruits and vegetables at all (even the fresh ones, for all that these would be rare and precious for many Westerners). ‘She took some salt but threw it away’, it was observed, while horses and cows would love it! She would only swallow ‘small quantities’ of the bread that people ate in abundance! She would refuse exotic fruits, even if these were sourced from Africa, which should surely suit her down to the ground! She paid no attention to the lush and highly prized meadows (though all European livestock enjoyed them, for giraffes, especially females, this meant adopting a vulnerable position). She would barely graze the abundant ash, only nibble the lime tree and the cherry tree (rarer and more precious still) – but she ‘would return with pleasure’ to the yew and the cedar, lumpy and bitter as they are! The Giraffe’s Journey in France 99 Since her capture, she had in fact been drinking milk from camels and, subsequently, cows – milk less rich than that of giraffes – but since it was sourced from fellow ruminants easily digestible to her, constituting an important element of its psychological sense of security as much as its physiological survival. ‘In general, she does not want cold milk’ – warm milk was her preference, as it would be for an animal separated too early from her mother (giraffes in such a position today are bottle-fed and only later weaned). The giraffe would thus force her human masters to accommodate to her needs and demands, though in time she would take to grains, such as maize (still rare and dear), which indeed it ‘would prefer to any other’, which it ‘would always eat avidly when served on its own’, and which it would ‘pick out, grain by grain’, when mixed with the far cheaper barley, bran and broad beans. And since she was ‘delighted’ by the company of her cows, she eventually deigned to eat the hay she had peremptorily refused back in February, following the example of the cows, and in this way adjusting her world to that of others.20 From Aix to Paris: The trauma of transit Her good behaviour prompted the expedition to Paris on foot and hoof, beginning on 20 May. She adapted once again, became used to the rhythm and regimen of her daily walks. As early as the 24th, however, once she ‘saw the cows preparing to leave, she also decided to leave, without needing any prompting from her groom’. In doing so she exhibited again her attachment to her fellow beasts, and at the same time a degree of ‘domestication’ and tractability thanks to her contact with people. She became ‘docile’ and ‘perfectly obedient’, to the point that only two mahouts were needed to hold her ropes. She became accustomed to eating and drinking in the open air and in public, whereas previously she had only done so in the tranquillity of the stable in Marseilles.21 She saw, heard and sensed the people as they walked by: and in her more relaxed state she had time now to observe and smell the mules, horses and oxen that were forced to stand aside by the gendarmes escorting the convoy. All the same, the busy crowds – noisier and more agitated than the ones in Marseilles – caused the giraffe to stiffen up and to stand in apprehension. She would indeed become particularly stressed in the large cities providing the stages in her journey to Paris. In Aix, she entered through the narrow streets where she was confronted by the people who rushed alongside the convoy, or hurrying to upper floors to see her better, leaning out of windows and over balconies, waving and cheering. She would hear their shouts, their applause ringing around her head, her most sensitive area. Everywhere she lodged, in the outhouses of hotels, she would be forced to go out and satisfy the curiosity of the immense crowds, else risk disturbances later. She took part in these unwelcome strolls twice on the same day in Aix, six times in Lyon, paraded through the streets, the main avenues and squares, to allow the maximum number of people to see her. In Aix, where ‘the number of curious people was incredible’, she only heard ‘a single shout, as it was so universal, extended and loud’ as she was led out in the morning. She was accompanied by waves of exclamations, great expressions of wonder, and by 100 Animal History in the Modern City the jostling of an indisciplined public, for all the presence of the gendarmes who accompanied the procession. She was not too skittish, reassured by her cows that she saw in front of her but also restrained by the pressure of the tightropes held by the mahouts; she would eventually be attracted by the foliage of the avenues and of the squares that she passed through, and she was led there because people could observe how she grazed and because this put on a spectacle that even people some distance away could witness without difficulty. She would concentrate on finding the best leaves, momentarily forgetting the unfamiliar sights, sounds and sensations of the street. She hovered her head above the flowers placed on windowsills and the grass grown on lean-tos, even condescending to lick a few hands along the way. She did not seem now to be unduly ‘astonished by the crowd that rushed to its feet’ whenever she approached; she exhibited an apparent tranquillity that allowed her handlers to put her on ready display to the delight and excitement of the crowds, even though she was constantly nervous and anxious – as with many herbivores she was ever on the lookout for predators, but her straight neck and raised head were simply misinterpreted as the sign of a ‘majestic’ demeanour. She did panic in Lyon, however, at the Place Bellecour, during her final parade there. As a precaution because of the expected influx of people on this Saturday morning, 9 June, the reassuring cows were replaced by a detachment of cavalry, designed to clear the way more effectively, but meaning that the giraffe was deprived of her main point of reference. ‘Curious spectators having rushed to her side, she became frightened’, presumably mistaking them for predators. She started to flee – surprising all but one of the mahouts who were forced to drop their ropes – and startling the horses pressed up against the onlookers in front. She ran even faster now, seeing the press of spectators ahead of her, trying to avoid them as best she could, but aware of the gendarmes’ attempts to keep people calm. She also heard people running behind her, gathering to witness what they believed was a staged display of her galloping ability. She circled around the statue of Louis XIV, and then stopped abruptly, exhausted by this exertion and by the burden of the one remaining mahout who had managed to hold onto her, and no doubt also quietened by the crowd simultaneously slowing down.22 Her evident distress was properly noticed by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who spoke perceptively of the ‘ennui of performance’ – as in Aix where ‘the spectators had been so insatiable, and the giraffe more tired when resting than on her daily walks’. The convoy thus decided to cross the Morvan after Beaune, steering clear of other big cities until they came to Paris.23 They finally arrived on 30 June in decent shape, thanks to a period of prolonged physical acculturation, the giraffe notably calmer (she was led now by only two mahouts). She could even be led without her cows – these in any case threatened to take away from the dignity and exoticism of the spectacle – and this is how she was received by the king in Saint-Cloud, walking behind two professors of the museums on horseback, and surrounded by its keepers and handlers, by the ever-present gendarmes, and by the equally inevitable crowds, loud but essentially good-humoured. In front of the court, she was still made to exhibit herself, the various gestures and movements that were supposed to illustrate, for Europeans, the giraffe’s ‘nature’, modest and often misleading as this impression was. She would be forced to break into a trot under her keepers’ direction, even though this was not a natural behaviour in the wild. She was The Giraffe’s Journey in France 101 offered precious petals to smell – befitting her rare and exotic status, but if she wanted to taste them, she would need once again, uncomfortably and unnaturally, to lower herself. Doubtlessly her apparent calm was abused, as for instance during her first walks in the fenced yard of the botanic school at the Jardin des Plantes, where she would hear the masses of spectators gathered at the gates, yelling, hooting – there were more than ten thousand of them on the day after her arrival. After the royal reception at SaintCloud, she would go out less often, giving her time to rest, and avoid the indigestion that eating the public’s flowers unfortunately brought it – the ordinary folk wanting to mimic the sovereign and to tempt the great beast closer, and the giraffe, true to her nature, was unable to restrain her appetite for these morsels.24 Coming out of the dangerous and disturbing liminal state would in the end be achieved through a stabilization of the environment and the imposition of a regular rhythm on her activities. In October, the giraffe discovered her winter quarters: this would prove to be one of the narrow hexagons of the rotunda in the Jardin des Plantes. Entering into the famous menagerie meant passing over into the stage of her life as a zoo animal. Now, sadly, she could barely move, all the more so since the walls were stuffed with bundles of hay and since a mahout and the cows meant to feed and calm were also expected to reside here, along with a stove that would heat the room up to six degrees warmer than outside. This was surely why she reverted to the stereotypical movements and licking. She would also be prevented from grazing the precious exotic trees when she did venture out, and she ‘seems to compensate herself for this privation by continually running her tongue over her lips’.25 Still, she was even now adapting herself, though the documentary evidence becomes very scarce at this point, limiting what we can say about this animal and her latest rite of passage, this third stage of her existence.26 She did not decline and disappear, however; she resisted the appalling mortality in zoos with inmates during their first year, and she must have appreciated the reduction in the number of fatiguing public performances expected of her. Indeed, our giraffe went out of fashion after the fall of Charles X in 1830, the July Monarchy marking a respite for her. She even became acclimated to the Parisian weather, and to the presence of more famous and fashionable neighbours in the rotunda – the elephants, especially, and the other wild animals with their peculiar scents and roars – and even to the deaths of some of her beloved cows. Another giraffe was welcomed into the zoo in 1839, with whom she could eventually communicate, through infrasound. She grew to her greatest height of 5.80 metres, and eventually passed away at the age of twenty years in 1845, from phthisis of the lungs (the bacillus of this tuberculosis had a bovine origin and was probably transmitted to her through the milk of one of her cows, as she remained faithful to her first diet to the end of her days). Conclusions From this history we can identify a pronounced and distinctive liminal state – not continuous but uneven, oscillating between stress and adaptation, with a first intensely 102 Animal History in the Modern City felt disruption when arriving in Europe, an extended period of progressive habituation when overwintering in Marseilles, and a new burst of anxiety and fatigue at the start of her journey northwards, along the Rhône corridor and its busy, bustling cities; this was followed by a calmer and less traumatic experience after Lyon, particularly when passing through the tranquil Morvan, and one more period of acute stress in Paris, before a final process of adaptation and accommodation in the Jardin des Plantes. Reconstructing the experience of travel and liminality from the animal standpoint, we remove ourselves from the exclusively human vision, the festive theme of performance and wonder, and are confronted instead with a delicate negotiation between two worlds, with its fair share of fear, doubt, incomprehension, learning, adaptation, on both sides –that of the Sudanese animal brought in 1827 to the Paris zoo, but also on the part of the human beings who received the giraffe, who were scared and excited in equal measure, who set out in hope to understand her nature, even if eventually she became a matter of indifference. Notes 1 Gabriel Dardaud, Une Girafe pour le Roi: La Véritable Histoire de Zarafa la Première Girafe de France (Bordeaux: Elytis, 2007); Michael Allin, Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris (London: Headline Review, 1999). 2 Éric Baratay, Le Point de Vue Animal: Une Autre Version de l’Histoire (Paris: Le Seuil, 2012); Éric Baratay, ‘Geschichtsschreibung von Seiten der Tiere: Leben und Sterben im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Tierstuden 5 (2014): 30–43; Éric Baratay, ‘Building an Animal History’, in French Thinking About Animals, ed. Louisa Mackensie and Stephanie Posthumus (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015), 3–14. Éric Baratay, Biographies Animales: Des Vies Retrouvées (Paris: Le Seuil, 2017). 3 Julius Bräuer, ‘What Dogs Understand about Humans’, in The Social Dog: Behavior and Cognition, ed. Juliane Kaminski and Sarah Marshall-Pescini (London: Academic Press, 2014), 295–317; Monique A. R. Udell et al., ‘A Dog’s-Eye View of Canine Cognition’, in Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior: The Scientific Study of Canis Familiaris, ed. Alexandra Horowitz (New York, 2014), 221–40. 4 See the special issue, Arthur Danto, ed., ‘Does History Need Animals?’, History and Theory 52, no. 4 (2013): 1–167. 5 Adam Miklosi et al., ‘The Personality of Dogs’, in Kaminski and Marshall-Pescini, The Social Dog, 191–222. 6 Ádám Miklósi, Dog Behaviour, Evolution and Cognition, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 7 Correspondence of Villeneuve-Bargemon, Archives Départementales des Bouches-duRhône (subsequently ADBR), 4 T 53; Salze, ‘Observations Faites sur la Girafe Envoyée au Roi par le Pacha d’Egypte’, Mémoires du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle 14 (1827): 68–84; Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, correspondence: ADBR 4 T 53, and ‘Quelques Considérations sur la Girafe’, Annales des Sciences Naturelles 11 (1827): 210–23. 8 To avoid multiple notes, the ethological discussion is taken from the definitive reference: Anne Dagg, Giraffe. Biology, Behaviour and Conservation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 9 L-D. Ferlus, Nouvelle Notice sur la Girafe (Paris: Moreau, 1827), 4 ; Salze, ‘Observations’, 71–2; Saint-Hilaire, ‘Quelques Considérations sur la Girafe’, 210–11, 223. The Giraffe’s Journey in France 103 10 Cited in Salze, ‘Observations’, 68–9; ADBR, 4 T 53, Prefect to the Customs Director, 14 November 1826. 11 Salze, ‘Observations’, 82–3; ADBR, 4 T 53, Open account, 10 November 1826, letters from the prefect, 8 and 18 November 1826, 12 February 1827. 12 Salze, ‘Observations’, 80–3; Meredith J. Bashaw et al., ‘A Survey Assessment of Variables Related to Stereotypy in Captive Giraffe and Okapi’, Applied Animal Behaviour Science 73, no. 3 (2001): 235–47. 13 Cited in Salze, ‘Observations’, 78, 81–2; ADBR, 4 T 53, letters from the prefect, 12 February 1827. 14 Cited in ADBR, 4 T 53, letters from the prefect, 3 and 19 March 1827, 28 April 1827, June 1827; Louis-Furcy Grognier, Gazette Universelle de Lyon, 14 June 1827, 1. 15 Salze, ‘Observations’, 76, 82; ADBR, 4 T 53, letters from the prefect, 12 February 1827. 16 Cited in Salze, ‘Observations’, 82; ADBR, 4 T 53, letters from the prefect, 12 February and 28 April 1827, and letter from the museum, 4 July 1827. 17 Cited in Salze, ‘Observations’, 77, 79 and Saint-Hilaire, ‘Quelques Considérations sur la Girafe’, 216, 220. 18 Robert Dantzer, Le Stress en Élevage Intensif (Paris: Masson, 1979). 19 Saint-Hilaire, ‘Quelques Considérations sur la Girafe’, 214–15; Graham Mitchell et al., ‘The Origin of Mean Arterial and Jugular Venous Blood Pressures in Giraffes’, Journal of Experimental Biology 209, no. 13 (2006): 2515–24. 20 Cited in Salze, ‘Observations’, 73–6, 83; ADBR, 4 T 53, Expense reports, November and December 1826, letters from the prefect, 12 February 1827. 21 Cited in ADBR, 4 T 53, letters from Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 21 and 24 May 1827, 2 June 1827; and Saint-Hilaire, ‘Quelques Considérations sur la Girafe’, 214, 219. 22 Cited in: ADBR, 4 T 53, Letters from the prefect, 23 June 1827, from the deputy prefect in Aix, 23 June 1827, from Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 24 June 1827; ‘Cérémonial of Aix, 20 May 1827’, in É. Aude, La Girafe à Aix (Aix: Imprimerie Chauvet, 1934), 10–12; Louis-Furcy Grognier, Gazette Universelle de Lyon, 6 June 1827, 2, 7 June 1827, 2, 9 July 1827, 1; Archives Municipales de Lyon, 1 I 65, letter from the mayor, 6 June 1827. 23 Citations from ADBR, 4 T 53, letters from Saint-Hilaire, 2 and 5 June 1827, and 23 and 24 May 1827. 24 ADBR, 4 T 53, letters from the muséum, 4t July 1827, and from Saint-Hilaire, 12 July 1827; Louis-Furcy Grognier, Gazette Universelle de Lyon, 15 July 1827; L-D. Ferlus, Dernière Notice sur la Girafe Contenant la Relation de Son Voyage à Saint-Cloud (Paris: Moreau, 1827). 25 ADBR, 4 T 53, Geoffroy to the prefect, 22 October 1827; citation from Ferlus, Dernière Notice sur la Girafe, 9. 26 Pierre Bernard et al., Le Jardin des Plantes (Paris: L. Curmer, 1842), Vol. I, 41–3; Pierre Boitard, Le Jardin des Plantes: Description et Murs des Mammifères de la Ménagerie et du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris: J.J. Dubochet, 1842), 442. Bibliography Allin, Michael. Zarafa: A Giraffe’s True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris (London: Headline Review, 1999). 104 Animal History in the Modern City Aude, É. La Girafe à Aix (Aix: Imprimerie Chauvet, 1934). Baratay, Éric. Le Point de Vue Animal: Une Autre Version de l’Histoire (Paris: Le Seuil, 2012). Baratay, Éric. ‘Geschichtsschreibung von Seiten der Tiere: Leben und Sterben im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Tierstuden 5 (2014): 30–43. Baratay, Éric. ‘Building an Animal History’, in French Thinking About Animals, ed. Louisa Mackensie and Stephanie Posthumus (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015), 3–14. Baratay, Éric. Biographies Animales: Des vies Retrouvées (Paris: Le Seuil, 2017). Bashaw, Meredith J., Tarou, Loraine R., Maki, Todd S., Maple, Terry L. ‘A Survey Assessment of Variables Related to Stereotypy in Captive Giraffe and Okapi’, Applied Animal Behaviour Science 73, no. 3 (2001): 235–47. Bernard, Pierre, et al. Le Jardin des Plantes (Paris: L. Curmer, 1842) Boitard, Pierre. Le Jardin des Plantes: Description et Murs des Mammifères de la Ménagerie et du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris: J.J. Dubochet, 1842). Bräuer, Julius. ‘What Dogs Understand about Humans’, in The Social Dog: Behavior and Cognition, ed. Juliane Kaminski and Sarah Marshall-Pescini (London: Academic Press, 2014), 295–317. Dagg, Anne. Giraffe. Biology, Behaviour and Conservation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Danto, Arthur, ed. special issue ‘Does History Needs Animals?’, History and Theory 52, no. 4 (2013): 1–167. Dantzer, Robert. Le Stress en Élevage Intensif (Paris: Masson, 1979). Dardaud, Gabriel. Une Girafe pour le Roi: La Véritable Histoire de Zarafa la Première Girafe de France (Bordeaux: Elytis, 2007). Ferlus, L-D. Nouvelle Notice sur la Girafe (Paris: Moreau, 1827). Ferlus, L-D. Dernière Notice sur la Girafe Contenant la Relation de Son Voyage à Saint-Cloud (Paris: Moreau, 1827). Miklosi, Ádám, et al. ‘The Personality of Dogs’, in The Social Dog: Behavior and Cognition, ed. Juliane Kaminski and Sarah Marshall-Pescini (London: Academic Press, 2014), 191–222. Miklósi, Ádám. Dog Behaviour, Evolution and Cognition, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Mitchell, Graham, Maloney, Shane K., Mitchell, Duncan and Keekan, D. James Keegan. ‘The Origin of Mean Arterial and Jugular Venous Blood Pressures in Giraffes’, Journal of Experimental Biology 209, no. 13 (2006): 2515–24. Saint-Hilaire, Étienne Geoffroy. ‘Quelques Considérations sur la Girafe’, Annales des Sciences Naturelles 11 (1827), 210–23. Salze, ‘Observations Faites sur la Girafe Envoyée au Roi par le Pacha d’Egypte’, Mémoires du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle 14 (1827): 68–84. Udell, Monique A. R., Lord, Kathryn, Feuerbacher, Erica N. and Wynn, Clive D. L. ‘A Dog’s-Eye View of Canine Cognition’, in Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior: The Scientific Study of Canis Familiaris, ed. Alexandra Horowitz (New York: Springer, 2014), 221–40. 7 The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog and the Rise of the Modern Slaughterhouse1 Annette Leiderer Introduction This chapter focuses on the fate of butcher dogs in Germany from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. These remarkable dogs were draft and herding animals, but also animal companions to the butchers and an essential part of their public image.2 There was even a breed of dogs named after them, the Metzgerhund or Fleischerhund.3 This is worth mentioning since names of dog breeds rarely refer to the owner of the dog; the majority of dogs are named or categorized by geography, usage, prey or social function: Newfoundlands or Yorkshires, say, or shepherd and hunting dogs, foxhounds, staghounds, lapdogs and toy dogs.4 What is more, butcher dogs had a special status when it came to their freedom of movement. They were the only domesticated animals that were allowed to enter the slaughterhouse and leave it alive; and in contrast to the draft horses owned by butchers or cattle traders, butcher dogs could freely roam the slaughterhouse or abattoir environs.5 This was not to last, however: after the 1860s, with the modernization of animal killing, the distinctive and even definitive mobility of the butcher dog came quickly to an end, as most local authorities in Germany moved to ban the butcher dogs from the slaughterhouse sites.6 This chapter aims to understand the proscription of butcher dogs, looking at the historical context of this unique human– animal relationship and its framing of the liminality of animals and humans alike. The first section of this chapter attempts to characterize the bond between butchers and their dogs in the early nineteenth century. Historical research on butcher dogs is hardly abundant, so this first section presents and debates source material that can provide an insight into the historical relationships between butchers and their dogs in German towns. This rough sketch will show that the public image of butcher dogs was affected by the negative stereotypes of butchers themselves, something that had developed long before the nineteenth century.7 The occupation of killing made butchers the subject of suspicion and speculation, notably whether they were born cruel or made cruel by their profession.8 Nevertheless, the social status of butchers, and by extension their dogs, was not that of complete outsiders. Their ‘bloody’ craft separated them from the ordinary citizen and defined the butcher and his dogs as a liminal pair in a moral 106 Animal History in the Modern City sense. But butchers were organized in respected and established municipal associations such as guilds.9 Butchers and butcher dogs were liminal beings, repeatedly traversing rites de passage, and proceeding through the classic phases of separation, liminality and aggregation.10 Every act of killing an animal inside the slaughterhouse separated the butcher from his fellow citizens, but every act of slaughtering, transforming the dead animal body into meat, was a liminal act that led to acts of aggregation to society, such as through the sale of meat that resulted, or the cattle trade in general, or, most significantly, the performance of corporate identities during festivities.11 Having established the traditional liminal status of the butchers and their dogs, the second section of this chapter describes the transformation to a publicly monitored slaughterhouse culture in Germany after 1860. This change to the profession split and ultimately dissolved the liminal position originally inhabited by butchers and butcher dogs. Now the butchers would be observed and accompanied in public only by other butchers, and by public officials and veterinarians, while the butcher dogs were no longer actors even inside the slaughterhouse. Once the butchers’ social position became less liminal, in other words, the social role of the butcher dogs was eliminated. No ordinary dog: The butcher dog in late-eighteenthand early-nineteenth-century Germany In popular images and visual art, pedagogical stories and encyclopaedias published between 1780 and 1820, butcher dogs formed an essential part of the public image of butchers. They did not appear as interchangeable or marginal figures, but as central actors of the butcher’s household.12 Figure 7.1 is a reprint of the master craftsman diploma handed to new master butchers by the masters of the guild of Heilbronn from 1802:13 the butcher dog appears in the upper part and the left part of the titular vignettes, and in both cases the dog walks behind the butcher. In the first instance the butcher holds a leash to control an ox or a bull, while the butcher dog trots freely after his owner. Since these ornaments usually bear reference to the content of the diploma, this image indicates that the butcher dog was part of the public image of master butchers at that time.14 Figure 7.2 shows a so-called popular scene by the Czech-Austrian artist and caricaturist Georg Emanuel Opiz.15 It depicts daily life in Vienna around the year 1812, and includes a butcher’s servant carrying a piece of meat over his right shoulder, accompanied by a dog. In terms of liminality and the process of crossing between the segregated slaughterhouse and the public space of the city, the position of this dog is significant. It is depicted at the threshold of the butcher’s house, at the very moment of leaving the home and entering the street. The dog’s appearance further demonstrates his status as a de facto participant in public life. Two other images can be offered in support to this proposition. Figure 7.3 is a reprint of an engraving after a genre painting by the Saxonian academy artist J. F. Constantin Schröter, part of a series of Leipzig street scenes manufactured in the 1820s.16 It resembles Opiz’s piece, but shows a ‘rural butcher-wife and rural butcher’ – to the fact that butcher dogs were not only an urban phenomenon. In Schröter’s picture The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 107 Figure 7.1 Master craftsman’s diploma, Heilbronn 1802. From Hans-Peter de Longueville, Kurt Nagel, Benno P. Schlipf, and Theo Wershoven, Kostbarkeiten des Fleischerhandwerks (Heidenheim: Rees, 1986), with permission of Professor Kurt Nagel. the butcher is standing in the centre of the composition and shouldering a tray of meat. He talks to his wife, who stands at his right side, while the dog stands to his left.17 Finally, the ceramic figurine in Figure 7.4 is a so-called Stubenzeichen. These were owned by guilds who, when gathering in taverns, put them on the table to demonstrate their affiliation.18 This example was manufactured in the 1820s by the Suebian ceramic artist Septimus Rommel.19 As in the master craftsman diploma of Figure 7.1, the butcher here holds an animal for slaughter on a leash, accompanied in this occupation by his dog, who once again walks off-leash. In these four depictions butcher dogs appear as part of the butchers’ public image. The street scenes they inhabit are portrayed somewhat neutrally, but the dogs are both the butchers’ companions and, as guard dogs and herding dogs, business partners.20 Unsurprisingly, the diploma and the ‘Stubenzeichen’ manufactured specifically for the butcher guilds portray a favourable image of the profession. In pedagogical literature, however, the butcher and his dog were viewed in a more dubious light. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Johann Peter Hebel, two widely read authors of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, introduced butcher dogs as characters in stories with a clear educational bias, and their portraits of these animals and their relations with their masters, suggests a more problematic public life. Between 1781 and 1787 the Swiss pedagogue and romanticist Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi wrote and published Lienhard and Gertrud – A Tale for the People, in four parts.21 The central figure in this novel is the eponymous Gertrud, who lives in a village called Bonnal with her husband Lienhard. Pestalozzi paints Bonnal as a morally and legally corrupted place, and in this environment the local Juncker Arner, inspired by Gertrud’s fine teaching skills, wants 108 Animal History in the Modern City Figure 7.2 Georg Emanuel Opiz, ‘Female butcher with servant, lady and hawker’, c.1812. Reproduced from Bruno Brandl and Günter Creutzburg, Die Große Walz: Das Handwerk im Spiegel der Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1974), with the permission of the publishers. to bring about sweeping educational reforms, bringing the ideas of the Enlightenment to the benighted inhabitants.22 While the village has started on the path from chaos to perfect harmony, however, Pestalozzi introduces an ‘anti-Gertrud’, by the name of Sylvia.23 Sylvia arrives at the home of the Juncker in the fourth part of the novel, when he is confronted with rioting villagers who refuse his social and legal reforms. An orphan without proper education, Sylvia is portrayed as a woman who lacks moral qualities, someone who provokes other people and generally advertises her unpleasant character. Sylvia has to stay with her cousin Arner for a season and immediately sets out to rock the boat, convincing a friendly hunter to set loose his two dogs to frighten a peasant who was to deliver a letter to Arner’s home. This incident causes uproar in the village and, given the novel’s educational purpose, has to be punished, and this ‘would follow quickly’ through the action of a butcher dog. One evening the butcher The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 109 Figure 7.3 J.F. Schröter, ‘Rural butcher-wife and rural butcher’, c. 1820. Reproduced from Bruno Brandl and Günter Creutzburg, Die Große Walz: Das Handwerk im Spiegel der Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1974), with the permission of the publishers. of Bonnal sees Sylvia walking home through the woods, and he decides to avenge the peasant by urging his dog to scare her. The dog barks at Sylvia, strips open the belt of her clothes and throws down her basket. Pestalozzi’s narrator then explicitly steps in to thank the butcher dog – not the butcher – for the necessary discipline. Yet the butcher in this story is depicted as leaving the local tavern, a location which repeatedly had been the source of all moral evil in Bonnal, and neither he nor his dog emerge as straightforwardly heroic figures. Their actions represent in fact the traditional village morality that Gertrud and her companions had been attempting to reform. For all the narrator’s approval of the dog’s actions in curbing Sylvia’s malice, both the butcher and the butcher dog, as vigilantes, are ultimately shown as enemies of moral progress and civilization.24 Sylvia’s chastisement suggests one important impression of the public image of butchers and their dogs: a strong comradely bond, but also a partnership that acted in morally ambiguous contexts, even endangering social progress as a result. We might 110 Animal History in the Modern City Figure 7.4 Septimus Rommel (1778-1846), ‘butcher with ox and dog’. Württemberg State Museum, inventory number WLM 9160 c, with permission of Chris Gebel. compare this moral with another famous story about a loyal butcher dog and a brutish woman, published thirty years after Lienhard and Gertrud, and entitled ‘How a horrid occurrence was brought to light by a common butcher dog’.25 The author was the Alemannic pedagogue and theologian Johann Peter Hebel. The story was published in the Badischer Landkalender (‘calendar for the Baden country’), a widely read almanac directed at all social groups, and from this context it is plausible that Hebel was presenting commonplace images of butcher dogs during the early nineteenth century. The narrative is straightforward. Two butchers, accompanied by their dogs, arrive at a small village to buy cattle. One of the butchers is killed by a farmer and his wife, after they become aware of his well-filled money belt. The farmers’ child witnesses the bloody deed, and the mother murders her own child to keep it secret. Nevertheless, the butcher dog searches for his master, scents his whereabouts, tracks down the second butcher and raises the alarm. In the end, the murderous couple are sentenced to death. As in the previous story, the butcher dog is depicted as his master’s loyal companion, accomplice and even avenger. We also note that the dog can apparently move freely inside the village and, moreover, that it is the restorer of public order. In sum, this is a cautionary tale directed at greedy people; but by using a ‘common butcher dog’ as the hero of the story, Hebel can stress the horrific aberration of the farmer and his wife. Encyclopaedias from the same era did not challenge the popular image of the loyal if morally ambiguous butcher dogs, but entries from the 1860s which have the most negative depictions may be contrasted with those published after 1900, by which time ‘butcher dogs’ had become simply ancestors of other dogs, entirely losing their social role and status, and no longer being seen as part of any distinct or significant human–animal relationship. Early discussions are morally neutral. Readers of Adelung’s Grammatikalisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart (with identical entries in the editions of 1796 and 1811) could learn, for instance, that ‘Fleischerhunde’ were simply tall and trained dogs who helped the butcher to herd the cattle.26 Blumenbach’s Naturkunde or ‘Natural History’, whose ninth edition was The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 111 published in 1814, mentions butcher dogs as one of twelve dog ‘races’, emphasizing the physical features which they shared with the Great Dane, such as a truncated scull, suspended upper lip and straight hair.27 In the first edition (1864) of the famous natural history Brehm’s Animal Life by Alfred Edmund Brehm, however, butcher dogs might be said to ‘break bad’.28 Brehm begins his chapter on dogs with the inoffensive poodle, portrayed as ‘always serene’ and ‘belonging to the world, to everybody with no exceptions’. In contrast, according to Brehm, other dogs belong to the world of instinct, with the butcher dog the worst of all, since he belongs completely to ‘the animal’ (‘nur dem Tiere … angehört’). In Brehm’s summary butcher dogs are melancholic, acerbicliverish, and particularly bloodthirsty: ‘His attacks are brutal when they [the young calves] erroneously make a step to the wrong side! He seems to be insensible to their pain, it even looks as if he enjoyed it!’29 This critical image of the butcher dog appeared at the very time the hygienic movement began to portray dogs as a sanitary threat. For the author of Animal Life, the butcher dog is simply a brute, rather than being made brutal by his owner; he essentializes the character of the dog and it seems that the dog’s social relationship to the butcher culture is an irrelevance to him. After 1900, individual entries for butcher dogs defined in terms of their function for the butchery trade disappeared from German encyclopaedias. The Meyer lexicon of 1907 contains a long entry about dog breeds, with the ‘Butcher Dog’ breed listed under the lemma ‘Molosser’, a crossbreed with the water-hound in order to breed the Newfoundland dog; the social role of the butcher dogs is no longer worthy of attention.30 The Brockhaus of 1911 similarly described the Newfoundland as the ‘bastard’ of a tall poodle and a French Butcher Dog, but once again there is no mention of the professional and public relationship between butcher dogs and their butcher masters.31 In the early nineteenth century, then, popular images and visual art portrayed butcher dogs as part of a human–animal team. Pedagogic literature showed him as a loyal animal, if often acting in a morally ambiguous manner or in a brutalizing social context. By the natural history of Brehm, the butcher dog had become inherently brutal and disconnected from human actors. Even before the butcher dogs disappeared from the slaughterhouses themselves, authors of encyclopaedias had lost interest in their social role (as ‘butcher dogs’), revelling more in their inherent ‘beastliness’ (‘Butcher Dog’). This transformation is closely linked to the changes in the butchers’ culture, to which we now turn. The rise of the modern slaughterhouse and the elimination of the butcher dog32 During the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe, the craft of butchery was transformed. The profession underwent a process of specialization, centralization and the renegotiation of privileges between craftsmen and state authorities. The German version of this development has accurately been called ‘vertical split’.33 It meant, inevitably, that butchers lost autonomy over their workspace and lifestyle, and with this came the equally inevitable abandonment of former economic and social roles. This transformation of the butcher trade also changed the role of the butcher dogs. 112 Animal History in the Modern City Three new types of butchers emerged during the Kaiserreich. There was the ‘meat salesman’, who in fact did not kill at all, but only processed and sold meat products (‘Fleischwarenhändler’). The second kind of butcher specialized in killing and slaughtering, sometimes focused on cattle or pig slaughtering. He was either a smallscale butcher (‘Lohnschlachter’, ‘Schweineschlachter’, ‘Kopfschlachter’), who specialized in commissioned killing and/or slaughtering of animals, but who did not himself own a meat shop. Then there was the large-scale or industrialized butcher (‘EngrosSchlächter’), who bought cattle or pigs, killed them, carried out basic slaughtering and sold larger meat pieces to small-scale butchers and meat shop owners, but who did not deal with meat production or sold directly to customers. This third category of butchers did not exist before the 1880s, and their work was only possible in modern slaughterhouse sites, publicly run institutions combining slaughterhouses and stockyards, eventually making up approximately 10 per cent of modern German slaughterhouses.34 The resulting ‘vertical split’ meant that after the 1880s many German butchers were no longer involved in the act of killing. Some butchers had, albeit unintentionally, overcome the very aspect of their profession that had been essential to them being defined as socially liminal. What is more, the vertical split was fostered by political and scientific actors. The Prussian government had suspended the tradition of the guilds in 1808, and in 1810 introduced freedom of trade, very much in correspondence with the zeitgeist, but which was also legitimized as a specific reaction to a supposedly decadent and outmoded butcher culture in Germany.35 According to the law of 1810, and with the principles of freedom of trade in mind, any citizen could register as a butcher without any proof of qualification and without being a member of any form of guild.36 During the following decades, however, the artisanate, including representatives of the butchery profession, attempted to strengthen their position and to restore historical privileges. Governments meanwhile tried to centralize their states, and as part of this ambition proposed new regulations to gain control over the ranks of craftsmen.37 Some butcher guilds were dissolved after losing their privileges, while others were reconstituted in craft unions – an organizational form already established in the south German states.38 After the establishment of the German Kaiserreich the still vulnerable butchery guilds united in the German Butchers’ Association (Deutscher Fleischer Verband or DFV) in 1875; and as a symbol of their newfound strength they chose a Christian lamb of resurrection, holding a pennant.39 In 1881, two amendment laws marked the beginning of a new era for butchers and other crafts. The first was the amendment of the 1869 trade law that conceded control over the craftsmen’s education and the establishment of their own jurisdiction to guilds both old and new. Between 1881 and 1895, the craftbutchers expanded by 45.2 per cent.40 Second, the amendment of the so-called slaughterhouse law (originally 1868) allowed communities to build public slaughterhouses, and more importantly to compel all butchers inside the municipal limits to work exclusively in these establishments.41 It also authorized veterinary controls on all imported meat and intended to prevent the building of any new private slaughterhouses. This legislation was an undoubted success: more than seven hundred public slaughterhouses were built in the forty-seven years of the Kaiserreich, with over half built in the fifteen years between 1881 and 1895. This boom affected all communities with more than two thousand people, but most especially larger cities with more than twenty thousand inhabitants.42 The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 113 The vertical split of the butchers’ craft, its legal reform and its expansion under municipal direction strengthened the social standing of the butchers, but it had profoundly negative implications for the previously powerful bond between butchers and their dogs. This can be summarily described: 1. Butcher dogs as companions and co-workers were conclusively ousted by urbanization and industrialization: the private slaughterhouses of the premodern era had often been just another building in a residential area or else were guildowned slaughterhouses located in the centre of a community. Apart from local sanitary regulations concerning, for instance, how high the rooms had to be where an animal was killed, and the written regulations of the police or guilds, such butchers were effectively autonomous.43 This meant that the butchers controlled the access to the slaughterhouse for humans and animals alike. But in the modern slaughterhouse sites after 1881 nearly everything was different. These buildings were overwhelmingly owned by municipal communities and managed by state officials. Germany’s modern slaughterhouses were famous for complying with trade routes, railways or canal-systems, rather than the needs of the butchers or customers. Inside the new, reformed slaughterhouse every step of the butcher was controlled either by a veterinarian or a member of the slaughterhouse administration.44 Industrialization of the butchery craft also meant that the butchers were integrated into a national production system that aimed at efficiency and was publicly controlled. This upgraded public trust in the meat products and the butchers, but downgraded other forms of butcher culture, among them the butcher dogs.45 2. Butcher dogs’ working status, as draft animals, herders or guard dogs, was collateral damage of the transport revolution and the target of new human–animal sensibilities. Modern German slaughterhouses developed during the centralization of the cattle trade.46 In larger cities the butchers could even buy cattle from the commissioners inside the new slaughterhouse sites, which were designed to be half-slaughterhouse, half-stockyard. Butchers did not necessarily need to visit the farmers in the environs of a city to buy a pig or a cow, as they would have to have done before the 1880s (as depicted in the master craftsman diploma, Figure 7.1) or the ‘Stubenzeichen’ (Figure 7.4). Trains now carried the animals directly to the stockyards or at least as far as the local train station. Butcher dogs thus lost their purpose both outside and inside the boundaries of the city.47 Furthermore modern urban sensibilities deplored the institution of draft dogs: in the opinion of animal protection societies this meant only cruelty to animals, if a dog drew the cart or carriage. While many German communities banned dog carriages, in some rural areas, without the influence of modern slaughterhouses and without the vertically split butcher culture, the draft dog could survive.48 Children’s toys from Thuringia, for instance, fabricated in the 1910s to the 1930s, still depicted draft dogs pulling a butcher and his pig (see Figure 7.5).49 3. The hygiene or sanitary movement worsened the public image of butcher dogs still further – now, they became a threat to public health rather than merely an irrelevance or a nuisance.50 Pestalozzi, Hebel and Brehm had already depicted butcher dogs as morally ambiguous agents who threatened fellow animals destined 114 Animal History in the Modern City Figure 7.5 Toy draft dogs pulling a butcher and his pig. Copyright Nuremberg Toy Museum. for slaughter, and who could be commissioned by their owners to terrify other humans – and by extension public order itself. That persistent moral ambiguity of butcher dogs merged and morphed into a seemingly scientifically authorized sanitary affront, incompatible with the idea of modern slaughterhouses as ‘temples of Hygiene’.51 To guarantee this status, regulations executed by medical personnel prevented diseases from intruding and the spreading of infections. During the second half of the nineteenth century, fear of contagion grew, as fast as did scientific and medical knowledge about diseases and epizootics.52 Hygienic worries not only followed medical advice, but were typically motivated by national or nationalist concerns: healthy animals sourced from Germany could easily enter the site of slaughter. In contrast, animals of foreign origin had to undergo multiple inspections.53 After they had crossed the German border, such animals were not even allowed to leave their carts until arriving at the station of a stockyard, because every stopover and contact with other humans or animals was deemed to threaten infection.54 In this alarmist environment it is hardly a surprise that the traditionally free-roaming and free-socializing butcher dog presented the hygienic worst-case scenario. Slaughterhouses literally became no-go areas for butcher dogs, for any dogs. As butchery culture was transformed into a publicly monitored slaughterhouse system, the bond between butchers and butcher dogs had become historical. The vertical split and the elimination of the human–animal relationship are tangible in historical pictures and documents that reflect the public image of German butchers or that were part of their self-representation after 1900. Figure 7.6, for example, shows a blueprint of a certificate of apprenticeship, produced by the German Butchers’ Association.55 The diploma lacks the titular vignettes and the references to the lifestyle and everyday work of the butchers that had been such a feature of the diploma of 1802. There is no reference to the town or city in which the butcher worked, nor a depiction of a butcher or a butcher dog. Even so, while diplomas of this kind did not reflect the new working environment of butchers, handbooks and marketing postcards did. Figure 7.7 is taken from a handbook for butchers, edited by master butcher Willy Schmidt in 1912. Here, the legend reads ‘private slaughterhouse with modern interior’.56 The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 115 Figure 7.6 Certificate of apprenticeship granted by the German Butchers’ Association. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912). Figure 7.7 Private slaughterhouse with modern interior. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912). 116 Animal History in the Modern City Figure 7.8 Public slaughterhouse. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912). Figure 7.9 The modern butcher as business owner. Postcard entitled ‘Wurst- und Fleischwaren-Fabrik Brunner’. Copyright permission granted by the Municipal Archive Munich. The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 117 In contrast to the pictures of the early nineteenth century, the ‘modern’ butcher is not depicted on the streets, but inside his small-scale enterprise. He is surrounded by carcasses of pigs and accompanied by a group of fellow butchers; the man in a dark suit in the background may even indicate the presence of a veterinarian.57 He is not presented in a casual conversation with his wife or costumers and a dog is nowhere to be seen. In Figure 7.8, a butcher poses in the middle of an empty, public slaughterhouse for pigs that was run not by himself but by the municipality.58 Again, no co-workers or companions, no wife, assistant – or butcher dog – are presented as part of the world of a modern slaughterhouse butcher. Instead, he is pictured with technical instruments and machinery, an actor inside an industrial architecture. Finally, Figure 7.9 showcases the modern butcher, as salesman and business owner rather than a person who killed animals and slaughtered meat. Here the German butcher proudly poses in front of his ‘sausage & meat products factory’.59 This picture is representative of marketing postcards popular after 1900, not for butcher businesses exclusively, but any kind of business.60 As in the street scene from the early nineteenth century, the butcher is still linked to his shop. Family members, neighbours, staff and other well-dressed citizens gather around him outside his shop front. The butcher dog, however, is long gone. Conclusion In the late eighteenth century we have seen that butcher dogs were an essential part of a butcher’s household and trade. Beyond that, they had a public life: the public image of butchers and butcher dogs promoted a strong bond between two morally ambiguous figures who were, because of the very nature of their craft, placed in a characteristically liminal social position. Urbanization and industrialization inevitably changed the frame in which this human–animal relationship worked: beginning in the late 1860s, the German states installed a system of publicly run slaughterhouses. In urban areas in particular, new types of butchers emerged, with the older, traditional liminal status of the butchers’ craft decisively transformed. While butchers were now more firmly and respectably integrated into the official public sphere, becoming more closely aggregated to society and thus less liminal, the same could not be said for the animals that had previously walked and worked beside their masters and partners. Now the butcher dogs were seen as a threat to public health and order. The social role of ‘butcher dogs’ was accordingly eliminated. What remained are mere traces, such as the entries in encyclopaedias depicting them as forerunners – with a set of inheritable physical traits – of a dog breed. No longer ‘butcher dogs’, but the ‘Butcher Dog’, the status of ‘animal’ took precedence over the relationship between humans and their animal companions. Notes 1 I would like to thank Aline Steinbrecher and Clemens Wischermann for inviting me to the ‘Liminal Lives’ session at EAUH 2016, which made me look closely for butcher 118 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Animal History in the Modern City dogs who turned out to be at the very centre of texts and pictures that I analyse in connection with my PhD research on the industrialization of animals for slaughter in the German Kaiserreich. I’m very grateful to Eva-Maria Kuhn and Lena Juknevicius who gave up their spare time to generously proofread the article and helped to eliminate Germanisms. Butchers and butcher dogs maintained an interdependent relationship. Butcher dogs also had to partner up with the butcher to be identified as butcher dog, so the butchers and the butcher dogs needed one another to be ‘butchers’/‘butcher dogs’. In this view, before the 1860s their relationship was similar to what Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 15–27, called companion species (see also Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003). In contrast, after the 1860s, the named breed of Butcher Dogs no longer had any such interdependent relationship with the butchers in modern slaughterhouses no longer had any such interdependent relationship; the elimination of the butcher dogs and the bond between butchers and their dogs was only one of many possible reactions to the cultural changes in times of nationalization, modernization and civilization. In this chapter the term ‘Butcher Dog’ with capitals refers to the dog breed, while the term ‘butcher dogs’ refers to the social role of the animals. The context in which they appear also makes it possible to distinguish them from each other and from other dogs referred to in a historical source. For the naming of the most popular dog breeds, see Edward Tenner, ‘Constructing the German Shepherd Dog’, Raritan 36, no. 3 (2017): 90–115, 96ff, who explains how dog breeding emerged during the 1880s and was divided into five branches specializing in dogs for hunting, Great Danes, rural breeds, luxury dogs and dogs bred for special purposes such as police dogs, terriers and watchdogs. Outside the slaughterhouses any dog had to obey the various regulations European cities installed from the late seventeenth century to control the vast number of urban dogs: for Paris, which was a role model for other European cities regarding control of dogs in the public space, see Chris Pearson, ‘Stray Dogs and the Making of Modern Paris, Past & Present 234, no. 1 (2017): 137–72, where he outlines the French capital’s dog politics. According to local slaughterhouse regulations (see ‘Bans of Dogs 1862-1918’: Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde R86/3361-R86/3382, Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt, Schlachthäuser im Deutschen Reich, 1862–1918), dogs were completely banned from slaughterhouses in the following years and communities: 1862 Kronach (Kingdom of Bavaria), 1866 Dürkheim (Bavaria), 1874 Pappenheim (Bavaria), 1877 Homburg (Bavaria), 1878 Speyer (Bavaria), 1879 in Braunschweig, with a fine of 30 Marks or 10 days imprisonment, 1880 Coburg (Duchy of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha), 1882 Pirmasens (Bavaria), 1883 Reichenbach (Prussia), 1884 Chemnitz (Kingdom of Saxony), 1885 Aschaffenburg (Bavaria), 1886 Schwerin (Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin), where the fine was 30 Marks or 10 days, and 1889 Elberfeld (Prussia). See Jacques Le Goff (1980), Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1980), 58–70 for ‘Licit and Illicit Trades in the Medieval West’, where he shows for the period of the tenth to the twelfth century how the stereotypes of butchers were linked to ‘blood taboos’, something that also made surgeons or soldiers a liminal group in society. Killing itself can be considered a liminal activity that defines the actor: see Roland Borgards, ‘Liminale Anthropologien: Skizze eines Forschungsfeldes’, in Liminale The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 119 Anthropologien: Zwischenzeiten, Schwellenphänomene, Zwischenräume in Literatur und Philosophie, ed. Jochen Achilles (Würzburg: Königsberg and Neumann, 2012), 9–15, 11. The notion of brutalization was even accepted by butchers when they talked about themselves: Klaus Hillebrand, Berufswunsch Henker: Warum Männer im Nationalsozialismus Scharfrichter Werden Wollten (Frankfurt: Campus, 2013), 158, analyses applications for the job of executioner during the Nazi regime, finding that nearly 5 per cent of the applicants were former butchers or knackers who considered themselves as fit for the job because of their past work or who were even ‘naturally’ attracted to killing. For German craftsmen unions and guilds after 1810 see Hans-Werner Hahn, Die Industrielle Revolution in Deutschland (München: Oldenbourg, 2011), 16ff. Arnold van Gennep introduced the term liminality in Les Rites de Passage (Paris: Émile Nourry, 1909). For subsequent and recent adaptations of the concept of liminality, see Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). In her milestone study on meat Noëlie Vialles, Animal to Edible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 37–8, follows van Gennep’s definition of liminality and sees the slaughterhouse – including the modern slaughterhouse of the twentieth century – as a liminal space (‘lieu de marges’) that ‘floats between two worlds’. Aline Steinbrecher and Roland Borgards, ‘Doggen, Bologneser, Bullenbeisser: Hunde in Historischen Quellen um 1800 und in Danton’s Tod von Georg Büchner’, in Tierisch! Das Tier und die Wissenschaft: Ein Streifzug durch die Disziplinen, ed. Meret Fehlmann, Margot Michel and Rebecca Niederhauser (Zürich, 2016), 151–72, 157–68, demonstrate that animals in literature are not interchangeable, replaceable or mere metaphors, but actors, who change a narrative and history. Master craftsman’s diploma, Heilbronn 1802, in Hans-Peter de Longueville, Kurt Nagel, Benno P. Schlipf and Theo Wershoven, Kostbarkeiten des Fleischerhandwerks (Heidenheim: Rees, 1986), plate 90. I would like to thank Professor Nagel, co-editor of the volume, for generously allowing me to use this image. See ‘Die Vignette’, in Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon, vol. 6 (Amsterdam: F. A. Brockhaus, 1909), 329. Georg Emanuel Opiz, ‘Female butcher with servant, lady and hawker’, from fifty-two scenes about the popular and street-life of Vienna under Francis II, around 1812, in Bruno Brandl and Günter Creutzburg, Die Große Walz: Das Handwerk im Spiegel der Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1974), plate 52. J.F. Schröter, ‘Rural butcher-wife and rural butcher’ from the group of engravings about street scenes in Leipzig, around 1820, in Brandl and Creutzburg, Die Große Walz, 30. The use of dog leashes was not customary for German cities during the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries: see Inge Auerbach, ‘Hunde in Westfalen’, Westfälische Forschungen 62 (2012): 31–50, 34; in contrast, muzzles already were debated or even mandatory in the 1770s, see Barbara Krug-Richter, ‘Hund und Student: Eine Akademische Mentalitätsgeschichte (18.-20. Jh.)’, Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte 10 (2007): 77–104, 87. For the use of ‘Stubenzeichen’, see Wolfram Metzger, Marion Faber, Angelika Müller and Hans-Ulrich Roller, ‘Zunft’, in Barock in Baden-Württemberg, vol. 1 (Karlsruhe: Badisches Landesmuseum, 1981), 575–91, 576. Septimus Rommel (1778–1846), ‘butcher with ox and dog’, in Dietmar Lüdke, Alte Zunftherrlichkeit: Das Fleischerhandwerk im Wandel der Zeiten (Freiburg, DFV, 1975), 13. I would like to thank Chris Gebel from the Württemberg State Museum for generously allowing me to use this image of the figurine (inventory number WLM 9160 c). 120 Animal History in the Modern City 20 Butcher dogs also seem to be less associated with the female members of the butcher’s household, who either are missing in the pictures or are separated from the butcher dog by the butcher or a male servant. 21 See Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Lienhard und Gertrud, vol. 4 (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Decker, 1787), §7 and §17 for the stories about Sylvia, the dogs and the butcher dogs in this chapter. 22 Herbert Gudjons, Gesellschaft und Erziehung in Pestalozzis Roman Lienhard und Gertrud (Weinheim: Beltz, 1971) is a thorough analysis of the anthropology of the novel. Unsurprisingly, Pestalozzi saw human, animals and societies as receptive for pedagogical endeavours. Karl Pestalozzi, ‘Gesellschaftsreform im Zeichen der Mutter: Zu Johann Heinrich Pestalozzis Roman Lienhard und Gertrud’, in Mutter und Mütterlichkeit: Wandel und Wirksamkeit einer Phantasie in der Deutschen Literatur, ed. Irmgard Roebling and Wolfram Mauser (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996), 99–113, 108f. stresses the fact that Gertrud’s home was introduced by Pestalozzi as an ideal plan for Bonnal’s school system. 23 For the term ‘Anti-Gertrud’, see Pestalozzi, ‘Gesellschaftsreform im Zeichen der Mutter’, 109; Udo Köster, ‘Literatur der Protoindustriellen Arbeit: Johann Heinrich Pestalozzis Roman Lienhard und Gertrud’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der Deutschen Literatur 18, no. 2 (1993): 53–75, debates Bonnal as a ‘village utopia’. 24 See Gudjons, Gesellschaft und Erziehung, 111ff., on Pestalozzi’s promotion of just punishment and Sylvia’s animalistic characterization, which is meant to underline the dangers of not having any education, or a just father or a loving mother; on the analogies between the positive effects of education on animals and humans, see ibid., 123 and 234. 25 See Johann Peter Hebel, ‘Wie eine Gräuliche Geschichte durch einen Gemeinen Metzger-Hund ist an das Tages-Licht Gebracht Worden’, in Aus dem Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes, ed. Johann Peter Hebel (Tübingen: Cotta, 1811), 254–5. For the notoriety of the tale, see Bernhard Viel, Johann Peter Hebel oder das Glück der Vergänglichkeit: Eine Biografie (München, C.H. Beck, 2010), 8 and for the overall didactic function of almanacs see ibid., 209, and also Stephan Giess, ‘“Merckwürdige Begebenheiten”: Wissensvermittlung im Volkskalender des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Traverse: Zeitschrift fur Geschichte 6 (1999): 35–49, who also stresses that remarkable stories like the above were used as marketing tools. The ‘Badische Landkalender’ was renamed ‘Rheinländischer Hausfreund’ in 1807, when Hebel began to work as its editor, see Viel, Johann Peter Hebel, 288. 26 Johann Christoph Adelung, Grammatikalisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart (Leipzig: J.G.I. Breitkopf, 1796), column 199. 27 See ‘Canis’, in: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, 9th edn (Göttingen: Bei Heinrich Dieterich, 1814), 99–105, 100. Butcher dogs also appeared in the chapter on ‘Natural Beauty’ of Vischer’s ‘Handbook on Aesthetics’, see ‘Hunde’, in Friederich Theodor Vischer, Aesthetik oder Wissenschaft des Schönen. Zweiter Theil: Die Lehre vom Schönen in einseitiger Existenz oder vom Naturschönen und der Phantasie (Reutlingen and Leipzig: Mäcken, 1847), §313. Vischer adds a short catalogue of dogs ranked by aesthetic appeal, where the Butcher Dog trumps the Pinscher. Similarly, in 1857’s ‘Pierers Universallexikon’, the Butcher Dog is described as a breed with a pointed and long skull, ears of average length, short hair, black colour and yellow stomach, see ‘Hund-Metzgerhund’, in Pierer’s Universal-Lexikon der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart oder Neuestes encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der Wissenschaften, Künste und Gewerbe, fourth revised and augmented edition, Vol. 8 (Altenburg: H.A. Pierer, 1859), 515. The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 121 28 For the notoriety of Brehm, see Orvar Löfgren, ‘Our Friends in Nature: Class and Animal Symbolism’, Ethnos 1–2 (1985): 184–213, 196. I would like to thank Wiebke Reinert for recommending this inspiring article. 29 Adolf Edmund Brehm, Illustrirtes Thierleben: Eine Allgemeine Kunde des Thierreichs, vol. 1 (Hildburghausen: Bibliograph. Instituts, 1864), 336; interestingly – regarding the role of Pestalozzi’s pedagogical work for this paper – Brehm quoted another Swiss, the priest Peter Scheitlin who had written a ‘Comprehensive History of the Souls of Animals’ in 1840. 30 ‘Hund (2)’, in Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, vol. 9 (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1907), 642–52, 647. 31 ‘Neufundländer’, in Brockhaus Kleines Konversations-Lexikon, vol. 2 (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1911), 259. 32 See Paula Young Lee, ed., Meat, Modernity and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse (Lebanon: University of New Hampshire Press, 2008). 33 For the ‘vertical split’ inside the butchery profession, see Arthur Rothe, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe (Jena: G. Fischer, 1902), 136. 34 For the numbers of German slaughterhouses and those combined with stockyards, see Stefan Tholl, Preußens blutige Mauern: Der Schlachthof als öffentliche Bauaufgabe im 19. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Europäische Food Ed, 1996), 69. 35 Georg Adler gives an account that represents the liberal economic views in Prussian government favouring freedom of trade: see Georg Adler, ‘Fleischergewerbe’, in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, ed. Johannes Conrad, Ludwig Elster, Wilhelm Hector, Richard Lexis and Edgar Loening (Jena: G. Fischer, 1900), 1081–94, 1086. 36 On free trade in Germany and the process of industrialization, see Hahn, Die Industrielle Revolution, 10–13. 37 A general overview of the struggle between the craftsmen and the governments in the different German states after 1800 is given by Friedrich Lenger, Sozialgeschichte der Deutschen Handwerker seit 1800 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988). For the politicization of craftsmen after 1848, see ibid., 68–85. However, the image of a backward artisan culture that Lenger paints has been revised from the 1980s onwards, and is, as the vertical split shows, not true for German butchers. 38 For the structural changes within the craft unions and guilds after 1810, see Hahn, Die Industrielle Revolution, 16ff. 39 For the symbol of the DFV, see Heike Baranzke, ‘Lammfleisch Gottes: Den Christen fehlt ein Ethos des Schlachtens’, Die Zeit, 2 April 1998. Available online: http://www. zeit.de/1998/15/Lammfleisch_Gottes (accessed 19 June 2017). 40 See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3, revised edn (München: C.H. Beck, 2008), 529–30, on the expansion of butchers and slaughterhouses in Germany. The following decades were characterized by social legislation sponsored by butchers, such as funds and grants, schools, scholarships and insurance. 41 On the increasing political and hygienic control of slaughterhouses and butchers, see Dorothee Brantz, ‘Risky Business: Disease, Disaster and the Unintended Consequences of Epizootics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France and Germany’, Environment and History 17, no. 1 (2011): 35–51, 50. 42 In 1875 the Association for Public Health asked the German government to build publicly controlled slaughterhouses in all communities larger than 10,000 people; this proposal was welcomed, even if it was only fully implemented in cities with over 20,000 people: see R86/3500-10.12.1875. 43 For examples of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century regulations, and also an analysis of the joint public image and social status of the butcher dogs and the butchers, see 122 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 Animal History in the Modern City Aline Steinbrecher, ‘Fährtensuche: Hunde in der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt’, traverse 15, no. 3 (2008): 45–58, 50–1. Steinbrecher compellingly identifies these regulations in terms of the control of butcher dogs and the butchers. For changes in regulations after 1860, see Christoph Nonn, ‘Fleischvermarktung in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jh.’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (1996): 53–76, 56f. For the very rational scouting of an efficient location for a German slaughterhouse, see Tholl, Preußens blutige Mauern, 49–55. Footnote 6 notes that the complete ban was common in the south German states, and footnote 48 indicates that even draft dogs had become a rarity there. In contrast, Germany’s second largest city, Hamburg, despite epidemics even in the 1890s, allowed draft dogs to enter the new slaughterhouse constructed in 1892: ‘Inside the slaughterhouse-site dogs only are allowed as draft dogs and harnessed; they must be unhitched and led to the dog stables. If dogs are found to roam freely, their owners will be open for punishment.’ See Johann Neumann, Hamburgs Viehmärkte und Zentralschlachthof (Hamburg: Paul Conström, 1910), 72. According to Brantz, ‘Risky Business’, 44, the rise of modern slaughterhouses stimulated the expansion of the German railroad system, though large parts of the German railroad system were built between 1840 and 1870, before the expansion of the slaughterhouse network after 1881. For the municipal regulations in the Bavarian and Saxonian monarchies, see ‘Bans of Dogs 1862-1918’. In the rural areas north of Lake Constance butchers’ draft dogs were a concern of animal protection societies, but they had become a rarity by 1900, which is evident in a letter by the local government, see ‘Draftdogs’. I would like to thank Mr Urs Latus, curator of the Nuremberg Toy Museum, who responded to my request for copyright permission not only by ordering a new and high-resolution photography of this exhibit, but also providing specialist knowledge on the great numbers of such miniatures and their realistic style. Figure 7.5 is copyright Spielzeugmuseum Nürnberg, origin: presumpt. Marie Flath, Seiffen/Erz Mountains, 1910ff., title: miniature team. For the hygiene or sanitary movement, see Dorothee Brantz, ‘Animal Bodies, Human Health, and the Reform of Slaughterhouses in Nineteenth-Century Berlin’, in Lee, Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse, 71–88; Pascal Eitler, ‘Übertragungsgefahr: Zur Emotionalisierung und Verwissenschaftlichung des Mensch-TierVerhältnisses im Deutschen Kaiserreich’, in Rationalisierungen des Gefühls: Zum Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Emotionen 1880-1930, ed. Uffa Jensen and Daniel Morat (Paderborn, 2008), 172–85; Helmut Lackner, ‘Ein “blutiges Geschäft”: Kommunale Vieh- und Schlachthöfe im Urbanisierungsprozess des 19. Jahrhunderts’, TG Technikgeschichte 71, no. 2 (2004): 89–138; and recently for the case of Paris Pearson, ‘Stray Dogs’. For ‘temple of hygiene’, see the fourth edition of the benchmark book by Hugo Heiss, Bau, Einrichtung und Betrieb öffentlicher Schlacht- und Viehhöfe: Ein Handbuch für Schlachthofleiter, Schlachthoftierärzte und Sanitäts- und Verwaltungsbeamte (Berlin: Springer, 1912), 20. See Brantz, ‘Risky Business’, on the importance of epizootics for the design of the slaughterhouse system. For the cultural construction of ‘healthy animals’ and the rise of modern veterinary medicine during the nineteenth century, see Kerstin Weich and Christian Voller, ‘Das Gesunde Tier: Anmerkungen zur Normativität des Gesundheitsbegriffes in der The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 123 Veterinärmedizin’, in Humana-Animalia: Mensch und Tier in Medizin, Philosophie und Kultur, ed. Christian F. Hoffstadt, Franz Peschke, Michael Nagenborg and Sabine Müller (Bochum: projekt verlag, 2012), 9–26. The suspicious view of foreign animals and meat became evident in the GermanAmerican quarrel over the import and export of pigs during the so-called pork war from 1879 to 1891: see Uwe Spiekermann, ‘Dangerous Meat: German-American Quarrels over Pork and Beef, 1870-1900’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 46 (2010): 93–109. Figure 7.6: Certificate of apprenticeship edited by the German Butchers’ Association. From Willy Schmidt, Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912), 122. Figure 7.7: Original title of the photograph is ‘Modern eingerichtetes Privatschlachthaus’. See Schmidt, Deutsche Fleischergewerbe, 407. Private slaughterhouses and home butchering had been regulated in §2 of an 1881 amendment of the 1868 slaughterhouse law: see Dieter Burgholz, ‘Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Märkten, Messen und Schlachthöfen (ab ca. 1850 bis zur Gegenwart)’, in Kommunale Unternehmen: Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Pohl and Wilhelm Treue (Stuttgart: Steiner Wiesbaden, 1987), 88–124, 110, for the hygiene movement of the late 1860s and its impact on the reform of the first slaugherhouse law. Figure 7.8: The original title of the photograph is ‘Inneres einer Schweineschlachthalle’: see Schmidt Deutsche Fleischergewerbe, 421. Figure 7.9: The original title of the postcard is ‘Wurst- und Fleischwaren-Fabrik Brunner’: see Municipal Archive Munich, PK Stb 11996 a. Christiane Lamberty, Reklame in Deutschland 1890-1914: Wahrnehmung, Professionalisierung und Kritik der Wirtschaftswerbung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000), 170–80, discusses ‘new marketing media’ during the Kaiserreich and names the marketing postcard as one genre that was established during the 1880s. Bibliography Adelung, Johann Christoph. Grammatikalisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart (Leipzig: J.G.I. Breitkopf, 1796). Adler, Georg. ‘Fleischergewerbe’, in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, ed. Johannes Conrad, Ludwig Elster, Wilhelm Hector, Richard Lexis and Edgar Loening (Jena: G. Fischer, 1900), 1081–94. Auerbach, Inge. ‘Hunde in Westfalen’, Westfälische Forschungen 62 (2012): 31–50. Babcock, B. A. ‘Liminality’, in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Neil J. Smelser and Paul J. Baltes (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001), 8862–64. (‘Bans of Dogs 1862-1918’): Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde R86/3361-R86/3382, Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt, Schlachthäuser im Deutschen Reich, 1862–1918. Baranzke, Heike. ‘Lammfleisch Gottes: Den Christen fehlt ein Ethos des Schlachtens’, Die Zeit, 2 April 1998. Available online: http://www.zeit.de/1998/15/Lammfleisch_Gottes (accessed 19 June 2017). BArch R86/3500-10.12.1875: Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde, Kaiserliches Gesundheitsamt, Schlachthäuser des Deutschen Reiches 1876-1928, ‘Letter by the chancellor’s office concerning the petition of the German Association of Public Health to the chancellor’s office, Dresden/Frankfurt 10.12.1875’. 124 Animal History in the Modern City Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich. Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, 9th edition (Göttingen: Bei Heinrich Dieterich, 1814). Borgards, Roland. ‘Liminale Anthropologien: Skizze eines Forschungsfeldes’, in Liminale Anthropologien: Zwischenzeiten, Schwellenphänomene, Zwischenräume in Literatur und Philosophie, ed. Jochen Achilles (Würzburg: Königsberg and Neumann, 2012), 9–15. Brandl, Bruno and Creutzburg, Günter. Die Große Walz: Das Handwerk im Spiegel der Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1974). Brantz, Dorothee. ‘Animal Bodies, Human Health, and the Reform of Slaughterhouses in Nineteenth-Century Berlin’, in Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse, ed. Paula Young Lee (Lebanon: University of New Hampshire Press, 2008), 71–88. Brantz, Dorothee. ‘Risky Business. Disease, Disaster and the Unintended Consequences of Epizootics in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France and Germany’, Environment and History 17, no. 1 (2011): 35–51. Brehm, Adolf Edmund. Illustrirtes Thierleben: Eine Allgemeine Kunde des Thierreichs, vol. 1 (Hildburghausen: Bibliograph. Instituts, 1864). Brockhaus Kleines Konversations-Lexikon, vol. 2 (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1911). Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon, vol. 6 (Amsterdam: F.A. Brockhaus, 1909). Burgholz, Dieter. ‘Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Märkten, Messen und Schlachthöfen (ab ca. 1850 bis zur Gegenwart)’, in Kommunale Unternehmen: Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Pohl and Wilhelm Treue (Stuttgart: Steiner Wiesbaden, 1987), 88–124. (‘Draftdogs’): States Archive Freiburg A96/1, Der Landeskommissär für die Kreise Konstanz, Villingen, Waldshut, Normalia. XXII Polizei 4. Sittenpolizei. 1851-1939, ‘Letter sent by the Great Ducal regional office in Donaueschingen, 09.12.1903’. Eitler, Pascal. ‘Übertragungsgefahr: Zur Emotionalisierung und Verwissenschaftlichung des Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisses im Deutschen Kaiserreich’, in Rationalisierungen des Gefühls: Zum Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Emotionen 1880-1930, ed. Uffa Jensen and Daniel Morat (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2008), 172–85. Giess, Stephan. ‘“Merckwürdige Begebenheiten”: Wissensvermittlung im Volkskalender des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Traverse: Zeitschrift fur Geschichte 6 (1999): 35–49. Gudjons, Herbert. Gesellschaft und Erziehung in Pestalozzis Roman Lienhard und Gertrud (Weinheim: Beltz, 1971). Hahn, Hans-Werner. Die Industrielle Revolution in Deutschland (München: Oldenbourg, 2011). Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003). Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard. ‘Neue Wege zur Geschichte der Zünfte in Europa’, in Das Ende der Zünfte: Ein Europäischer Vergleich, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Rurpecht, 2002), 9–38. Hebel, Johann Peter. ‘Wie eine Gräuliche Geschichte durch einen Gemeinen MetzgerHund ist an das Tages-Licht Gebracht Worden’, in Aus dem Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes, ed. Johann Peter Hebel (Tübingen: Cotta, 1811), 254–5. Heiss, Hugo. Bau, Einrichtung und Betrieb öffentlicher Schlacht- und Viehhöfe: Ein Handbuch für Schlachthofleiter, Schlachthoftierärzte und Sanitäts- und Verwaltungsbeamte (Berlin: Springer, 1912). Hillebrand, Klaus. Berufswunsch Henker: Warum Männer im Nationalsozialismus Scharfrichter Werden Wollten (Frankfurt: Campus, 2013). The Elimination of the German Butcher Dog 125 Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt. Die Volkszählung im Deutschen Reich am 1. Dezember 1885 (Berlin: Puttkammer and Mühlbrecht, 1888). Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt. Die Volkszählung im Deutschen Reiche am 1. Dezember 1910 (Berlin: Puttkammer and Mühlbrecht, 1915). Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt. (1905–8), Abteilung für Arbeiterstatistik, Erhebung über die Wirkungen des Handwerkgesetzes (Reichsgesetz vom 26. Juli 1897), Berlin. Köster, Udo. ‘Literatur der Protoindustriellen Arbeit: Johann Heinrich Pestalozzis Roman Lienhard und Gertrud’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der Deutschen Literatur 18, no. 2 (1993): 53–75. Krug-Richter, Barbara. ‘Hund und Student: Eine Akademische Mentalitätsgeschichte (18.20. Jh.)’, Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte, no. 10 (2007): 77–104. Lackner, Helmut. ‘Ein “blutiges Geschäft”: Kommunale Vieh- und Schlachthöfe im Urbanisierungsprozess des 19. Jahrhunderts’, TG Technikgeschichte 71, no. 2 (2004): 89–138. Lamberty, Christiane. Reklame in Deutschland 1890-1914: Wahrnehmung, Professionalisierung und Kritik der Wirtschaftswerbung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000). Lee, Paula Young, ed. Meat, Modernity and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse (Lebanon: University of New Hampshire Press, 2008). Le Goff, Jacques. Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1980). Lenger, Friedrich. Sozialgeschichte der Deutschen Handwerker seit 1800 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988). Löfgren, Orvar. ‘Our Friends in Nature: Class and Animal Symbolism’, Ethnos 1–2 (1985): 184–213. Longueville, Hans-Peter de, Nagel, Kurt, Schlipf, Benno P. and Wershoven, Theo. Kostbarkeiten des Fleischerhandwerks (Heidenheim: Rees, 1986). Lüdke, Dietmar. Alte Zunftherrlichkeit: Das Fleischerhandwerk im Wandel der Zeiten (Freiburg: DFV, 1975). Metzger, Wolfram, Faber, Marion, Müller, Angelika and Roller, Hans-Ulrich. ‘Zunft’, in Barock in Baden-Württemberg, vol. 1 (Karlsruhe: Badisches Landesmuseum, 1981), 575–91. Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, vol. 9 (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1907). Neumann, Johann. Hamburgs Viehmärkte und Zentralschlachthof (Hamburg: Paul Conström, 1910). Nonn, Christoph. ‘Fleischvermarktung in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jh.’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (1996): 53–76. Pearson, Chris. ‘Stray Dogs and the Making of Modern Paris, Past & Present 234, no. 1 (2017): 137–72. Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich. Lienhard und Gertrud, vol. 4, (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Decker, 1787). Pestalozzi, Karl. ‘Gesellschaftsreform im Zeichen der Mutter: Zu Johann Heinrich Pestalozzis Roman Lienhard und Gertrud’, in Mutter und Mütterlichkeit: Wandel und Wirksamkeit einer Phantasie in der Deutschen Literatur, ed. Irmgard Roeblingand and Wolfram Mauser (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996), 99–113. Pierer’s Universal-Lexikon der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart oder Neuestes encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der Wissenschaften, Künste und Gewerbe, fourth revised and augmented edition, vol. 8, (Altenburg: H. A. Pierer, 1859). Rothe, Arthur. Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe (Jena: G. Fischer, 1902). 126 Animal History in the Modern City Schmidt, Willy. Das Deutsche Fleischergewerbe in Wort und Bild (Leipzig: Killinger, 1912). Spiekermann, Uwe. ‘Dangerous Meat: German-American Quarrels over Pork and Beef, 1870-1900’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 46 (2010): 93–109. Steinbrecher, Aline. ‘Fährtensuche: Hunde in der frühneuzeitlichen Stadt’, traverse 15, no. 3 (2008): 45–58. Steinbrecher, Aline and Borgards, Roland. ‘Doggen, Bologneser, Bullenbeisser: Hunde in Historischen Quellen um 1800 und in Danton’s Tod von Georg Büchner’, in Tierisch! Das Tier und die Wissenschaft: Ein Streifzug durch die Disziplinen, ed. Meret Fehlmann, Margot Michel and Rebecca Niederhauser (Zürich: vdf Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH Zürich, 2016), 151–72. Tenner, Edward. ‘Constructing the German Shepherd Dog’, Raritan 36, no. 3 (2017), 90–115. Tholl, Stefan. Preußens blutige Mauern. Der Schlachthof als öffentliche Bauaufgabe im 19. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden: Europäische Food Ed, 1996). Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). Van Gennep, Arnold. Les Rites de Passage (Paris: Émile Nourry, 1909). Vialles, Noilie. Animal to Edible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Viel, Bernhard. Johann Peter Hebel oder das Glück der Vergänglichkeit: Eine Biografie (München: C. H. Beck, 2010). Vischer, Friederich Theodor. Aesthetik oder Wissenschaft des Schönen. Zweiter Theil: Die Lehre vom Schönen in einseitiger Existenz oder vom Naturschönen und der Phantasie (Reutlingen and Leipzig: Mäcken, 1847). Wehler, Hans-Ulrich. Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3, revised edition (München: C. H. Beck, 2008). Weich, Kerstin, and Voller, Christian. ‘Das Gesunde Tier: Anmerkungen zur Normativität des Gesundheitsbegriffes in der Veterinärmedizin’, in Humana-Animalia: Mensch und Tier in Medizin, Philosophie und Kultur, ed. Christian F. Hoffstadt, Franz Peschke, Michael Nagenborg and Sabine Müller (Bochum: projekt verlag, 2012), 9–26. 8 It’s Just an Act! Dogs as Actors in Eighteenthand Early Nineteenth-Century Europe Aline Steinbrecher Introduction The model of the liminal animal is a perfectly apt one for the city dogs of eighteenthand nineteenth-century Europe, an inevitable result of the diversity of roles available in human–dog communities. Dogs were, alternatively, prestige objects and status symbols, draught animals, guardians and protectors, assistance animals, pedagogic examples and also companions, arguably substitutes for children, friends, family or nature itself. Dogs typically lived and moved in intermediate areas that could not easily be ascribed to either the human or the animal worlds, to culture or nature, wildness or domesticity, or to the public and private spheres. The figure of the liminal animal is not of course mobilized to reify these well-worn dichotomies; to the contrary, it is used to point to the many transitions and interfaces that exist, and which become particularly obvious in the mapping of human–dog relationships in the modern city. By its very nature an animal that ignores boundaries and crosses thresholds, the history of the urban dog contributes to a more accurate conceptualization of urban modernity. This chapter begins by laying out the many different if interrelated forms of liminality that dogs exemplified, focusing on the boundaries that they constantly crossed in the modern city, and the roles that they were expected to perform. This is not intended to give the impression that dogs had a single role; rather, it should be emphasized that dogs were constantly moving between various functions and characters. To continue the theatrical metaphor, dogs were versatile and accomplished actors – sometimes heroes, sometimes villains, sometimes comic stooges, sometimes reduced to bit-parts, mere stage and street furniture, but sometimes the leading players, as we shall see. In the modern city, these various roles were played out alongside and along with human beings, most obviously as family members and partners in working relationships. It is this relationship with human beings that is primarily responsible for turning humble dogs into iconic liminal animals. This relationship should not be understood as fixed, however; rather it should be seen as something that has been created and is constantly subject to change – Chris Pearson is right to argue that dogs are not ‘static’ but change within relationships, adapting to both their counterparts 128 Animal History in the Modern City and protagonists and their respective settings.1 The coupling of the actual canine and human worlds becomes particularly clear in practices such as the stage performances that are the substantive focus of this chapter. The presence of the dog on the theatrical stage exemplifies the liminality of all urban dogs, but this chapter is principally dedicated to the proposition that dogs as stage actors help illuminate a special aspect of canine liminality. Dogs as liminal animals in the modern city This chapter also follows the argument that history is co-created, here by human beings and dogs working together. This draws on the concept of relational agency attributed to Donna Haraway and others. The decisive argument here is that the partners in a relation never precede that relationship. Instead, everything that exists is the result of it (becoming with).2 The implications for the relations between humans and (other) animals are spelt out in Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto (2003), the story of evolution that she tells there deposing human beings of their privileged position, their singularity and the supposedly unique ability to take action.3 Dogs, not to mention other non-human companions, should be recognized as actively constructing the world they share with human beings, even to the extent that they contribute to and help constitute what we call ‘culture’. According to Haraway, human beings simply cannot be comprehended independent of the animal others with whom they have entered into a symbiotic relationship. Instead, human beings and animals are best seen as shaping each other in a complex state of togetherness.4 This reciprocal shaping has an influence on the theoretical conceptualization of the human–animal relationship, which Haraway describes as follows: ‘Living with animals, inhabiting their/our story, trying to tell the truth about relationship, co-habiting an active history: that is the work of companion species, for whom “the relation” is the smallest possible unit of analysis.’5 This last postulate will be pursued in this chapter, and, accordingly, it will speak of a history that has been co-created by human beings and animals, as partners in an interactive and reciprocal relationship,6 and indeed within networks of actors and actor environments.7 We can perhaps best illustrate this proposition, as Haraway does, by turning to the history of the dog and its relationship with humans and the modern city. If we accept the argument that animals such as dogs help create their world, it also follows that they depart from the roles that are allotted to them by human beings, and become liminal animals accordingly. In their manifold performances, both on stage and off, dogs did not always conform to the cultural scripts provided for them, which made them vulnerable to being represented as out of place. As famously liminal animals they continually cross from one state to another in the context of the modern city. We can think first of all of dogs traversing or transgressing the human–animal boundary and the one that separates, or attempts to separate, nature and culture.8 There is also the problematic boundary between public and private spheres.9 Canine city dwellers appeared alternatively as stray ownerless dogs and companion animals, public animals (as described by Bärbel Edel) in the first instance, and private animals It’s Just an Act! 129 in the home in the second.10 In the public sphere of the city, dogs were increasingly subjected to rigid regulations, as potential troublemakers, and unaccompanied dogs were increasingly excluded from public space. But the ideal of the dog in the private space of the home was always just that, and dogs themselves typically disregarded the spatial and cultural distinction between inside/outside.11 Dogs that live inside the home – ‘pet’ dogs – have increasingly been subjected to very restrictive legislation, while it was often suggested that other dogs were ‘pests’ to be completely ‘eliminated’. Dogs were thus always caught on the threshold between useful/harmful, defined according to human norms and needs.12 Through their intrusion into and incorporation with human social and cultural environments, dogs become liminal through being both real and imaginary actors – images and representations of dogs clearly contribute to their treatment, but it should not be forgotten that the real dog lies behind the imaginary dog.13 Here too dogs like other animals help shape our worlds, including the cultural practices that we often take to be exclusively human achievements. This will become clear in the subsequent discussion of performing dog ‘acts’ and their reception in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe – along with the practices of dog training on which they depended. Performing dogs were exemplary liminal animals because the real or genuine animal was inextricably enmeshed in the production of meaning, being material-semiotic figures. Dogs like these, capable of performing trained stunts and tricks, were even called ‘artistic dogs’, that is, ‘artistes’ in their own right, especially where they could display convincing facsimiles of human cultural techniques such as reading or speaking or even solving mathematical problems. Here, especially, dogs became liminal animals because they entertainingly overstepped the boundary between the human and non-human. But they were not liminal animals because they were neither animal nor human: they were so because they were part of a human– animal ‘double act’, a professional working partnership between members of different species. The real ‘trick’ was not a dog (say) who could apparently speak or read, but the development of relationship between the human and the animal that allowed them to work together, a kind of ‘natural magic’, as one of the eighteenth century’s most famous dog trainers called it. Liminal animal actors Animal studies has not neglected the significance of performing animals, including those to be found on the stage – but the importance of cultural scripts and practices is the most emphatic theme. Esther Köring, for instance, has described those animals to be found in circuses and zoos, as ‘pragmatiere’ (‘pragmatic animals’), defining them in relation to (human) cultural practices (‘in bezug auf kulturelle praktiken’).14 But such ‘practices’ include slaughterhouses, laboratory animals and rituals, so that the concept, useful as it is, risks ignoring the massive differences between animal performances, and the ways that these have changed over time. The variations in animal acts, as well as the contexts in which, say, dogs performed as ‘pragmatic animals’, were extremely broad, as we shall see. Animals such as dogs were, moreover, accorded a significance that can hardly be extended to, say, a slaughtered cow or a dissected frog. 130 Animal History in the Modern City Performances by dogs were not limited just to menagerie stages, of course, as was primarily the case for exotic animals; canines also appeared in the literature-based theatre houses, taking leading roles. An especially famous play with a canine actor was the melodrama The Dog of Montarges (or Montargis), first performed in 1814.15 Animals on stage were great popular sensations, even if problematic ones, given that their presence was a potential threat to the prestige of the theatre and its elevation of human artistic and cultural achivements. Animal performances had long been an attractive option for theatre managers, especially for those who lacked a licence for spoken-word drama and performance, but their threat to the ‘all-human or at least human-centred theatre’ was increasingly acknowledged.16 The legitimate theatre attempted to define itself in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a place for human beings, with established boundaries for ‘cultural performances’ involving animals.17 Goethe is famously said to have resigned as the theatre director in Weimar because of a failed attempt to prevent a guest performance of The Dog of Montarges in 1817. In 1812, Goethe had the Weimar theatre regulations changed in Paragraph 14 to the effect that any type of stage dog should be prohibited.18 This anecdotal episode probably became popular through the rewriting of Schiller’s verses to Goethe, from ‘The appearance should never attain reality / And if nature conquers, then art must retire’, into: ‘The dog stable should never be the same as the stage / And if the poodle arrives, the poet must depart’.19 This attempted proscription of stage animals gave them a kind of hinge function since such a division marked the separation between high and popular culture, as well as between theatre and circus. But this amibition, as Goethe’s inability to prevent a canine actor from performing on the Weimar stage suggests, was never fully realized – and indeed Michael Dobson, suggesting that modern mass entertainment ‘makes canines of us all’, argues that ‘human actors … may want to soliloquize, but the performing dogs of modernity are altogether more decisive, becoming the main action of any show into which they are allowed’.20 The dog theatre also carried a political message, since the canine depictions not only showed off the animals’ docility, and made it possible to present a caricature of human types of behaviour without violating prohibitions on singing and speaking,21 they also contributed to the contemporary debate on the ability of animals to be (at least in part) rational. The tricks that stage dogs learnt through careful training made up an impressive spectrum of abilities. Their handlers and impresarios used dogs for tolerance training with other animals, had them dance and walk on their back legs, as well as jump through hoops. But the trained dogs could apparently also ‘read’, ‘write’ and ‘speak’. The dogs with the most impressive abilities of this sort, including crucially the ability to perform on command, were termed ‘artistic dogs’. At the start of the eighteenth century, there were performances by such canine star turns to be found in many German cities. The term has indeed no pejorative or mocking meaning; rather, it emphasizes the fact that these dogs had actually learnt feats of an intellectual nature. Eighteenth-century stage dogs were considered performers, then, animal actors, not merely performances or spectacles. That dogs of all animals were seen in this way is surely down to the fact that they were considered especially easy and uncomplicated to train, a quality lauded in Krünitz’s Enzyklopaedia of 1782: ‘The dog has genius, i.e. it has the ability to quickly comprehend and learn something. That such a predisposition actually exists can be seen in the orientation towards hunting and all types of stunts, It’s Just an Act! 131 which they know how to do in an admirable way.’22 An encyclopaedia entry is an index of received wisdom, but it shows moreover that companion animals were taught practices that extended beyond the dog’s domestic roles. Under the heading of ‘Training Dogs for Pleasure’, the same Enzyklopaedia provides information on how the dog can be taught to walk on its hind paws, in addition to (the rather less impressive) fetching and swimming.23 Dogs were animals understood in the frame of cultural practices, then, but their very ‘nature’ contributed to the role they performed. This nature was specific, a quality to be found in all canines, however unevenly, but it was a nature that could be brought out in individual animals, with the right training, a process that led directly to the phenomenon of dog ‘artists’ – itself a liminal category by the very fact that such performing dogs exhibited talents comparable to those of human beings. This is most obvious in the ‘learned’ animals, including ‘scholar’ dogs, who graced the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stage, but these exemplary liminal qualities were part of the attraction of performing animals of all kinds, qualities that enabled trainers, and their animals, to rise above natural ‘animality’ and to mimic, for example, human achivements. An especially popular motif was, for instance, the spectacle of an animal able to make purchases from the butcher and deliver the wrapped meat to its master intact – mastering of course its impulsive animal appetite. The familiar narrative appeared for the first time in the writings of the humanist Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), who told of how during his childhood in Brussels, a large dog of an English breed would go to the butcher on its own and faithfully carry home its purchases according to the wishes of its master.24 This story was subsequently repeated in many variations, and by the eighteenth century at least was invoked to praise the unique learning abilities of dogs. Performing animals also provided animal versions of human artistry, however. In the reporting of canine artists, for example, much space was given to the dog ballet. In 1705, chroniclers enthusiastically wrote about the Ballet of Little Dogs in London, in which the dogs not only danced on two legs but also knew how to keep the beat.25 This fascination for dog ballet continued into the nineteenth century (the dancing poodle Pollux and its ‘Styrian National Dance’ were advertised as part of Berlin’s amusement repertoire in 1848, for instance).26 It was also popular and profitable to put dogs on stage, in combination with exotic animals. From 1762 to 1765, Charles Duclos displayed his exotic animals, particularly apes and monkeys, together with his trained dogs.27 The combination of these animal species is apparent in the dog and monkey ‘theatre’ that had developed great popularity in eighteenth-century Europe.28 The shows by Heinrich Schreyer were especially well known in Germany in the 1830s, advertised with thrilling announcements like the following: ‘The conquest of the Veste Kakumirium castle, a pantomimic dramatic scene, performed by a number of monkeys and dogs. This play is distinguished not only by the admirable skills of the four-footed artists but also by the entirely new costumes, machinery and impressive decoration.’29 Here, the hierarchical elevation of the animal was an essential element in the performances. The obviously appealing aspect of the monkey and dog theatre was the fact that the presented animals mimicked human beings in their various antics, something that simultaneously endorsed the priority of human reason and called it into question. Dogs were dressed up, made to walk on two legs, and to act in a human 132 Animal History in the Modern City manner by calculating, reading the clock, playing dominos or guessing cards.30 But the humanization of the canine and simian performers, however anthropomorphic, required people to attribute a certain degree of rational faculty to the animals.31 This teachability of the most talented and tractable animals was also evident in the figure of the ‘learned’ or ‘scholar’ dog, popular as far back as the seventeenth century: in 1670, Philip, Duke of Orleans in Paris apparently possessed a dog who knew how to sort books alphabetically by author.32 Reading dogs could communicate with people by laying down letters; according to reports, a dog performed at the Danzig Fair in 1754 that could respond to the question about who built Rome with the word ‘Romulus’ or also knew how to answer the question regarding the first Roman emperor. In addition to learning the cultural technique of reading, however, scholarly canines were asked to express themselves, not in their own but in human language – and in contrast to conventional wisdom for human subjects, we might rate such speaking as more difficult than reading. The fascination with speaking dogs was a familiar manifestation of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Evidence of such animals was entered into the reports of scientific academies and scholarly treatises. Most famously, Leibniz in 1768 enthusiastically reported that a farmer’s dog in the region of Meissen could speak.33 After extensive years of practice, this dog was capable of speaking thirty words or repeating them after its owner. Its repertoire of words included the luxury consumer products, ‘tea’, ‘coffee’ and ‘chocolate’, apparently the first words that the animal was trained to utter, and which subsequently became the ABC of speaking dogs.34 And although people were quite aware of the anatomical reasons for some of the difficulties that stopped dogs from speaking in human tongue, they nevertheless made many attempts to overcome these disadvantages. In the Bibliothèque Germanique of 1720, for instance, the procedure with which dogs were forced to speak or supported in learning to speak was described as follows: Its master sat down on the ground and took the dog between his legs so that he could do whatever he wanted with the dog. He used one hand to hold its upper jaw and the other to hold its lower jaw, sometimes holding both at the same time. This twisted the dog’s throat in various ways, which caused it to be able to speak a few words.35 The Universal-Lexicon published by Heinrich Zedler in the mid-eighteenth century also reported on the methodical procedure for making mute dogs speak; in this process, the scientist-cum-showman manipulated the animal’s throat.36 Even the credulous Leibniz reported that his learned dog, ‘only speaks by echoing, that is, after its master has pronounced a word, and it seems that it only repeats when forced, and despite itself, although it has not been maltreated’.37 Munito, the ‘wonderful dog’ An analysis of contemporary newspapers shows that the narrative of the ‘scholar’ and the image of the ‘teachable’ dog appeared in many guises, with several variations. It’s Just an Act! 133 From the many recorded descriptions of ‘scholar’ dogs, we can nevertheless see how numerous motifs of the dog on the stage were condensed – in the figure of Munito, the ‘dog genius’ whose performing career began in the 1820s and took him all over Europe with his master. Munito’s talents were certainly impressive: he understood Dutch, English, Italian, French and Latin; he could spell, play cards and dominos; and he was a mathematical wizard to boot.38 The great Munito was constantly on tour and his performances in the best-known entertainment locations were invariably sold out. In Paris, he made a guest appearance at the Cabinet d’Illusion for some time; in London, he performed for the Prince Regent and the Duke of York. The name Munito was used – however – for a large number of different scholar dogs over the course of the nineteenth century. The first dog by the name of Munito, the prototype so to speak, was presented in Milan by an Italian man named Castelli after thirteen months of training. This Munito was a mixed-breed dog who probably had a hunting hound as a father and a water spaniel as a mother. On the many advertising posters for his performances, he was pictured as white with a brown spot above his left eye and had curly fur. Even though he was actually a mixed-breed dog, he was given the fashionable shearing of a lion hound. During his time in London, Munito the First achieved fame beyond the stage, as a courageous hero in real life rather than in melodrama: together with his master Castelli, he rescued a woman from a pond and received a medal from the Royal Humane Society – as did his owner. In 1821 and 1822, Castelli and Munito were on the road in Prussia and the Kingdom of Bavaria, and there is evidence of his performances in Munich, Berlin and Augsburg. By 1824, very little was heard from Munito, however. It can be assumed that Munito had trodden the boards, actual and metaphorical, for the last time. But it was not long before performances by ‘Munito’ were being advertised once again. Signor Castelli had also called his next stage dog ‘Munito’, despite the fact that the successor was a different species of poodle. The name of Munito had become a brand rather than merely a personal name, well on its way to designating a clever and well-trained performing dog. Eugène Muller described this second Munito in his book Les Animaux Célèbres as a beautiful white poodle with a lion haircut.39 Starting in 1827, Munito the Second’s European tour took him through Germany, on his own at first and then, from 1830, with his supposed son. The stunts Munito performed were similar to those of his predecessor; but the poodle could now demonstrate the ability to read the time from a clock, turn a key with his teeth, play a drum and perform acrobatic tricks. Munito apparently also knew the answers to hundreds of questions that were printed in a little octavo notebook. With the use of letters laid out for him, Munito provided the answers required, and could also work with numbers and solve mathematical problems. Munito had been so perfectly instructed in these stunts that it was impossible to determine how the trick was accomplished, though spectators such as Charles Dickens wondered whether Signor Castelli was providing the dog with cues of various kinds. This was indeed the case: the learned dog Munito was receiving instructions that only he could hear, as he ran back and forth between the cards that had been laid out for him: once he reached the letter that his master wanted him to select, he picked up the signal and stopped moving. This signal was the noise made by his master bending and releasing a toothpick hidden in his pocket.40 To contemporaries, informed by the long 134 Animal History in the Modern City speculation over the reasoning ability of animals, Munito’s powers were a mystery as well as a delight; to us, who know that even the most accomplished dog cannot spell or calculate, this inevitably feels like a fraud. But Munito was no automaton or dunce: what is really impressive is a performance that had been perfected down to the last detail, in which human and dog were successfully melded into a successful double act. And this could only happen because the dog and human were able to communicate, to share knowledge. Dog training of this kind – and this is the decisive point – does not principally evidence the intellectual abilities of dogs, or their lack of them, calibrated as ever to human standards of achievement, but rather the special relationship between the trainer and the trained. What is more, the performance of these famed stage dogs makes it clear that canines can very much be understood as active actors, not passive stooges: to an extent we have to argue that dog and human trained each other. Interpreting training in this way, as a framework of interaction, should not belie the fact that the animals did not necessarily perform voluntarily,41 nor ignore acts of resistance and the unpredictability of animal actors,42 – but it should give us pause before dismissing the stage dog as merely the product of human cultural practices. Rudolf Lang and his performing dogs A second example can be offered, that of the early-eighteenth-century German dog trainer and impresario Rudolf Lang. The basic sources for the story of Lang and his two trained dogs are the writings entitled Kurz Verfasste Reiss-Beschreibung (‘Brief Travel Descriptions’) (1739) and Natürliche Zauberey (‘Natural Magic’) (1740).43 Lang describes how the stunts with his dogs had made him famous throughout Europe: as he put it rather immodestly, ‘All in all, I was a wonder in Europe.’44 Lang was a showman, very well aware of the nature of the market for entertainment, especially in animal acts. He was very much aware that his trained dog tricks were part of a long tradition of ‘artistic animals’, but advertised his shows with the claim that they clearly stood out from the competition.45 Lang’s act was certainly different from Signor Castelli and the various Munitos. Lang’s position on speaking dog acts, as well as the dog and monkey theatres, was largely dismissive as well as sceptical: in his travel account of 1739, he presents these phenomena in a wholly ironic manner. For Lang, the purpose of the dog act was primarily to entertain, not to instruct or speculate about the abilities of people and animals. Humour came from the names that Lang’s dogs were given, letting the audience clearly know what it should expect. The little dog responded, for instance, to the name of ‘Hanswurst’ and the large one to the name of ‘Mosche’. It is difficult to understand the context for the name ‘Mosche’, and though Mosché, with an emphasis on the acute ‘é’, is the Hebrew name for Moses, it is unlikely that this is an anti-Semitic transposition of Moses into a dog; perhaps Mosche was a play on the discourse of the Jewish convert as a ‘false’ Christian or ‘hidden Jew who – despite all efforts at adapting – could not be transformed into a Christian citizen after all’. ‘Hanswurst’ is easy to explain, however. Since the sixteenth century it referred to a ribald-comical figure of the German-language improvized comedy, and by the eighteenth century, ‘Hanswurst’ was the name of the leading comic figure in German-language theatre – It’s Just an Act! 135 the travelling physician and lessee of the Kärntnertortheaters in Vienna, Joseph Anton Stranitzky, had been pitching his troop of ‘German comedians’ against the Commediadell’arte since the 1720s, for instance, with ‘Hanswurst’ as his secret weapon. As a popular peasant figure, the Hanswurst figure was also performed in plays at fairs and in the travelling theatres. Lang’s training typically anthropomorphized the dog by turning it into a pawn of human communication. In addition, the dog was also used as a medium to speak or ‘bark out’ things that the human actor in the performance duo would not have been allowed to articulate. Another basic element of this anthropomorphization was that trained dogs showed that they were capable of human cultural techniques such as reading the clocks or handling playing cards, even if this was put forward without the claims to rationality made by Castelli and Munito.46 Like Munito, Hanswurst and Mosche were famous for their card tricks, and they moreover were trained to recognize money. But Lang’s achievements in dog training and performance were also to be found in the way in which the dog could be made to make humorous physical contortions, such as sticking its head between its legs. Lang’s act perhaps owes more the carnivalesque than to the Enlightenment: he describes, for instance, how a dog could be taught to point to its rear end in response to the question of: ‘Where does it love the cats?’47 A dog might be trained to stop in front of a woman and respond to the question (a comedy staple!) ‘What do you think – is she still a virgin?’ by either barking or shaking its head according to the prompts given (Figure 8.1).48 Figure 8.1 Training a dog to recognize who is still a virgin: Lang, ‘Einen Hund abzurichten, zu Erkennen wer noch Jungfrau sei’, in Rudolf Lang, Die von mir auf das höchst gebrachte natürliche Zauberey (Augsburg, 1740). 136 Animal History in the Modern City Other dog tricks were more in the tradition of the dog theatre and served the somewhat more elevated purpose of political parody. So, for instance, the twelfth number in Lang’s essay of 1739 had the title ‘Training a dog so it shows that it does not want to visit the Turkish or Roman emperor’. In this trick, a dog named Mosche was asked to take a letter to the ‘emperor’. As soon as the dog receives this command from its trainer, it rushes off. When he calls it back to deliver the letter to the Turkish emperor, the dog now lies down on the floor and plays dead. But when Lang asks it to begin the journey to the Roman emperor, it immediately leaps up and was willing to do its duty.49 The background here is that of the Russo–Austrian–Turkish War, which ended in 1739, with the Austrian Habsburg emperor and the Turkish emperor facing each other as enemies in the battle for the Balkans. The impact of this act depended in part on a knowledgeable audience, and one of the secrets of Lang’s success was probably that he included them in his performances. At private shows, in particular, audience members were directly integrated into the show: one trick involved the dog barking to show which of those present was a well-known personality, something that allowed Lang to flatter the host. At the Margrave of Ansbach’s court, for instance, the dog Hanswurst performed in a dress and occupied a chair at the table between the margrave and the marchioness; the hostess was so amused by this that she wanted to buy Hanswurst, which Lang denied her despite an offer of hundred ducats.50 When another showman offered to trade Hanswurst for an ‘artistic monkey’, Lang also rejected the offer.51 Lang instead purchased this monkey, for thirty-two guilders, and added it to his animal ensemble, teaching it balancing tricks.52 Lang and his dogs toured from late 1717 to 1722, making guest appearances in the cities of Augsburg, Nuremberg, Munich, Ingolstadt, Regensburg, Passau, Linz, Hamburg, Wolfenbüttel, Ludwigsburg, Stuttgart, Erlangen, Bamberg, Frankfurt, Jena, Leipzig, Freiburg, Magdeburg, Dresden, Prague and Vienna. Lang put on shows in his home, at the fair, at exhibitions and in ballroom buildings, and gave private performances upon request. Lang not only performed with his stage animals but also lived and travelled with them – a circumstance that additionally turned his animal companions into liminal animals since they were virtually his training relationship partners within the private sphere. But he subsequently returned to his hometown of Augsburg and gave up his career as a dog trainer, selling his two dogs for 220 guilders.53 Tormented by boredom, Lang in 1723 bought a foal for thirteen guilders and two new dogs, though the training did not function as well with them as with his first two animals.54 Nor did his successors have any success with Hanswurst and Mosche, a circumstance that prompted Lang to point out the importance of the trainer’s personal relationship with his dogs. It is the importance that Lang placed on this training that gives his dog act its real significance, and this is a theme that Lang returned to time and again in his autobiographical reflections.55 Lang had felt a passion for animals from his boyhood, writing: ‘It should not be unknown to most people here in Augsburg, which is not unfamiliar as my father’s city, that I was a great fan of animals – especially of horses and dogs – since my youth.’56 He reveals nothing about the reasons that caused him to give up his learned profession, as a brewer, and instead go on tour with his trained dogs. But he does discuss the history of his experiments in dog training, starting with how he It’s Just an Act! 137 bought a female Danish dog and had it mated with a male dog of his selection. Shortly before the birth of the litter, Lang kept the mother chained in a ‘laundry tub’ filled with hay.57 Of the five pups that resulted, the two females were drowned by Lang, who kept only the three male dogs for training. Though this seems particularly cruel, this approach (post-zygotic selection) was widespread, the general opinion being that just three or four out of a litter should be allowed to live, to enable the survivors to grow up healthy and strong.58 Lang also emphasized that it was important for the training that the pups be separated as early as possible from the mother and carefully selected as to the degree to which each might be or become an ‘exceptional dog’.59 For Lang, the education and training of the pups as stage animals primarily depended on two things: patience, and time. He initially based his training on a guide that was more than one hundred years old, and though he did not provide any more information, Lang was evidently impressed by the above-mentioned story of the dog who went to the market and butcher with a shopping list and brought home all of the goods intact.60 In doing so, he organized his own story in conformity with the wellestablished narrative of the disciplined or scholarly dog. When it came to his own advice on the training of dogs, however, Lang put forward three principles: the first being the recognition that dogs are ‘intelligent animals’; second, that ‘they should only be trained when they are hungry (because the reward is more effective in this case)’; and third, ‘that “more can be achieved with love and words than with blows”’.61 Lang’s fundamental assumption was that many animals show ‘intellect’ and that the animal trainer should make use of precisely this trait.62 Before an individual dog’s tricks and stunts could be practised, however, Lang insisted that work must first be invested in basic training. This includes the animal having a proper interaction with humans, being able to shake its head on command and barking and fetching when instructed to do so. Every chapter of his guide to training, the book Natural Magic, has the same structure, proceeding with step-by-step descriptions of how the dog can be made to learn the various tricks, from the basic to the more difficult. Lang proceeds by describing his training methods in detail, as in the example of how to train a dog so that it ‘reaches the crumb of bread beneath it without even moving its foot by a hair’, illustrated in Figure 8.2. This advice is then followed by a passage in which the dog protagonist speaks to the readers in the form of a poem, putting the training and treatment of dogs from their own perspective.63 By repeatedly using this device, Lang lets the dog speak, to make it clear to people that the canine should be considered a partner in the process of training. He acknowledges the respective places of the human and the dog, and puts a premium on human speech, but he gestures at the same time, in a liminal manner, towards putting humans and non-human animals on the same plane. It is true that Lang imagines his dog spouting the following line of verse, something that gives a clear indication of the human–dog, trainer–trained hierarchy: ‘But I am a dog / and live in reason / and yet I still show many things of wonder / Through my master’s diligence / as he has taught me’.64 The servility staged here is a leitmotif of the passages spoken by the dog actor, and places the emphasis on the fact that training is a ‘rare art’ and much diligence is required to learn it.65 But that art and diligence is capable of being taught to the animal who is his performing partner. It is not something that is simply, 138 Animal History in the Modern City Figure 8.2 Training a dog to perform a trick: from Rudolf Lang, Die von mir auf das höchst gebrachte natürliche Zauberey (Augsburg, 1740), 9 ff. say, beaten into a broken beast. Lang was convinced that nothing could be achieved through violence; he thought that people were often too rough with dogs, and that this was entirely counterproductive. As Lang presented it, the basic element of dog training was a form of knowledge shared by both parties. When practising stunts, this mutual knowledge was an exclusive and – from the perspective of the audience – ultimately clandestine knowledge, since the success of the performance was based solely on the human–dog duo knowing its secret. The ignorance of the astonished audience as to how the stunts were performed made the act successful – even if it left a space for sceptical questioning and criticism. Lang faced accusations, for instance, that his ‘artistic’ performance was merely ‘deception’, or perhaps even ‘sorcery’, something of which he was accused of by the executioner of Dresden.66 Lang was alleged to have made a pact with the Devil, his two black dogs nothing less than Satan’s stage extras.67 Without divulging the secrets of his training, Lang was forced to distance himself from the accusations of witchcraft that could also have ended his life as well as his career: and Lang did this by emphasizing that even though he had ‘artistic’ dogs, they only demonstrated ‘natural’ magic. ‘Natural magic’, the title of his 1740 book, was used here to make a clear distinction between his training and the ‘unnatural’ art of witchcraft. Natürliche Zauberey is a dog training manual, then, but also a defence of his methods and the nature of his art. The revelation of his training techniques was an example of skilful marketing, since his contemporaries were always interested in ‘exposing’ the ‘magic tricks’ that lay behind the dogs’ performances. But it was also a justification strategy: by disclosing in detail how dogs could be taught such tricks, it was possible for him to refute any type of accusation that he was somehow in bed with the Devil. Lang argued in his introduction that ‘natural magic, which many thousands consider to be and see as true magic’ can finally be revealed. Although it might ‘look supernatural in the eyes of the people’, these methods of teaching an irrational animal were simply beyond their grasp, giving it ‘an intellect that is human, so to speak’. But his art was the result It’s Just an Act! 139 of patient and careful training, nothing more – but also nothing less. Lang’s ultimate aim was to show ‘sensible people what can be imprinted on the animal mind through much diligence and effort’.68 Conclusions Above all, the achievements of Rudolf Lang in dog training demonstrated the teachability of his dogs. In his texts, the dog appears in fact as an actor, a claim can that be understood on three different levels: in the classic sense of an actor on the stage, but then also as a speaking agent who represents its master, and – above all – as part of a double act, the unity of human being and dog in the stage performance. Lang took a clear position by calling on people to also comprehend dogs as beings with an intellect – not as a result of magic, especially not in the sense of a pact with the Devil, but a condition that the ‘natural magic’ of training could bring out and enhance, enabling them to produce feats so complex that they could not even have been taught to every human being. So the dog, as a trained partner in the performing arts, inevitably turns into a human-like counterpart. In the figure of the scholar dog, the learned canines become particularly anthropomorphized, but the art of the artistic animal consisted in learning human cultural techniques, not just in mimicking humans. Notes 1 Chris Pearson, ‘Dogs, History, and Agency’, History and Theory 52, no. 4 (2013): 128–45, 137. 2 See Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 301. 3 See Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003). 4 See Julia Bodenburg, ‘Auf den Hund gekommen: Tier-Mensch-Allianzen in Donna Haraways Companion Species Manifesto and Thomas Manns “Erzählung Herr und Hund”’, in Ich, das Tier: Tiere als Persönlichkeiten in der Kulturgeschichte, ed. Heike Fuhlbrügge, Jessica Ullrich and Friedrich Weltzien (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2008): 283–93, 288. 5 Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto, 20. 6 Gesine Krüger has pointed out that if we wish to retain the epistemological value of history as a concept, an animal story entirely without human beings is meaningless and/or impossible to write; moreover, history does not necessarily need to be based on texts, something noted by Lucien Febvre in the 1930s. See Gesine Krüger, ‘Tiere und Imperium: Konturen einer Animate History postkolonial: Rinder, Pferde und ein kannibalischer Hund’, in Tiere und Geschichte: Konturen einer Animate History, ed. Gesine Krüger, Aline Steinbrecher and Clemens Wischermann (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004), 127–52, 135, and Lucien Febvre, ‘Ein Historiker prüft sein Gewissen: Antrittsvorlesung am Collège de France 1933’, in Das Gewissen des Historikers, ed. Lucien Febvre (Berlin: Wagenbuch, 1988), 9–37, 18. 140 Animal History in the Modern City 7 A much more expansive understanding of relationships can be found in related concepts such as entangled agency. See Mieke Roscher, ‘Zwischen Wirkungsmacht und Handlungsmacht – Sozialgeschichtliche Perspektiven auf tierliche Agency’, in Das Handeln der Tiere: Tierliche Agency im Fokus der Human-Animal Studies, ed. Sven Wirth et al. (Bielefeld: Transkipt, 2015), 43–67, 58ff. 8 This helps shape the new (intermediate) space that Haraway describes as emergent nature cultures: see Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto, passim. 9 Dorothee Römhild, ‘Belly’chen ist Trumpf ’: Poetische und andere Hunde im 19. Jahrhundert (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2005), 44. 10 Bärbel Edel, Der Hund als Heimtier: Gegenstand oder Person? (Hamburg: Kovac, 1995), 5. 11 We can see this in discussions about the appropriate places for companion animals to sleep and to relieve themselves. 12 Police regulations in European countries typically differentiated between useful and useless dogs, and between dogs employed for professional purposes and those kept solely for pleasure. But utility was always in the eye of the beholder, defined through culture and discourse rather than a straightforward use-value. 13 Consider the grieving process and the culture of remembering beloved canines: the feeling of grief for a specific dog that had accompanied a stage of life was always concrete and imaginary, both real and discursive. See, for instance, Philip Howell, ‘A Place for the Animal Dead: Pets, Pet Cemeteries and Animal Ethics in Late Victorian Britain’, Ethics, Place & Environment 5, no. 1 (2002): 5–22, 7. 14 See Esther Köhring, ‘Tiere, Theater, Tanz und Performance’, in Tiere: Ein Kulturwissenschaftliches Handbuch, ed. Roland Borgards (Stuttgart: Metzler 2015), 245–61, 247. 15 Guilbert de Pixérécourt’s The Forest of Bondy: Or, The Dog of Montargis (1814). See the excellent discussion in Michael Dobson, ‘A Dog at all Things: The Transformation of the Onstage Canine, 1550–1850’, Performance Research 5, no. 2 (2000): 116–24. 16 Dobson, ‘A Dog at all Things’, 120–1. 17 Köhring, Tiere, Theater, Tanz und Performance, 250. 18 Ibid., 251. 19 Cited in Allgemeine deutsche Real-Encyklopädie fur die gebildeten Stände: Konversations-Lexikon in Zwolf Bänden (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1833), 497. Available online: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009030134 (accessed 15 July 2017). 20 Dobson, ‘A Dog at all Things’, 124. 21 See Dittrich and Rieke-Müller, Carl Hagenbeck, 23. 22 Johann Georg Krünitz et al., Oekonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, Vol. 26 (Berlin: Pauli, 1782), 379ff. The encyclopaedia, begun by Krünitz, was originally published between 1773 and 1858, and is available online: http://www.kruenitz1.uni-trier.de (accessed 15 July 2017). This and subsequent translations by Aline Steinbrecher. 23 Ibid. 24 Martin Pegie, Juristische Ergötzlichkeiten vom Hunde-Recht, und denen darbey vorkommenden Fällen: welchen als ein Anhang, das Recht derer Tauben und Hühner beygefügt worden (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Immig, 1725), 3. Available online: https://www. deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/L2Z6LHP5E2W5EUPYSOFG4GLPMHI5BYJP (accessed 15 July 2017). 25 Cf. Pierre Hachet-Souplet, Die Dressur der Thiere mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Hunde, Affen, Pferde und der wilden Thiere. Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1889 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1999), 31. 26 See Lothar Schirmer and Paul S. Ulrich, ‘Einmal Hunderttausend Thaler –Öffentliche Vergnügungen in Berlin 1848’, last updated 12 February 2009, entry for 14 February It’s Just an Act! 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 141 1848. Available online: http://www.theatergeschichte.org/dokumentation/berlin/1848/ index.html (accessed 15 July 2017). See also Lothar Schirmer and Paul S. Ulrich, Das Jahr 1848: Kultur in Berlin im Spiegel der Vossischen Zeitung Repertoire in February 1848 (Berlin: Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte, 2008), 145. Lothar Dittrich and Annelore Rieke-Müller, Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913): Tierhandel and Schaustellungen in the German Empire (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999), 21. See Horst Flechsig, ‘Tiere als Schau-Spieler: So ein Affentheater’, MIMOS 1–2 (1995): 16–20. Heinrich Schreyer, ‘Programmzettel. Heinrich Schreyerʼs Affen-Theater: Gastrolle der Dlle. Pauline, Spielstätte: Wien/Prater/Schreyers Affentheater, 1847’, cited by David Krych, ‘“Auch uns ist ein gut dressierter”: Affe lieber alse ein schlecht dressirter Komōdiant – Affentheater und Hundekomōdien in Wien im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Artistenleben auf Vergessenen Wegen: Eine Spurensuche in Wien, ed. Birgit Peter and Robert Kaldy-Karo (Wien: Lit-Verlag, 2013), 145–68, 145ff, 151, 165 note 33. See Krych, ‘Auch uns ist ein gut dressierter Affe lieber’, 168. Ibid. See Johann Heinrich Klüver, Auserlesene Juristische Ergötzlichkeiten (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Johann Martin Burgsmannen, 1715), 7ff. See Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ‘Exposé d’une Lettre de Mr. Leibniz a l’abbé de St. Pierre sur un chien qui parle’, in Leibnitii Opera Omnia: Nunc Primum Collecta, in Classes Distributa, Præfationibus et Indicibus Exornata, Vol. 2 (Geneva: Fratres de Tournes, 1768), 175–82, 180. See Krünitz, Oekonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, Vol. 26, 381ff. Cited by Ernst Flössel, Der Hund: ein Mitarbeiter an den Werken des Menschen, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Hundes (Wien: Hartlebens Verlag, 1906), 408. See Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon (Leipzig: Zedler), Vol. 13, S.617, column 1191. Published originally between 1731 and 1754. Available online: https://www.zedler-lexikon.de (accessed 15 July 2017). Leibniz, ‘Exposé d’une Lettre’, 180. Translation by Lloyd Strickland, available online at: http://www.leibniz-translations.com/dog.htm (accessed 15 July 2017). For Munito, see Jan Bondeson, Animal Freaks: The Strange History of Amazing Animals (Chalford: Tempus Publishing, 2008), 47–62. See Eugène Muller, Les Animaux Célèbres (Paris: Hetzel, 1885), 25ff. See Hachet-Souplet, Die Dressur der Thiere, 3. See Mieke Roscher, ‘Where is the animal in this text? Chancen und Grenzen einer Tiergeschichtsschreibung’, in Human-Animal Studies: Über die gesellschaftliche Natur von Mensch-Tier-Verhältnissen, ed. Chimaira – Arbeitskreis für Human-Animal Studies: Eine Einführung in Gesellschaftliche Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse und HumanAnimal Studies (Bielefeld: transcript, 2011), 121–50, 143. See Garry Marvin, ‘Natural Instincts and Cultural Passions: Transformations and Performances in Foxhunting’, Performance Research 5, no. 2 (2000): 108–15, 109. Rudolf Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, Oder oft beschuldigte aber niemals erwiesene Zauber-Kunst, so in 2 künstlichen Hunden bestunde (Augsburg, 1739); Rudolf Lang, Die von mir auf das höchst gebrachte natürliche Zauberey… Worinnen gantz deutlich angezeigt wird, wie man einen Hund … zu ausserordentlichen und der Vernunfft nach, recht übernatürlich scheinenden Künsten … abrichten und erlehrnen kan … Mit … Kupffern (Augsburg, 1740), Lang, Natürliche Zauberey, 2. Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, Preface. 142 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 Animal History in the Modern City Lang, Natürliche Zauberey, 7. Ibid., Preface. Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, 2. Lang, Natürliche Zauberey, 13. Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, 23. Ibid., 49. Ibid., 51. Thirty-two guilders (1,920 kreutzers) corresponded with about 68 days’ wages for a carpenter overseer, 112 days for a carpenter journeyman, and between a half and a third of the annual salary for a teacher at the Fürth Armen und Waisenschule (School for the Poor and Orphans). A municipal tax writer in Augsburg earned 210 guilders annually in 1739, so the price for these two canines corresponded with the yearly salary of a medium-level civil servant. See Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, 161. That Lang’s reports on training and travel are also autobiographical narratives is evidenced by mentions of performances in other accounts. See, for instance, (Peter Süssmilch Van Ghelen, ed.), Wienerisches Diarium, No. 4, 17 January 1722 (Vienna, Austria). Rudolf Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, 3. Krünitz, Oekonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, Vol. 26, 402. Ibid. Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, Preface. Ibid. Lang, Natürliche Zauberey, 1. Ibid., Preface Lang, Natürliche Zauberey, 2. Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, 2. Lang, Natürliche Zauberey, 9. Lang, Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, 72. Ibid., 13. Ibid., Preface. Bibliography Allgemeine deutsche Real-Encyklopädie fur die gebildeten Stände: Konversations-Lexikon in Zwolf Bänden (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1833). Bodenburg, Julia. ‘Auf den Hund gekommen: Tier-Mensch-Allianzen in Donna Haraways Companion Species Manifesto and Thomas Manns “Erzählung Herr und Hund”’, in Ich, das Tier: Tiere als Persönlichkeiten in der Kulturgeschichte, ed. Heike Fuhlbrügge, Jessica Ullrich and Friedrich Weltzien (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2008): 283–93. Bondeson, Jan. Animal Freaks: The Strange History of Amazing Animals (Chalford: Tempus Publishing, 2008). Dittrich, Lothar and Rieke-Müller, Annelore. Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913): Tierhandel and Schaustellungen in the German Empire (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999). Dobson, Michael. ‘A Dog at all Things: The Transformation of the Onstage Canine, 1550–1850’, Performance Research 5, no. 2 (2000): 116–24. Edel, Bärbel. Der Hund als Heimtier: Gegenstand oder Person? (Hamburg: Kovac, 1995). It’s Just an Act! 143 Febvre, Lucien. ‘Ein Historiker prüft sein Gewissen: Antrittsvorlesung am Collège de France 1933’, in Das Gewissen des Historikers, ed. Lucien Febvre (Berlin: Wagenbuch, 1988)), 9–37. Flechsig, Horst. ‘Tiere als Schau-Spieler: So ein Affentheater’, MIMOS 1–2 (1995): 16–20. Flössel, Ernst. Der Hund: ein Mitarbeiter an den Werken des Menschen, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Hundes (Wien: Hartlebens Verlag, 1906). Hachet-Souplet, Pierre. Die Dressur der Thiere mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Hunde, Affen, Pferde und der wilden Thiere. Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1889 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1999). Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003). Haraway, Donna. When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Howell, Philip. ‘A Place for the Animal Dead: Pets, Pet Cemeteries and Animal Ethics in Late Victorian Britain’, Ethics, Place & Environment 5, no. 1 (2002): 5–22. Klüver, Johann Heinrich. Auserlesene Juristische Ergötzlichkeiten (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Johann Martin Burgsmannen, 1715). Köhring, Esther. ‘Tiere, Theater, Tanz und Performance’, in Tiere: Ein Kulturwissenschaftliches Handbuch, ed. Roland Borgards (Stuttgart: Metzler 2015), 245–61. Krüger, Gesine. ‘Tiere und Imperium: Konturen einer Animate History postkolonial: Rinder, Pferde und ein kannibalischer Hund’, in Tiere und Geschichte: Konturen einer Animate History, ed. Gesine Krüger, Aline Steinbrecher and Clemens Wischermann (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004), 127–52. Krünitz, Johann Georg, et al. Oekonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, vol. 26 (Berlin: Pauli, 1782). Krych, David. ‘“Auch uns ist ein gut dressierter Affe lieber alse ein schlecht dressirter Komōdiant – Affentheater und Hundekomōdien in Wien im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Artistenleben auf Vergessenen Wegen: Eine Spurensuche in Wien, ed. Birgit Peter and Robert Kaldy-Karo (Wien: Lit-Verlag, 2013), 145–68. Lang, Rudolf. Kurtzverfasste Reiss-Beschreibung, Oder oft beschuldigte aber niemals erwiesene Zauber-Kunst, so in 2 künstlichen Hunden bestunde [Brief Travel Description] (Augsburg, 1739). Lang, Rudolf. Die von mir auf das höchst gebrachte natürliche Zauberey … Worinnen gantz deutlich angezeigt wird, wie man einen Hund … zu ausserordentlichen und der Vernunfft nach, recht übernatürlich scheinenden Künsten … abrichten und erlehrnen kan … Mit … Kupffern (Augsburg, 1740). Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. ‘Exposé d’une Lettre de Mr. Leibniz a l’abbé de St. Pierre sur un chien qui parle’, in Leibnitii Opera Omnia: Nunc Primum Collecta, in Classes Distributa, Præfationibus et Indicibus Exornata, vol. 2 (Geneva: Fratres de Tournes, 1768). Marvin, Garry. ‘Natural Instincts and Cultural Passions: Transformations and Performances in Foxhunting’, Performance Research 5, no. 2 (2000): 108–15. Muller, Eugène. Les Animaux Célèbres (Paris: Hetzel, 1885). Pearson, Chris. ‘Dogs, History, and Agency’, History and Theory 52, no. 4 (2013): 128–45. Pegie, Martin. Juristische Ergötzlichkeiten vom Hunde-Recht, und denen darbey vorkommenden Fällen: welchen als ein Anhang, das Recht derer Tauben und Hühner beygefügt worden (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Immig, 1725). Römhild, Dorothee. ‘Belly’chen ist Trumpf ’: Poetische und andere Hunde im 19. Jahrhundert (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2005), 44. 144 Animal History in the Modern City Roscher, Mieke. ‘Where is the animal in this text? Chancen und Grenzen einer Tiergeschichtsschreibung’, in Human-Animal Studies: Über die gesellschaftliche Natur von Mensch-Tier-Verhältnissen, ed. Chimaira – Arbeitskreis für Human-Animal Studies: Eine Einführung in Gesellschaftliche Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse und HumanAnimal Studies (Bielefeld: transcript, 2011), 121–50. Roscher, Mieke. ‘Zwischen Wirkungsmacht und Handlungsmacht – Sozialgeschichtliche Perspektiven auf tierliche Agency’, in Das Handeln der Tiere: Tierliche Agency im Fokus der Human-Animal Studies, ed. Sven Wirth, Annett Laue, Markus Kurth, Katharina Dornenzweig, Leonie Bossert and Karsten Balgar (Bielefeld: Transkipt, 2015), 43–67. Schirmer, Lothar and Ulrich, Paul S. ‘Einmal Hunderttausend Thaler –Öffentliche Vergnügungen in Berlin 1848’, last updated 12 February 2009. Available online: http:// www.theatergeschichte.org/dokumentation/berlin/1848/index.html (accessed 15 July 2017). Schirmer, Lothar and Ulrich, Paul S. Das Jahr 1848: Kultur in Berlin im Spiegel der Vossischen Zeitung Repertoire in February 1848 (Berlin: Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte, 2008). Wienerisches Diarium, No. 4, 17 January 1722. Zedler, Johann Heinrich. Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon (Leipzig: Zedler), vol. 13, S.617, column 1191. Published originally between 1731 and 1754. Available online: https://www.zedler-lexikon.de (accessed 15 July 2017). 9 Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death: The Problem of the Stray in the Victorian City Philip Howell Introduction The word ‘liminal’ has several meanings, and at least two are relevant when it comes to non-human animals. The first is the distinctive status of animals who do not happily fit in the established categories and associated geographies of ‘wild’ or ‘domesticated’. In this regard, the archaeologist Terry O’Connor straightforwardly identifies liminal animals with ‘commensal’ animals: that is, the wild or domestic species which live on anthropogenic food sources and share their living spaces with humans.1 They are our ‘neighbours’, to use O’Connor’s phrase, literally eating at the same table, whether we put it out for them specially (via garden birdfeeders, for example), or inadvertently provide affordances for, say, the wide range of urban wildlife (rats, pigeons, foxes, feral cats etc.). There is a persuasive case to be made that for animals such as the dog, commensalism is the species’s distinctive destiny: for almost no dogs live in the nonhuman ‘wild’, while only a tiny minority of the world’s dogs are ‘domesticated’ in the modern, Western sense of pets or companion animals.2 The word ‘liminal’ is surely to be preferred to ‘commensal’, however, not least because it stakes out a territory between wild and domestic, acknowledging that these terms are cultural artefacts as much as ecological categories. ‘Commensal’ arguably conjures up a neat demarcation of ecological relationships (though in practice no relationship is purely ‘commensal’, likely as it is to take on elements of mutualism and parasitism); ‘liminality’, derived from the human sciences such as anthropology, privileges by contrast ambiguity, in-between states, the work of boundary-making and boundary-challenging.3 As Kimberley K. Smith puts it, ‘Feral animals and strays occupy a liminal space; their status is indeterminate.’4 Here, in contrast to the approach of the naturalists, liminality is explicitly recognized as a cultural phenomenon. This is pre-eminently a political space, and liminal animals have been expressly considered in a political theory that seeks to include non-human animals: What political status, ask the animal rights theorists Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, should ‘liminal species’ 146 Animal History in the Modern City be granted in a more-than-human political theory?5 If domestic and domesticated animals might be considered co-citizens of some kind, as ‘dependants’, and wild animals granted a kind of ‘sovereign’ independence, how can we account for the liminal species close to us but not necessarily part of our society – animals that are not strangers but neighbours, neighbours but not dependants? What kind of political rights might be envisaged for these animals? In Zoopolis, Donaldson and Kymlicka opt for what they call ‘denizenship’: animals who are residents neither qualifying for nor requiring full citizenship, but who should nevertheless be accepted as entitled to specific rights and privileges. In their self-consciously liberal political theory and its guidelines for living with animals, Donaldson and Kymlicka provide a spirited defence of the rights of these hard-to-place liminal animal lives. Admirable as Donaldson and Kymlicka’s ideas are, though, this is not a wholly persuasive case, as critics have charged. For a start, there is an obvious tension between the rights of individual animals and the discrete, homogeneous group identities that Donaldson and Kymlicka want to use as the basis for allocating non-human animals’ rights and human responsibilities.6 The rights and privileges extended to animals vary abruptly and alarmingly between animals sorted in this way into the categories of ‘wild’, ‘domestic’ and ‘liminal’, with the latter being granted the basic but largely negative rights of non-interference, and very little more.7 Tensions between the rights of ‘wild’, ‘domestic’ and ‘liminal’ animals are another obvious problem. Clare Palmer points, for example, to the difficulties of respecting the domestic cat’s ‘right’ to outdoor access and the ‘rights’ of the liminal community of garden birds; indeed, Palmer notes that ‘cats are probably the most “liminal” … of domesticated animals; we are not clear where they “fit”’.8 We could go much further in this regard, in critiquing the still far too straightforward classifications that are the basis for Donaldson and Kymlicka’s theory of animal rights. The category ‘wild’, and the geography or geographies associated with it, has been shown by Irus Braverman (among others) to be intensely problematic; we can say the same about the definition of ‘domestic’ or ‘domesticated’ animals, including companion animals caught in ‘a sort of nether-world between animal and human’.9 And of course if this is so, it is hard to see how Donaldson and Kymlicka’s liminality can be regarded as anything like a stable category. One perfectly understandable response is that we need to particularize, to be more careful and precise about the subdivisions and sub-subdivisions within the category ‘liminal’.10 Donaldson and Kymlicka themselves divide their liminal cohort into opportunists (animals who actively seek out human populations), niche specialists (animals relying on a specific resource or microhabitat made available by humans), introduced exotics and feral animals.11 But on the other hand, and as I shall try to argue here, the category of liminal animals should privilege ‘ambiguity, complexity, and open-endedness’ rather than ‘clarity, simplicity, and closure’, which are really the values of a ‘fictional’ ecology rather than scientific ‘fact’.12 I would argue that an approach to liminal lives needs a further inoculation of liminality if we are to do liminality, and liminal animals, justice. Rather than approach liminality as a category or box, we need to go back to thinking of it as an in-between state, unstable, contestable and dynamic. Which takes us to a second obvious way of thinking about ‘liminal animals’, and that is the distinction between animal and human. We are by now accustomed to Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death 147 decrying the dualism of human/animal – often to the point of tiresome redundancy – but it is still worth stressing that the concept of liminality is not so much a way of identifying and specifying and fixing a particular group of non-human animals, but rather a way of registering the ambiguous nature of humanity and animality themselves: ‘Liminal space/time boundaries do not have hard-and-fast edges but are fuzzy, certainly showing up highly distinctive marks of the human, but only through association with other beings in a community, including other animals.’13 Indeed, the troublesome liminality of humans and (other) animals is apparent in every attempt to define what we as humans owe to liminal (and other) animals. Donaldson and Kymlicka’s purpose in their political theory of animal rights is for instance precisely to draw comparisons between the way in which rights are allocated to some human beings rather than others, and the way in which they might accordingly be extended to some non-human animals. In the case of liminal species, Donaldson and Kymlicka consider several categories of human ‘denizens’, as diverse and incommensurable as the Amish, seasonal migrants and undocumented immigrants. In the case of the latter, Donaldson and Kymlicka do so not to denounce the limited political privileges and the limbo status of such ‘shadow citizens’, but simply to show that some form of political inclusion, however compromised, is possible for some liminal non-humans.14 But by doing so they can hardly help but generate unease: inevitably, the raising of animals’ rights seems to threaten the lowering of those of some human beings, and one does not have to be a committed anthropocentrist to be troubled by the various human/animal comparisons. The point I want to insist on here, however, is simply that a political theory that aspires to include all animals necessarily produces liminality, in what we might call a ‘liminality effect’, as much it tries to tame this liminality by encompassing, containing and subdividing it. Between wild and domestic: The Battersea Dogs’ Home and the problem of the ‘stray’ I want to explore this ‘liminality effect’, the excessive and unruly anthrozoological quality of the liminal, via a reflection on the animal–human history of the ‘stray’, the stray dog in particular. There is a special worth in considering the question of liminality historically, given the neglect of the temporal dimension in the kind of political theory that I have briefly discussed (Donaldson and Kymlicka problematically look only to the present social and spatial status of animals, for instance),15 and the dog has a special place in these discussions too. With apologies to Clare Palmer’s errant cats, it is the dog that can fairly claim to be the most liminal of all the animals. Paul Shepard noted years ago, in his account of how animals made us human, that the dog is ‘the most liminal of animals because of the tension between its civilized associations and its degraded state in the wild’; the dog is at once (if we forgive the gendered language) ‘man’s best friend’, the companion in humanity’s civilizing mission, and an ‘alien monster and hypocrite, fallen and hateful, the most corrupt of animals’.16 It is precisely the fact that the dog is (culturally speaking) caught between civility and savagery (far more than the tenuously tamed cat, for instance) that makes the dog so hard to place, and thus so iconically 148 Animal History in the Modern City liminal. In critical circumstances, as is so constantly emphasized in the demonization of rabid or ‘dangerous’ dogs, the dog can switch in a moment from Jekyll to Hyde, companion to predator, domestic to wild, civil to savage, friend to foe.17 The place of the animal is critical to this liminality. It is something of a commonplace now, having been repeatedly demonstrated by animal geographers, that ‘social and spatial belonging … are tightly entwined’.18 The liminal lives of animals are perhaps principally a matter of where they are placed and where they refuse to stay put. The problematic term ‘stray’ clearly partakes of this fateful social and cultural geography. Etymologically, ‘stray’ means simply not being in the right place, wandering from the right path, the fate of lost sheep both real and metaphorical; of domestic (rather than domesticated) animals, it means moreover having no home or having wandered away from home (there is a tension here between being permanently or only temporarily homeless, to which I shall return). The spatial contrast with proper domesticity makes the ‘stray’ the antonym of the ‘pet’.19 The words ‘pet’ and ‘stray’ make indeed a strange but instructive contrast. The English word ‘pet’ has a northern English or Scottish origin, as a word simply for a favourite, a category that could take in human beings, such as spoilt or indulged children, and perhaps only in the early eighteenth century did it come to mean companion animals as we would now understand them.20 By contrast, ‘stray’ is an Anglo-Norman word derived from the management of livestock, and for all the resonant Biblical metaphors, only belatedly became detached from the pastoral and applied to people directly (possibly even as late as the nineteenth century).21 So ‘pets’ became animals, while only in time did the human become a ‘stray’ in his or her own right. Put it another way: animals and humans were once both ‘pets’, but only in the modern age did animals and humans become equivalently out of place ‘strays’. This is a far more complex process than I have indicated, but something of the convergence between the animal and the human in the figure of the ‘stray’ can be seen in the emergence of homelessness as a distinctively modern social problem, whether this be the homeless animal or the homeless human. I would like to focus on the midnineteenth century here, and though I can only illustrate my argument rather than fully justify it, I want to put forward the particular conjuncture in which a range of homes for the human and animal homeless were founded, as one of those ‘spaces and moments’ of liminality/modernity ‘in which the taken-for-granted order of the world ceases to exist and novel forms emerge’.22 The novel form that I have in mind, needless to say, is that of the ‘stray’. Consider the founding, in December 1860, of what would become the Battersea Dogs (and Cats) Home, under the name the ‘Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs’. This was an unprecedented attempt to care for ‘lost’ dogs that had become separated from their owners and ‘starving’ dogs suffering from want and neglect and cruelty in the streets of London. This is the world’s first animal rescue home, and its influence and auspiciousness is undeniable. But though it represents a wholly novel intervention into the liminal lives of London’s lost and stray dogs, there were equivalent rescue homes for humans, dating back to the late eighteenth century, if not earlier, but appearing in remarkable numbers from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, particularly with regard to homes for ‘prostitutes’ and other so-called fallen Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death 149 women, and also for children of the streets. Here Louise Jackson remarks that ‘the development of specialist homes must be linked to the convergence of interests of a social purity movement concerned with “fallen” women and an active child welfare lobby intent on saving ill-treated children’.23 We have, in the same decade as the Battersea Dogs’ Home, the ‘Homes of Hope’ in London (from 1860), founded ‘to help the less degraded class of penitent fallen women’, Louisa Twining’s homes for workhouse girls (1861), and the first of Dr Barnado’s homes for street children (1866), among others.24 Most importantly, these ‘rescue’ efforts share exactly the same conviction – that life on the streets is vicious and demoralizing, and that a home, even an ersatz and temporary one, is the only antidote to such pervasive misery. Their ethos and mission is domestic: to ‘reclaim the wanderer’ by offering them a temporary home. The lost human, like the lost dog, is to be taken off the streets and offered a familial palliative. The connection between these institutions for human and animal unfortunates is therefore the reclamation of the ‘stray’ through domestic salvation. Cynthia Curran notes that ‘the use of the word “home” is significant because it reflects the belief that a dog’s proper place was in a domestic setting; these stray dogs came to be seen as having fallen from security’; but of course the same could be said of stray women and children.25 The connections have not gone unnoticed: the Dickens scholar Grace Moore, for instance, directly links the Dogs’ Home with the ethos of the Magdalens for penitent women, seeing the situation of stray dogs and stray women as analogous, and while I am less convinced of the specific connections (she wrongly sees Charles Dickens’s hand directly at work in the Battersea Dogs’ Home, as at Urania Cottage, for instance), the need to place the ‘stray’ in a morethan-human ideological and policy framing must be accepted.26 Dickens’s fiction has plenty of these ‘strays’, of course; for instance, the street sweeper Jo in Bleak House is described as a ‘wounded animal that had been found in a ditch’. The journalist James Greenwood, ventriloquizing a street child, similarly describes his ‘ragamuffin’ hero ‘taking the streets as I came to them, as a homeless dog might’.27 The trope of the ‘stray’ is certainly very powerful when the vulnerability of women and children in the streets of the city is made the focus. It is surely an amazing transformation, over the longer timescale, that the words ‘waif and stray’, derived as they are from Anglo-Norman law, should lose their reference to unclaimed property and wandering stock respectively, and become attached to abandoned or neglected children, as with the Church of England’s ‘Waifs and Strays’ Society (1881). But perhaps it is small wonder that the stray should migrate from animal to human, given that the ‘stray’ can be figured as a lost lamb to be shepherded back to his or her flock.28 Between animal and human: Beastly slumming at the Dogs Home It is important, however, to stress that ‘stray’ becomes a general figure and metaphor, not merely confined to the ranks of fallen women and street children but extending to 150 Animal History in the Modern City the poor in general. For evidence, see the work of the artist John Charles Dollman, and his visits to the Dogs Home in or around 1875, soon after it had removed to Battersea. Dollman’s pathetic portrayal of a street tyke, ‘supported by voluntary contributions’, as one of his prints has it, has some fun – a serious, sentimental, somewhat troubling kind of fun – with the comparison with human indigents, and the message is obvious enough. We have the contrast between life on the streets and life in the home. But the title puts the work of the animal charity on the same plane as human institutions, making the plea for domesticity in the same register. Both animals and humans can be saved from a life on the streets. Consider too an early and significant statement of support for the work of the Dogs Home, from the pen of John Hollingshead, published in Dickens’s family magazine All the Year Round.29 In this 1862 article Hollingshead neatly counterpoints the spectacle of a dog show in Islington (a similarly recent innovation, the conformation dog show having begun only in 1859) with the work of the Dogs Home round the corner in Holloway, founded just eighteen months later. For Hollingshead the near-simultaneous appearance of the dog show and the Dogs Home suggests a ready complementarity between the genteel world of pedigreed pooches and their unfortunate cousins, between the pampered ‘pet’ and the pathetic ‘stray’. Tellingly, Hollingshead talks of not one but two dog shows, for the dogs in the rescue home are every bit as on display as those in the exhibition hall, since (like all dog shelters seeking to rehome their inmates) the Dogs Home had to make the dogs available for inspection – enabling owners to be reunited with their pets, or prospective families to judge whether they could offer a home to an unwanted animal or a stray. We would today think of the variety of ‘exhibitionary complexes’ by which both animals and humans are rendered visible, and the visual regimes and conventions that organize and narrate these exhibits and their meaning.30 But there is another aspect of exhibition that links the fate of stray animals with that of the human poor. Hollingshead is indulging in the well-recognized and historically situated practice of ‘slumming’ – that is, visiting and viewing those less fortunate than ourselves, for purposes of philanthropy or titillation, or both.31 Here it is given a cross-species makeover (a practice that I would like to call ‘beastly slumming’), and it is complemented by the visits of several other journalists, sketch-writers and artists, all of whom, inevitably, portray the work of the Home and the plight of its inhabitants in comparison to the human world, not merely as idle anthropomorphism, for these accounts not only help to animalize the human as well as humanize the animal but provide also a point of comparison and comparability that underwrites their ostensible and inadvertent political messages. Hollingshead provides the key example here. He makes much of the commonplace doctrine of canine plasticity, which suggests that humans and their pets, exhibit similarities and exchange characteristics: It has been said that every individual member of the human race bears in his outward form a resemblance to some animal. … But what is more remarkable is, that there is one single tribe of animals, and that the most mixed up with man of all, whose different members recall to us constantly, different types of Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death 151 humanity. It is impossible to see a large collection of dogs together, without being continually reminded of the countenances of people you have met or known; of their countenances, and of their ways.32 Naturally enough, Hollingshead has some fun with this, in his observations of a snooty spaniel, a lily-livered Italian Greyhound and a put-upon Pomeranian paterfamilias, all on display at the dog show, whose triumphs and disasters seem inextricably intertwined with that of their human companions. But the most pointed animal– human comparisons, the moment when the precarity and liminality of canine and human lives really presses, comes when he is dealing by contrast with the residents of the Dogs Home, which is portrayed as a strange mixture of the privileged and only temporarily distressed, the lost, fancy animals, momentarily separated from their wellto-do owners, and the true canine poor, the famishing and distressed. Here it is the canine poor who predominate, as Hollingshead makes clear in a subsequent account of the Dogs Home: It is a melancholy fact, and one not at all peculiar to animals generally, that the most worthless dogs have the largest appetites, and make the most noise. The keeper knows about a dozen of his large-headed, thick-limbed, gaping, shambling pensioners by the title of the ‘wolves’, and, to use his own words, ‘they are a precious sample’. They form the ‘dangerous classes’ of the Refuge; they do nothing but eat and yell, are never likely to be reclaimed, and belong to that family of gift dogs which people never will look in the mouth.33 As with the phrase ‘supported by voluntary contributions’ mentioned earlier, but rather more perniciously, the language of ‘dangerous classes’ aligns even this sympathetic account with the worst condescension towards that great spectre at the Victorian feast, the undeserving poor, who turn up here in canine guise. The Dogs Home is repeatedly and persistently portrayed in these beastly slumming accounts as a mongrel institution home to few pedigreed boarders, whereas the poor dogs are boundless. The Dogs Home is open to all – ‘whatever be his race, his social rank, or his religious creed’ is how the Illustrated London News puts it – but it is only to be expected that the permanently homeless dog will preponderate.34 The Dogs Home is filled not with fancy dogs, accidental strays unwittingly slumming it, rather but with tramps and vagrants and otherwise wilful strays. The point is that the comparison to the human vagrant is enticing, not merely passively unresisted but actively embraced by the Victorian essayist. In the charged context of mid-nineteenth-century welfare reform, with the intractable problem of the casual poor always to the fore, the implications of this comparison of human and animal ‘strays’ are simultaneously reassuring and disturbing. Reassuring, even charming, because the stray dog can be portrayed as an equivalent urban wanderer similarly worthy of sympathy and charity – indeed the wholly ‘innocent’ animal can be rather easier to portray as an example of the deserving poor than his more beastly human kin, with all his and her vices. But disturbing too, because these accounts persistently dehumanize the vagrant poor in the act of extending humanity to animals. 152 Animal History in the Modern City This is particularly explicit in George Augustus Sala’s contribution, ‘The Key of the Street’, in which he inhabits the persona of a homeless vagrant, and in so doing subjects himself to a transformation from human to dog: ‘I feel my feet shuffle, my shoulders rise towards my ears; my head goes on one side; I hold my hands in a crouching position before me; I no longer walk, I prowl.’35 As I have put it in my own work, in such an account, ‘Vagrancy carries with it the taste and the taint of transmogrification, the fear and the thrill of “becoming-animal”.’36 Sala’s is a particularly striking and imaginative account of the experience of the human–animal stray, but the liminality of animal and human lives on the Victorian streets is a common trope in this era, where tramps and vagrants and other human wanderers were consistently portrayed as living ‘outside civilization in “anachronistic space” in which the boundary between humans and animals was all too easily crossed’.37 We see it once again in an article on the Dogs’ Home written by the crusading journalist James Greenwood, published in 1866 under the inevitable title, ‘Going to the dogs’.38 Greenwood – who in the same year published his famous exposé of a visit to a casual ward (‘A Night in the Workhouse’) recapitulates his analysis of brutalizing poverty through a reflection on animal others, albeit without feeling the urge to spend the night in the Dogs Home undercover, nor indeed to provide any of the ‘startling particulars’ that spiced up the workhouse exposé. Greenwood’s account of the work of the Dogs’ Home is like so many examples of ‘beastly slumming’ broadly sympathetic, and he shares the conviction that the luckiest dogs are those that find their way to proper homes. But his analysis draws such a deep draught of anthropomorphism that he cannot help but cast the beastliness of the dogs back upon the human waifs and strays who provide him with the precise point of comparison. Without even the ability to ask these canine strays for an account of their condition, Greenwood has to fall back on observation and speculation: the incongruous sight of two sheepdogs encourages Greenwood for instance to imagine that they had somehow conspired to run away from their drover masters in the search of a more comfortable home, and that their appearing to be complete strangers to each other is simply artful dissembling. They have in other words wilfully ‘gone astray’.39 Moreover, the workhouse world of institutionalized dishonesty is transposed more or less directly to the inhabitants of the Dogs Home. The by no means dominant ‘honest’ dog is constantly in danger of being demoralized by the sharps and cadgers who are their fellow inmates: ‘Other dogs, contemptible curs, all teeth and belly, may endeavour to persuade these honest creatures that nothing can be more foolish than to thrust themselves forward to be owned out of such snug quarters, retired from the cares and anxieties of the world, and nothing to do but eat and sleep’.40 The inhabitants of the workhouse – the incorrigible, work-shy, thoroughly undeserving poor – are made the model for understanding the milieu of the lost and starving dog: but of course only at the expense of acknowledging the moral descent into animality implied by the business of ‘going to the dogs’. In other words, by aligning the extension of ‘philanthropy’ and ‘humanitarianism’ to animal welfare, the practitioners of beastly slumming can hardly resist calling into question the division between animals and humans, and thus to produce and reproduce ‘liminal lives’. Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death 153 Between life and death: The purgatory of the stray So the canine poor are to be pitied, and the work of the dogs’ home approved: but never indiscriminately. If it is right to help these dogs, the principles of economy, the truths of political economy – should always be observed. Since the dogs could not be housed forever, and not all dogs could be rehomed, some – many – were necessarily rendered disposable. And here the consequences for dogs who are judged unsuited or unlucky diverge drastically from their human peers – for these animals are subject to a third and fatal form of liminality. These animals hover between life and death, a ‘zone of occult instability’ or fluctuation, as Frantz Fanon puts it.41 Or, as Colin Dayan writes, ‘Dogs stand in for a bridge – the bridge that joins persons to things, life to death, both in our nightmares and in our daily lives.’42 In the case of the inmates at the Dogs Home, after a short grace period (fourteen days to begin with, coming down as low as three days by the end of the century), surplus animals were required to be euthanized. As the Illustrated London News argued, in its arch way: There are some dogs whose life is of no value to themselves or to anybody else. When a fellow of this good-for-nothing description has enjoyed the bounty of so liberal an institution more than a fortnight without paying for it, being in fact a pauper, and having no master to reclaim or employ him, then he is gently invited to retire from existence; for human science has invented several easy and painless devices to relieve an unlucky dog of the burden of his mortality, cheaper than permitting him ‘to eat his own head off ’. It would, indeed, be unjustifiable, as a matter of social and political economy – worse than the toleration of monkery or beggary in the Middle Ages – to undertake to support all the idle dogs in London as long as they chose to live at the public expense. Their consumption of food, which, though not of the same kind as human food, has yet a value no less certain and appreciable, must compete ultimately with the wants of the twolegged population.43 Political economy here takes on a dimension that certainly haunts the human but which is hardly comparable in all but the most exceptional circumstances and in the most excessive rhetoric. By 1871, by which time it had removed south of the river to Battersea, the Dogs Home was participating in the systematic policing of strays from the streets of London, having established a working relationship with the Metropolitan Police, and the franchise of putting to sleep thousands of unwanted dogs every year. The Dogs’ Home represents an exemplary kindness to animals, then, but also a kindness that kills, that has to kill, that has to participate in the making killable: in short, the Battersea Dogs’ Home was not just the world’s first rescue home but also its first ‘kill-shelter’. In this regard it further anticipates the world the Victorians have furnished for us. ‘Stray’, then, takes on a deadly connotation in this biopolitical or zoopolitical regime. ‘Stray’ is an ambiguous, liminal category (are animals temporarily lost or defiantly errant, homeless by accident or by choice?), but when translated into the practices 154 Animal History in the Modern City of law and policing the fixing of the identity of the stray is a political judgement that condemns an animal not to the deprivation of its liberty but its existence. The geographer Krithika Srinivasan rightly observes that dogs in modern Britain, to be assured even of life (the very limited business of non-interference, put forward by Donaldson and Kymlicka as one of the rights of denizenship), have to show that they belong to someone, that they are property.44 The comparison she makes with the Indian ‘street dog’ shows that the modern, Western ‘stray’ is a very particular legal and spatial construction, with a special and instructive history and geography. ‘Dogs in India can be in the absence of a human owner’, she argues, but ‘strays’ in Britain are by definition out of place.45 If the stray animals cannot be ‘rehomed’ they can be rendered out of existence as well as out of public space. We recognize that ‘civility … is a principle that has the power to actively expel those who challenge the socio-spatial boundaries of the moral order’, but this expulsion, ultimately, is from the world of the living.46 The killing of animals in the Dogs’ Home, which is in the following pictures a simple before-and-after contrast (Figures 9.1 and 9.2), might in fact be figured as a representation of the hovering of the animal between life and death, like Schrödinger’s famous cat, here a ‘poise or suspension between opposites’, exhibiting ‘the seepage between entities assumed to be distinct, whether dead or living, animal or inanimate, commonplace or extraordinary’.47 Figure 9.1 Going into the lethal chamber: from Basil Tozer, ‘The Dogs Home, Battersea’, English Illustrated Magazine, volume 13 (1895): 445-9, 447. Courtesy Cambridge University Library. Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death 155 Figure 9.2 Coming out of the lethal chamber: from Basil Tozer, ‘The Dogs Home, Battersea’, English Illustrated Magazine, volume 13 (1895): 445-9, 448. Courtesy Cambridge University Library. Conclusions In Donaldson and Kymlicka’s vision of Zoopolis, the liminal animal can be granted a place in our society, a form of citizenship. For them, the point or purpose of citizenship ‘is to recognize and uphold membership in a shared society. Citizenship is a way of acknowledging who belongs here, who is a member of the people in whose name the state governs, and whose subjective good must be considered in determining the public good and in shaping the social norms that structure our cooperative relations.’48 Inspiring as this vision is, however, we must acknowledge the realities of animals’ liminal lives, and the work of such liminal concepts as the ‘stray’ in drawing connections between humans and animals, sometimes to the advantage of nonhumans, but sometimes to their utter detriment. In the purgatorial condition of the ‘stray’, the boundaries of the human and the animal seem to be inherently ambiguous, indicative of their ‘extreme separation and vertiginous proximity’: at once dissolving the boundary between the human and animal poor, and asserting that non-human animals possess most insistently those ‘lives not worthy of being lived’.49 The stray in this regard becomes a kind of anti-citizen, and in the most extreme separation between the human and the animal, dogs and other animals exist in a palpably precarious form of liminality, trembling perilously ‘at the edge of life’.50 156 Animal History in the Modern City Notes 1 Terry O’Connor, Animals as Neighbors: The Past and Present of Commensal Species (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013). 2 Raymond Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger, What is a Dog? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). See also the earlier evolutionary biology discussion in Raymond Coppinger and Mark Feinstein, How Dogs Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 3 See, for instance, Susan M. Squier, Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). 4 Kimberley K. Smith, Governing Animals: Animal Welfare and the Liberal State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 67. 5 Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 218. 6 Alasdair Cochrane, ‘Cosmozoopolis: the Case Against Group-Differentiated Animal Rights’, Law, Ethics and Philosophy 1 (2013): 127–41. 7 Erin Luther, ‘Tales of Cruelty and Belonging: In Search of an Ethic for Urban HumanWildlife Relations’, Animal Studies Journal 2 (2013): 35–54. 8 Clare Palmer, ‘Companion Cats as Co-Citizens? Comments on Sue Donaldson’s and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis’, Dialogue 52 (2013): 759–67, 765. 9 Irus Braverman, Zooland: The Institution of Captivity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); Irus Braverman, Wild Life: The Institution of Nature (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015). For domesticity, see Philip Howell, At Home and Astray: The Domestic Dog in Victorian Britain (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015). The quotation is from Bob Torres, Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights (Oakland: AK Press, 2007), 59. 10 Kiboko na Kipepeo weblog (co-authored with George E. Brooks), ‘On the Origins of Liminal Species’, weblog, ‘Kiboko na Kipepeo/The Hippo and the Butterfly’, 19 May 2013. Available online: kibokonakipepeo.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/on-the-originof-liminal-species (accessed 10 August 2016). 11 Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis, 218. 12 I take this contrast from Squier, Liminal Lives, 263. 13 Celia Deane-Drummond, The Wisdom of the Liminal: Evolution and Other Animals in Human Becoming (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 4. 14 Tim Cresswell, ‘The Prosthetic Citizen: New Geographies of Citizenship’, Political Power and Social Theory 20 (2009): 259–73. 15 For a different approach, see Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel, The War Against Animals (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 16 Paul Shepard, The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997), 63–4. 17 See, for instance, Kathleen Kete, The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in NineteenthCentury Paris (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994). For Jekyll and Hyde, see Colin Dayan, With Dogs at the Edge of Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 122. 18 Luther, ‘Tales of Cruelty and Belonging’, 40. 19 Howell, At Home and Astray. In arguing that the ‘stray’ is the antonym of the ‘pet’, I do not mean to say that this is its only meaning: the question of how the ‘stray’ as a category moves from the management of rural livestock to that of the street dogs of the city is an important question to which this chapter does not speak directly. Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death 157 20 See Ingrid H. Tague, Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015). 21 Apart from an ambiguous reference to Valentine and Orson (1649), the OED offers only these later nineteenth-century examples: 1864 F.W. Robinson Mattie II. 78 ‘A stray whom no one would claim as child, sister, friend’; 1889 Harper’s Mag. Mar. 545/2 ‘There is also a school for strays and truants … which re-enforces the public schools’; 1892 Daily News 2 April 6/6 ‘Greater facilities are now offered than formerly in conveying the strays to the Home [for Lost Dogs]’. 22 Bjørn Thomassen, Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 23 Louise A. Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000), 133. 24 See, for instance, Paula Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 18601914 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000); Jackson, Child Sexual Abuse. 25 Cynthia Curran, ‘Pets’, in Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era, ed. James E. Adams, Tom Prendergast and Sara Prendergast (Danbury: Scholastic Library Publishing, 2004), 189–93, 192. 26 Grace Moore, ‘Beastly Criminals and Criminal Beasts: Stray Women and Stray Dogs in Oliver Twist’, Victorian Animal Dreams: Representations of Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture, ed. Deborah Denenholz Morse and Martin A. Danahay (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 201–14. 27 James Greenwood, The True History of a Little Ragamuffin (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866), 74. 28 In the United States, ‘Good Shepherd Homes’ from 1893 make the link quite explicitly: see Sharon E. Wood, The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), ch. 8. 29 John Hollingshead, ‘Two Dog-Shows’, All the Year Round 2 August 1862: 493–7. 30 See, for instance, Helen Cowie, Exhibiting Animals in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Empathy, Education, Entertainment (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 31 See Chad Heap, Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 18851940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 32 Hollingshead, ‘Two Dog-Shows’, 493. 33 John Hollingshead, ‘Happy Dogs’, in Miscellanies (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874), 203. 34 Illustrated London News, 22 August 1868, 182. 35 George Augustus Sala, ‘The Key to the Street’, Household Words 6 September 1851: 565–72, 568. 36 Howell, At Home and Astray, 84. 37 Koven, Slumming, 61. 38 James Greenwood, ‘Going to the Dogs’, The Star (London: C. Beckett, 1866). 39 For the attraction and allure of wandering, see Jeremy Tambling, Gone Astray: Dickens and London (Harlow: Pearson, 2009). 40 Greenwood, ‘Going to the Dogs’, 5–6. 41 See Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove, 1968), 227; the more recent translation by Richard Philcox (New York: Grove, 2004, 163) prefers ‘hidden fluctuation’. For this reference, see Dayan, With Dogs at the Edge of Life, xiv. 42 Dayan, With Dogs at the Edge of Life, xiii. 158 Animal History in the Modern City 43 Illustrated London News, 22 August 1868, 182. 44 Krithika Srinivasan, ‘The Biopolitics of Animal Being and Welfare: Dog Control and Care in the UK and India’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38, no. 1 (2013): 106–19. 45 Srinivasan, ‘Biopolitics of Animal Being’, 110. 46 Luther, ‘Tales of Bruelty and Belonging’, 41. 47 Dayan, With Dogs at the Edge of Life, xiv. The pictures are from Basil Tozer, ‘The Dogs’ Home, Battersea’, The English Illustrated Magazine 13 (1895): 445–9. For an extended discussion, one that I read after writing this chapter, see Susan Hamilton, ‘Dogs’ Home and Lethal Chambers, Or, What Was it Like to be a Battersea Dog’, in Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture: Contexts for Criticism, ed. Lawrence W. Mazzeno and Ronald D. Morrison (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 83–105. Hamilton persuasively argues that these carefully staged photographs work to elicit sympathy and impress the reader with the humane disposal of surplus animals, domesticating the potentially disruptive charge of its imagery. 48 Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, ‘Animals and the Frontiers of Citizenship’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 34, no. 2 (2014): 201–19, 217. 49 Giorgio Agamben, The Use of Bodies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 90. I reference here something of the ‘purgatorial anxiety’ involved in the distinction between bios and zöe put forward by Paul Rabinow, French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), as discussed by Squier, Liminal Lives, 8. 50 Dayan, With Dogs at the Edge of Life. Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. The Use of Bodies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016). Bartley, Paula. Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860-1914 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000). Braverman, Irus. Zooland: The Institution of Captivity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). Braverman, Irus. Wild Life: The Institution of Nature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). Cochrane, Alasdair. ‘Cosmozoopolis: the Case Against Group-Differentiated Animal Rights’, Law, Ethics and Philosophy 1 (2013): 127–41. Coppinger, Raymond and Coppinger, Lorna. What is a Dog? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). Coppinger, Raymond and Feinstein, Mark. How Dogs Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). Cowie, Helen. Exhibiting Animals in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Empathy, Education, Entertainment (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Cresswell, Tim. ‘The Prosthetic Citizen: New Geographies of Citizenship’, Political Power and Social Theory 20 (2009): 259–73. Curran, Cynthia. ‘Pets’, in Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era, ed. James E. Adams, Tom Prendergast and Sara Prendergast (Danbury: Scholastic Library Publishing, 2004), 189–93. Dayan, Colin. With Dogs at the Edge of Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). Deane-Drummond, Celia. The Wisdom of the Liminal: Evolution and Other Animals in Human Becoming (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014). Between Wild and Domestic, Animal and Human, Life and Death 159 Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove, 1968). Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove, 2004). Greenwood, James. ‘Going to the Dogs’, in The Star (London: C. Beckett, 1866). Greenwood, James. The True History of a Little Ragamuffin (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1866). Hamilton, Susan. ‘Dogs’ Home and Lethal Chambers, Or, What Was it Like to be a Battersea Dog’, in Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture: Contexts for Criticism, ed. Lawrence W. Mazzeno and Ronald D. Morrison (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 83–105. Heap, Chad. Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Hollingshead, John. ‘Two Dog-Shows’, All the Year Round 2 August (1862): 493–7. Hollingshead, John. ‘Happy Dogs’, in Miscellanies (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874). Howell, Philip. At Home and Astray: The Domestic Dog in Victorian Britain (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015). Jackson, Louise A. Child Sexual Abuse in Victorian Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000). Kete, Kathleen. The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1994). For Jekyll and Hyde, see Colin Kiboko na Kipepeo weblog (co-authored with Brooks, George E.) ‘On the Origins of Liminal Species’, weblog, ‘Kiboko na Kipepeo/The Hippo and the Butterfly’, 19 May 2013. Available online: kibokonakipepeo.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/on-the-origin-of-liminal-species. Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). Kymlicka, Will and Donaldson, Sue. ‘Animals and the Frontiers of Citizenship’. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 34, no. 2 (2014): 201–19, 217. Luther, Erin. ‘Tales of Cruelty and Belonging: In Search of an Ethic for Urban HumanWildlife Relations’, Animal Studies Journal 2 (2013): 35–54. Moore, Grace. ‘Beastly Criminals and Criminal Beasts: Stray Women and Stray Dogs in Oliver Twist’, in Victorian Animal Dreams: Representations of Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture, ed. Deborah Denenholz Morse and Martin A. Danahay (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 201–14. O’Connor, Terry. Animals as Neighbors: The Past and Present of Commensal Species (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013). Palmer, Clare. ‘Companion Cats as Co-Citizens? Comments on Sue Donaldson’s and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis’. Dialogue 52 (2013): 759–67. Rabinow, Paul. French DNA: Trouble in Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Sala, George Augustus. ‘The Key to the Street’, Household Words 6, September 1851: 565–72. Shepard, Paul The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (Washington DC: Island Press, 1997). Smith, Kimberley K. Governing Animals: Animal Welfare and the Liberal State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Squier, Susan M. Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). 160 Animal History in the Modern City Srinivasan, Krithika. ‘The Biopolitics of Animal Being and Welfare: Dog Control and Care in the UK and India’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38, no. 1 (2013): 106–19. Tague, Ingrid H. Animal Companions: Pets and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015). Tambling, Jeremy. Gone Astray: Dickens and London (Harlow: Pearson, 2009). Thomassen, Bjørn. Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). Torres, Bob. Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights (Oakland: AK Press, 2007). Tozer, Basil. ‘The Dogs’ Home, Battersea’, The English Illustrated Magazine 13 (1895): 445–9. Wadiwel, Dinesh Joseph. The War Against Animals (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Wood, Sharon E. The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 10 Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush: Humans, Leopards and Initiation in West African History Stephanie Zehnle Introduction From the 1890s to the 1920s, rumours about leopards, about humans dressed as leopards, or about leopard spirits killing human beings paralysed the inhabitants of the British colony of Sierra Leone. The authorities at first played down such stories as ‘primitive superstition’ but when dead bodies were found, the police and courts were forced to deal with these so-called human-leopard murders within the colonial judicial system. From the confusing and often mixed metaphorical statements of the witnesses and the accused, the British legal bureaucracy settled on the following account of the violence, an explanation that is now canonical: The ‘human leopards’ form a secret society, how recent or how ancient no one appears to know. … To obtain admission to the society, an aspirant must dress himself in a leopard’s skin, prowl about in the jungle on all fours, and when he finds a suitable victim, preferably a boy or a girl, and, for choice, defenceless and alone, spring upon it from behind, and kill it, as a leopard would, by swiftly severing the spinal cord. … It may be that the human leopard devours his victim, but whatever else he does with him, he must preserve some of the fat, for human fat is an essential ingredient in the ‘medicine’ or charm, known by the name of ‘borfimor’. To this sovereign drug, the Society of Human Leopards owes its power.1 Dozens of the accused would eventually be sentenced to death by the colonial and district courts for these terrible crimes – particularly in the series of trials held between 1912 and 1913 – but the scandalous stories of mysterious deaths caused by humans/leopards would not be silenced. The colonial government concluded that since the problem could not be entirely solved by legal measures, it needed a trained anthropologist to clarify the nature and crimes of such ‘secret societies’. They called in the British anthropologist Northcote Whitridge Thomas (1868–1936),2 a scholar who had already completed research for the Nigerian colonial government on 162 Animal History in the Modern City indigenous law, which, despite his reputation for academic and personal eccentricity, was praised for its thoroughness. In Sierra Leone, Thomas travelled extensively from February 1914 to April 1915 collecting information on the alleged secret societies; but there was an immediate conflict between the academic and the legal requirements. Thomas asked the colonial government for his local informants to be protected from criminal prosecution – the Attorney General replied, however, that all criminals had to be reported to the colonial administration. Worse was to come: for the purpose of his research Thomas even attempted to be initiated into local societies, though the chiefs he consulted were apprehensive of diplomatic tensions with the colonial staff and immediately reported his request to the District Commissioner.3 The colonial government shortly prohibited any such initiation, evidence again of the mounting distrust between the anthropologist and those who had called for his expertise. All the same, Thomas was able to proceed with his study of secret societies in Sierra Leone. In his interpretation of their initiation rituals, Thomas focused on two major concepts: liminality and (animal) totemism. For his research on the latter, Thomas benefitted from a life-long interest in European and non-European ‘folk superstitions concerning animals’.4 In his unpublished monograph Religion, Totemism & Reincarnation in West Africa, for instance, Thomas analysed the widespread belief in the possibility of ‘transmigration into an animal’5 (especially from human to leopard), and he also emphasized the concept of the leopard as the ‘the bush soul of the [human] king’6, along with the totemic taboos regarding leopards in Sierra Leone and beyond.7 Thomas’s other guiding concept, that of liminality in initiation rites, was adopted from the ethnographer Arnold van Gennep’s Rites de Passage (1909).8 Thomas used van Gennep’s recently published ideas to highlight a secret society’s ability to generate the ritual ‘rebirth’ of initiates, specifically by leading them out of the towns and practising rites during a period of ‘seclusion in the bush’.9 Liminality and animal totems thus formed the basis of Thomas’s understanding of Sierra Leone’s secret societies. What is astonishing is that Thomas did not link these insights in the process of youth initiation. To appreciate the full complexity of Sierra Leone’s human–animal relations in the context of the so-called secret societies and the human-leopard killings, going beyond the account of a passing colonial scandal and the anthropological explanations offered at the time, this chapter revisits the theory of liminality, but applies these ideas to both humans and (real, not merely metaphorical) leopards. This chapter seeks specifically to consider the analogous liminality of male youths moving into the bush for purposes of initiation, and juvenile leopards wandering in the towns looking for prey. Historicizing ethnological concepts concerning the spatial and temporal liminality of human initiation and exploring the use of these theories for a multi-species history, these reflections lead to a re-evaluation of liminal spaces (urbanity in this case) and liminal periods (here, juvenility). Expanding the ethnographic concept of liminality To make the concept of liminality fruitful for historical human–animal studies, it is necessary to integrate this essentially ethnographic term into both historical methodology and the sub-discipline of animal history. When the French ethnographer Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 163 Arnold van Gennep first presented his Rites de Passage, he established a three-stage model of such initiation rites. During the rite of separation (1) the initiate has to break with the past or his whole personality. In the transition period (2) – the liminal stage – the actual change of a person or group takes place. Finally, the rites of incorporation (3) mark the resocialization of the initiates into society, as ‘new’ persons. Because Sierra Leonian initiation rites were not well-researched when van Gennep wrote his monograph,10 he referred to examples of the so-called secret societies11 from other West African regions and the Congo, which were responsible for organizing the initiation of children before or during puberty. At first, van Gennep explained, the initiates were secluded – often in the forest. In the période de marge, initiates’ bodies were then altered – by, for example, circumcision, ritual injuries and body painting. Lastly, the initiated were reintegrated by rites of being reborn, by being bathed in a river, by relearning how to walk and eat, by destroying the forest camps or by way of other ritual performances. Despite not being able to draw on knowledge about these particular societies, the so-called Poro initiation rites of colonial Sierra Leone and Liberia followed van Gennep’s classic model of rites of passage impressively accurately. One major shortcoming has to be highlighted with reference to the Poro liminal phase, however. Although van Gennep considered seclusion ‘in the bush’ or ‘in the wilderness’ a general feature of West African initiation, he did not consider either animals or animal spirits as relevant actors or factors in this process. In the orthodox account, the ‘liminal’ cohort does not follow the normal social structures, but becomes temporarily part of the order of nature; more precisely, they become members of the inhabitants of the forest, a place that included wild animals. But this means that only someone looking at this rite from the perspective of the society left behind in the settlement could accurately describe that stage as ‘liminal’; from an internal view there was still a hierarchy and a society in connection with animals and forest spirits. In order to grasp the liminal nature of human-animal society, we clearly must include animals and animal spirits as subjects. It is equally necessary to focus on the middle stage explored in Victor Turner’s subsequent work on liminality, which we need briefly to explain. Turner relied on his colleague van Gennep with regard to the three-stage structure of rites of passage, but he made his entire focus the middle or liminal phase. In 1967, he presented his thoughts about this aspect of ritual initiation in his famous text ‘Betwixt and Between: the Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’.12 Turner argued that ‘during the intervening liminal period, the state of the ritual subject (the “passenger”) is ambiguous; he passes through a realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state’.13 In contrast to stages one and three in van Gennep’s terminality, the liminal stage here was not so much a state but a transition. Turner calls the subject of this stage a ‘liminal persona’ that is, again unlike its preceding and successive states, structurally and physically invisible: ‘A society’s secular definitions do not allow for the existence of a not-boynot-man, which is what a novice in a male puberty rite is’.14 On a symbolic level this social invisibility is often linked with ‘the dead, or worse still, the un-dead’,15 and the participants often lose their former personal names accordingly. The symbolism of death here is frequently complemented by the symbolism of birth, of ‘being in the womb’,16 caught between life and death, unseen and not yet existent. Turner’s development of the concept of liminality has been extremely influential. In more recent years, however, sociologists have tried to move the theory of liminality 164 Animal History in the Modern City away from small-scale societies in order to make it efficient for explaining the process of change in larger societies during collective ‘liminal periods’;17 Turner himself draws the useful distinction between ‘liminal’ and ‘liminoid’.18 The concept can be and has been applied to time frames of very different lengths, to groups of people of various sizes and to markedly different spaces. Bjørn Thomassen helpfully categorizes liminality according to subjects (individuals, groups and societies), temporality (moments, periods and epochs)19 and spatiality (places, areas and regions).20 His tabulation (adapted in Table 10.1) combining the subject and temporal dimensions is especially useful for historians as it offers to bring individual experiences and liminal societies together. But while Thomassen argues for a somewhat strict and formal distinction between planned and unintended liminal experiences across his very broad range of examples, my own empirical data (and that of van Gennep and Turner) suggests that one must instead accept that any liminal experience – whether intended or not – shares the same significance: such liminality is always dangerous because of the momentum of contingency inherent to any liminal stage. So, for instance, boys leaving for initiation may come back alive as new persons, something intended and expected by the community but it is wholly unforeseen how they will change society as new adult actors. Again, even if a revolution is planned in certain circles, the outcome is typically not predictable in the moment of turmoil.21 Liminality and contingency are inseparable; the element of planning and intentionality is not as definitive as Thomassen suggests. Returning to West Africa around 1900, it is an obvious move to apply the concept of liminality to Poro male initiation groups in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Table 10.1 adopts Thomassen’s systematics in order to visualize the key liminal dimensions of actors and time in the specific case of the human-leopard killings in colonial West Africa. As a rite of passage, the Poro initiation follows the broad principles set out by van Gennep and developed by Turner: for a liminal period of usually a couple of months, the young boys left the town to become members of the animal society. It is much less obvious, however, to see how we can bring the concept to bear in the era of intense Table 10.1 Categories of liminality in colonial West African ‘human leopard killings’ Liminality Subject Group Society Moment Individual ritual, Attacks of animals Cohorts undergoing a particular rite of passage Mysterious deaths Period Puberty, sickness Youth (initiation), Colonial court (mental or physical), period of seclusion proceedings, individual initiation in the dry season, (anti-)colonial charms/spirits education, Becoming wars a member of nature/ the forest Permanent liminality Intermediaries Colonialism, of ritual experts brokering between age of crisis local and colonial cultures Epoch Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 165 administrative and economic colonization at hand, and with references to debates concerning local and regional processes in ‘indigenous’ societies. But these Poro rites were not situated in a timeless ethnological space, for British and Liberian colonialism as well as Christian and Muslim missionaries were forcibly challenging traditional authorities, such as demonizing the process of initiation. Rumours were spread abroad, for instance, that the Poro were a criminal organization devoted to the ritual killing and eating of children, merely concealing their crimes by imitating leopards. We should recognize that global colonial discourses contributed to a critical liminal period in their own right, and that they had a major impact on local Poro activities and beliefs. In the Poro initiation rites of colonial West Africa, boys kept in forest camps had to find their own nourishment in the bush, while non-initiates had to stay in the town during this period. The boys often called out warnings, played instruments or put signs on the roads to prevent any passers-by from entering their barricaded domain in the wilderness (Figure 10.1). Accordingly, the liminal period of the initiates affected the life of their societies, because crossing the forest for trade, travel, agricultural activities or hunting was strictly prohibited. Only the ritual experts were allowed to pass the border of forest and settlement. With a reference to Mary Douglas, Victor Turner added that because of the liminal personae’s status as ‘betwixt and between’, initiates were considered as polluting or dangerous to those who have never experienced this rite of passage themselves, which is why they generally Figure 10.1 Initiation authorities visiting a town with their human-animal costumes. Photography by Northcote Whitridge Thomas, Sierra Leone 1914/15. Courtesy University of Cambridge, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, NWT P1150206. 166 Animal History in the Modern City had to be secluded from society.22 If we prefer van Gennep’s terminology, initiates were sacred, holy, intangible and extremely dangerous all at the same time.23 Stealing from neighbouring societies was also common at this stage, as a sort of test of male courage.24 The initiates were literally meant to prey on others as wild animals do: they hunted animals of the forest or those of settlements the way predators like leopards would. The liminal phase here meant in fact that they became animals for a limited period and were only subsequently reintegrated into human culture and society. They acted as predators from a position in-between species and thus were in a particularly dangerous liminal place and condition. This human-animal transition was further practised by the use of animal masks and costumes. Turner called masks and other ritual equipment of this hybrid type ‘monstrous’ and ‘grotesque’, and they were meant to be, that they might inspire the liminal persons to rethink relations, facts and their own selves when confronted with this dangerous hybridity.25 The mixture of human and animal shapes or characteristics within these sacred objects is an essential element singled out by Turner as an example among other forms of hybridity: Put a man’s head on a lion’s body and you think about the human head in the abstract. Perhaps it becomes for you, as a member of a given culture and with appropriate guidance, an emblem of chieftainship; or it may be explained as Figure 10.2 The Colonial Government engaged hunters to kill leopards. Photography by Northcote Whitridge Thomas, Sierra Leone 1914/15. Courtesy University of Cambridge, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, NWT P1150251. Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 167 representing the soul against the body; or intellect as contrasted with brute force, or innumerable other things.26 There is a problematic implication here that animals merely ‘represent’ human offices, religious or moral values at the liminal stage of rites of passage, and while Turner briefly argues that these human-animals may also generate sustained reflection about the represented animal itself, the focus is clearly on the human world: The man-lion monster also encourages the observer to think about lions, their habits, qualities, metaphorical properties, religious significance, and so on. More important than these, the relation between man and lion, empirical and metaphorical, may be speculated on, and new ideas developed on this topic.27 Here, Turner considers human-animal hybridity first and foremost as a form of spiritual lesson, neglecting the role of actual living animals in the whole ritual process. Similarly, in a later book, Turner rethought therioanthropic figures in the Middle Eastern and European past (namely, centaurs) and also in traditional African societies, touching upon the idea that the liminal stage was basically a temporary withdrawal from culture into nature: Thus, symbolically, their structural life is snuffed out by animality and nature, even as it is being regenerated by these very same forces. One dies into nature to be reborn from it.28 Compare this however with colonial anthropologist Northcote Thomas’s official report on the West African Poro, in which initiates are understood as ‘being in the womb’ of nature in an abstract sense, and more precisely as ‘being in the womb’ of the leopard, an animal by which they had been ‘eaten’, and only would they then – hopefully – be reborn successfully as adult men at the third stage.29 In the Poro bush, this process of being eaten by the leopard spirit was made manifest by the inflicting of minor injuries and scars on the backs of the initiates. These marks were then interpreted as coming from the teeth of the leopard.30 During this ritual, Poro authorities themselves often acted as leopard spirits and imitated leopard growls with instruments or their voices.31 Thus, the bush was feared for its demons/spirits/animals eating children as non-initiated beings both spiritually and corporally, though it was also required for boys to become men.32 Here, liminality might easily be defined as wilderness, the antistructure and anti-culture of a society, to use Turner’s expressions but at the same time it is the source of all structure and adult human culture. Nature in this model has its own rules, processes and powers, and is not to be conceptualized only as the antithesis of society’s structure but rather as an alternative structure that stands in stark contrast to human society. With regard to the historical adaptation of anthropological concepts of liminality for West African initiation, the question however remains: how can we integrate animals as a set of actors in their own right? Pace Turner, animals should not be seen merely as symbols for human initiation, since they inhabited the places where initiates 168 Animal History in the Modern City stayed and were addressed as fellow members of the ‘forest society’ by Poro initiates. Accepting that Poro youths were liminals, can we think of forest animals as liminals too, through their involvement in the same rituals? When leopards come to town, the boys go to the forest Let it be emphasized that leopards not only existed as imagined beings for the Poro authorities and initiates. Leopard teeth and skins were preferred materials for the production of ritual objects, costumes and masks. The Poro moreover entered the forest habitats of West African leopards, a place dangerous for humans. Fatal attacks of leopards on humans were often reported, even if reliable data about such animal attacks was not collected by colonial authorities in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and thus not available to the historian. Until about 1900 the British administration simply had no particular interest in recording such incidents, because deaths caused by predators were considered a problem for a hinterland population that was not effectively colonized (in terms of taxation, jurisdiction etc.) until the mid-1890s. This indifference of the colonial government of Sierra Leone changed drastically, however, when rumours about leopards, human leopards or humans in leopard skins predating human victims led to mass panic, detention and executions.33 In this situation colonial staff and journalists tried to collect as much information as they could about the species that might have been involved in these killings or murders, but all they accomplished was the collection of metaphorical explanations and inconsistent rumours.34 Most researchers agreed that leopards were killers, and thus plausible suspects: ‘Leopards notoriously eat boys and girls when they get their chance, and they spring on them from the jungle, and sever their spines’.35 At the same time, it was assumed that human murderers could take advantage of the leopard’s ferocity, copying such methods of killing in order to avoid criminal prosecution. The sources and discourses on humanleopard killing are plainly confusing. By contrast, however, collections of the so-called native laws dealt with questions of compensation in cases of leopards killing domestic animals in a markedly more rational manner.36 There is some evidence that leopard attacks in villages and small towns were common enough to have led to local laws created specifically for such eventualities. Villagers were also from time to time attacked by the so-called maneating leopards, and reacted by calling in a government hunter to solve the problem, or, more often than not, attempting to solve the problem themselves by building leopard traps around their villages. These traps were clearly created to mark the border between humans and animals, village and forest.37 Villagers usually abstained from sending hunters directly into the forests in search for leopards, however, because it was very unlikely that a particular leopard could be tracked by this method.38 ‘Leopards are so common in Sierra Leone as to amount to a pest’,39 a District Commissioner lamented in 1928, recalling the cases of several persons allegedly killed by the same leopard in 1925 and 1926; the government engaged hunters who went out and killed not the one ‘man-eater’ but seven leopards in all, capturing the cubs (Figure 10.2).40 Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 169 ‘As no further casualties occurred amongst the villagers, it seems certain that the man-eater was destroyed’, the Commissioner concluded, but no information was collected on leopard behaviour or the reasons for their transformation into ‘man-eaters’. It is indeed impossible to draw generalized conclusions on leopard behaviour from historical documents alone. Fortunately, up-to-date ethological studies on leopard behaviour can be consulted. We know that, first of all, leopards are extremely sensitive to territoriality: ‘Leopards live in a complex land tenure system that is highly dependent on the stability of long-term relationships’.41 They live solitary lives in their own habitats, but the habitats of males and females overlap in a gendered spatial system:42 in rainforest areas of West Africa, for instance, a male leopard’s habitat usually has a size of about 90 kilometres, which he co-inhabits with approximately three females (and their cubs).43 Leopards may thus mate with each other without leaving their own habitats. On the other hand, this means that adolescent male leopards do have to leave the area where they were raised and find their own territory and partners of the opposite sex with whom they can cohabit: ‘Generally, subadult female leopards are philopatric, and subadult males disperse’.44 In this transition period between a cub and a grown-up male, leopards can then be observed wandering, exploring unknown areas, and are markedly more alarmed and aggressive since they have to compete with established males when crossing into their territories. Fights between established males and migrant newcomers result, and often end with the death of one or the other leopard. The analogy with human youths is clear: as for human beings puberty should be regarded as a temporally liminal period, in certain animal species at least (Table 10.2). With regard to leopards, this temporal liminality (youth, juvenility) also includes a distinctive spatial liminality, because the advent of a certain life period leads to migration and mobility between established habitats, until such time as leopards can find and establish their own territory. The social territorial space of leopards is thus reorganized whenever leopard offspring mature into adults. African forest leopards have no special mating seasons, so that the male leopard leaves the mother after about fourteen months in any given season. But the sex of the offspring in crucial here: females usually established their habitats close to their mother (around 3 kilometres) whereas males migrated further (around 11 kilometres). Male youths dispersed further afield the denser an area’s leopard population is, in order to avoid competition with their fathers. Once established, the gendered spatial order of leopards usually continued, Table 10.2 Spatial and temporal liminality in human and leopard hunting behaviour in colonial West Africa Liminality Human Animal (Leopard) Spatial Hunting, agriculture, village and suburbanity, migration, initiation Temporal Youth, marriage, rites of installation, colonialism (political/social/ economic crisis), death, initiation Hunting, mating, search for habitats (youth), change of landscape Youth, hunting activity, seasonal behaviour 170 Animal History in the Modern City but agricultural or other forms of human presence may disturb this territorial order and its restructuring.45 One further, highly significant, aspect of animal liminality is defined by the fact that leopards’ hunting expeditions sometimes took them into villages and towns. Leopards may not have preyed upon domestic animals and humans ‘notoriously’, but they certainly started to hunt closer to human settlements in the dry season (November to April), when prey became scarce in the forests.46 The more extreme the dry season the more regularly leopards would enter towns, for all their aversion to interaction with humans. Activity and mobility typically increase in the dry season in any event.47 The common explanation offered in colonial Sierra Leone, that leopards would attack children in the dry season, was an empirically correct statement, though it had two distinctive implications with respect to the mobility of humans or leopards. On the one hand, in the dry season, male initiates had to stay in the forest under the aegis of Poro authorities (also referred to as leopard spirits) and could die there from diseases, infections or predator attacks. On the other hand, extreme dry seasons could cause leopards to undertake hunting expeditions into the settlements. During the Poro period in the dry season, the initiates would be taught to live on hunting in the forest,48 whereas leopards came closer to the town. This ambivalence generated the paradoxical situation that in the dry season leopards came into town (either the big cats themselves, or the masked and costumed initiates), whereas the local male youth left the town for their forest seclusion. Liminality existed on an interspecies level because the spatial and social order was temporarily turned upside down by both human and non-human actors. ‘Leopards’ were considered dangerous for children in two distinct spaces: their ‘spirits’ ate the male initiates in the forest, while leopards hunting in the towns were dangerous for the girls and young children there. When comparing liminality in humans and leopards, we can see that phases of liminality often overlap temporally (the dry season, puberty, say) and spatially (here, the mobility between town and forest). Humans crossed the gates or portals between settlements and forests for different reasons. Hunting was of course one traditional human practice that could lead to a liminal status when ‘in the bush’. In West Africa, hunting was often placed in the care of certain castes of society,49 so that they remained liminal social beings even between hunting expeditions. They were ‘marginals’, in the terminology of Victor Turner. When plantation farming was expanding into natural forests after 1900, the settlement/forest edge was moved, too. Sometimes, farmers established satellite farmland far from the town, where they seasonally spent the nights, or they sent their children or workers to control them day and night. Leopard and baboon attacks were reported from such marginal farms quite often. Working in agriculture was always potentially dangerous, because wild animals and humans often were forced to meet. Leopard attacks typically happened in the twilight hours when humans slept in the sheds and when a man or woman went to a far-off farm with a baby or small child during the day; even attacks by chimpanzees were frequent, taking little children from the farms into the forest, injuring or even killing them there.50 Another ‘liminoid’ factor generating new animal behaviour certainly was the advent of the colonial age. There was an explicit colonial agenda of planned transformation, and yet the processes brought about were often diametrically opposed to the intentions Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 171 of the actors of modernization. In Sierra Leone, indigenous inhabitants were often scared and alarmed at colonial rationalization or interference in the fields of economics, politics and religion.51 After 1900, large areas were deforested and became rice farms or rubber tree plantations.52 Such dramatic modifications of the rural landscape may also have played their part in causing leopards to leave or renegotiate habitats. Research from India suggests that the more leopards were disturbed by human-made interventions in their habitats, the closer they would dare to come to human settlements.53 It is hardly implausible that the drastic changes of agricultural practices ushered in by colonial governments in the early twentieth century must have had their impact on leopard behaviour. The colonial era was a fundamental restructuring of the ecological order affecting both indigenous humans and animals alike.54 Colonial migration – or: From leopards to crocodiles During the age of modern colonialism, urbanization of villages and migration into cities transformed both the environment of the pre-existing coastline and of the hinterland. In British Sierra Leone, coastal settlements had mainly evolved from Atlantic harbours. These places were characteristically and extremely multiethnic: in the nineteenthcentury black Americans had ‘repatriated’ West Africa (Liberia especially); abolitionist vessels had conveyed freed slaves from all over Africa and resettled them in Sierra Leone and people from the hinterland of the colonies migrated to the coast in search of work. The latter brought their initiation rituals with them, something which caused anxiety and panic among the predominantly Christian majority of the towns. While the boys were usually brought out of the towns into their Poro bush, the Bundu bush for the girls was often installed close to the houses, leading to particular unease. There were, for instance, several cases in the capital Freetown when Christian girls – whether targeted deliberately or by accident – were kidnapped into the bush and circumcised against the will of their families. An anonymous author from Freetown complained about such crimes in a local newspaper: and our Mothers, Sisters and Daughters find it unsafe to travel alone in some streets of Freetown for fear of being forcibly dragged into the Bondoh bush and put through the rites of this disgusting society; rites that are so disgraceful that common courtesy forbids its description in a public press.55 During the 1880s and 1890s, emotive discussions about the scandal of female initiation practised in urban areas reached its height. In this period, migration from rural areas into Freetown and other urban places increased. Male initiation, historical sources indicate, was much less a problem for an urban Christian lifestyle, since circumcision was common among African Christians too and in any event, as noted, the Poro bush for boys was necessarily installed far from the settlements. When the hinterland towns also expanded as a result of plantation economies in the 1890s, however, traders and other self-conscious modernizers began to attack the Poro rules prohibiting 172 Animal History in the Modern City any commercial exploitation of the forests around these camps. One newspaper correspondent complained that, The purroh bush so near to the town of Bompeh is a great hindrance toward the enlargement of the capital, until the Chiefs and headmen will see to remove the ‘devil bush’ from the town. … Two years age the purroh law forbade any body to cut palm nuts, thereby impoverishing the country, and impeding commerce; traders and people suffered … .56 In search of economic modernization, colonial actors tried to abolish the camps that so clearly represented liminal spaces between town and forest. When West African settlements (suburbs or towns) expanded, former Poro bush areas where destroyed, something that led directly to an urban myth about hunted areas of towns being built on bewitched Poro ground.57 For their part, traditional Poro authorities attempted to maintain the wilderness, and the gates that connected it to the settlements. At the coastal towns, meanwhile, newcomers from the hinterland also confronted the urban population with their ideas about human-animal transformation: whenever a wild animal attacked or killed a human being within these human settlements, it was considered an evil diviner who had turned himself, or another, into an animal to commit murder.58 Leopard attacks were less frequent in the coastal region than in the hinterland forests, note: there it was crocodiles, or in the local pidgin, alligators from the swamps and river deltas that regularly attacked fishermen. It was reported that in the town of Waterloo alone sixteen persons had been killed by alligators in the late 1880s. In one of these cases, the police investigated and examined the dead body and was confused by local rumours claiming that either a human being or a human-alligator had committed the killing.59 In coastal areas, it was alligators that became the liminal beings, oscillating between wilderness and town, between animal and human shape, but with the same evil intentions and effects for human society that leopards posed elsewhere. While migrants from the hinterland brought their ideas about man-killing predators being transformed human sorcerers, the Christianized (or Westernized) population of Freetown and its suburbs and satellite towns for the large part followed a more orthodox interpretation of these fatal attacks: while the migrants told the police to search the area for human murderers, the coastal people asked for intensification of alligator hunting. Such hunting had some effect and several weeks after the killing of the last fisherman in the town Waterloo, local newspapers announced: ‘An alligator, 8 feet in length, was killed by some of our hunters on the 8th instant [that is, 8 November 1890]’.60 Bearing in mind that the average length of dwarf crocodiles living in the West African swamps and rivers was five to six feet, this crocodile was extraordinarily large. In their letters to the editors, (Christian) inhabitants of Waterloo complained about ‘monstrous alligators existing … in our little river’.61 The author of this quotation glorified the role of fishermen as liminal subjects who risked their lives by going afloat daily to deliver fish for the local population. The alleged pragmatism of hunting alligators was also complemented by spiritual rituals offered by Christian missionary churches in Waterloo, whose staff prayed for the fishermen and preached on the Biblical theme of the fisherman Peter. Local churches also picked up the ‘Mangators’ or ‘river monsters’ Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 173 as chances to propagate Christianity: such monsters, they explained, were punishments for the sins of some fishermen who would not go to church, and practice traditional rituals instead.62 Despite all these efforts, however, the killings did not cease,63 and whenever hinterland migrants reported such alligator killings, they returned to human malevolence and the monstrosity of human cannibalism in particular: A young woman was caught by cannibals (in the shape of alligator [sic]), … and carried up the river and there butchered and eaten, only a very small portion being discovered to attest this fact.64 These hinterland groups demanded that colonial authorities allow local people and their ‘chiefs’ to prosecute such crimes, through witch hunts. The entire urban population seemed to agree that something had to be done against the alleged ‘monsters’, but there then existed contradictory ideas about the species of the killers and the appropriate measures to be taken against them. Moreover, the ‘rationalists’ were not invariably favoured by history and ‘progress’. Around 1905, for instance, public opinion in the Christian urban community began to change, as black intellectuals started to criticize colonial administrations and the presumed cultural superiority of Europeans in West Africa. In this context, initiation rites were rehabilitated ethnographically, by accounting for their social functions. The African medical doctor John Augustus Abayomi-Cole (1848–1943) highlighted, for example, the fact that the installation of taboos over forests was just a very smart socio-ecological method to let the forest recover.65 Cole also compared the Poro bush to Paradise and romanticized the exotic nature as sacred with a Christian perspective: ‘God is always in the bush’.66 All the same, local ideas about the wilderness were not as unbalanced as might be suggested by separating natural science’s supposed objectivity, Cole’s positive and exalting reinterpretation of the forests, or colonial demonization of nature and wild animals. Local evaluations of liminal spaces and liminal beings remained ambiguous: such spaces and subjects were dangerous but powerful, the antithesis of order but also the source from which social order derived, associated with death but also rebirth. Conclusions When Northcote Whitridge Thomas arrived in Sierra Leone in 1914 in order to conduct field research on behalf of the colonial authorities, he entered a complex social environment with its confusing narratives and ellipses regarding human-animal transformation. Thomas was told repeatedly and in different places, for instance, that ‘a witch can live in a crocodile or leopard and seize people: four or five go into one animal and if the animal is shot, they die too’.67 Witches and their conspirators could turn into animals (leopards, crocodiles, bats) at night and then kill and eat people.68 What Thomas ended up describing in his reports was what we might define as the ‘liminal criminal’, a harmful creature, between human and animal. What ‘really’ happened in such cases (in the tidiness of Western judicial reason) is hard or impossible to define, but from the perspective of local communities liminality and animality went 174 Animal History in the Modern City together in the explanation of such malevolence and violence: people may have died from unknown diseases or been killed by wild animals such as a leopard or a large ape (in which case the animal was usually declared a witch).69 Sudden deaths of young children in particular were explained as deaths by the witchcraft of snake-men or other human-animals.70 And since it was their liminal status that formed a continuous threat for society, the danger could be countered only by magic rituals including animals. Witches were fought by cursing a fowl: the eyes of the fowl were destroyed so that the witch would turn blind simultaneously, or the fowl was killed in order to kill the witch.71 If a supposed witch died soon after such a ritual, the person was ‘tied on a stick for burial and carried like an animal’.72 Such acts express the will of society to clearly draw a line between humans and animals by allocating the animal sphere to witches by practising special burial rites. While human-animal ‘transformers’ were clearly marked as criminals, however, ritual experts also remained liminal beings between the animal/spirit world and human society throughout their lives, but were evaluated with ambiguity: they were necessary for a functioning society, but their powers were potentially dangerous at the same time. Therefore, their remains after death were treated like those of witches. Dead experts falling sick had to go into the Poro bush and ‘must die in the Poro bush and be buried there’.73 Victor Turner focused on distinguishing such ‘liminars’ from other social types like outsiders and marginal: ‘Marginals like liminars are also betwixt and between, but unlike ritual liminars they have no cultural assurance of a final stable resolution of their ambiguity’.74 Turner also considers diviners, mediums, priests and other ritual experts as such permanent liminars, and we may add here, that initiation authorities from West Africa perfectly fit this definition. These experts were themselves transformers who were consulted in times of crisis: when animals became humans, when youths became predators. In reconsidering Thomas’s hesitant steps in framing an anthropology that pays tribute to liminality and initiation in human–animal relations we note that Thomas had little time for animals themselves. He blithely explained that a given indigenous culture usually ‘attributes to the animal a vastly more complex set of thoughts and feelings, and a much greater range of knowledge and power, than it actually possesses’.75 Thomas acknowledged that human beings’ dependence on animals in subsistence economies, as well as the risk of dying ‘beneath the claws of a lion or a bear’76 were the major reasons for an intense human–animal relation: ‘It is therefore small wonder that this attitude towards the animal creation is one of reverence rather than superiority’.77 Some years before his journeys to West Africa, Thomas moreover explored the role of animals for human initiation rites based on ethnographic literature: ‘here, an individual provides himself with a tutelary genius. Sometimes conceived as a spirit, sometimes as a living animal, on whose aid he relies in the battle of life’.78 In both, the initiation into secret societies and into adulthood more generally, it was necessary to procure ‘a tutelary deity, which is commonly an animal’.79 Otherwise, however, Thomas deemed the role of animals ‘less important’ for initiation than, for instance, for rituals of hunting or death. His intense fieldwork in Nigeria and Sierra Leone may have changed this position, but serious distrust from both colonial administration and local chiefs prevented Thomas from gaining more elaborate insights into the actual ritual Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 175 practices, so that he subsequently studied liminality in initiation and with humananimal transformations separately. This chapter, on the other hand, has sought to make the anthropological concepts of initiation fruitful for understanding the liminal roles of humans and animals in the history of West Africa. Although leopards are generally considered wild animals living in forests and savannahs far from human settlements, they are well known for preying on cattle and other domestic animals in suburban and village areas. Whenever leopards enter these places, fatal attacks on humans may occur. From this standpoint, leopards, too, can be considered liminal animals for the fact that they, too, trespass the spatial nature-culture boundary. Their liminal character must also be defined temporally: in colonial West Africa, for instance, they entered the suburban spaces, preferably at night, during dry seasons when other prey was scarce, and as juveniles looking for their own habitats. Human cultures, on the other hand, integrated this animal behaviour into their own rites of passage: in the dry season, juvenile boys lived in huts located between the settlements and the bushes where they were turned into men by leopard spirits. Their liminal youth was also defined spatially (between forest and town) and temporally (between child and adult). By drawing an analogy between these forms of human and animal liminality, in the specific historical context of colonial West Africa, this chapter considers not just the parallel but the overlapping and co-productive human-animal nature cultures that emerged during the process of colonial urbanization in West Africa. Notes 1 Anon, ‘Human Leopards’, The Colony and Provincial Reporter, 1 November 1913, 4. 2 For a critical autobiographical analysis and discussion of his role in the formation of colonial anthropology see Paul Basu, ‘N.W. Thomas and Colonial Anthropology in British West Africa: Reappraising a Cautionary Tale’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22, no. 1 (2015): 84–107. 3 The National Archives (Kew, London), CO 267/570, Anthropological Survey: Human Leopard Society (collection of letters). 4 Basu, ‘N.W. Thomas and Colonial Anthropology’, 91. 5 Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge, Haddon Papers, 11.012, draft book: ‘Religion, Totemism & Reincarnation in West Africa’, 181. 6 Ibid., 120. 7 Ibid., 162. 8 Arnold van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage (Paris: Picard, 1981). Reprint of 1909 edition. 9 N. W. Thomas, ‘Secret Societies (African)’, in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, Volume 11, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920), 296, 301. 10 He called the Poro, the Sierra Leonian initiation societies, ‘Purra’ in a list of West African secret societies. Ibid., 117. 11 Van Gennep himself admitted that this term is inadequate since those societies were only secret with regard to women and non-initiated children. Ibid., 115. This opinion has been repeated in nearly every work on these societies, but the term is still widely used and Victor Turner also mentioned the initiation into a secret society as a key 176 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Animal History in the Modern City example in the broader understanding of rites of passage: See Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 95. Turner, Forest of Symbols, 93–111. Ibid., 94. Ibid., 95. Ibid., 96. Victor Turner, ‘Liminality and Communitas’, in The Ritual Process: Structure and AntiStructure. The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures 1966 (London: Routledge & Paul, 1969), 95. See Bjørn Thomassen, ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 5–27. See Victor Turner, ‘Liminal to Liminoid in Play, Flow and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 53–92. Some theorists went as far as to call modernity itself an age of ‘permanent liminality’: ibid., 19. Ibid., 16. Thomassen admits this under certain conditions in his catalogue of future research desiderata: ‘In other words, we have to consider the possibility that ritual passages can go wrong, and produce effects of a very undesirable kind’. Ibid., 21. Turner, Forest of Symbols, 97. ‘Les novices sont hors de la société, et la société ne peut rien sur eux et d’autant moins qu’ils sont proprement sacrés et saints, par suite intangibles, dangereux, tout comme seraient des dieux’: van Gennep, Rites de Passage, 161. Ibid., 162. Initiates were considered in-between the sexes; they were neither seen as females, nor males, but sexless – ‘that which is neither this nor that, and yet is both’: See Turner, Forest of Symbols, 99. Ibid., 106. Ibid. Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbol, Myth, and Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 253. Northcote Whitridge Thomas, Anthropological Report on Sierra Leone. Part I: Law and Custom (London: Harrison & Sons, 1916), 145. H. G. Warren, ‘Secret Societies’, Sierra Leone Studies 3 (1919): 8–12. George Schwab, Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, 1947), 272. See for the special fear of bush spirits killing children, James Littlejohn, ‘The Temne House’, Sierra Leone Studies 14 (1960): 63–79. Stephanie Zehnle, ‘Of Leopards and Lesser Animals: Trials and Tribulations of the “Human-Leopard Murders” in Colonial Africa’, in The Historical Animal, ed. Susan Nance (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015), 221–39. Stephanie Zehnle, ‘Wenn Tiere Morden. Koloniale Aushandlungen Zwischen Natur und Kultur in Westafrika’, in Andere Ökologien. Transformationen von Mensch und Tier, ed. Iris Därmann and Stephan Zandt (München: Wilhelm Fink, forthcoming 2017). ‘The Nation’, ‘Human Leopards’, The Colony and Provincial Reporter (15 November 1913), 3. N. C. Hollins, ‘Notes in Mendi Law’, Sierra Leone Studies 15 (1929): 57–8, 57. Stephanie Zehnle, ‘Leoparden, Leopardenmänner: Grenzüberschreitungen in Raum und Spezies’, in Afrikanische Tierräume: Historische Verortungen, ed. Winfried Speitkamp and Stephanie Zehnle (Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2014), 91–112. Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 177 38 C. M. G. Stanley, ‘Game Preservation in Sierra Leone’, Sierra Leone Studies 11 (1928): 2–15, 4. 39 Stanley, ‘Game Preservation in Sierra Leone’, 13. 40 Zehnle, ‘Leoparden, Leopardenmänner’. 41 G. A. Balme et al., ‘Edge Effects and the Impact of Non-Protected Areas in Carnivore Conservation: Leopards in the Phinda–Mkhuze Complex, South Africa’, Animal Conservation 13, no. 3 (2010): 315–23. 42 However, the intensity of social interaction among kin (female adult, male adult and their offspring) differs severely: see T. J. Pirie et al., ‘Social Interactions Between a Male Leopard (Panthera pardus) and Two Generations of his Offspring’, African Journal of Ecology 52 (2014): 574–6. 43 David Jenny, ‘Spatial Organization of Leopards Panthera pardus in Taï National Park, Ivory Coast: Is Rainforest Habitat a “Tropical Haven”?’ Journal of Zoology 240 (1996): 427–40, 429. In African savannas they establish habitats half that size: see ibid., 436. 44 Julien Fattebert et al., ‘Population Recovery Highlights Spatial Organization Dynamics in Adult Leopards’, Journal of Zoology 299 (2016): 153––162, 154. 45 Julien Fattebert et al., ‘Density-Dependent Natal Dispersal Patterns in a Leopard Population Recovering from Over-Harvest’, PLoS ONE 10, no. 4 (2015). Available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122355 (accessed 15 January 2017). 46 For the case of elephants, it was well-known among colonial hunting officials that they migrated between Sierra Leone and Liberia, spending the dry seasons in the latter state: see Stanley, ‘Game Preservation in Sierra Leone’, 9. 47 David Jenny and Klaus Zuberbühler, ‘Hunting Behaviour in West African Forest Leopards’, African Journal of Ecology 43, no. 3 (2005): 197–200. Male leopards also undertake longer marking tours in the dry season: see Jenny, ‘Spatial Organization of Leopards’, 438. 48 Schwab, Liberian Hinterland, 280. 49 Stanley compared them to traditional castes like blacksmiths across many African societies: see Stanley, ‘Game Preservation in Sierra Leone’, 2. 50 Howard Ross, ‘Man-Killing Apes’, Sierra Leone Studies 6 (1922): 45–8. 51 In 1898 this fear even caused a trans-regional anti-colonial war (The Hut Tax War) that was defeated by colonial military forces. 52 L.H. Palfreman, ‘Forestry Dept. Report 1918’, National Archives (Kew, London), CO 267/581, 29 May 1919. 53 For a discussion of these ethological studies, see Zehnle, ‘Of Leopards and Lesser Animals’. 54 Animal history does not always lead to a new temporal structure and new animal eras: see Mieke Roscher, ‘Tiere, die dem Kaiser gehören … Das Tier als politisches und kulturelles Ordnungswesen’, in Tierisch! Das Tier und die Wissenschaft. Ein Streifzug durch die Disziplinen, ed. Meret Fehlmann et al. (Zürich: vdf, 2015), 173–82. 55 ‘W.’, ‘Bondohism’, Sierra Leone Times, 18 March 1899, 3. 56 ‘J.W.’, ‘Release of Chief Canray Bah Caulker’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 16 February 1895, 3. 57 Schwab, Liberian Hinterland, 276. 58 Zehnle, ‘Wenn Tiere Morden’. 59 Anon, ‘News from the Villages: Waterloo, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 11 October 1890, 2–3. I will not go into details here about the criminal investigation of such cases, which is the primary focus of my larger research project on so-called Human-Animal Murder in colonial Africa. 178 Animal History in the Modern City 60 Ibid., 6. 61 ‘Gratitude’, ‘The Fishermen of Waterloo and Alligators’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 22 November 1890, 6. 62 Ibid., 7. 63 Anon, ‘News from the Villages: Waterloo’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 23 October 1890, 6. 64 ‘A Tourist’, ‘Cannibalism at Lower Bargroo’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 23 April 1892, 6. 65 Aboyami Cole, ‘Possibilities of the Protectorate’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 14 January 1905, 2–5. 66 Aboyami Cole, ‘Lecture in Liberia: God in Fetish’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 14 May 1910, 3. 67 Thomas, Law and Custom, 50. 68 Ibid., 46. 69 Ibid., 153. See also Ross, ‘Man-Killing Apes’. 70 W. B. Stanley, ‘Carnivorous Apes in Sierra Leone’, Sierra Leone Studies 2 (1919): 3–19, 8. 71 Thomas, Law and Custom, 47. 72 Ibid., 49. 73 Ibid., 146. 74 Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, 233. 75 Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge, Haddon Papers, 11.013/1, draft article: ‘Animals’, 483. 76 Ibid., 484. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., 496. Bibliography Anon. ‘News from the Villages: Waterloo’, Sierra Leone Weekly News 11, October 1890, 2–3. Anon. ‘News from the Villages: Waterloo’, Sierra Leone Weekly News 23, November 1890, 6. Anon. ‘Human Leopards’, The Colony and Provincial Reporter, 1 November 1913. Balme, G. A., Slotow, R. and Hunter, L. T. B. ‘Edge Effects and the Impact of NonProtected Areas in Carnivore Conservation: Leopards in the Phinda–Mkhuze Complex, South Africa’, Animal Conservation 13, no. 3 (2010): 315–23. Basu, Paul. ‘N.W. Thomas and Colonial Anthropology in British West Africa: Reappraising a Cautionary Tale’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22, no. 1 (2015), 84–107. Cole, Aboyami. ‘Possibilities of the Protectorate’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 14 January 1905. Cole, Aboyami. ‘Lecture in Liberia: God in Fetish’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 14 May 1910. Fattebert, Julien, Balme, Guy, Dickerson, Tristan, Slotow, Rob and Hunter, Luke ‘DensityDependent Natal Dispersal Patterns in a Leopard Population Recovering from OverHarvest’, PLoS ONE 10, no. 4 (2015). Fattebert, Julien, Balme, Guy A., Robinson, Hugh S., Dickerson, Tristan, Slotow, Rob and Hunter, Luke T. B. ‘Population Recovery Highlights Spatial Organization Dynamics in Adult Leopards’, Journal of Zoology 299 (2016): 153–62, 154. Liminal Youth Between Town and Bush 179 ‘Gratitude’, ‘The Fishermen of Waterloo and Alligators’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 22 November 1890, 6. Hollins, N. C. ‘Notes in Mendi Law’, Sierra Leone Studies 15 (1929), 57–8. Jenny, David. ‘Spatial Organization of Leopards Panthera pardus in Taï National Park, Ivory Coast: Is Rainforest Habitat a “Tropical Haven”?’, Journal of Zoology 240 (1996): 427–40. Jenny, David and Zuberbühler, Klaus. ‘Hunting Behaviour in West African Forest Leopards’, African Journal of Ecology 43, no. 3 (2005): 197–200. ‘J.W.’, ‘Release of Chief Canary Bah Caulker’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 16 February 1895, 3. Littlejohn, James. ‘The Temne House’, Sierra Leone Studies 14 (1960), 63–79. ‘The Nation’, ‘Human Leopards’, The Colony and Provincial Reporter 15 November 1913, 3. Pirie, Tara J., Thomas, Rebecca L., Reilly, Brian K. and Fellowes, Mark D. E. ‘Social Interactions Between a Male Leopard (Panthera pardus) and Two Generations of his Offspring’, African Journal of Ecology 52 (2014): 574–6. Roscher, Mieke. ‘Tiere, die dem Kaiser gehören … Das Tier als politisches und kulturelles Ordnungswesen’, in Tierisch! Das Tier und die Wissenschaft. Ein Streifzug durch die Disziplinen, ed. Meret Fehlmann, Michel, Margot and Niederhauser, Rebecca (Zürich: vdf, 2015), 173–82. Ross, Howard. ‘Man-Killing Apes’, Sierra Leone Studies 6 (1922): 45–8. Schwab, George. Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, 1947). Stanley, W. B. ‘Carnivorous Apes in Sierra Leone’, Sierra Leone Studies 2 (1919), 3–19, 8. Thomas, Northcote Whitridge. Anthropological Report on Sierra Leone. Part I: Law and Custom (London: Harrison & Sons, 1916). Thomas, N. W. ‘Secret Societies (African)’, in Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, Volume 11, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1920). Thomassen, Bjørn. ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 5–27. ‘A Tourist’, ‘Cannibalism at Lower Bargroo’, Sierra Leone Weekly News, 23 April 1892, 6. Turner, Victor. The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 95. Turner, Victor. ‘Liminality and Communitas’, in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures 1966, ed. Victor Turner (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), 94–130. Turner, Victor. ‘Liminal to Liminoid in Play, Flow and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 53–92. Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbol, Myth, and Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974). Van Gennep, Arnold. Les Rites de Passage (Paris: Picard, 1981). ‘W.’, ‘Bondohism’, Sierra Leone Times, 18 March 1899, 3. Warren, H. G. ‘Secret Societies’, Sierra Leone Studies 3 (1919), 8–12. Zehnle, Stephanie. ‘Leoparden, Leopardenmänner: Grenzüberschreitungen in Raum und Spezies’, in Afrikanische Tierräume: Historische Verortungen, ed. Winfried Speitkamp and Stephanie Zehnle (Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2014), 91–112. Zehnle, Stephanie. ‘Of Leopards and Lesser Animals: Trials and Tribulations of the “Human-Leopard Murders” in Colonial Africa’, in The Historical Animal, ed. Susan Nance (München: Wilhem Fink, 2017): 77–100. Zehnle, Stephanie. ‘Wenn Tiere Morden. Koloniale Aushandlungen Zwischen Natur und Kultur in Westafrika’, in Andere Ökologien. Transformationen von Mensch und Tier, ed. Iris Därmann and Stephan Zandt (München: Wilhelm Fink, forthcoming 2017). 180 11 Betwixt and Between: Making Makeshift Animals in NineteenthCentury Zoological Gardens Wiebke Reinert pen1 VERB [WITH OBJECT] write or compose Origin Middle English (originally denoting a feather with a sharpened quill): from Old French penne, from Latin penna ‹feather› (in late Latin ‹pen›). pen2 VERB [WITH OBJECT] 1. put or keep (an animal) in a pen 1.1. (pen someone up/in) confine someone in a restricted space1 Introduction: Articulating the history of the modern zoo The zoological garden as a distinctive form of animal keeping in the modern world is a well-studied institution.2 The zoo is a place where animals are physically present and made manifest to human observers, providing unparalleled opportunities to investigate human–animal relations in modern societies and cities (zoological gardens being quintessentially urban phenomena). However, many zoo histories are premised on the problematic assumption that they represent a kind of ‘fresh start’.3 Conventional histories tend to draw sharp dividing lines between modern and premodern eras, attaching little or no value to the continuity of animal exhibition, albeit in very different urban and social settings. We can argue, however, that the putative transformation in relations between watching humans and watched animals raises the question of liminality right from the start: for any account of the emergence of the zoo implies a movement from a definitive before to a prospective after, and thus invokes a characteristic liminal period that involves at the same time a no longer and 182 Animal History in the Modern City a not yet.4 Understanding zoos in the early years of their development means putting this liminality centre stage, and in this chapter I want to consider the development of zoos not only from the perspective of the animals themselves, but also in terms of the ambiguous experience zoos offered, as places of both entertainment and instruction, education and spectacle. Speaking of liminal animals, liminal spaces or liminality necessarily involves the idea of a before and after, but it is necessary to look more closely at the stability that is the frame for this liminality, and which makes liminality the uncertain, potentially transgressive phenomenon that it is (for liminality has the potential to tell us about not only what, at certain times, is defined as appropriate and accepted, but also disapproved of as misplaced). As regards our specific interest in the entanglements of humans and animals, it is these connections and separations, the process of valuing and devaluing, placing and displacing, and interactions and demarcations, which appear to cross and be negotiated in liminal periods.5 Drawing on the history of German zoological gardens, this chapter stresses the difficulties involved in ‘articulating’ the zoo, joining its elements together and making it work, such as by regulating and representing the paying public as well as the lives of its animal captives: nineteenth-century European zoos are exemplary liminal sites because of, for instance, the collision between high nature and popular culture, and the necessarily incomplete transition from its predecessors and competitors in the business of animal spectacle to the familiar and apparently straightforwardly modern institution. I take a close look in particular at three examples of characterizing and popularizing zoo animals, first considering the zoo’s liminal history and geography, then considering the ways in which animals’ liminal lives at the zoo were imagined and represented, before concluding with a consideration of the vital role of animals’ wards and keepers, as ‘middlemen’. These three examples explore liminality as a characteristic effect of the development of a zoo culture for the masses as well as the leisure class. Betwixt and between: The zoo and the fair Zoological gardens were certainly not the only urban sites or locations where ‘exotic’ animals could be observed in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Travelling menageries, circuses, itinerant animal trainers, the private homes or palaces of aficionados, even pubs, all exhibited various kinds of animals on a regular if not always permanent basis. ‘Towards the middle of the nineteenth century’, as David Wilson has noted, ‘the favoured locales for the kind of entertainment involving easily portable exhibits of the sort that formerly occupied booths at the now declining or extinct fairs were taverns and assembly rooms in working-class neighbourhoods’.6 Though the nature of these neighbourhoods will not be explored in detail here, it is noteworthy that quite a few of these earlier animal exhibitions were positioned further away from city centres than the zoological gardens familiar in modern times. There were pragmatic as well as cultural reasons for this, of course: a lack of space, real or perceived, in the heart of the city; the fact that many exotic animals were kept in country house menageries; the desire to keep carnivals and their dubious characters outside the city walls; the objectionable Betwixt and Between 183 sounds and smells and other ‘nuisances’ that came with animals’ permanent presence in human neighbourhoods. We should resist the temptation to conclude that the zoo marked a decisive move of animal shows into the heart of the city, however, simply achieving a bourgeois respectability that the fairs and travelling menageries never could. Sure enough, a zoological garden and a fair are categorically very different institutions, most obviously in terms of the former’s permanence and institutional character. Focussing on actual practices, including the activities of keepers and their animal charges, reveals that zoos had much in common with the other sites of ‘popular tradition’, since the zoo like the fair brought together the exotic and the familiar, the villager and the townsman, the professional performer and the bourgeois observer.7 As Helen Cowie remarks, Menageries have typically been portrayed as promoting entertainment rather than providing education. This was the view put forward by the directors of the newly established zoological gardens, who contrasted the spacious, genteel atmosphere of their own institutions with the cramped, sometimes unseemly conditions of the travelling wild beast show. It has also been the general view of historians, who have tended to draw a sharp distinction between the menagerie and the zoo.8 In this regard it makes sense to speak of liminal periods and spaces rather than a simple substitution or replacement of the traditional fair by the modern zoo. The utility of liminality as an analytical framework is especially obvious when it comes to the zoo as an innovation since, for all that they have been seen as a ‘tribute to bourgeois selfconfidence’,9 zoos were highly fragile and insecure institutions, not least financially. ‘Betwixt and between’, ‘no longer classified and not yet classified’,10 as Victor Turner put it, applies equally well to the animals exhibited: for captive zoo animals remained in a threshold-status, caught between science and spectacle, education and entertainment, taxonomy and amusement, exotic and familiar, the near and the distant. The zoo’s claim to provide a space of rational and cultivated leisure was also pointedly asserted by way of comparison to its urban competitors, either specific, in terms of animal exhibitions, or general, in the developing spaces of leisure in the city.11 The zoo could not simply be a site of elevating knowledge about the animal kingdom; to make zoo visits interesting and popular (and to ensure that zoos were viable economically), animals and the environments in which they lived and performed (park, enclosures and cages) had to affect visitors in an emotional register. Zoos were no different from other forms of recreation in the city that mobilize desires, hopes and fears, pleasure, relief and satisfaction: the familiar effects of entertainment and enjoyment.12 Rather than representing a sharp break with a liminal past, the development of a zoo culture for the masses reproduced the characteristic forms of liminal ambivalence. Harriet Ritvo has even suggested that this liminality may be the most interesting thing about zoos.13 As an example of the latter, Gustav Friedrich Werner from Stuttgart, began to earn his nickname of ‘Affenwerner’, by exhibiting animals in and around his tavern in the 1840s.14 In much the same manner, the founder of Leipzig Zoo was the enterprising landlord Ernst Pinkert, who developed his zoological career by enlivening his restaurant with animals in 1874. In the Leipzig quarter of Lindenau, the pub owner 184 Animal History in the Modern City Jahn complemented his restaurant with a ‘zoological yard’.15 Similar examples can be found in the menagerie owned by Berg, in Horn near Hamburg,16 and the private business of Franz Leven, who in the 1850s ran an animal park in addition to a ‘cabinet’ of stuffed wild animals.17 Related businesses existed in Munich (run by the family of the showman Schröll), and with the animal trader Lossow’s ‘new zoological garden’ in Berlin.18 At the same time, many itinerant animal shows travelled throughout Europe, often pitching their tents and waggons at various fairs, as they would do up to the 1930s.19 The overlap between fairs and zoos is clear. Zoos have always been fundamentally dependent on modern amusement culture. To render a visit to the zoo relevant, to give meanings to animals as part of leisure activities, the new institutions had to engage with a range of other practices and institutions dealing with exotic animals besides the draw of scientific knowledge.20 If nothing else, they took part in the same wild animal trade that flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century: a global trade that linked zoos, circuses, travelling menageries, animal trainers, aficionados and private animal keepers, as well as natural history museums.21 Given the remarkable diversity and variety of knowledge, perspectives and practices involved, it is, as stressed by Emily S. Rosenberg impossible to ‘tame’ such exhibitions with a single, fixed meaning; rather, ‘this era was characterized by a cacophony of several possible outlooks.’22 This does not mean that attempts were not made to make animal exhibition more respectable and enlightening. One way of giving animals a kind of mannered and ‘bourgeois’ meaning, for instance, was to integrate them in the bourgeois practice of promenading, Spaziergang, involving the ‘wild’ animals in tamed and themed practices and landscapes.23 Numerous reports of visits to zoos, sourced from the popular press as well as from books and journals of the time, were given such titles as ‘a walk in the Zoological Garden of…’, ‘a stroll through…’, ‘wandering in…’ and the like. They were narrated in the manner of a minor travel report, including the familiar range of safe surprises and impressive views. This genre went hand in hand with the bourgeois virtues of promenading: recreation, sociability, ease, enlivening and the series of improving sights.24 At the same time, however, the zoo tapped into narratives and forms that had long been successful in popularizing animals and their lives, presenting them as comic figures, as screens on which to project ideas and emotions, as outlets and props for displaying human sentiment or as simple objects of entertainment. In this way the zoo reached back to folkloristic staging of animals which typically contained elements of burlesque, for all that the emergent bourgeoisie or middle class promoted a display of animals that was supposed to serve educative and morally uplifting purposes.25 Animals might indeed be considered makeshifts – interim and temporary measures – in the construction of traditions whose ultimate purpose was ‘to ensure or express social cohesion and identity and to structure social relations’,26 crucially in periods of transition, for instance in the shift from the feudal and folkloric to modern ‘science’, sentiment and sociability. A sympathetic and sensuous interest in animals was not new, then, and it could barely be fulfilled by, say, scientifically educational taxidermy, where static displays of galliformes, canis latrans, ursus maritimus and their ilk hardly took the place of their respective zoo exhibits. In the context of urban leisure activities, it is living animals that had to be rendered consumable, ‘common goods’. Drawing on Betwixt and Between 185 this traditional culture of display for the purpose of social improvement depended on whether the spectators appreciated the relevant coding at work – but the ‘set of meanings’ around the presence and use of ‘wild’ animals in the middle of mid-European cities was by no means clear, as the evidence of this chapter makes clear, drawing on examples relating to the ‘wave of foundations’ identified by zoo historiographers Annelore Rieke-Müller and Lothar Dittrich, starting with Frankfurt Zoo (1858), and including Cologne (1860), Dresden (1861), Hannover and Karlsruhe (1865).27 Most importantly, we have to critically consider the outwardly self-confident, almost missionary prospectuses of German zoo founders, which, despite being scornful of both aristocratic and folkloric exhibitions of animals, nevertheless relied on established patterns and codes.28 The zoo seems to require a different attitude towards animals, something aligned with what Lynn Nyhart has called ‘Modern Nature’.29 Devotional observation and interest in natural science were here meant to be the premises of rational recreation, the kind of ‘embourgeoisement’ made possible through the encounter with ‘book nature’30 made flesh. The nineteenth century brought about significant change: We can hardly ignore the fact that with the emergence of mass culture and the mass production and consumption of scientific artifacts, the means and meanings of scientific display and communication have radically altered. Since ‘popularizations’ are communicative processes, their histories must attend to the history of communicative production.31 ‘Book nature’ had always included much more than ‘science’ per se. To render animals and their physical presence relevant to humans they had to be edited through a variety of cultural techniques, inevitably making them hybrid and liminal in nature. ‘Advocates for the public understanding of science’ were in fact ‘merely the latest entrepreneurs in a tradition that reaches back at least 300 years’.32 It should be kept in mind, as Nigel Rothfels sums up, that ‘the new public zoological gardens, despite their rhetoric, did not differ much from the earlier collections in their commitment to science, education and public recreation; all three of these goals were also claimed by the earlier collectors.’33 In sum, zoological gardens were hybrids – neither feudal menagerie nor natural history museum, neither circus nor pub, neither diorama nor fairground booth, but containing a little bit of everything these represented. Zoo culture is liminal, in Turner’s sense: ‘it is the analysis of culture into factors and their free or “ludic” recombination in any and every possible pattern, however weird, that is of the essence of liminality, liminality par excellence’.34 Penning the animal: Imagining and representing captive animals Actual encounters with caged and stage-managed animals at the zoo and the ways in which they were narratively processed simply emphasize the fact that they were figures in the correlations, transgressions and shiftings of an elaborate popular 186 Animal History in the Modern City urban amusement industry. The role of imagination in narrating this nature and the experience of zoo animals for the spectator is particularly prominent. Zoological gardens relied, for instance, on an imaginative presentation of the habitat of exhibited animals, something that emphasized their exotic character as well as representing ideas, informed or otherwise, about an animal’s ‘natural’ behaviour. Inevitably, however, this representation of the animal’s ‘proper’ place served to remind the observer of those other places where the animals once or actually belonged, in marked contrast to the cages or enclosures in which the animals found themselves, and the spectators found them. An article in the Freiberger Stadt-, Land- und Berg-Kalender from 1862 highlights for instance the ways in which exotic or ‘outlandish’ animals could be narratively integrated into city life. The calendar was published by the printing office Gerlach on behalf of the city of Freiberg in Saxonia from 1856 to 1938. It contained familiar categories such as an economic calendar, an index of Saxonian markets, information for ‘miners’ (mining being a main economic sector in the region since the Middle Ages), various ‘anecdotes’ and the ‘Freiberger public officers calendar’.35 Another special category, however, was titled ‘contemplative and uplifting’, which in 1862 included a narrative on the zoological garden in Dresden, which had opened in the preceding year of 1861: We turn to guest room number 3 – whose occupant was not exactly intended by nature for playing the harp. This is a polar bear and a youngster in age. The bold furry foreigner did not bring much luggage from Spitsbergen, only a coat which would make a whole guild of peltmongers green with envy. He is in everlasting motion and rarely lazes around.36 In this narrative, presumably deliberately, animals like polar bears were assigned welldefined ‘homelands’;37 raccoons, by contrast, were simply ‘delivery men’ for the envious peltmongers (since these creatures came from familiar contexts, they were merely ‘glanced at’ by the Freiberger Kalender).38 What is also striking is the use of diminutives when presenting birds and beasts of prey as an alternative to emphasizing their ferocity and ‘wildness’. The buzzard, for instance, in the same light-hearted account became a ‘little rascal’, which despite being a bird of prey, ‘in the dock has nothing to confess but that it grabbed a mousie by the tailie and in such manner prepared himself a little roast for his spout’.39 Zoo animals were also consistently compared to animals that were already physically and culturally domesticated (most often and prominently to dogs), and the comparison was drawn as in this characteristically chatty example: ‘the Egyptian geese, which sure enough look different than our own St. Martin’s goose, as well as the Mandarin ducks from the Philippines, next to which our ducks on village ponds have nothing to be proud of ’.40 These zoo animals exhibit both strangeness and familiarity, wildness and domestication, freakish foreignness and civic incorporation. That the author repeatedly pointed to the captive animals’ ‘remarkable liveliness’ (not just the polar bear above, but also otters, prairie dogs, poultry) suggests the characteristic, even cardinal, entanglement of the ‘scientific’ rationale that with scripts inherited from and shared with other places of popular amusement. Showing animals Betwixt and Between 187 necessarily meant show business, and we can precisely reference zoos’ dependence on stories, fables and symbols derived from popular and folk cultural contexts – again, rather than contemporary scientific authority. The description of the Dresden Zoo’s owl shows serves as an example. There was, as the author of the Freiberger Kalender stated, ‘something mystical and eerie’ about the owl; ‘one is reminded of craggy forests, darksome cloistral walls and ruinous castles’.41 At Hannover Zoo, this fictive scenery was not even off stage, left to the imagination: the landscape architect projected and materialized this romantic, gothic ambience right from the start with a rocky construction that included such amenities as an ‘engagement bridge’ (Verlobungsbrücke),42 and a hall for hot summer days offering ‘rest and refreshment in the most romantic surroundings’,43 as Hermann Schläger, a parliamentarian from the Kingdom of Hannover described it in Der Zoologische Garten. These romantic notes were sounded by a journal that was ostensibly interested in the scientific legitimation for zoos, aimed at those who ‘aspire to a higher cultivation of mind’.44 It is true that not every representation of zoo animals conformed to these romantic visions of nature. Sometimes, human sensibilities were confronted with a ‘nature’ that owed nothing to fables or romance, something rather baser or material. The following description of the fox at Dresden Zoo has for instance no great claim to aesthetic significance. The author explicitly invokes legendary beasts, and in the ‘hunting breviary’ refers to ‘Reynard, rogue and villain/everyone loves and hates you/in the same breath’; but he takes notice of the physical presence of the fox in this way: ‘Crammed in as he is forced to live here, he is well-known as no homebody, particularly since the perfume in his prison might put him off all the more, a scent that he does not purchase from Struve in Leipzig or Oscar Baumann in Dresden’.45 The connective here is twofold: by adverting to Struve and Baumann, regional vendors of luxury products, this passage links the zoo animal to high-end consumption; but by jocularly commenting on the animal’s excretions, the author also makes use of the comparison to bring out the physical expression of the fox’s creatureliness, an opportunity that might have been rather limited otherwise. Humour, as Mary Lee Townsend has shown for the German public sphere, often ‘helped carve out a public space, a field or arena within which all sorts of ideas could be discussed and debated, be they political, social or moral’.46 Humour allows the writer here to allude to the fox’s scent marking in a manner that liminally domesticates the animal, in all its base and off-putting physicality. This account of the Dresden Zoo culminated in ‘Our walking-tour through the Zoological Garden’, which consisted in large part in chatty natural history, casually introducing information on the zoo animals’ ‘home countries’, but stressing ultimately Dresdeners’ fondness for ‘the good and the beautiful’ and praising the ‘good environment’ of the garden, as a place to demonstrate the sophisticated and superior senses of the better class of human being. ‘Natural sciences’ were only incidentally mentioned, but these nods can certainly be interpreted as providing scientific legitimacy to the young zoo. These texts need to justify leisure and pleasure, to make the city elite’s financial strength and social prestige visible. Thorstein Veblen’s commentary on the ‘leisure class’ of his time contains the apposite observation: ‘however wasteful a given expenditure may be in reality, it must at least have some colourable excuse in the way of an ostensible purpose’.47 For Veblen pastimes like 188 Animal History in the Modern City listening to music, learning ‘dead languages’, taking part in sports, breeding fancy pets, or for that matter going to the zoo, are ‘“immaterial goods” … quasi-scholarly or quasi-artistic accomplishments and a knowledge of processes and incidents which do not conduce directly to the furtherance of human life’.48 Veblen goes on to argue that ‘unless these accomplishments had approved themselves as serviceable evidence of an unproductive expenditure of time, they would not have survived and held their place as conventional accomplishments of the leisure class’.49 Reading zoos as creations of the nineteenth-century European leisure class reinforces the relative unimportance of science and natural history for their own sake; nor were animals significant for human societies in their own right. Instead, zoological gardens were dependent on giving animals meaning. In this regard, the language used in the presentation and representation of exhibited animals is especially revealing: jocose and ironic, at one and the same time sensationalizing and trivializing, these kinds of writing helped to classify animals but also naturalized the practice of keeping them captive in urban zoos. By picking up familiar narratives or tropes, drawing comparisons between strange beasts and familiar ones, by defusing the potentially threatening beastliness of the predators, the most ambiguous and liminal aspects of the animals’ presence in these places could be addressed. The same can be said of providing amenities such as pubs and restaurants, entertainments such as ice skating on the frozen flamingo pond in the winter, hot-air balloon rides, masked balls, concerts and the scenic views. The zoo animals themselves, the performing sea lions, say, or the elephants on which to ride, had a status somewhere between star performers and live props. What contemporaries experienced was a stroll in the midst of the city, observing en passant a nature enlivened by the physical presence of unfamiliar animals. Animals were conscripted into this newly domesticated and civil nature: Alfred Edmund Brehm, the popular author of the Illustrirtes Thierleben and first director of the Hamburg Zoo, facetiously described a prairie wolf (nowadays we would call it a coyote) playing an active part in one of the activities at the site, a concert: ‘Music has the same effects on him as songs; from the vantage of his cage, he impulsively participates in the garden’s concerts and often tries to be a serious contributor’.50 Animals themselves could be seen as beneficiaries of the gentrified leisure culture that was developed at the zoo. Liminal figures: Zoo workers as middlemen The figures of wards and keepers at the zoos are just as crucial for the understanding of the interwoven areas of urban leisure, interpretations of nature and economic networks. These zoo workers played a vital role in cleaning, feeding and animating captive animals for the entertainment of visitors. The intimate relationship fostered between guard/keeper and animal is a fundamental component of the process by which both the institution of the zoo and the animal other were introduced into urban space. The amusement they produced, for instance – say, in the laughter provoked by an animal’s actions under the direction of the keeper – can be understood in relation to Mikhail Bakhtin’s arguments about the carnivalesque, in which laughter at the grotesque Betwixt and Between 189 is an essential means of incorporating the other: ‘Laughter presents an element of victory not only over supernatural awe, over the sacred, over death, it also means the defeat of power, of earthly kings, of the earthly upper classes, of all that oppresses and restricts’.51 Bakhtin’s arguments hold true for the daunting task of blending animals into an urban society: the grotesque, as a figure of riotous exchange, is potentially transgressive, for instance putting emphasis on the shared corporality of humans and other animals, but it is also a means of taming such ambivalence, easing the pains of transition and achieving the kind of incorporation that Arnold van Gennep suggests. In this sense, the bourgeois middle class in the making, the builders of the modern zoo, are closer to folk culture and the carnivalesque than we might at first imagine. The sentimentalized relationship between keepers and captives, often enough presented in the same jocose and frolicsome undertones, also served obvious legitimizing purposes, despite the fact that physical contact remained potentially dangerous. Zoo founders were well aware of the ambivalence and grotesqueness produced by having exotic animals settled permanently and behind bars in the centres of rapidly growing European cities. This issue is tackled in the very first number of the journal Der Zoologische Garten, founded in Frankfurt in 1859, a publication that was intended to underline the scientific aims of zoo founders and to distinguish the zoo from its unrespectable predecessors. The zoologist David Friedrich Weinland, scientific superintendent of the Frankfurt Zoo at this time and editor of the journal, suggested the importance of the middleman role: ‘Just as the imprisoned man can, if only for hours, forget about his doom while chatting with a humane guard … [a]n animal held captive could and ought to be recompensated for the loss of its freedom by man bestowing in a closer relationship with it’.52 However, besides this ethical commentary, Weinland emphasized the importance of the keeper in ensuring that an animal provided entertainment and instruction: with help from the keepers, ‘a tamed animal’ would display ‘a lot of its mental peculiarities, which could never be seen if the animal was too shy’. The line between legitimate and illegitimate spectacle was a fine one, but Weinland referred to the world of the fairs and Stuttgart’s ‘Affenwerner’, justifying the ‘scientific’ value of popular animal exhibition even when the comparison to modern zoos was distinctly unfavourable: Alas, one might smile about the so-called tricks of the elephants etc., that can be seen in the Menageries’ show booths at the fairs; yet no one will deny that the audience that has seen the elephant ’work through’ a dozen tricks gets more of the physical and mental peculiarities of his whole character and nature than those who’ve seen him rocking back and forth behind the barrier or pace in a little park every now and then. Most of the polar bears in menageries and zoological gardens are rather boring, highly indolent fellows, but the polar bear of Mister Werner in Stuttgart, a noble male and bigger than ours by well over a quarter, is an extremely interesting animal. Why? Because he is dealt with daily for about half an hour, and with love.53 The keeper, he wrote, ‘must love his animals, thus he will not only remember to always optimally nourish them etc. but also, to his own delight, try to coax expressions of 190 Animal History in the Modern City mental traits out of the animals, which makes them interesting to every observer’.54 Treading the line between wild and tame, folk culture and bourgeois leisure, Weinland wrestles here with the task of incorporating the traditional business of animal tricks into the ideally serious space of the bourgeois zoo. Keepers’ ‘love for animals’ was also significantly linked to the running of the wellknown travelling menageries, for all that zoos aspired to higher things. Faced with the practical requirements of keeping wild animals, zoos had to turn towards those who had the best experience in handling lions, elephants, monkeys and so forth, namely animal wranglers from the menageries. Alfred Edmund Brehm was upfront in calling these menagerie workers both ‘mentors and role models’.55 Quite a few such men came to be employed in the early zoos.56 Drouad, a cousin of animal trader Lorenzo Casanova, was among the first keepers in Hannover’s zoo, for instance.57 Costello, elephant keeper in Antonio Alpi’s menagerie, came to serve in Schönbrunn, Vienna. The Londonbased animal showman Alfred Cops applied to Berlin Zoo.58 August Sieber, who had been working with the popular menagerie of Hermann van Akens, found employment there.59 Hermann van Akens himself applied for a job at Schönbrunn Zoo in 1828 and self-confidently demanded a rather high annual salary, free lodging and heating. In turn, drawing on his expertise and good business connections, he offered to save the zoo’s directors money, through better access to the worldwide animal market on the one hand, and improving breeding at the zoo on the other.60 In similar ways, animal trainer Henri Martin provided advice for both the Amsterdam zoo and the Berlin Zoo on the matter of animal diseases. In 1853, Martin even became a member of the board of directors in the zoo at Rotterdam.61 Whilst personnel of the menagerie, the zoo and circus frequently crossed over,62 we can also observe that particular practices persisted which had become a familiar part of wild animal shows that existed long before zoos came into existence. Zookeepers, even those who had never worked at the circus or menagerie, were probably as well acquainted with these shows as the paying public that came to the zoo. Travelling menageries and circuses’ animal stagings were the most popular, socially inclusive, and, because of their itinerant character, had a far greater geographic range, bringing wild animals, as Helen Cowie puts it, ‘to the doors of the masses’.63 The knowledge and techniques of menagerie workers were crucial for the formation of popular, entertaining zoology. Zoo directors nevertheless stuck faithfully to the narrative of a ‘fresh start’, promoting the zoo as a completely different form of animal show altogether. The bourgeois zoo founders and directors at the same time presented a story about their own milieu. In an article published in the bourgeois magazine Die Gartenlaube in 1872 by Franz Schlegel, director of the zoo in Breslau from 1864 to 1882, sounds the distinctive note of social disparagement when he talks of menageries and their exhibits: Besides the travelling hawkers, there are travelling zoologists …, presenters of zoological curiosities and their accomplices: the keepers of small booths [‘Budiker’], who present a mermaid or sea bear, sea wolf or sea lion, since seal sounds all too common, or a badger as an American skunk, a shepherd dog as a wolf, white mice or albino rats, woodchucks, trained fleas, dogs or canaries.64 Betwixt and Between 191 All the same, Schlegel conceded that menagerie workers were ‘trained under most difficult conditions’ and ‘perforce’ became ‘excellent practitioners’.65 In his critical remarks, Schlegel was focussing not so much on a lack of knowledge or even skill with animals. Rather, it is the ‘calamity’ of ‘nomadic life’ that was the crucial issue, something that pointed towards social segregation as much as a settled existence. By penning animals in zoo enclosures, by making them ‘permanent residents’, zoo founders redefined the scope of socially acceptable keeping of animals, claiming to spare the animals themselves the ‘calamity’ of the travelling menagerie, at the same time that they were rendered permanently accessible to paying citizens. Moreover, by calling menagerie workers ‘practitioners’, Schlegel relegated these well-trained and experienced animal handlers to the new zoos’ peanut gallery, though it was clear that it was these trained animal owners and keepers who had provided the public (including later zoo directors) with the sight of exotic animals in the first place. Travelling menageries, as Schlegel noted, were: the first sites where we were able to fulfil our curiosity and study nature, and it was at least partly these inspirations and experiences that were responsible for the fondness of certain princes for menageries. The gentlemen animal showmen [‘Thierbudiker’] are well aware of this, which is why they consider zoological gardens to be merely stationary menageries, and simply consider us directors [‘Thiergärtner’] as colleagues, even if it is not without the underlying thought that we, as scholars, are incapable of ever achieving their high standards. Even the famous Lichtenstein, the founder of Berlin’s zoological garden, had to put up with being addressed in a letter from an animal showman as the ‘director of the wild beasts’.66 Zoo directors like Weinland, Brehm and Schlegel were concerned not only with zoological taxonomy, then, but also with a kind of social classification. In practice, however, such clear distinctions were lacking. For both ‘wild beasts’ and their caretakers the experience of the zoo, as Daniel Bender convincingly stresses, had to do with ‘its daily drama rather than its taxonomy’.67 At the ‘ground level’, the ‘perspective taken from the position alongside animals’, which Erica Fudge recommends for the writing of animal history, and within the ‘daily drama’ of the zookeeper’s work, the more or less ‘bourgeois’ ‘distinction between the serious and the spurious’ looked quite different altogether.68 In 1864, for instance, the physician and publicist Wilhelm Stricker sent a letter to the journal Der Zoologische Garten, in which he openly complained about tip jars for the keepers set up at Dresden Zoo. Stricker considered those props as ‘by no means worthy’ of the zoo’s ‘society’.69 In these tip jars, we can find evidence for both the poor payment of the keepers and a double-sided disciplinary action. Three years later, Alwin Schöpf, the director of Dresden Zoo, explained: Keepers who were in charge of bears, monkeys, elephants, lions and so forth, often received tips when they impelled the animals to perform certain activities, neglecting to comply with their duties with other animals under their care … and even secretly sold bread … [to visitors who then could get into closer contact with 192 Animal History in the Modern City the animals by feeding them]. This in turn understandably caused serious grudges on the part of other keepers, who looked after less popular animals, so that the quarrel went on and on.70 Schöpf preferred to extend the system of tip jars, in favour of a fair share of tips among the staff, though he wanted to stop the unauthorized supplement of income by the selling of bread, and thus to guarantee the proper care of all animals, even the less charismatic. Zoo founders, as Daniel Bender points out, ‘imagined their parks as orderly, but visitors and animals together ensured they were anything but’.71 With these considerations in mind, we can observe that becoming zoo animal did by no means necessarily assure popularity – the most popular animals were still those best known from the circuses, menageries and wider media, and the ones who exhibited or performed certain pleasing types of behaviour. Moreover, the ‘love of animals’ which, as David Friedrich Weinland envisioned, was to express itself in the interaction between animal and keeper – who ‘to his own delight … coax[ed] expressions of mental traits out of the animals’ – had a more mundane economic dimension, far removed from the aims of improvement. For sure, there has always been a potential for emotional connections that the exhibitors and keepers formed with their charges, and presumably vice versa: ‘Unlike other business assets’, according to Louise E. Robbins, ‘animals could be companions, too, and could provoke affection as well as anger.’72 But in the everyday world of ‘exotic’ animals in nineteenth-century zoos, menageries and circuses, we see multifaceted, ambiguous profiles of emotions and modes of behaviour that call into question the desired separation of the former from the latter. Vacillating between a place of popular entertainment alone and one with pretences to an educational experience for the masses, the zoo thus remained a place of either/ or and neither/nor. The perspective of liminality explored here helps us to properly understand the history of the zoo, and also to demonstrate how inadequate our conventional categories typically are. Randy Malamud has suggested that we ‘try to think about these animals outside the proscribed, subservient two-dimensional role to which they are almost always relegated in our culture’.73 The urge to define and categorize runs very deep, however, as with the organizing and regulating categories of ‘zoo animals’, ‘wild animals’, ‘show animals’, ‘productive animals’ and so on. But the more we examine animal history, these seemingly established categories become, to quote Clemens Wischermann, ‘blurry and misty’.74 And it is this ‘blurring and merging of distinctions [which] may characterize liminality’,75 that offers the best opportunity for animal historians to challenge what Hayden White has called ‘prefigurative nature’.76 Notes 1 Oxford Living Dictionaries, available online: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pen#PEN_Residual_700 (accessed 28 February 2017). 2 The studies are correspondingly innumerable, but the most comprehensive is probably still Éric Baratay and Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West (London: Reaktion, 2004), and Nigel Rothfels, Savages and Beasts: Betwixt and Between 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 193 The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). For the context at hand see Annelore Rieke-Müller and Lothar Dittrich, Der Löwe Brüllt Nebenan: Die Gründung Zoologischer Gärten im Deutschsprachigen Raum 1833-1869 (Köln: Böhlau, 1998). Ayako Sakurai, Science and Societies in Frankfurt am Main (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 71. Victor Turner, ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society (1964): 4–20. Reprinted in: Victor W. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 93–111. This is precisely what Victor Turner described as his ‘basic model of society’: ‘[it] is that of a “structure of positions,” we must regard the period of margin or “liminality” as an interstructural situation’: Turner, Betwixt and Between, 93. David A. H. Wilson, The Welfare of Performing Animals: A Historical Perspective (Berlin: Springer, 2015), 18. A small note may be made on the assumed ‘extinction’ of fairs, which can hardly be maintained for the German case in the mid-nineteenth century. Stallybrass and White make this point clear in their chapter on ‘The Fair, the Pig, Authorship’: see Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 27–79, 34ff. Stallybrass and White, Politics and Poetics of Transgression, 36. Helen Cowie, ‘Elephants, Education and Entertainment: Travelling Menageries in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Journal of the History of Collections 25/1 (2013): 103–17, 111f. David Blackbourn, ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: Reappraising German History in the Nineteenth Century’, in The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany, ed. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 159–292, 200. Turner, Betwixt and between, 96. Kaspar Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen: Der Aufstieg der Massenkultur, 1850-1970 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1997), 79, 95. Jakob Tanner, ‘Industrialisierung, Rationalisierung und Wandel des Konsum- und Geschmacksverhaltens im Europäisch-Amerikanischen Vergleich’, in Europäische Konsumgeschichte: Zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (18.-20. Jahrhundert), ed. Hannes Siegrist et al. (Frankfurt: Campus, 1997), 583–613, 586. See also Peter Vorderer, ‘Entertainment Theory’, in Communication and Emotion: Essays in Honor of Dolf Zillmann, ed. Jennings Bryant and David R. Roskos-Ewoldsen (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003), 131–53. Harriet Ritvo, ‘At the Zoo’, American Scientist, March–April 2003. Available online: http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/2003/2/at-the-zoo (accessed 18 June 2017). W. Neubert, ‘Der Thiergarten des Caffetier Gustav Werner in Stuttgart’, Der Zoologische Garten: Der Zoologische Garten 11 (1870): 84–90, 84–90. Heinrich Leutemann, ‘Eine nachahmungswürdige Liebhaberei’, Die Gartenlaube (1863): 196–9. Rieke-Müller and Dittrich, Der Löwe brüllt, 16f. Utz Anhalt, Tiere und Menschen als Exoten: Exotisierende Sichtweisen auf das ‘Andere‘ in der Gründungs- und Entwicklungsphase der Zoos, Diss. Univ. Hannover, onlinepubl. (2007), 153. Rieke-Müller and Dittrich, Der Löwe brüllt, 265. 194 Animal History in the Modern City 19 Annelore Rieke-Müller, ‘»ein Kerl mit wilden Thieren«: Zur sozialen Stellung und zum Selbstverständnis von Tierführern im 18. Jahrhundert’, Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert – Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, Abenteuer und Abenteurer im 18. Jahrhundert 24, no. 2 (2000): 163–75. 20 Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen, 25ff; Oliver Hochadel, ‘Wandermänner der Wissenschaft: Das Staunen in bare Münze wandeln’, Kultur & Technik: Magazin des Deutschen Museums 4 (2005): 42–7. For another example of popularization in spaces of urban leisure, see Anne Secord, ‘Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early NineteenthCentury Lancashire’, History of Science 32, no. 3 (1994): 269–315. On the role of popular exhibitions, amusements, entertainment and the figure of the showman, see Jill A. Sullivan, ed., Popular Exhibitions, Science and Showmanship, 1840-1910 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012) as well as Bernard Lightman and Aileen Fyfe, ed., Science in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century Sites and Experiences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 21 Jutta Buchner, Kultur mit Tieren: Zur Formierung des bürgerlichen Tierverständnisses im 19. Jahrhundert (Münster: Waxmann, 1996), 148. See also Eric Ames, Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008). 22 Emily S. Rosenberg, ‘Transnationale Strömungen in einer Welt, die zusammenrückt’, in Geschichte der Welt, 1870-1945: Weltmärkte und Weltkriege [Geschichte der Welt, vol. 5, ed. Akira Iriye and Jürgen Osterhammel] (München: Beck, 2012), 816–920, 920. 23 Aline Steinbrecher, ‘Eine Praxeologisch Performative Untersuchung der Kulturtechnik des Spaziergangs’, in Tierstudien2 (2012) ed. Jessica Ulrich’, 9. See Karen Raber, ‘From Sheep to Meat, from Pets to People: Animal Domestication 1600-1800’, in A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Matthew Senior (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 73–100. 24 Sakurai, Science and Society, 80. For more see Gudrun M. König, Eine Kulturgeschichte des Spaziergangs: Spuren einer bürgerlichen Praktik 1780-1850 (Wien: Böhlau, 1996). 25 Orvar Löfgren, ‘Our Friends in Nature: Class and Animal Symbolism’, Ethnos 1–2 (1985): 184–213, 209. 26 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 263–307, 263. 27 The zoological garden in Berlin, which opened in 1844, constitutes a special case, since the connections to the feudal menagerie at the Pfaueninsel was quite explicit. Rieke-Müller u. Dittrich, Der Löwe brüllt. 28 Mary Douglas and Baron C. Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (New York: Basic Books, 1979), ix. 29 Lynn K. Nyhart, Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 30 Christina Wessely, Künstliche Tiere: Zoologische Gärten und Urbane Moderne (Berlin: Kadmos, 2008), 56. 31 Roger Cooter and Stephen Pumfrey, ‘Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture’, History of Science 32, no. 3 (1994): 237–67, 239. 32 Cooter and Pumfrey, Separate Spheres, 238. Kay Anderson, ‘Animals, Science, and Spectacle in the City’, in Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the NatureCulture Borderlands, ed. Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (New York: Verso 1998), 27–49. Betwixt and Between 195 33 Nigel Rothfels, ‘Zoos, the Academy, and Captivity’, PMLA – Transactions and Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America 124, no. 2 (2009): 480–6, 482. 34 Victor Turner, ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974). 35 Anon, ‘Der Zoologische Garten’, Freiberger Stadt-, Land- und Berg-Kalender (1862), 36–9. 36 Ibid., 37. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. A St. Martin’s goose was presumably best known in its plucked and roasted state as a traditional dish. 41 Anon, Der Zoologische Garten, 38. 42 Hermann Schläger, ‘Der Zoologische Garten zu Hannover im Jahre 1864’, Der Zoologische Garten (1865): 103–6, 106. See also Annelore Rieke-Müller and Lothar Dittrich, Ein Garten für Menschen und Tiere (Hannover: Grütter, 1990), 28ff. 43 Schläger, ‘Der Zoologische Garten zu Hannover’, 105. 44 David Friedrich Weinland, ‘Was wir Wollen’, Der Zoologische Garten 1 (1860): 1–7, 1. 45 Anon, Der Zoologische Garten, 38. Both Struve and Baumann were vendors of cosmetic products. 46 Mary Lee Townsend, ‘Humour and the Public Sphere in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, in A Cultural History of Humour from Antiquity to the Present Day, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), 200–21, 202. 47 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 64; the original publication was in 1899. 48 Ibid., 37. 49 Ibid., 37ff. 50 Alfred Edmund Brehm and Th. F. Zimmermann, Bilder und Skizzen aus dem Zoologischen Garten zu Hamburg (Hamburg: Lührsen, 1865), 240. 51 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968), 92. 52 David Friedrich Weinland, ‘Was ein Zoologischer Garten Leisten Soll’, Der Zoologische Garten (1860): 2ff. 53 David Friedrich Weinland, ‘Was wir Haben’, Der Zoologische Garten (1860): 202ff. 54 Ibid., 203–9, 203ff. 55 Alfred Edmund Brehm, ‘Literatur – Dr. F. Schlegel. Führer im Zoologischen Garten bei Breslau. Max Melzer. 1866.’ Der Zoologische Garten (1866): 278–80, 278. 56 Richard W. Burckhardt, ‘Akteure und Interessen in der Pariser Menagerie’, in Mensch, Tier und Zoo. Der Tiergarten Schönbrunn im internationalen Vergleich vom 18. Jahrhundert bis heute, ed. Mitchell G. Ash (Wien: Böhlau, 2008), 111–31, 119. 57 F. Th. Röbbecke, ‘Briefliche Mitteilung’, Der Zoologische Garten (1863): 196–7, 196. 58 Annelore Rieke-Müller and Lothar Dittrich, Unterwegs mit Wilden Tieren: Wandermenagerien Zwischen Belehrung und Kommerz 1750-1850 (Marburg: Basilisken-Presse, 1999), 86. 59 Rieke-Müller and Dittrich, Unterwegs mit Wilden Tieren. 60 Ibid. 61 Signor Saltarino, Artisten-Lexikon: Biographische Notizen über Kunstreiter, Dompteure, Gymnastiker, Clowns, Akrobaten, Specialitäten etc. aller Länder und Zeiten (Düsseldorf: Druck, 1895), 134–6. See Rieke-Müller and Dittrich, Unterwegs mit Wilden Tieren, 87. 196 Animal History in the Modern City 62 Jutta Buchner-Fuhs, ‘Gebändigte Wildheit im Stadtraum. Zur Geschichte der Zoologischen Gärten im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Natur – Kultur, Volkskundliche Perspektiven auf Mensch und Umwelt, ed. Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Annette Schneider and Ute Werner (Münster: Waxmann, 2001), 291–303, 297; Elizabeth Hanson, Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 34; Ken Kawata, ‘Wild Animal Training: A Glance at Circuses and Hediger’s Viewpoint’, Der Zoologische Garten 85, no. 5 (2016): 261–79, 261. See Daniel Bender, The Animal Game: Searching for Wildness at the American Zoo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 43. 63 Cowie, Elephants, 115. See Peta Tait, Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows (Sydney: Sidney University Press, 2016), xv. 64 Franz Schlegel, ‘Thierbudiker’, Die Gartenlaube (1872): 34–6, 34. 65 Schlegel, ‘Thierbudiker’, 36. 66 Ibid. 67 Bender, Animal Game, 184. 68 Erica Fudge, ‘What Was it Like to be a Cow?’ in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, ed. Linda Kalof (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 258–78, 264. See also Bender, Animal Game, 184, and Brett Mizelle, ‘Contested Exhibitions: The Debate Over Proper Animal Sights in Post-Revolutionary America’, Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 9, no. 2 (2005): 219–35, 232. 69 ‘Aus einem Schreiben des Herrn Dr. W. Stricker dahier an den Herausgeber, Dresden, 12. September 1864’, Der Zoologische Garten (1864): 416–17, 417. 70 Alwin Schöpf, ‘Nachrichten aus dem Zoologischen Garten zu Dresden’, Der Zoologische Garten (1867): 186–8, 188. 71 Bender, Animal Game, 23. 72 Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots. Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001), 74. 73 Randy Malamud, An Introduction to Animals in Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 22. 74 Clemens Wischermann, ‘Liminale Leben(s)räume: Grenzverlegungen Zwischen Urbanen Menschlichen Gesellschaften und Anderen Tieren im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, in Urbane Tier-Räume, ed. Thomas E. Hauck et al. (Berlin: Reimer, 2017), 14–31, 15. 75 Turner, ‘Liminal to liminoid’, 59. 76 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 30. Bibliography Ames, Eric. Hagenbeck’s Empire of Entertainment (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008). Anderson, Kay. ‘Animals, Science, and Spectacle in the City’, in Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands, ed. Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (New York: Verso 1998), 27–49. Anhalt, Utz. Tiere und Menschen als Exoten: Exotisierende Sichtweisen auf das ‘Andere’ in der Gründungs- und Entwicklungsphase der Zoos, Diss. Univ. Hannover, onlinepubl. (2007). Betwixt and Between 197 Anon, ‘Der Zoologische Garten’, Freiberger Stadt-, Land- und Berg Kalender (1862), 36–9. ‘Aus einem Schreiben des Herrn Dr. W. Stricker dahier an den Herausgeber, Dresden, 12. September 1864’, Der Zoologische Garten 5, (1864): 416–7. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968). Baratay, Éric and Hardouin-Fugier, Elisabeth. Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West (London: Reaktion, 2004). Bender, Daniel. The Animal Game: Searching for Wildness at the American Zoo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). Blackbourn, David. ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: Reappraising German History in the Nineteenth Century’, in The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany, ed. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 159–292. Brehm, Alfred Edmund and Zimmermann, Th. F. Bilder und Skizzen aus dem Zoologischen Garten zu Hamburg (Hamburg: Lührsen, 1865). Brehm, Alfred Edmund. ‘Literatur — Dr. F. Schlegel. Führer im Zoologischen Garten bei Breslau. Max Melzer. 1866’, Der Zoologische Garten (1866), 278–80. Buchner, Jutta. Kultur mit Tieren: Zur Formierung des bürgerlichen Tierverständnisses im 19. Jahrhundert (Münster: Waxmann, 1996). Buchner-Fuhs, Jutta. ‘Gebändigte Wildheit im Stadtraum: Zur Geschichte der Zoologischen Gärten im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Natur – Kultur, Volkskundliche Perspektiven auf Mensch und Umwelt, ed. Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Annette Schneider and Ute Werner (Münster: Waxmann, 2001), 291–303. Burckhardt, Richard W. ‘Akteure und Interessen in der Pariser Menagerie’, in Mensch, Tier und Zoo. Der Tiergarten Schönbrunn im internationalen Vergleich vom 18. Jahrhundert bis heute, ed. Mitchell G. Ash (Wien: Böhlau, 2008), 111–31. Cooter, Roger and Pumfrey, Stephen. ‘Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture’, History of Science 32, no. 3 (1994): 237–67. Cowie, Helen. ‘Elephants, Education and Entertainment: Travelling Menageries in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Journal of the History of Collection 25, no. 1 (2013): 103–17. Douglas, Mary and Isherwood, Baron C. The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Fudge, Erica. ‘What Was it Like to be a Cow?’, in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, ed. Linda Kalof (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 258–78 Hanson, Elizabeth. Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). Hobsbawm, Eric. ‘Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 263–307. Hochadel, Oliver. ‘Wandermänner der Wissenschaft: Das Staunen in bare Münze wandeln’, Kultur & Technik: Magazin des Deutschen Museums 4 (2005), 42–7. Kawata, Ken. ‘Wild Animal Training: A Glance at Circuses and Hediger’s Viewpoint‘, Der Zoologische Garten 85, no. 5 (2016): 261–79. König, Gudrun M. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Spaziergangs, Spuren einer bürgerlichen Praktik 1780-1850 (Wien: Böhlau, 1996). Leutemann, Heinrich. ‘Eine nachahmungswürdige Liebhaberei’, in Die Gartenlaube (1863): 196-9. 198 Animal History in the Modern City Lightman, Bernard and Fyfe, Aileen Fyfe, eds. Science in the Marketplace: NineteenthCentury Sites and Experiences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Löfgren, Oscar. ‘Our Friends in Nature: Class and Animal Symbolism’, Ethnos 1–2 (1985): 184–213. Maase, Kaspar. Grenzenloses Vergnügen: Der Aufstieg der Massenkultur, 1850-1970 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1997). Malamud, Randy. An Introduction to Animals in Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Mizelle, Brett. ‘Contested Exhibitions: The Debate Over Proper Animal Sights in Post-Revolutionary America’, Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 9, no. 2 (2005), 219–35. Neubert, W. ‘Der Thiergarten des Caffetier Gustav Werner in Stuttgart’, Der Zoologische Garten 11 (1870), 84–90. Nyhart, Lynn K. Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Raber, Karen. ‘From Sheep to Meat, from Pets to People: Animal Domestication 16001800’, in A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Matthew Senior (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 73–100. Rieke-Müller, Annelore. ‘»ein Kerl mit wilden Thieren«: Zur sozialen Stellung und zum Selbstverständnis von Tierführern im 18. Jahrhundert’, Das Achtzehnte Jahrhundert – Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, Abenteuer und Abenteurer im 18. Jahrhundert 24, no. 2 (2000), 163–75. Rieke-Müller, Annelore and Dittrich, Lothar. Ein Garten für Menschen und Tiere (Hannover: Grütter, 1990). Rieke-Müller, Annelore and Dittrich, Lothar. Der Löwe Brüllt Nebenan: Die Gründung Zoologischer Gärten im Deutschsprachigen Raum 1833-1869 (Köln: Böhlau, 1998). Rieke-Müller, Annelore and Dittrich, Lothar. Unterwegs mit Wilden Tieren: Wandermenagerien Zwischen Belehrung und Kommerz 1750-1850 (Marburg: Basilisken-Presse, 1999). Ritvo, Harriet. ‘At the Zoo’, American Scientist, March–April 2003. Available online: http:// www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/2003/2/at-the-zoo (accessed 18 June 2017). Röbbecke, F. Th. ‘Briefliche Mitteilung’, Der Zoologische Garten (1863), 196–197. Robbins, Louise E. Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots. Exotic Animals in EighteenthCentury Paris (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2001). Rosenberg, Emily S. ‘Transnationale Strömungen in einer Welt, die zusammenrückt’, in Geschichte der Welt, 1870-1945: Weltmärkte und Weltkriege [Geschichte der Welt, vol. 5, ed. Akira Iriye and Jürgen Osterhammel] (München: Beck, 2012), 816–920. Rothfels, Nigel. Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). Rothfels, Nigel. ‘Zoos, the Academy, and Captivity’, PMLA – Transactions and Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America 124, no. 2 (2009): 480–86. Sakurai, Ayako. Science and Societies in Frankfurt am Main (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013). Saltarino, Signor. Artisten-Lexikon: Biographische Notizen über Kunstreiter, Dompteure, Gymnastiker, Clowns, Akrobaten, Specialitäten etc. aller Länder und Zeiten (Düsseldorf: Druck, 1895). Schläger, Hermann. ‘Der Zoologische Garten zu Hannover im Jahre 1864’, Der Zoologische Garten (1865), 103–6. Schlegel, Franz. ‘Thierbudiker’, Die Gartenlaube (1872), 34–6. Betwixt and Between 199 Schöpf, Alwin. ‘Nachrichten aus dem Zoologischen Garten zu Dresden’, Der Zoologische Garten 1867, 186–8. Secord, Anne. ‘Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire’, History of Science 32, no. 3 (1994): 269–315. Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). Steinbrecher, Aline. ‘Eine Praxeologisch Performative Untersuchung der Kulturtechnik des Spaziergangs’, in Tiere auf Reisen: Tierstudien 2, ed. Jessica Ulrich, (2012): 13–25. Sullivan, Jill A., ed. Popular Exhibitions, Science and Showmanship, 1840-1910 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012). Tait, Peta. Fighting Nature: Travelling Menageries, Animal Acts and War Shows (Sydney: Sidney University Press, 2016). Tanner, Jakob. ‘Industrialisierung, Rationalisierung und Wandel des Konsum- und Geschmacksverhaltens im Europäisch-Amerikanischen Vergleich’, in Europäische Konsumgeschichte: Zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (18.-20. Jahrhundert), ed. Hannes Siegrist, Hartmut Kaelble and Jürgen Kocka (Frankfurt: Campus, 1997), 583–613. Townsend, Mary Lee. ‘Humour and the Public Sphere in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, in A Cultural History of Humour from Antiquity to the Present Day, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), 200–21. Turner, Victor. ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, ed. June Helm (Seattle: American Ethnological Society, 1964), 4–20. Turner, Victor W. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967). Turner, Victor. ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 53–92. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Vorderer, Peter. ‘Entertainment Theory’, in Communication and Emotion: Essays in Honor of Dolf Zillmann, ed. Jennings Bryant and David R. Roskos-Ewoldsen (Abingdon: Routledge, 2003), 131–53. Weinland, David Friedrich. ‘Was ein Zoologischer Garten Leisten Soll’, Der Zoologische Garten 1–2 (1860). Weinland, David Friedrich. ‘Was wir Wollen’, Der Zoologische Garten 1 (1860), 1–7. Weinland, David Friedrich. ‘Was wir Haben’, Der Zoologische Garten 12 (1860): 203–9. Wessely, Christina. Künstliche Tiere: Zoologische Gärten und Urbane Moderne (Berlin: Kadmos, 2008). White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Wilson, David A. H. The Welfare of Performing Animals: A Historical Perspective (Berlin: Springer, 2015). Wischermann, Clemens. ‘Liminale Leben(s)räume: Grenzverlegungen Zwischen Urbanen Menschlichen Gesellschaften und Anderen Tieren im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, in Urbane Tier-Räume, ed. Thomas E. Hauck, Stefanie Hennecke, André Krebber, Wiebke Reinert and Mieke Roscher (Berlin: Reimer, 2017), 14–31. 200 12 Liminality in the Post-War Zoo: Animals in East and West Berlin, 1955–61 Mieke Roscher Introduction When in August 1955 the East Berlin Tierpark opened the gates to the former Schlosspark Friedrichsfelde, a predominantly, but not exclusively, East German audience was offered the opportunity to witness both the wonders of the animal world and the fruits of an ideal socialist society. The grounds of the former chateau were opened up to both animals and humans providing a lush green sward for the grazing ungulates and an extensive public park for the latter: a reward for the hard-working population of the city, as the GDR leadership proudly declared. In a Berlin still under reconstruction, the Tierpark, like its West Berlin counterpart, the rather better-known Zoologischer Garten in the British sector, offered a vision of a better life for the animal inmates and the human visitors alike. In this chapter, I place the development of these two zoos side by side, in the historical framework of the Cold War. I hope to show how the sites that were to become the new Tierpark as well as the rebuilt Berlin Zoo were the result of a new political as well as simply a new cultural geography, making them liminal places whose liminality was embodied in the captive animals themselves. These animals should be considered liminal, not only because they were caught between the statuses of wild and domesticated, but also because they were caught between the past, present and future of the German metropolis. The concept of liminality used here is focused therefore on the in-between-ness of both space and time. On the one hand, the argument made here is very much in line with the situation described by the animal geographers Chris Wilbert and Chris Philo, who refer to ‘“in-between” animals finding themselves, appropriately enough, utilizing “in-between” spaces’.1 In this sense non-human animals serve both as transgressors and translators of a given space such as the zoo, active occupiers rather than mere occupants. On the other hand, a broader and more expansive understanding of liminality is drawn upon, one that takes in the in-between stages of cultural and political transitions. Animals are not only subjected to these transitions but are indeed their prime material. The approach subscribes to the ‘claim’ within political and social theory, ‘that liminal situations can be applied to whole societies going through a crisis 202 Animal History in the Modern City or a “collapse of order”’.2 With this precise argument in mind, I will attempt to uncover liminal moments within the life of the two zoos as distinct spaces, asking in what way zoo animals can be seen as liminal animals, and adding a new dimension to the ways in which the post-war and Cold War era can themselves be described as liminal. Lastly, I will try to describe how these complex states of liminality have in their turn influenced zoos and their animals. The liminality of the zoo According to a straightforward definition, such as the one given by the German federal law on nature protection, zoos are to be characterized as ‘permanent places in which wild animals are kept for display for more than seven days a year’.3 This definition maintains the importance of both spatial and temporal interpretations. The importance of time may be extended, however. Throughout their history, starting off with the post-revolutionary Jardin des Plantes in Paris (see Chapter 6) and the establishment of the London Zoo in 1828, zoos act as temporal markers of the transition from feudal to bourgeois society, for instance, or from the colonial to the imperial state,4 or, at the end of the century, from the age of enlightenment to, one might argue, the age of consumerism (see the previous chapter by Wiebke Reinert). As such, zoos always seem to stand on the threshold of one historical period and another. They also straddle debates on the place of the natural sciences in society, the rise of evolutionary theories, questions of race and belonging, the distinction between savagery and civilization and matters of inclusion and exclusion more generally. The opening up of the zoo to the general public and the working classes in particular, like what happened in London and Berlin by the end of the nineteenth century, also marks significant societal changes – enshrining human civility while presenting animal nature. In the building of zoos, a re-enactment of civilized order was clearly envisaged. By the turn of the century, almost all European countries and capitals of any pretension to civilization would provide a home for zoos, with cities in settler colonies following suit during the first half of the twentieth century. Civility as a powerful trope was also paraded as the animus of the animal welfare movement, whose origins can be traced back to the Victorian and Wilhelminian eras in Britain and Germany respectively.5 This abiding concern with civilized society survived even the continent’s darkest hour, and only became more significant: after the atrocities of the National Socialist regime in Germany, zoos offered an opportunity for restoring the image of a civilized nation. They also provided a place where it seemed legitimate to mourn the dead and to lament the destruction caused by the war.6 These reconciliatory steps were taken in the twin German states that came into being as a result of the war, and for all that they led in different directions they found common ground in the urgency displayed in attempting to provide or restore a zoo culture for the masses. In West Berlin, the first set of steps to re-open the almost totally destroyed Zoologischer Garten were taken soon after the end of the Second World War.7 Only ninety-one animals had survived the war, most falling victim to the bombings, or to shootings and even stabbings. After cleaning the area of debris, securing the remaining Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 203 cages, erecting makeshift roofs and replacing walls and heating, the Zoologischer Garten reopened in the fall of 1945 – albeit in what we can describe as a liminal condition, for the rituals that guaranteed full belonging, social as well as political, had yet to be performed. In fact, it was a ramshackle operation: when the restaurants were working, for instance, some entrances had to be sealed in order to prevent ‘strangers’ from entering the zoo, as Katharina Heinroth, zoo director from 1945 to 1956, reported.8 Heinroth herself can be regarded as a transitional figure in the history of the Berlin Zoologischer Garten, inheriting the post from Lutz Heck, a fervent Nazi infamous for his programme of ‘breeding back’ supposedly pure Germanic animals such as the European bison and the aurochs.9 With Heck disgraced as well as fleeing from Soviet persecution, it fell to Heinroth not only to rebuild the zoo, but also to integrate it into the unfamiliar political geography of a city under fragmented allied control. In many ways, Heinroth like many German women, suddenly found herself in positions of authority, albeit only temporarily. With the coming ‘re-patriarchization’ of the German Federal Republic, in particular, its labour market reverting from its wartime shape, this period constitutes a liminal stage in itself, as the zoo and other institutions were charged with bringing some kind of civility to the German nation (or nations) and to help rebuild diplomatic ties with former enemies.10 Like many other women Heinroth was eventually forced to leave her position when a better and – perhaps more significantly – a male candidate became available – in this case, Heinz-Georg Klös, who took office in 1957. The Zoologischer Garten under her direction had already accomplished its mission as a standard-bearer for stability in uncertain times, as Berlin was slowly restored to its place among the great European cities. But by increasingly catering for a male working population, the zookeepers in particular, many of whom like Klös had been held in captivity as allied prisoners of war, this rehabilitation meant the end of one transitional period and the beginning of another. As the post-war period developed, however, economic stabilization, at least for West Germany, was accompanied by the political destabilization of the Cold War, ushering in a new transitional phase: no less important for the zoo as a Berlin institution. On a more general level, zoos can rightfully be regarded as the first and foremost markers of urbanity and urbanism.11 Since their inception in the nineteenth century they stood for the locus primus of the civilized city, where feral spaces were firmly under control. The modernization process following the rebuilding of Berlin clearly endorsed such aims, though they were given in these circumstances the very highest political priority, as documents between the senate and Klös demonstrate.12 Klös began his work where Heinroth had left off, albeit with greater vigour: Klös wanting to leave his own mark in the working of the zoo. It was his goal to lead the Zoologischer Garten and with it the city of Berlin through this liminal phase: to secure for both a bright and stable future, making the captive animals involved partners in this political vision. East Germany was no less interested in communicating a stable future for its citizens. Like its Western counterpart, the transitional phase between the end of the war and the formation of the state constituted a political and societal threshold par excellence. As Harald Wydra writes: ‘Political regimes change as societies undergo the dissolution of established power structures, affecting not only institutional forms but 204 Animal History in the Modern City also affective relations and symbolic universes of people.’13 Indeed, in complement to individuals’ transitory and liminal phases, these societal and political transformations are marked by ‘rituals, emotions and contentious politics’.14 Zoos were recognized as ‘symbolic universes’ capable of providing these much needed rituals and fostering these emotions. In the case of the GDR, shortly after the uprising of June 1953, Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl himself took the initiative for creating a zoo in the eastern half of the city. In 1954, Grotewohl found the perfect candidate in Heinrich Dathe, then assistant to the director of the Leipzig zoo.15 The magistracy, the governing body of East Berlin, allocated both money and land16 for what was to become the Tierpark, and this was supported both by the high command of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), particularly by its first secretary Walther Ulbricht and President Wilhelm Pieck. The location they provided for the Tierpark was in itself a prime example of attempts to re-interpret city landscapes by redefining their purposes. The castle of Friedrichsfelde, a Prussian palace built in the baroque style, and its formal gardens, designed by the great landscape architect Peter Josef Lenné, later the Prussian Garden Director General, had obviously to be repurposed and reconciled with the realities of the socialist present. Like so many of the great country parks of the nineteenth century, the new animal park offered open spaces and grand vistas. Contrary to the park’s initial design, however, the new garden layout remained relatively simple following the re-opening after the war; there were also, from an early stage, plans on the table to build high-rise buildings around the park, developments that threatened to take away even more of the dignity and grandeur of the former Prussian palace. But the Tierpark was meant not for the enjoyment of a noble family but for the urban population as a whole, and its main features were meant moreover to be representative of an explicitly socialist environment. The Tierpark effectively functioned as a mediator between the old and the new, as a tool for the kind of debourgeoisification that the GDR envisaged, and as a device for the claiming of Berlin as an appropriate capital for the socialist state. Landscape design was intended to reinforce the city’s role as the centre and centrepiece of the new nation. With the landscape as ‘processual and in a constant state of transition and becoming’,17 it fell to the park’s animals to give meaning to this particular political geography. The construction of the park was premised foremost on the direct participation of the East Berlin populace. The ‘Nationales Aufbauwerk’, an initiative to muster volunteers in building and rebuilding the city, contributed hundreds of thousands of working hours in the construction of the new park (see Figure 12.1). Building the nation and building the Tierpark were two sides of the same coin. It was, therefore, vital to present the Tierpark’s adaptation as a popular project. At the third party congress of the SED, Walther Ulbricht explicitly recognized the Tierpark as the prime example of what the young nation could collectively achieve.18 Heinrich Dathe, the zoo’s director, agreed: ‘The Tierpark can be seen as a symbol for the cultural development of the capital.’19 Commenting on the new character assigned to the park, he added: ‘The former owners would surely not have imagined in their wildest dreams that that one day chimpanzees, orang-utans and gorillas would live here.’20 It can be argued in fact that the radical transitions that followed the defeat of Nazi Germany and the making of the GDR were made possible by using this space in an unprecedented Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 205 Figure 12.1 Clearing up the rubble: making space for the new Tierpark, 1955. Bundesarchiv Berlin 183-29610-002, Zentrabild Quasch. 26.3.1955. way, and with the animals themselves explicitly conscripted as political actors: here, ‘the liminal already in some way connotes the spatial: a boundary, a border, a transitional landscape, or a doorway’, as Hazel Andrew and Les Roberts write,21 but we should add that the role envisaged for landscape in such an interpretation needs explicitly to include the presence and activity of non-human animals. Playing with the liminal: The design and orchestration of the zoo Before turning to the animals themselves, it is important to stress that the architectural designs for new enclosures and animal houses reveal traces of liminality. This was first and foremost the case with the elephants’ enclosure built in the Zoologischer Garten between 1953 and 1955, a construction that was meant to serve as a kind of window display, positioned as it was between the zoo and the forecourt of the neighbouring station of Bahnhof Zoo.22 Its main purpose was to hide or minimize the barriers between animals and spectators, and to illuminate the enclosure in such a way that visitors would have ‘the full might of these animal colossuses right in front of their eyes’.23 Channelling the gaze of the public was something that was characteristic of the newly-developing tourism industry in the 1950s in West Germany, a phenomenon that saw for instance the establishment of car-free zones in the city centre inviting pedestrians to go ‘window-shopping’.24 Instead of looking at the consumer goods that were increasingly filling the shelves as a result of the ‘economic miracle’ here it was the 206 Animal History in the Modern City animals that were put on display. It was not a display in the conventional sense, for here it was a whole world that was recreated for the spectator. One is reminded of Victor Turner’s suggestion that we need to nuance the concept of the liminal for the ‘modern’ world by speaking instead of the ‘liminoid’: thinking for instance of the passages and experiences provided by consumer societies, where uncertainty unfolds in particular practices of art and leisure activities.25 More precisely, the site under consideration here was an eminently ‘in-between-space’, caught as it was between the revived civilization of the new Germany, represented simultaneously by the modernity of the enclosure and the disciplined wilderness it presented for view. Consider the construction of the ape and primate house, finished in 1960 and the most prominent of Klös’s rebuilding projects, using considerable amounts of transparent materials, mainly glass, to convey the essential quality or illusion of openness. Windows, not iron bars, would ideally separate the human and non-human primates. In 1959, the first animals moved in when the initial phase of construction was completed.26 At this point the threshold between old and new, classical and modern, was decisively crossed. The ape house was the final part of the restoration and replacement programme for the pre-war buildings, and was supposed to be the largest of its kind worldwide. It was not only the housing but also the display material that can be read as offering cultural constructions of the new or ideal state of society for which the zoos offered a plan. For the Tierpark, Dathe opined that a modern zoo should be full of surprises for the visitors, so he rejected both purely taxonomic displays as well as those based on geographical regions. Since the very beginning of zoological gardens in the nineteenth century there were several exhibition models to choose from.27 Providing for a new framework entirely helped highlight the transitional nature of the society under constructions. In the GDR, something wholly novel, a socialist state on German soil was to be realized; the opening of a new zoo offered the chance to try something equally unique, a blank slate for the drawing and redrawing of zoological (and sociological) boundaries. Dathe saw the Tierpark as a test bed for accommodating species unknown to each other in the wild.28 The large size of the zoo enclosures would also allow the variability of subspecies to be on show, while at the same time providing some idea about specific areas of origin.29 The ‘animal material’ would, through this process, gain in scientific value, or so Dathe hoped.30 In West Berlin’s Zoologischer Garten, on the other hand, a different story was to be told through the spatial arrangement of the animals on display. Prior to the advent of the Third Reich, the exhibits at the Zoologischer Garten had been ordered strictly on taxonomical principles, and a systematic display was to be achieved by pooling ‘related animals in territorial sections and enclosure complexes as well as other units’.31 With the beginning of the reconstruction process after the war, this rigid scheme proved particularly difficult to recreate, but it remained a top priority nonetheless. Klös was concerned to eradicate what he called the ‘current entanglement of species’ in the zoo as soon as possible.32 One might easily align his response to the disorder on display with the premium put on political normalization and on continuity. The failed attempts at denazification, most of all in the civil service, the ministries and the judiciary, were one result of this attempt to return to ‘normality’. Looking at the Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 207 entanglement of species in both zoos, the one in the GDR purposefully created, the other in the FDR an unfortunate promiscuity better abolished as quickly as possible, the central importance of the liminal nature of these animals can be observed. In both cases the animals, their landscapes and the principles by which they were arranged, all demonstrated that society itself was in transition. The liminality of the zoo animal Harriet Ritvo has written that ‘there is an essential paradox involved in looking at wild animals confined in cages; zoo animals have entered a borderline state, being neither wild nor tamed’.33 Garry Marvin has even explicitly referred to the zoo animal as ‘l’animal liminal’, because they are neither here (meaning as members of the urban household) nor there (i.e. in their ‘natural’ habitat).34 By becoming infused with specific cultural values, these liminal animals become ‘cultural commodities’35 in the struggle for an authorized and authoritative meaning. It is a process of acculturation in which these animals’ in-between-ness becomes tangible and embodied. This was particularly true for some of the ‘crowd-pullers’ who were the mainstays of both zoos – but perhaps more especially so with the case of the Zoologischer Garten, an institution which made use of considerable propagandistic effort to highlight their ‘animal stars’. Such was the case with ‘Knautschke’, a bull hippo who by the fact that he had survived the war could be represented as having ‘suffered’ with his fellow Berliners, and who became as a result a highly symbolic figure. The marketing of ‘Knautschke’ made it easier to argue that modernization, the hippos getting a new building in 1957, for instance, was both necessary and benign. The same could not be said, however, about the white stork ‘Oshima’, the oldest animal in the zoo, born there in 1930.36 Oshima was by comparison to Knautschke more or less ignored, principally perhaps because he was not well placed to meet the public eye. Cultural value, symbolic meaning and questions of proper presentation were clearly intertwined in these contrasting cases, and it can be argued that not all zoo animals were ‘liminal’ in the same way, some figuring only as passive cultural translators. Whatever the case, it is easy to see that the exhibition of zoo animals served different purposes. In contradistinction to the Zoologischer Garten with its stars like Knautschke, in the Tierpark it was not so much the individual animals that were prominently displayed but rather the herds of bison, antelopes, zebras and camels who roamed the 160 hectares of the park. Next to the Zoologischer Garten, which could only offer a comparatively cramped twenty-eight hectares, this was an immense space. So it was essentially not the animals as individuals but instead the space they inhabited such that the centre of attention in the East Berlin zoo. Matters were to stay like this for the life of the regime, no major changes to the landscapes being carried out between the founding of the Tierpark and the amalgamation with the Zoologischer Garten after German re-unification in 1990. As Thomassen reminds us, ‘liminal states may at times become institutionalized’,37 and this was certainly the case for the Tierpark: it remained a kind of open space and a test field even at a time when the GDR with its infamous surveillance system was firmly in place. Moreover, as Arpad Szakolzcai has 208 Animal History in the Modern City argued, this state of permanent liminality may be a feature of socialist regimes as such, permanently stuck as they are in the final phase of a collective rite of passage.38 Admittedly, one reason for prioritizing the open landscape in the Tierpark was purely economic. The shortage of material, particularly iron, which characterized the East German economy as a whole led to a turning away from a strategy of building massive cages and instead settling on roomy enclosures. Moreover, not all the zoo animals were so lucky in having the luxury of a seemingly open landscape; others had to make do with small crates and interim arrangements. What seemed like randomness in the curatorship of the Tierpark was from a different angle programmatic. When the Tierpark opened its gates, ninety species and four hundred individual animals were available to be seen.39 Dathe simply tried to make the best out of the resulting situation by claiming that, for the animals, it was in the Tierpark’s interest to keep endangered species alive, and that the animals would need to make the most of it, until such time proper and adequate viewing enclosures could be installed.40 This was an unfortunate situation that was to remain for years to come. In 1960, 63 per cent of the animals were still confined in provisional housing.41 An open den for the wolf pack that had arrived a year earlier was still nowhere near completion.42 These awkward realities mirrored the position of the human city. When looked at from another angle, we might argue that the rite of passage was only completed, and the liminal state brought to an end, by housing animals rather than people on this site. Before the Tierpark was set up in the grounds of the castle, numerous allotment gardens that had been lining the park had to be removed. At a time when the city was still very much under construction, these allotments were a refuge and the source of food for a not inconsiderable portion of the population.43 When these people were forced to leave their improvised gardens the question of what was to be preferred – space for new housing or a dedicated zoo for the eastern half of the city – was hotly debated.44 In the end, the decision to build the Tierpark was taken with the future of the metropolis in mind, rather than what was needed in the present. To add a further irony, some of the animal houses were constructed from sandstone bricks recovered from the ruins of old Berlin, something that evoked the city’s terrible past rather than its idealized future. The dream of presenting the perfect zoo remained elusive. Nevertheless, both zoos boasted a rapid increase in the number of animals they housed. This growth was only possible because of the booming animal trade of the post-war era and the professionalization of animal breeding. The Zoologischer Garten became particularly well known for breeding apes and hippos, and the Tierpark achieved the same successes with bison, wolves and flamingo. Another source of ‘animal income’ took the form of gifted animals. Whereas the main sources in the West were local businesses, the East would benefit from animal donations by socialist partner states. These animals came either from other zoos or were caught in the wild, the mobility of animals on their way to their eventual destinations evidence again for their liminal status. It was this mobility that rendered them from feral nature into cultural commodity. The Tierpark at this point also served another function, as it was the main transfer site for animals shipped from East to West. It was here that animals had to endure quarantine and where their fate was really decided. Where they would eventually Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 209 end up was, however, established in Moscow. The destiny of one of the most famous animals transferring through the Tierpark illustrates this fact. This was the panda Chi Chi who, on her way to the London zoo, resided at the Tierpark for a few weeks,45 much to the delight of the director as well as of the GDR’s ruling elite. These animals in transit illustrate and embodied this period of ideological competition between East and West. Other animals suffered from the growing culture of confrontation, however. When the Tierpark bought a female donkey from a French animal park in Poitou, the borders with Western Germany remained closed, so she was forced to travel on board a ship for much of the way.46 Regarding zoo animals this was an exceptional situation, however. More often than not, animals moved with an ease that seems startling in the era of the Berlin Wall. With the increasing successes of zoo breeding programmes, the borders of the German states that even before 1961 were not so easy to traverse, became almost non-existent. It is true that these apparent transgressions were the result of carefully calculated breeding regimes, and control of the animals’ movements, the signs of domestication, but the liminal character of Cold War animals is apparently all the same. The exchange was particularly vibrant between Leipzig and Berlin in the breeding of hippos: Berlin’s famous hippo bull Knautschke was to become the parent of a whole new generation of hippos at both zoos, with ‘Bulette’, born in 1952, and ‘Jette’, born in 1958, being the most celebrated offspring. Just as ‘wild’ animals know no borders, animals like these achieved what was impossible for most people, moving freely between East and West. Of course, both zoos, albeit rather unwillingly, housed those animals which are defined as liminal by Susan Donaldson and Will Kymlicka in their recent argument for granting ‘denizenship’ to non-human co-habitants, those who live among us, in the city, without being domesticated, or ‘without being under direct care of humans’.47 Liminal animals defined in this way ‘typically fend for themselves, living independently of individual humans’.48 In the case of the Tierpark there were many liminal animals like these who used the zoos as a kind of supply station: black-headed and common gulls regularly ate from the feeding troughs of the llamas, for instance, while ravens sat on the backs of buffalo and deer sustaining themselves from what they gleaned in their enclosures. The number of ducks rose dramatically too, because they found ‘refuge and supply’, as Dathe recounted.49 According to the parameters given by Kymlicka and Donaldson, the ‘real’ zoo animals, those behind the bars and moats, are not true liminal animals because they do not choose to be in human company. But Kymlicka and Donaldson do not provide any specific category for zoo animals, declaring them, problematically, to be ‘wild’ animals. This is probably because they use the terminology of liminality to achieve something quite different, namely attributing rights to (certain) non-human beings. In this sense they employ liminality not in an analytical sense but for bringing out the grey areas of animal welfare law. Nonetheless, their conception is helpful as it draws attention to the arbitrariness of animal taxonomies, in itself a product of negotiating liminal beings,50 and underlines the importance of the spatiality of human–animal interaction. It was a specific space, the divided metropolis with its competing zoos, which determined the distinct cultural and political meaning of the animals under their care. It served moreover as a site for specific human-animal encounters, a theme to which I now turn. 210 Animal History in the Modern City The liminality of the Cold War era The transformations embodied in each of our zoos and their animal stock reflected the post-war era in Germany as a whole. With the establishment of rival states in 1949 came the inevitable contest to establish which would become the ‘better’ Germany.51 The period under discussion, often defined as the first phase of the Cold War, can thus further be understood by considering moments of in-between-ness and suspension, of being on a threshold, exemplified by inscriptions of difference, of individual and collective subjectivities.52 Thomassen’s version of liminality, which he applies to the post-war period in Italy, is particularly useful here for analysing periods prominent for high degrees of ambivalence and anxiety, yet at the same time creativity, all of which can be seen to lead to ‘deep changes in political and social imagery’.53 The Cold War has certainly been read as such a liminal period, particularly insofar as it exhibits ‘a promising confusion of boundaries, positions, theories, and possibilities’.54 As Arpaid Szakolczai has recently argued, ‘Liminality helps to study events or situations that involve the dissolution of order, but which are also formative of institutions and structures.’55 What we can see here is that the period under discussion complies with the second distinctive element of liminality, namely that of temporality. This must be combined with the emphasis on space discussed above, however; Arnold van Gennep saw these territorial and spatial processes together forming a liminal phase preceding the symbolic transition.56 In other words, for the Cold War as a rite of passage to take place spatial transformations also had to occur. This was clearly the case with the parallel development of the twin Berlin zoos. The geopolitical framework of the Cold War was starkly materialized in their ability to house and exhibit their animals. In West Berlin, this was particularly obvious in their response to attempts by the East German authorities to outmatch them: the governing board of the Zoologischer Garten warned the senate that the ‘government of the Soviet zone’ would spare no expenses to ‘create an institution of highly significant character’.57 The Cold War emerged therefore not only in the race for space and for cultural and political supremacy58 but also in a competition about animal lives. In much the same manner, in a letter to Walter Ulbricht on 23 August 1956, Dathe warned that the Zoologischer Garten would put the ‘greatest effort’ into trying to compensate for ‘the loss of prestige’ resulting from his Tierpark’s success, so that the Tierpark for its part should continue to exceed expectations.59 This encounter between East and West in the form of its respective zoological institutions, their directors battling for attention and money and prestige, is reminiscent of nothing so much as an Elizabethan drama, with the zoo as a stage on which the management boards try to come to terms with the tensions raised by running a modern zoo, something that been already been compared to a classical rites of passage,60 save that in the case of Berlin, the Cold War setting only amplifies this tension. That the zoo was a place for political symbolism became evident once more when Secretary of Defence Robert Kennedy visited the Zoologischer Garten and brought with him the present of a bald eagle, the political icon of the United States.61 This gift was meant to reinforce the connection between Berlin and the United States, obviously: the eagle became part of a Cold War culture, a universal value system adaptable for Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 211 the practices of everyday life, making a fetish of anticommunism as it celebrated the Western, or more precisely the American, way of life – a culture that here influenced how and what was to be seen in places such as zoos.62 This phenomenon implied not only that all sorts of consumer goods were available in the Zoologischer Garten and the West, but also that constant comparisons with the rival zoo and model of society were essential to its operation. This also held true for the eastern part of the city, where the Tierpark embodied normalcy and civility, foundation stones of the state-building process. Even at a time when most of its buildings were unfinished, these messages had to be transmitted.63 When in July 1955 President Wilhelm Pieck was driven around the Tierpark’s compound with a lion cub on his lap, in fact only an insignificant part of the area was actually opened up and ready for use. Nevertheless, even these provisional arrangements sufficed to communicate the legitimacy of Berlin as the capital of the GDR. In the Zoologischer Garten, on the other hand, different images were put across, if no less saturated with an image of stately legitimacy. It was the portrayal of the zoo as a well-oiled machine that was the underlying theme, most especially directed at those Berliners living in the eastern sector – for, up to 1961, it was seen as a matter of courtesy and diplomacy to extend the invitation to the ‘brothers and sisters from the East’. The Zoologischer Garten was thus pictured both as an important link as well as a dividing line between East and West, expressing the hope that the liminal state of Germany might yet be reunified.64 After the Wall had been erected, from 13 August 1961, the zoos did not cease being vital for negotiating the cultural values connected with the Cold War, however. As late as 1980, West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt secured two pandas, Bao Bao and Tjen Tjen, as official gifts from China, part of what has been termed ‘panda diplomacy’ and a sign of China’s increasing openness to the West.65 The pandas also symbolized the ongoing struggle between the Berlin zoos and their systems, a situation that only really ended with their (re-)unification in 1991. Conclusion Zoo animals have long been regarded as paradigmatic examples of the liminal, caught as they are between wild and tame.66 This holds true for some animals more than for others, but in our case these claims are easily endorsed. It is the unprecedented social geographies of a city soon to be violently divided that serve here as a paradigm case for understanding relations between states and zoos. The transportation of animals between East and West, the crossing of borders, their ‘becoming-zoo-animal’ in rival political systems, all can rightly be described through the concept of liminality. Here, the allocation of space is what makes zoo animals such paradigmatic liminal beings, but again we should emphasize the importance of a political rather than simply a cultural geography. Following Karen Syse’s concept of the animalscape, places shaped, turned around or transformed by animal presences, we can emphasize these Berlin zoo animals’ political mutability.67 The way in which a Cold War culture was communicated by means of animal bodies can also be described as following implicit rituals: by giving zoo animals the role of political ambassadors they became far more than bodily presences, symbolizing liminality both semantically as well as materially. 212 Animal History in the Modern City The political transformations presented here do not accord perfectly with what Arnold van Gennep had in mind in his seminal Rites de Passage.68 Still, the conceptual extension of the status of in-between-ness and phases of liminality provided by Thomassen and others clearly helps to illustrate a distinctive stage in the development of the post-war zoo in Berlin and, beyond that, in post-war German society as a whole. In this narrative, animals were bestowed with liminal lives as they were transgressive in both spatial and temporal senses. Thomassen’s testimony that ‘liminality is a world of contingency where events and ideas, and “reality” itself, can be carried in different directions’,69 is particularly apposite. As demonstrated in this chapter, liminal or in-between phases characterized the construction of the Berlin zoos, as well as what they aimed to represent, the different ideologies and visions of Germany. The same could be said about the animals themselves: distinctively liminal moments appeared ‘during transitions from one type of system to another’.70 On the one hand, in the Zoologischer Garten, by allowing animals free rein in a space that had previously been reserved for ‘Germanic’ animals, spatial re-figurations were materialized through creaturely performances: these liminal animals were tasked with reconciling a Nazi past with the post-war present and a democratic tomorrow. In the Tierpark, on the other hand, zoo animals were avowedly messengers for a bright socialist future. Notes 1 Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert, ‘Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: an Introduction’, in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (London: Routledge, 2000), 1–34, 21. 2 Bjørn Thomassen, ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality’, International Political Anthropology 2, no.1 (2009): 5–27, 19. 3 Bundesnaturschutzgesetz [BNatSchG: Federal Nature Conservation Act] 29 July 2009, § 42 Zoos. 4 Benedikt Stuchtey, ‘Colonialism and Imperialism, 1450–1950’, European History Online (EGO), published 24 January 2011. Available online: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/stuchteyb2010-en (accessed 5 June 2017); Mary Gilmartin et al., Key Concepts in Political Geography (London: Sage, 2008). 5 See Mieke Roscher, Ein Königreich für Tiere (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2009); Claire Charlotte McKechnie and John Miller, ‘Victorian Animals: Introduction’, Journal of Victorian Culture 17, no. 4 (2012): 436–41; Maneesha Deckha, ‘Welfarist and Imperial: the Contributions of Anticruelty Laws to Civilizational Discourse’, American Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2013): 515–48. 6 See John M. Kinder, ‘Zoo Animals and Modern War: Captive Casualties, Patriotic Citizens, and Good Soldiers’, in Animals and War: Studies of Europe and North America, ed. Ryan Hediger (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 45–75, 45. 7 Anna-Katherina Wöbse and Mieke Roscher, ‘Zoos im Wiederaufbau und Kaltem Krieg, Berlin 1955-1961’, Tierstudien 7 (2015): 67–77; Mieke Roscher, ‘Curating the Body Politic: the Spatiality of the Zoo and the Symbolic Construction of German Nationhood (Berlin 1933–61), in Animals and Place: Lively Cartographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Jacob Bull, Tora Holmberg and Cecilia Åsberg (London: Routledge, 2017), 115–136. Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 213 8 Cf. Heinz-Georg Klös, Von der Menagerie zum Tierparadies. 125 Jahre Zoo Berlin (Berlin: Haude & Spener 1969), 260. 9 See Michael Wang, ‘Heavy Breeding’, Cabinet 25 (2012), Available online: http://www. cabinetmagazine.org/issues/45/want.php (accessed 5 June 2017); Clemens Driessen and Jamie Lorimer, ‘Back-Breeding the Aurochs: The Heck brothers, National Socialism and Imagined Geographies for Nonhuman Lebensraum’, in Hitler’s Geographies, ed. Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 138–57). 10 See Maria Höhn, ‘Frau im Haus und Girl im Spiegel: Discourse on Women in the Interregnum Period of 1945–1949 and the Question of German Identity’, Central European History 26, no. 1 (1993): 57–90; Elizabeth Heineman, ‘The Hour of Women: Memories of Germany’s “Crisis Years” and West German National Identity’, American Historical Review 101, no. 2 (1996): 354–95; Christine von Oertzen and Almut Rietzschel, ‘Comparing the Post-War Germanies: Breadwinner Ideology and Women’s Employment in the Divided Nation, 1948-1970’, International Review of Social History (1997): 175–96; Robert G. Moeller, ‘Reconstructing the Family in Reconstruction Germany: Women and Social Policy in the Federal Republic, 1949-1955’, Feminist Studies 15, no. 1 (1989): 137–69. 11 David Van Reybrouck, ‘Archaeology and Urbanism: Railway Stations and Zoological Gardens in the 19th-Century Cityscape’, Public Archaeology 4, no. 4 (2005): 225–41; Elizabeth Hanson, Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 12 State Archive of Berlin (henceforth: LAr Berlin), C Rep.14 No. 2541. 13 Harald Wydra, ‘The Liminal Origins of Democracy’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 91–109, 91. 14 Wydra, ‘The Liminal Origins of Democracy’, 92. 15 Heinrich Dathe, Im Tierpark Belauscht, 7th edn (Wittenberg: Ziemsen, 1971), see also Heinrich Dathe, personal paper and manuscript collection, 317 H. Dathe, State Library of Berlin (henceforth: StaBi). 16 Magistratsvorlage [Municipal Council records] Nr. 291/60 dated 2 September 1960, LAr Berlin C Rep. 100-05, No. 1138. 17 Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts, ‘Introduction: Re-Mapping Liminality’, in Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-between, ed. Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 1–18, 2. 18 Erdmann speech at meeting of the supporters of the Tierpark, dated 28 March 1956, LAr Berlin C Rep. 121 No. 29. 19 Heinrich Dathe, personal paper and manuscript collection, 317 H. Dathe, StaBi K. 25. 20 Ibid. 21 Andrews and Roberts, ‘Re-Mapping Liminality’, 1, emphasis in original. 22 Klös, Tierparadies, 137. 23 Ibid., 138. 24 Cord Pagenstecher, ‘The Construction of the Tourist Gaze: How Industrial was Post-War German Tourism?’, in Construction d’une Industrie Touristique au 19e et 20e Siècles: Perspectives Internationales/Development of a Tourist Industry in the 19th and 20th Centuries: International Perspectives, ed. Laurent Tissot (Neuchâtel: Editions Alphil, 2003), 373–89; Jeffry M. Diefendorf, In the Wake of War: the Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 25 Victor Turner, ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 53–92. 214 Animal History in the Modern City 26 Press report, Zoologischer Garten Berlin, 29. 4. 1959, Archive of the Zoologischer Garten Berlin (henceforth ZooArchB). 27 Patrick H. Wirtz, ‘Zoo City: Bourgeois Values and Scientific Culture in the Industrial Landscape’, Journal of Urban Design 2, no. 1 (1997): 61–82. 28 Dathe, Im Tierpark Belauscht, 80. 29 Heinrich Dathe, Lebenserinnerungen eines Leidenschaftlichen Tiergärtners (Munich Koehler & Amelang, 2001), 269. 30 Heinrich Dathe, transcript‚ ‘Tierpark Berlin: Paradies der Tiere’, StaBi, K. 25, undated. 31 Ibid. 146. 32 Heinz-Georg Klös, Wegweiser durch den Zoologischen Garten Berlin (Berlin: Actien Verein Zoo, 1958), 69. 33 Harriet Ritvo, ‘At the Zoo’, American Scientist, March/April 2003. Available online: http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/at-the-zoo (accessed 5 June 2017). 34 Garry Marvin, ‘L’Animal de Zoo: un Rôle entre Sauvage et Domestique’, Techniques & Culture 50 (2008): 102–19. 35 Irene Sywenky, ‘Non-Human Animals and Liminal Cultural Space in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and Victor Pelevin’s The Life of Insects’, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 38, no. 3 (2011): 381–95, 385. 36 Klös, Tierparadies, 260. 37 Bjørn Thomassen, ‘Revisiting Liminality: the Danger of Empty Spaces’, in Andres and Roberts, Liminal Landscapes, 21–35, 22. 38 Arpad Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (London: Routledge, 2000), 220. 39 Dathe, Lebenserinnerungen, 257. 40 Dathe, ‘Tierpark Berlin: Paradies der Tiere’. 41 Sketch of a development plan for the completion of the Tierpark Berlin. LAr Berlin, C Rep. 110-04, No. 12. 42 Speech by Heinrich Dathe on the occasion of the founding of the society of supporters, dated 28 March 1956. LAr Berlin, C Rep. 110-04, No. 12. 43 Jürgen Schmidt, ‘How to Feed Three Million Inhabitants: Berlin in the First Years after the Second World War, 1945-1948’, in Food and the City in Europe Since 1800, ed. Peter J. Atkins, Peter Lummel and Derek J. Oddy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 63–76; Florian Urban, ‘The Hut on the Garden Plot: Informal Architecture in TwentiethCentury Berlin’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 72, no. 2 (2013): 221–49. 44 Dathe, Lebenserinnerungen, 241. 45 Henry Nicholls, The Way of the Panda: The Curious History of China’s Political Animal (London: Profile Books, 2010), 84. 46 Dathe, Im Tierpark Belauscht, 52. 47 Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 217. 48 Donaldson and Kymlicka, Zoopolis, 218. 49 Dathe, Im Tierpark Belauscht, 52. 50 See Roland Borgards, ‘Liminale Anthropologien: Skizze eines Forschungsfeldes’, in Liminale Anthropologien: Zwischenzeiten, Schwellenphänomene, Zwischenräume in Literatur und Philosophie, ed. Jochen Achilles et al. (Würzburg: Königsberg & Neumann, 2012): 9–13. 51 See Mary Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity, 1999). 52 Sywenky, Liminal Cultural Space. Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 215 53 Bjørn Thomassen and Rosario Forlenza, ‘The Pasts of the Present: World War II Memories and the Construction of Political Legitimacy in Post-Cold War Italy’, in The Use and Abuse of Memory: Interpreting World War II in Contemporary European Politics, ed. Christian Karner and Bram Mertens (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2013), 137–54. 54 Virginia Carmichael, Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 13. 55 Arpad Szakolczai, ‘Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 141–72, 141. 56 On this see Thomassen, ‘Revisiting Liminality’, 24. 57 Ibid. 58 David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). As Amy Nelson has shown, sending animals of various species into orbit was a way of providing evidence for successfully conquering space: See Amy Nelson, ‘The Legacy of Laika: Celebrity, Sacrifice and the Soviet Space Dogs’, in Beastly Natures: Human-Animal Relations at the Crossroads of Cultural and Environmental History, ed. Dorothee Brantz (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010): 204–24. See also Michael D’Antonio, A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957 – The Space Race Begins (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007). 59 LAr Berlin C Rep. 120, No. 1936. 60 Frances Westley and Harrie Vredenburg, ‘Prison or Ark? The Drama of Managing the Modern Zoo’, Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies 2, no. 1 (1996): 17–30, 18. 61 Harald Reissig, ‘Zoologischer Garten, Hardenbergplatz 1’, in Geschichtslandschaft Berlin: Orte und Ereignisse, Band 2: Tiergarten, Teil 1: Vom Brandenburger Tor zum Zoo, ed. Helmut Engel and Helmut Bräutigam (Berlin: Nicolai, 1989): 323–42, 340. 62 On Cold War culture, see Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), Tony Shaw, ‘The Politics of Cold War Culture’, Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 3 (2001): 59–76, Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945-1961 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), Annette Vowinckel, Marcus M. Payk and Thomas Lindenberger, eds., Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012). 63 That zoos were indeed a prima facie place to illustrate the workings of power has been demonstrated beyond non-Western societies: see for example Ian Jared Miller, The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). 64 Letter from the Corporation of the Zoologischer Garten Berlin to the president of the senate Willy Henneberg, dated 11 March 1959, LAr Berlin, C Rep. 14, No. 2541, 8–11. 65 Jonathan Harrington, ‘“Panda Diplomacy”: State Environmentalism, International Relations and Chinese Foreign Policy’, in Confronting Environmental Change in East and Southeast Asia: Eco-Politics, Foreign Policy, and Sustainable Development, ed. Paul G. Harris (London: Earthscan, 2005): 102–18. 66 More precise differentiations can be made, with some zoo animals clearly on the side of the ‘domesticated’ and some, because of their ‘loathsomeness’ firmly put in the camp of the ‘other’: see Justin M. Nolan et al., ‘The Lovable, the Loathsome, and the Liminal: Emotionality in Ethnozoological Cognition’, Journal of Ethnobiology 26, no. 1 (2006): 126–38. 216 Animal History in the Modern City 67 Karen Victoria Lykke Syse, ‘Stumbling over Animals in the Landscape: Methodological Accidents and Anecdotes’, Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies 2, no. 1 (2016): 20–6. 68 Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monica B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); this work was originally published in 1908. 69 Thomassen, ‘Meanings of Liminality’, 5. 70 Ibid., 21. Bibliography Andrews, Hazel and Roberts, Les. ‘Introduction: Re-Mapping Liminality’, in Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-between, ed. Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 1–18. Borgards, Roland. ‘Liminale Anthropologien: Skizze eines Forschungsfeldes’, in Liminale Anthropologien: Zwischenzeiten, Schwellenphänomene, Zwischenräume in Literatur und Philosophie, ed. Jochen Achilles, Roland Borgards and Brigitte Burrichter (Würzburg: Königsberg & Neumann, 2012): 9–13. Carmichael, Virginia. Framing History: The Rosenberg Story and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). Caute, David. The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). D’Antonio, Michael. A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957 – The Space Race Begins (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007). Dathe, Heinrich. ‘Tierpark Berlin: Paradies der Tiere’, transcript, StaBi, K. 25, undated. Dathe, Heinrich. Im Tierpark Belauscht, 7th edition (Wittenberg: Ziemsen, 1971). Dathe, Heinrich. Lebenserinnerungen eines Leidenschaftlichen Tiergärtners (Munich: Koehler & Amelang, 2001). Deckha, Maneesha. ‘Welfarist and Imperial: the Contributions of Anticruelty Laws to Civilizational Discourse’, American Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2013): 515–48. Diefendorf, Jeffry M. In the Wake of War: the Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Driessen, Clemens and Lorimer, Jamie. ‘Back-Breeding the Aurochs: the Heck brothers, National Socialism and Imagined Geographies for Nonhuman Lebensraum’, in Hitler’s Geographies, ed. Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 138–57. Fulbrook, Mary. German National Identity after the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity, 1999). Gilmartin, Mary, Nally, David, Strohmayer, Ulf, Whelan, Yvonne and Morrissey, John. Key Concepts in Political Geography (London: Sage, 2008). Hanson, Elizabeth. Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Harrington, Jonathan. ‘“Panda Diplomacy”: State Environmentalism, International Relations and Chinese Foreign Policy’, in Confronting Environmental Change in East and Southeast Asia: Eco-Politics, Foreign Policy, and Sustainable Development, ed. Paul G. Harris (London: Earthscan, 2005): 102–18. Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 217 Heineman, Elizabeth. ‘The Hour of Women: Memories of Germany’s “Crisis Years” and West German National Identity’, American Historical Review 101, no. 2 (1996): 354–95. Hixson, Walter L. Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945-1961 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997). Höhn, Maria. ‘Frau im Haus und Girl im Spiegel: Discourse on Women in the Interregnum Period of 1945–1949 and the Question of German Identity’, Central European History 26, no. 1 (1993): 57–90. Kinder, John M. ‘Zoo Animals and Modern War: Captive Casualties, Patriotic Citizens, and Good Soldiers’, in Animals and War: Studies of Europe and North America, ed. Ryan Hediger (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 45–75. Klös, Heinz-Georg. Wegweiser durch den Zoologischen Garten Berlin (Berlin: Actien Verein Zoo, 1958). Klös, Heinz-Georg. Von der Menagerie zum Tierparadies. 125 Jahre Zoo Berlin (Berlin: Haude & Spener 1969). Marvin, Garry. ‘L’Animal de Zoo: un Rôle entre Sauvage et Domestique’, Techniques & Culture 50 (2008): 102–19. McKechnie, Claire and Miller, John. ‘Victorian Animals: Introduction’, Journal of Victorian Culture 17, no. 4 (2012): 436–41. Miller, Ian Jared. The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Moeller, Robert G. ‘Reconstructing the Family in Reconstruction Germany: Women and Social Policy in the Federal Republic, 1949-1955’, Feminist Studies 15, no. 1 (1989): 137–69. Nelson, Amy. ‘The Legacy of Laika: Celebrity, Sacrifice and the Soviet Space Dogs’, in Beastly Natures: Human-Animal Relations at the Crossroads of Cultural and Environmental History, ed. Dorothee Brantz (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010): 204–24. Nicholls, Henry. The Way of the Panda: The Curious History of China’s Political Animal (London: Profile Books, 2010). Nolan, Justin M., Jones, Katlin E., McDougal, Kenneth Wade, McFarlin, Matthew J. and Ward, Michael K. ‘The Lovable, the Loathsome, and the Liminal: Emotionality in Ethnozoological Cognition’, Journal of Ethnobiology 26, no. 1 (2006): 126–38. Pagenstecher, Cord. ‘The Construction of the Tourist Gaze: How Industrial was Post-War German Tourism?’, in Construction d’une Industrie Touristique au 19e et 20e Siècles: Perspectives Internationales/Development of a Tourist Industry in the 19th and 20th Centuries: International Perspectives, ed. Laurent Tissot (Neuchâtel: Editions Alphil, 2003), 373–89. Philo, Chris and Wilbert, Chris. ‘Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: An Introduction’, in Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (London: Routledge, 2000), 1–34. Reissig, Harald. ‘Zoologischer Garten, Hardenbergplatz 1’, in Geschichtslandschaft Berlin: Orte und Ereignisse, Band 2: Tiergarten, Teil 1: Vom Brandenburger Tor zum Zoo, ed. Helmut Engel and Helmut Bräutigam (Berlin: Nicolai, 1989): 323–42. Ritvo, Harriet. ‘At the Zoo’, American Scientist, March/April 2003. Available online: http:// www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/at-the-zoo (accessed 5 June 2017). Roscher, Mieke. Ein Königreich für Tiere (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2009). Roscher, Mieke. ‘Curating the Body Politic: the Spatiality of the Zoo and the Symbolic Construction of German Nationhood (Berlin 1933-1961)’, in Animals and Place: Lively 218 Animal History in the Modern City Cartographies of Human-Animal Relations, ed. Jacob Bull, Tora Holmberg and Cecilia Åsberg (London: Routledge, 2017), 115–36. Schmidt, Jürgen. ‘How to Feed Three Million Inhabitants: Berlin in the First Years after the Second World War, 1945-1948’, in Food and the City in Europe Since 1800 ed. Peter J. Atkins, Peter Lummel and Derek J. Oddy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 63–76. Shaw, Tony. ‘The Politics of Cold War Culture’, Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 3 (2001): 59–76. Stuchtey, Benedikt. ‘Colonialism and Imperialism, 1450–1950’, European History Online (EGO), published 24 January 2011. Available online: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/stuchteyb-2010-en. Syse, Karen Victoria Lykke. ‘Stumbling over Animals in the Landscape: Methodological Accidents and Anecdotes’, Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies 2, no. 1 (2016):20–6. Szakolczai, Arpad. Reflexive Historical Sociology (London: Routledge, 2000). Szakolczai, Arpad. ‘Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 141–72. Sywenky, Irene. ‘Non-Human Animals and Liminal Cultural Space in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and Victor Pelevin’s The Life of Insects’, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 38, no. 3 (2011): 381–95, 385. Thomassen, Bjørn. ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 5–27. Thomassen, Bjørn. ‘Revisiting Liminality: The Danger of Empty Spaces’, in Liminal Landscapes: Travel, Experience and Spaces In-between, ed. Hazel Andrews and Les Roberts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012): 21–35. Thomassen, Bjørn and Forlenza, Rosario. ‘The Pasts of the Present: World War II Memories and the Construction of Political Legitimacy in Post-Cold War Italy’, in The Use and Abuse of Memory: Interpreting World War II in Contemporary European Politics, ed. Christian Karner and Bram Mertens (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2013), 137–54. Turner, Victor. ‘Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology’, Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 53–92. Urban, Florian. ‘The Hut on the Garden Plot: Informal Architecture in Twentieth-Century Berlin’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 72, no. 2 (2013): 221–49. van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage, trans. Monica B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Van Reybrouck, David. ‘Archaeology and Urbanism: Railway Stations and Zoological Gardens in the 19th-Century Cityscape’, Public Archaeology 4, no. 4 (2005): 225–41. Von Oertzen, Christine and Rietzschel, Almut. ‘Comparing the Post-War Germanies: Breadwinner Ideology and Women’s Employment in the Divided Nation, 1948-1970’, International Review of Social History 42, no. S5 (1997): 175–96 Vowinckel, Annette, Payk, Marcus M. and Lindenberger, Thomas, eds. Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012). Wang, Michael. ‘Heavy Breeding’, Cabinet 25 (2012), Available online: http://www. cabinetmagazine.org/issues/45/want.php (accessed 5 June 2017). Westley, Frances and Vredenburg, Harrie. ‘Prison or Ark? The Drama of Managing the Modern Zoo’, Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies 2, no. 1 (1996): 17–30. Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Liminality in the Post-War Zoo 219 Wirtz, Patrick H. ‘Zoo City: Bourgeois Values and Scientific Culture in the Industrial Landscape’, Journal of Urban Design 2, no. 1 (1997): 61–82. Wöbse, Anna-Katherina and Roscher, Mieke. ‘Zoos im Wiederaufbau und Kaltem Krieg, Berlin 1955-1961’, Tierstudien 7 (2015): 67–77. Wydra, Harald. ‘The Liminal Origins of Democracy’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009): 91–109. 220 13 Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses: Domiciles of the Wild in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Cities Dolly Jørgensen It was a cool late spring evening as I stood impatiently waiting for the bats to emerge. At sunset every day from March to November, thousands of human spectators gather in Austin, Texas, to see the largest urban bat colony in the world come out for their night hunting. But I am not standing in front of the mouth of a cave where most people think bats live. I was stationed on the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, which crosses the Colorado River, in the downtown heart of the capital city of Texas (Figure 13.1). The bats would be emerging from their roost hanging upside down among the bridge beams. A migratory Mexican free-tailed bat colony of over one million bats have come each year since the mid-1980s to the underside of this bridge, to make their home and rear their young. Watching the bat colony swirl out from under the bridge and fly away into the darkening sky affirms that wildness is present in the urban. When we think of an urban space, we probably think of its human inhabitants and the structures and infrastructures that make their lives work, from roads to hospitals to city governments. Yet there are many non-human inhabitants of the city, from pigeons roosting on rooftops to rats in the sewers. On that day in April, looking at the swirling bats waking up and streaming out from under the bridge to feed, I got up close and personal with some wild inhabitants that co-inhabit our urban space by repurposing human buildings as their own. In order to think about the lives of these bats and how countless other species intersect with the urban world, we can focus on their homes – the domiciles which are found in human structures, sometimes intended by humans and other times not. The word domicile has its roots in the Latin word domus, literally meaning the house. This is the same root of the Latin verb form domesticāre, meaning to dwell in a house or become accustomed to it. The verb domesticate in its most simple sense means ‘to make, or settle as, a member of a household; to cause to be at home’, and more specifically for animals it is ‘to accustom to live under the care and near the habitations of man’.1 Although domestication when applied to animals most often refers to the 222 Animal History in the Modern City Figure 13.1 Crowd gathered in downtown Austin on the Congress Avenue Bridge, as well as on boats on the river, to witness the nightly emergence of bats from under the bridge, 27 March 2016. Photograph by author. conscious selection and breeding of animals for specific traits so that they could be kept by humans for productive purposes, this is a limited view. Domestication in the larger sense is about being at home, creating a domicile. I want to propose that rather than defining domestication in the terms of biological sciences or animal husbandry we should consider instead the idea of domestication as reformulated by the fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and media studies, as the processes of technology’s acceptance, rejection and use.2 Scholars who originally developed this idea of technological domestication consciously built on the idea of animal domestication, but enlarged it to encompass the ‘complexity of everyday life and technology’s place within its dynamics, rituals, rules, routines, and patterns’.3 Although research into such domestication began with a focus on technologies in the home, there have been calls for expanding the remit to include public spaces and every connection created by technologies.4 The domestication of technology that results is defined as an ongoing adaptive process in which technology is adjusted to practices while at the same time people modify their behaviours and environment to integrate new technologies. In the process, technologies are objectified (i.e. located in material, cultural and social spaces) and incorporated (temporally inserted into the patterns of life).5 Technologies do not then come as pre-packaged wholes which are simply integrated into the domestic sphere; instead they are objects of negotiation. Early telephone companies, for example, never envisaged that telephone users would make personal calls – and had designed it as a Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses 223 business communication tool.6 Similarly, how individual households would integrate a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner or a car was never a given. A key observation is that the process is seldom complete – some technologies will indeed ‘disobey’ attempts to domesticate them. Intellectually, this approach to technological domestication is a move toward granting agency to the users of technological innovations: so while designers and builders may have certain uses in mind when an object is created (from a small mobile phone to a large-scale urban area), it is the individuals who determine how (or even if) a technology becomes part of their everyday life and practice. In this chapter, I want to bring this reformulated idea of domestication full circle, returning to its interest in or inspiration from non-human animals, applying the broader STS concept of domestication to an investigation of city beasts, and asking: how are urban animals domesticated in the sense of finding a place within the infrastructure of a city? and how do the animals themselves domesticate human technology in order to make their own domus? These questions grow out of some of my previous research that postulated unclear boundaries between human artefacts and non-human habitats, and that advocated a wider view of domestication when dealing with wild animals.7 In this chapter, I focus on the history of bird and bat inhabitants of North American cities – specifically, on birdhouses constructed for purple martins and bridges that became bat roosts – in order to see how urban infrastructure becomes a natural home for its wild animal inhabitants. The comparison and contrast is instructive. STS scholars analysing domestication of a technology often stress that details of a particular case are not in fact generalizable to other technologies even if some patterns emerge.8 The same applies here – each animal history stands on its own and the details will not be precisely the same in other instances. What is generalizable, however, is the involvement of domestication of human infrastructure by non-human agents. Birdhouses Human interaction with the purple martin (Progne subis, known as Hirundo purprea in the nineteenth century), the largest of the North American swallows, exposes first how bird-housing infrastructure blurs the boundaries between the natural and the artificial through the kind of domestication discussed above. North American settlers, as well as the native populations, had a marked preference for these particular birds because they were considered excellent at scaring away birds of prey that fed on poultry and controlled insects that were harmful to gardens and crops. They were welcomed, and made welcome, in human society. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers describe structures made intentionally by humans to encourage the purple martin to nest. Mark Catesby drew and delineated the purple martin in the first major natural history treatise on the south-eastern part of North America, in his Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731). He included three types of details as the bird’s outstanding features: (1) its colouring (‘The whole Bird is a dark shining Purple; the Wings and Tail being more dusky and inclining to Brown’), (2) its migratory pattern (‘They retire at the Approach of Winter, and return in the Spring to Virginia and Carolina’), and (3) its human-made 224 Animal History in the Modern City housing (‘They breed like Pigeons in Lockers prepared for them against Houses, and in Gourds hung on Poles for them to build in, they being of great Use about Hoses and Yards for pursuing and chasing away Crows, Hawks and other Vermin from the Poultry’).9 Catesby’s text is the earliest description of the practice of building birdhouses for the purple martin. His drawing of the purple martin places the bird in an agricultural context, perched on a fence, a domestic setting associated with a farm or house, although its gourd nest, which Catesby notes in the text, is not shown visually. When John James Audubon illustrated the purple martin for his Birds of America (1840), he featured a gourd house prominently, however (Figure 13.2).10 Audubon provided the necessary context in his accompanying text describing the use by Native Americans, and also by slaves in the southern states, of a hollowed calabash squash hung on a stick. In addition, Audubon noted, the construction of wooden nesting boxes was ‘a general practice, the Purple Martin being considered as a privileged pilgrim, and the harbinger of spring’.11 Nesting boxes for purple martins were, Audubon continued, commonplace in country taverns, hung up over the signboard. Figure 13.2 John James Audubon, Purple Martin, Birds of North America, vol. 1 (1840). Image released into the public domain by the Audubon Society. Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses 225 According to Audubon, purple martins were not just countryside birds: ‘All our cities are furnished with houses for the reception of these birds.’12 In fact, the purple martin may have been a more common urban resident than a country one. One writer in 1908 identified purple martins as urban birds, apart from their migrations, seeing them as ‘haunters of civilization’ to be found ‘about the business sections of our cities, where the flat gravel roofs and overhanding cornices are tenanted by these birds together with House Sparrows and Nighthawks’.13 In one story Audubon recounts about his own experience setting up a purple martin box, there are glimpses, however, of the potential conflict between bird and human over the former’s appropriation of the human-built birdhouse. Audubon had set up purple martin nests and one year decided to supplement that with several smaller boxes for bluebirds. Much to Audubon’s chagrin, ‘the Martins arrived in the spring, and imaging these smaller apartments more agreeable than their own mansion, took possession of them, after forcing the lovely Blue-birds from their abode’.14 Audubon then decided that his intent as a designer/builder of the nesting technology took precedence – those birdhouses were for bluebirds, not purple martins – whatever the purple martins thought: I thought fit to interfere, mounted the tree on the trunk of which the Blue-bird’s box was fastened, caught the Martin, and clipped his tail with scissors, in the hope that such mortifying punishment might prove effectual in inducing him to remove to his own tenement. No such thing; for no sooner had I launched him into the air, than he at once rushed back to the box.15 Audubon recaught the bird and clipped its wings, but when the martin continued to occupy the bluebird house Audubon ‘seized him in anger, and disposed of him in such a way that he never returned to the neighbourhood’.16 This particular purple martin’s crime was the attempt to domesticate a technology with no regard to the script defined for the object by its maker. Birds are quite proficient at domesticating human structures for their own habitation, irrespective of human desires. Purple martins used urban infrastructures as housing, both those intentionally created for them (birdhouses) and those which were not (roofs and cornices). The birds identified these elements created directly by human technologies as appropriate nesting sites sufficient for their needs. Enticed, but not forced, to inhabit these objects, purple martins entered into a symbiotic relationship with humans: the birds provided what we now call ecosystem services, of pest and predator control; the humans for their part provided, deliberately or not, artificial nesting structures. The design of purple martin birdhouses moreover had to take into account the preferences of the bird itself. Purple martins prefer to nest alongside others in colonies, so large structures with multiple nests or gourds hung near each other became standard. Alexander Wilson, who wrote in 1828 slightly before Audubon, noted this common construction of birdhouses for the purple martin: Wherever he comes, he finds some hospitable retreat fitted up for his accommodation and that of his young, either in the projecting wooden cornice – 226 Animal History in the Modern City on the top of the roof, or sign post – in the box appropriated to the Blue-bird; or, if all these be wanting, in the dove-house among the pigeons … Some people have large conveniences formed for the Martins, with many apartments, which are usually fully tenanted, and occupied regularly every spring.17 In addition to his own description, Wilson printed a letter from a friend who had hung up a ‘large box with a number of apartments for the Martin’.18 Large apartments like this were constructed to accommodate the needs of both birds and humans. Designs such as a 1925 patent filed by Ollie C. George of Illinois tried to make cleaning such houses easy through the use of detachable pieces. They also tended to mimic human housing, containing features such as gabled roofs and columns.19 The naturalist P. A. Taverner critiqued this trend arguing that although a house may be pleasing artistically the bird’s nesting needs should come first: A shingled cottage built to look like a medieval castle is bad taste, and a bird house in too close imitation of a city hall, viewed by the canons of pure art, is equally questionable. Artistically, the most successful bird house is the one, which, while fulfilling the practical bird requirements, retains pleasing lines and agreeable surfaces but looks frankly what it is – a house for birds and not a toy human habitation.20 In spite of this criticism, however, many purple martin houses were designed to appeal aesthetically as much to humans as to birds (Figure 13.3). In the early twentieth century, urban spaces were regarded deficient in habitats for birds, so that artificial birdhouses became necessary. Because city streets and parks were maintained under ‘clean cultivation’, that is with dead wood and tangled brush removed, bird nesting sites were lacking. This made it ‘more necessary to provide artificially the necessities of bird life that are missing. Bird boxes will largely compensate for natural cavities in trees’.21 These concerns were voiced as part of the growing bird conservation movement that began in earnest at the turn of the twentieth century in response to hunting of migratory birds in North America. The success of the movement peaked with the passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which adopted strict controls on the taking of non-game birds. Although the main focus of bird conservation legislation aimed at limiting the killing of birds, conservationists quickly expanded their focus to providing more bird nesting places.22 Offering birds suitable housing and systematic feeding were considered key elements ‘of protecting and conserving our wildlife’.23 Suburban, residential and urban park areas were described as ideal places to increase the average number of birds per acre, through provision of such artificial nesting sites.24 Martin houses were available for purchase from commercial builders – by 1916 there were at least three manufacturers furnishing houses complete with a pole.25 Standing on a pole rather than being attached to a tree allowed the houses to be cleaned after the martins migrated in the autumn and then re-erected in spring before the birds arrived. Individuals with carpentry skills were encouraged to construct their own martin houses, so authors discussing birdhouses always included purple martin Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses 227 Figure 13.3 Purple martin house in Mabel Osgood Wright, Gray Lady and the Birds (1907). house design descriptions, although these varied widely.26 Birdhouse design and building competitions were also set up in the early twentieth century to engage young people in nature conservation. In one small Vermont town, St. Johnsbury, around two hundred nesting boxes were constructed by local schoolchildren and hung up around town between 1917 and 1919.27 These houses were constructed as part of a competition organized by the local Museum of Natural Sciences that included lectures on bird species and their nesting requirements.28 The town’s shop instructor Leon Baxter felt that making the birdhouses was a way ‘to lead the boy and girl toward their proper relationship with their feathered friends of the air, and to instil [sic] the feeling of protection toward our native birds’.29 228 Animal History in the Modern City Although a wild bird, the purple martin was thus actively encouraged to settle in man-made structures, in some sense to domesticate them and put them to use. One writer at the end of the nineteenth century put it bluntly: ‘The Martins have become so domesticated that they follow man wherever he goes, provided, he offers the proper inducements in the way of building places. In town or country they are equally satisfied’.30 Purple martins have transitioned to life in human-constructed homes; so much so that a study from 1974 claimed that the purple martin ‘now s almost exclusively in houses provided by man’.31 Thinking conceptually, the history of the purple martin is instructive for how a distinction between artificial and natural can be played out in urban space and how that process might contribute to a fuller appreciation of these birds’ role as domesticators of what we can see as a form of second nature. Take the claim about artifice and nature first. Animals that live in the city often locate their dens and nests in human-built structures, making their homes out of what we can term the artificial, meaning made by human hands through art or craft. This can be contrasted with the natural, with the connotation as not being made by humans. Such a straightforward nature-culture divide has come to be criticized, and rightly so, on many counts. If we think of nature on one side and culture on the other, we miss out on the hybridity of human history – the fact that we are both nature and culture at the same time. For at least the last two hundred years, one prominent argument goes, humans have been living in the Anthropocene, an unprecedented era of human influence on the planet: no place on Earth has been left unaffected by human action, so that the distinction between artificial and natural can be seen as no longer relevant. Yet from the environmental historian’s vantage point, the distinction between artificial and natural remains useful for understanding how certain urban phenomena came to be manifest. In this reading, it is not just human bodies that create the urban environment – it is the many things that humans make. The technological matters that make up the urban fabric are clearly artificial, in the sense that they are constructed through human arts. This does not mean that their components did not come from the non-human world, as they indeed must do, nor mean that humans have complete control over them. In that sense, the artificial is necessarily natural since it is of nature. But there is a question of degree – brick houses, skyscrapers, concrete bridges and asphalt streets could not possibly exist without humans creating them. So in this sense, there is a distinction between the things humans can make (artificial) and the things they cannot (natural) in environments like cities. This is where the idea of second nature comes in. In Clarence Glacken’s classic Traces on the Rhodian Shore (1967), ‘second nature’ is described as ‘the novelty that men could create in nature. … The occupations, crafts and the skills of everyday life were evidences that changes were possible that either brought order, or more anthropocentrically, produced more orderly accessibility to things men needed’.32 Here the stress is on the material and technological changes humans are able to make in order to create environments best suited for their habitation.33 This is the kind of ‘second nature’ William Cronon puts forth in his analysis of the making of Chicago and its hinterlands, a new nature ‘designed by people and “improved” toward human ends, gradually emerged atop the original landscape that nature – “first nature” – had Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses 229 created as such an inconvenient jumble’.34 Second nature has met with much criticism for reifying a dichotomy between humans and culture, since it would appear to claim that what humans do is fundamentally different than what non-human forces do.35 While agreeing with the critical concerns that splitting humans away from nature is unproductive, I think however that the concept of second nature need not do this. Like the distinction between artificial and natural, second nature is a matter of degree of material change resulting from human technological intervention. Accepting and emphasizing built forms such as cities as in greater or lesser degree natural, ‘second nature’ may yet prove a productive way of conceptualizing the ‘built environment’. With this argument in mind, we can see that the purple martins that live in humanmade birdhouses are domesticating the second nature that humans provided, and in doing so making it their own. Through their actions to inhabit these structures, birdhouses become an integral part of the bird’s umwelt, its own world and environment.36 The birds perceive and react to birdhouses without knowing their creators’ scripts – that the house will attract a species desired by humans, that only certain birds should use certain houses, that the designs should accommodate cleaning by humans and so on. Instead, the birds react to the houses as potential habitat, making their own decisions about integrating (or not) a structure into their lives. At the same time, the purple martin is also domesticated through its domestication of birdhouses. Humans have provided the domus for these birds, inviting them to live in close proximity to human houses and in urban areas. Humans have lured the bird into service –whether to catch pests, drive away predators or simply be aesthetically pleasing to humans. This moves the bird firmly into the human sphere. Bat bridges Just as the purple martin has domesticated second nature, the bats I encountered in Austin are also domesticating agents. The Central Texas region has long been a bat haven: the limestone caves and sinkholes of the area make a perfect habitat for the thirty-three species of bats that live in Texas.37 Bracken Cave located near San Antonio, Texas has the largest bat colony in the world – over fifteen million Mexican (or Brazilian) free-tailed bats (Tarida brasiliensis) use the cave as a maternity ward.38 But having plenty of ‘natural’ places in the countryside to roost did not stop bats from becoming pre-eminent urban dwellers. The Congress Avenue Bridge (officially renamed the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge in 2006), 25 metres wide and nearly 300 metres long, spans the Colorado River in downtown Austin. It has connected the two sides of town since 1910. When it was renovated in 1980, however, the new design added 2 centimetres wide expansion joints – which turned out to be perfect nooks for roosting bats.39 The bridge is located near urban lakes that have significant flying insect populations that serve as the bats’ food, and while the earliest bat residents seem to have previously lived in a broken sewer pipe under Congress Avenue, bats began showing up to make their home under the bridge in 1982, their numbers rapidly increasing as bats were attracted from elsewhere. The designers of the new Congress Avenue Bridge have never intended their 230 Animal History in the Modern City structure to be bat habitat, but the bats saw it differently. They domesticated a structure that met their own needs perfectly: it was a protected haven free from predators, had an appropriate surface for their young bats to hang on and was close to insect-rich feeding grounds. The urban setting of the bridge in the middle of the capital city with significant automobile traffic did not act as any barrier or deterrent. Some reactions to the bats’ appropriation of the bridge were negative. In September 1984 newspapers carried articles about the ‘several hundred thousand’ bats under bridges and in some buildings in the city; four people were reported as having been bitten by bats, raising concerns about rabies, which can be transmitted by bats.40 Anyone who is bitten by a bat has to undergo a series of rabies shots, so it can be an ordeal even if only two to three per cent of all bats in the area carry the virus.41 According to a city health administrator, the city government considered covering the expansion joints with wire screens or rubber, but decided against it since the bats might relocate to even less desirable places (from the human perspective), such as parking garages.42 Bat researcher and founder of Bat Conservation International (BCI) Merlin Tuttle noted that Austin’s local newspaper coverage was overwhelmingly negative in 1984, with headlines such as ‘Bat colonies sink teeth into city’.43 Tuttle relocated the headquarters of BCI to Austin in 1986, however, and began working to change public opinion about the bats.44 The campaign to rehabilitate the bats has been notably successful. The bats were rapidly adopted as a tourist attraction and even a symbol of the city. A Texas Monthly magazine article in 1989 noted that small crowds of fifty or so people were gathering at sunset on the bridge or on the hike-and-bike trail underneath it to watch the bats emerge.45 By 1990, the bats had been recognized by the city parks and recreation department as a nature attraction worthy of a large educational display along the river’s trail.46 The city also approved the installation of artist Dale Whistler’s kinetic metal sculpture of a stylized bat in a triangular intersection island near the bridge in 1998.47 The annual Bat Fest, featuring live music, art and craft vendors, and batthemed activities on the bridge which includes watching the nightly emergence, started in 2004.48 Bat-watching cruises are offered by several companies to provide a view from the water and bat activities are highlighted in development studies and plans for the city.49 Watching the bats’ emergence is even listed on TripAdvisor as one of the top twenty things to do in Austin.50 In time, then, the bats have become thoroughly domesticated in Austin, twenty years after the first immigrants had moved in under the bridge. In 2010, the Austin City Council proclaimed the Mexican free-tailed bat as the ‘official animal’ of Austin, noting that the colony ‘is an integral part of the character and culture of our city’.51 This domestication of the bats has been a response to the bats’ domestication of the bridge. It turns out that bats had been adopting bridges as homes throughout the United States. In 1994, a survey of Texas bridges found an aggregate population of five to six million bats living under bridges.52 Field surveys of 2,421 highway structures in the southern states along with a literature survey of the northern states concluded that there were at least 211 structures inhabited by bats in 1999, though this number might have been a very low estimate.53 Scientists began advocating structural changes to bridges to create suitable bat roosting places.54 The Texas Department of Transportation even Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses 231 developed a design programme to make bridges more bat-friendly.55 This does not mean, however, that bats are always desirable under bridges: in 1994, bat exclusion structures were added to one section of the Congress Avenue Bridge where public safety was a concern.56 The Congress Avenue Bridge is an artificial human creation, but it is also part of the bats’ natural world. The human population in Austin has created a new nature, a second nature, that is different from what would be in the location of the city otherwise. Yet, to the bats, the bridge is simply one more place in the world to roost, and a particularly good place at that. The label second nature helps humans identify the changes to environments that humans have brought about, but from the bird or bat point of view, the distinction is irrelevant. For the animal, the things which humans build are simply part of their environment and potential habitats. The bats have domesticated these technological artefacts because to them all things are just nature. The animals choose whether or not to use human artefacts as homes based on their own needs, not ours.57 While humans may entice some wild animals to live near them in the city, they cannot force them to do so. Building a wilder urban world Human building practices have long created suitable homes for birds and bats in cities. The purple martin and the free-tailed bat have adopted artificial structures to nest and roost, turning the human-made structures into their own domus. In the case of the purple martin, humans intended the habitation all along – birdhouses were intentionally constructed with the birds’ needs in mind, in order to coax them to move in. In the case of the free-tailed bat, by contrast, the design was entirely unintentional, but the bats found it, took up residence, and subsequently humans have ended up adapting their building practices to encourage the bats’ behaviour, here and elsewhere. Both birds and bats, in their different ways, have become integrated urban residents. As noted above, these two histories challenge the distinction between artificial and natural, yet the distinction is not without merits. The artificial objects – birdhouses and concrete bridges which could not naturally exist in their form without human arts – are natural from the animal’s point of view, but humans did indeed make them intentionally. Second nature is made up of these objects, artificially constructed, but natural to nonhumans. The label of artificial here points out the agency of creation, while not limiting the agency of use. It is worth revisiting the fact that STS domestication theory stresses that technologies are not finished when they leave the factory and enter people’s homes and lives; it is through the process of domestication that technologies come into being, a matter of give-and-take between humans and technological artefacts in social settings. We can extend this insight to argue that both humans and animals are involved in domestication processes. That means that artefacts may be repurposed in ways wholly unintended by designers, or rejected altogether. Importantly, even if humans try to build urban artefacts that are bird- or bat-friendly, as our language now has it, this does not guarantee their use. The wild animal that is invited into the domestic sphere of the urban world with artificial habitats always retains the ability to choose. 232 Animal History in the Modern City The house – the domus – for more than half of the world’s population of humans is the city. But the urban domus is more than human; animals co-inhabit that house. In the writing of urban history, we can no longer ignore the wild animal inhabitants of the city. Human-made structures are animal domiciles – lively habitats that serve as the places in which animals play out the drama of life and death as much as humans do. It turns out that historical choices about where to place structures, how they should be shaped and how they can be adapted have often intentionally considered animal inhabitants. Choices to hang up an apartment-style purple martin house or to close off bat roosting crannies matter to both the human and animal populations. The urban bats and birds who are the subjects of this study are not interlopers or marginal inhabitants – they are right smack in the middle of cities, under bridges and in backyards. Notes 1 OED. Available online: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/56668 (accessed 5 June 2017). 2 Thomas Berker, Maren Hartman, Yves Punie and Katie Ward, ‘Introduction’, in Domestication of Media and Technology, ed. Thomas Berker, Maren Hartman, Yves Punie and Katie Ward (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), 1–17, 1. 3 Ibid. For examples of how technological domestication is built upon animal domestication, see Mika Panswer, ‘Domestication of Everyday Life Technology: Dynamic Views on the Social Histories of Artifacts’, Design Issues 13, no. 3 (1997): 52–65, and Roger Silverstone, ‘Domesticating Domestication: Reflections on the Life of a Concept’, in Berker et al., Domestication of Media and Technology, 229–48. 4 Silverstone, ‘Domesticating domestication’; Leslie Haddon, ‘Domestication Analysis, Objects of Study, and the Centrality of Technologies in Everyday Life’, Canadian Journal of Communication 36, no. 2 (2011): 311–23. 5 Silverstone, ‘Domesticating Domestication’. 6 See Claude Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Irvine: University of California Press, 1994). 7 Dolly Jørgensen, ‘Artifacts and Habitats’, in The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, ed. Ursula Heise, Jon Christensen and Michelle Niemann (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 138–43, and Dolly Jørgensen, ‘Muskox in a Box and Other Tales of Containers as Domesticating Mediators in Animal Relocation’, in Animal Housing and Human-Animals Relations: Politics, Practices and Infrastructures, ed. Tone Druglitrø and Kristian Bjørkdahl (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 100–14. 8 Haddon, ‘Domestication analysis’. 9 Mark Catesby, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731), 51. 10 James J. Audubon, Birds of America, vol. 1 (1840), plate 45. 11 Audubon, Birds of America, 173. 12 Ibid., 174. 13 P. A. Taverner, ‘A Purple Martin Roost’, The Wilson Bulletin 56 (1908): 88. 14 Audubon, Birds of America, 172. 15 Ibid., 172–3. 16 Ibid., 173. Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses 233 17 Alexander Wilson, American Ornithology; or Natural History of the Birds of the United States , vol. 2 (1828), 407 18 Wilson, American Ornithology, 409. 19 See for example patents US1522815 (1925), US2915040 (1959), and US3757742 (1973). 20 P. A. Taverner, ‘Bird-Houses and their Occupants’, The Ottawa Naturalist 32, no. 7 (January 1919): 121–5, 120. Charles R. Brown made a later critique of commercial aluminium purple martin birdhouses which had entered the market, as being unsuitably designed for the bird’s needs: Charles R. Brown, ‘Inadequacies in the Design of Purple Martin Houses’, Bird-Banding 49, no. 4 (1978): 321–5. 21 Taverner, ‘Bird-houses and their Occupants’. 22 See John R. B. Masefield, Wild Bird Protection and Nesting Boxes (Leeds: Taylor Brothers, 1897) for a British example of advocating nesting boxes as part of wild bird conservation at this time. 23 Bradford A. Scudder, Conservation of Our Wild Birds (Boston: Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Association, 1916), 8. 24 E. R. Kalmbach and W. L. McAtee, Homes for Birds, Farmer’s Bulletin No. 1456 (Washington DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1925/30), 2. 25 Scudder, Conservation of Our Wild Birds, 32. 26 For example, Scudder, Conservation of Our Wild Birds, 32–4; Kalmbach and McAtee, Homes for Birds, 12–13. 27 Inez Addie Howe, ‘Introductory Note’, in Leon H. Baxter, Boy Bird House Architecture (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1920), 5. 28 Baxter, Boy Bird House Architecture, 23–4. 29 Ibid., ‘Author’s Preface’. 30 Howard Jones and N. E. Jones, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio with Text (Circleville: Robert Clarke & Co., 1886), 107. 31 Jerome A. Jackson and James Tate, Jr. ‘An Analysis of Nest Box Use by Purple Martins, House Sparrows, and Starlings in Eastern North America’, The Wilson Bulletin 86, no. 4 (1974): 435–49. 32 Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 116–17. He titles his third chapter ‘Creating a Second Nature’. 33 While some appropriations of the ‘second nature’ concept have used the term to describe the relation between human social structures, particularly politics, and nature, I want to reserve the concept for a more material interpretation. The politically-aimed reading of the concept comes in Hegelian and Marxist scholarship, often in the disciplines of geography and political science. See for example Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984); Bruce Braun and Noel Castree, eds., Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium (London: Routledge, 1998); Crina Archer, Laura Ephraim and Lida Maxwell, eds., Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural through Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 34 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991), 56. 35 Urban historian Martin V. Melosi makes this critique in ‘Humans, Cities, and Nature: How do Cities Fit in the Material World?’ Journal of Urban History 36, no. 1 (2010): 3–21. Similar critiques have also come from geographers, such as David Demeritt, 234 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 Animal History in the Modern City ‘The Nature of Metaphors in Cultural Geography and Environmental History’, Progress in Human Geography 18, no. 2 (1994): 163–85, and Margaret Fitzsimmons and David Goodman, ‘Incorporating Nature’, in Braun and Castree, Remaking Reality, 194–220. I have been influenced by scholarship in semiotics from the Tartu school, which has its roots in the work of Jakob von Uexküll and is now expanding through the work of ecosemioticians such as Timo Maran, who has looked significantly at how animals view the world. Amy Price, ‘Bat Mania’, Texas Parks & Wildlife, January/February 2015, online edition http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2015/jan/ed_2_bats/ (accessed 5 June 2017). Bat Conservation International, ‘Bracken Cave: Protecting a Jewel in Texas’, http:// www.batcon.org/our-work/regions/usa-canada/protect-mega-populations/brackencave (accessed 5 June 2017). New York Times News Service, ‘Bridge Helps Austin, Texas, Become City of Bat Awareness’, Gainesville Sun, 31 August 1992, 1D. United Press International (UPI) issued an article about it so versions of the story appeared in newspapers countrywide, from Lakeland Ledger (Florida) to Spokane Chronicle (Washington) around 24–25 September 1984. A long feature article appeared in The Washington Post: W. Gardner Sel, ‘Austin’s I-beam Bat Haven’, Washington Post, 13 October 1984. The original UPI version carried the headline ‘Rabies-Carrying Bats Invade State Capital’, 23 September 1984, http://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/09/23/Rabies-carrying-bats-invade-state-capital/5794464760000/ (accessed 5 June 2017). Sel, ‘Austin’s I-beam Bat Haven’. Merlin Tuttle, The Secret Lives of Bats: My Adventures With the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammals (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), ix. Tuttle, Secret Lives of Bats, x. Joe Nick Patoski, ‘The Real Bat Show’, Texas Monthly (August 1989), 86. Cox News Service, ‘Austin’s Bats to Become Official Tourist Attraction’, Lawrence Journal World, 29 April 1990, 2C. See details about the sculpture at http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM8M6J_ Nightwing_Austin_Texas (accessed 5 June 2017). Lindsey Galloway, ‘Go Batty in Austin, Texas’, BBC, 16 August 2011. Available online: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20110817-worldwide-weird-go-batty-in-austintexas. For example, Citi Arts, Publc Art and Urban Design Consultants, Austin Alive: Mapping Place through Art and Culture (2007). Available online: https://www.austintexas. gov/sites/default/files/files/EGRSO/dowtown_arts_dev_study.pdf (accessed 5 June 2017). TripAdvisor, ‘Congress Avenue Bridge / Austin Bats’, https://www.tripadvisor.com/ Attraction_Review-g30196-d106309-Reviews-Congress_Avenue_Bridge_Austin_ Bats-Austin_Texas.html (accessed 5 June 2017). Austin City Council, Resolution No. 20100408-028. Kim Jenkins, Texas Department of Transportation Wildlife Activities (Austin TX: Texas Department of Transportation, 1996), 6. Brian W. Keeley and Merlin D. Tuttle, ‘Bats in American Bridges’, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Wildlife Ecology and Transportation, Missoula, Montana, 1999. Available online: http://www.icoet.net/ICOWET/99proceedings.asp (accessed 5 June 2017). A later study estimated nearly 300 bridges in Florida alone Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses 54 55 56 57 235 were occupied by bats, meaning that the Keeley and Tuttle number was very low: see Jeffrey A. Gore and Karl R. Studenroth, Jr., Status and Management of Bats Roosting in Bridges in Florida (Tallahassee: Florida Department of Transportation, March 2005). For example, Keeley and Tuttle, ‘Bats in American Bridges’; Edward B. Arnett and John P. Hayes, ‘Bat Use of Roosting Boxes Installed Under Flat-Bottom Bridges in Western Oregon’, Wildlife Society Bulletin 28, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 890–4. Texas Department of Transportation, ‘Bats ’N’ Bridges’, undated brochure. https://ftp. dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot-info/library/pubs/kids/bats.pdf (accessed 5 June 2017). Jenkins, Texas Department of Transportation Wildlife Activities, 6. Animal agency is well established and uncontroversial in animal history studies, as evidenced by the essays in Susan Nance, ed., The Historical Animal (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015); yet many fields of history still struggle with giving animals agency in their narratives. Because I believe that animals ‘choose’ their homes, I give them free will, even if they make those decisions based on standards other than what humans might use. Bibliography Archer, Crina, Ephraim, Laura and Maxwell, Lida Maxwell, eds. Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural through Politics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). Arnett, Edward B. and Hayes, John P. Hayes. ‘Bat Use of Roosting Boxes Installed Under Flat-Bottom Bridges in Western Oregon’, Wildlife Society Bulletin 28, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 890–4. Audubon, James J. Birds of America 1 (1840). Bat Conservation International, ‘Bracken Cave: Protecting a Jewel in Texas’, http://www. batcon.org/our-work/regions/usa-canada/protect-mega-populations/bracken-cave (accessed 5 June 2017). Berker, Thomas, Hartman, Maren, Punie, Yves and Ward, Katie. ‘Introduction’, in Domestication of Media and Technology, ed. Thomas Berker, Maren Hartman, Yves Punie and Katie Ward (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), 1–17. Braun, Bruce and Castree, Noel, eds. Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium (London: Routledge, 1998). Brown, Charles R. ‘Inadequacies in the Design of Purple Martin Houses’, Bird-Banding 49, no. 4 (1978): 321–5. Catesby, Mark. The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731). Citi Arts, Publc Art and Urban Design Consultants, Austin Alive: Mapping Place through Art and Culture (2007). Available online: https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/ files/files/EGRSO/dowtown_arts_dev_study.pdf (accessed 5 June 2017). Cox News Service, ‘Austin’s Bats to Become Official Tourist Attraction’, Lawrence Journal World, 29 April 1990. Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991). Demeritt, David. ‘The Nature of Metaphors in Cultural Geography and Environmental History’, Progress in Human Geography 18, no. 2 (1994): 163–85. Fischer, Claude. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Irvine: University of California Press, 1994). 236 Animal History in the Modern City Fitzsimmons, Margaret and Goodman, David. ‘Incorporating Nature’, in Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium, ed. Bruce Braun and Noel Castree (London: Routledge, 1998), 194–220. Galloway, Lindsey. ‘Go Batty in Austin, Texas’, BBC, 16 August 2011. Available online: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20110817-worldwide-weird-go-batty-in-austin-texas. Glacken, Clarence J. Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Gore, Jeffrey A. and Studenroth Jr., Karl R. Status and Management of Bats Roosting in Bridges in Florida (Tallahassee: Florida Department of Transportation, March 2005). Haddon, Leslie. ‘Domestication Analysis, Objects of Study, and the Centrality of Technologies in Everyday Life’, Canadian Journal of Communication 36, no. 2 (2011): 311–23. Howe, Inez Addie. ‘Introductory Note’, in Leon H. Baxter Boy Bird House Architecture (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1920), 5. Jackson, Jerome A. and Tate Jr., James. ‘An Analysis of Nest Box Use by Purple Martins, House Sparrows, and Starlings in Eastern North America’, The Wilson Bulletin 86, no. 4 (1974): 435–49. Jenkins, Kim. Texas Department of Transportation Wildlife Activities (Austin TX: Texas Department of Transportation, 1996). Jones, Howard and Jones, N.E. Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio with Text (Circleville: Robert Clarke & Co., 1886). Jørgensen, Dolly. ‘Muskox in a Box and Other Tales of Containers as Domesticating Mediators in Animal Relocation’, in Animal Housing and Human-Animals Relations: Politics, Practices and Infrastructures, ed. Tone Druglitrø and Kristian Bjørkdahl (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 100–14. Jørgensen, Dolly. ‘Artifacts and Habitats’, in The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, ed. Ursula Heise, Jon Christensen and Michelle Niemann (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 138–43. Kalmbach, E. R. and McAtee, W. L. Homes for Birds, Farmer’s Bulletin No. 1456 (Washington DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1925–30). Keeley, Brian W. and Tuttle, Merlin D. Tuttle, ‘Bats in American Bridges’, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Wildlife Ecology and Transportation, Missoula, Montana, 1999. Available online: http://www.icoet.net/ICOWET/99proceedings.asp (accessed 5 June 2017). Masefield, John R.B. Wild Bird Protection and Nesting Boxes (Leeds: Taylor Brothers, 1897). Melosi, Martin V. ‘Humans, Cities, and Nature: How do Cities Fit in the Material World?’ Journal of Urban History 36, no. 1 (2010): 3–21. Nance, Susan, ed. The Historical Animal (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2015). New York Times News Service, ‘Bridge Helps Austin, Texas, Become City of Bat Awareness’, Gainesville Sun, 31 August 1992. Panswer, Mika. ‘Domestication of Everyday Life Technology: Dynamic Views on the Social Histories of Artifacts’, Design Issues 13, no. 3 (1997): 52–65. Patoski, Joe Nick. ‘The Real Bat Show’, Texas Monthly (August 1989). Price, Amy. ‘Bat Mania’, Texas Parks & Wildlife, January/February 2015, online edition http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2015/jan/ed_2_bats/ (accessed 5 June 2017). Scudder, Bradford A. Conservation of Our Wild Birds (Boston: Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Association, 1916). Backyard Birds and Human-Made Bat Houses 237 Sel, W. Gardner. ‘Austin’s I-beam Bat Haven’, Washington Post, 13 October 1984. Silverstone, Roger. ‘Domesticating Domestication: Reflections on the Life of a Concept’, in Domestication of Media and Technology, ed. Thomas Berker, Maren Hartman, Yves Punie and Katie Ward (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006): 229–48. Smith, Neil. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984). Taverner, P. A. ‘A Purple Martin Roost’, The Wilson Bulletin 56 (1908). Taverner, P. A. ‘Bird-Houses and their Occupants’, The Ottawa Naturalist 32, no. 7 (January 1919): 121–5. Texas Department of Transportation, ‘Bats ’N’ Bridges’, undated brochure. https://ftp.dot. state.tx.us/pub/txdot-info/library/pubs/kids/bats.pdf (accessed 5 June 2017). Tuttle, Merlin. The Secret Lives of Bats: My Adventures With the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammals (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), ix. United Press International. ‘Rabies-Carrying Bats Invade State Capital’, 23 September 1984, http://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/09/23/Rabies-carrying-bats-invade-statecapital/5794464760000/ (accessed 5 June 2017). Wilson, Alexander. American Ornithology; or Natural History of the Birds of the United States, Vol. 2 (1828). 238 Index agency, animal 78, 91, 93, 128, 137–9 Alves, Abel A. 25 America 25–34, 55–68 native Americans and indigenous peoples 10, 25–34, 60, 224 Andrew, Hazel 205 animal geography 148–201 animals. See also captive animals; commensal animals; laboratory animals; performing animals as exotic and wild alligators and crocodiles 172–3 antelopes 95, 97, 207 apes and monkeys 44, 131, 134, 136, 170, 174, 183, 191, 206, 209 bats 15, 173, 221–2, 229–31 bears 191 bison 203, 207–8 boars 41–2, 46, 48 camels 99–207 deer 41–2, 46, 48–50 elephants 188–91, 205 giraffes 12, 91–102 hippopotami 207–9 leopards 14, 161–75 lions 43, 191, 211 llamas 31, 209 pandas 209, 211 polar bears 186, 189 prairie dogs 186 raccoons 186 sea lions 188, 190 tigers 28 wolves 11, 46, 48–50, 59–60, 67, 190, 208 zebras 207 as predators, pests, and vermin 1–2, 11, 15, 55–60, 67, 224, 229 badgers 190 coyotes 188 feral and stray dogs 8, 13–14, 43–4, 56, 59–67, 76, 78, 111–14, 128–9, 145–55 feral cats 8, 56, 60, 78, 145–7 foxes 46, 48, 55–6, 145, 187 hares and rabbits 7–8, 31, 46, 47 rodents 55–6, 78, 145, 190 squirrels 60 wolves 11, 48–9, 59–60, 67 birds 44–50, 55–60, 75–85, 145, 174, 186–90, 223–9 birds of prey 15, 28–30, 44–8, 186–7, 210, 224–5 bluebirds 225 canaries 47, 84–5, 190 crows 224 larks 46–7 parrots 13, 34, 84 pigeons 47, 56, 78, 81, 84–6, 145, 221, 224, 226 poultry 15, 31, 49, 55, 75–6, 81, 174, 186, 223–4 purple martins 15, 223–5, 231 sparrows 46–7, 225 storks 207 draft and working animals dogs 56, 60–7, 76, 78, 105–17, 127–39 donkeys 209 horses 25, 31–2, 43–4, 59, 61, 67, 78, 81–3, 95–8, 100, 136 insects 2, 79, 81, 190 livestock 1, 11, 13, 31, 34, 44, 50, 55, 60–1, 78, 81–5, 95, 97–101, 112, 148, 175 cattle 1, 25, 31–4, 42–4, 55, 60–1, 78, 81–3, 95–101, 112–13, 129, 175, 203 goats 78, 81–2 240 Index pigs 1, 11, 13, 25, 31, 34, 55, 58–9, 67, 78, 81–3, 112–13 sheep 25, 31, 34, 60, 78, 81–2, 95, 148 pets and companion animals 1, 13–14, 34, 44, 55–6, 85, 129, 145–55 cats 8, 78, 135, 145–7 dogs 8, 11–13, 34, 44, 50, 56, 60–7, 76, 78, 80, 128–9, 145–55 animal training 127–39, 184, 190 animal welfare 13, 95–8, 100–1, 147–55, 209 Anthropocene 228 anthropocentrism 4, 147 anthropology 2, 4, 14, 56, 145, 161–2, 165–6, 173–4 anthropomorphism 85, 131–2, 135, 139, 150 artisans, urban 105–17 butchers 12–13, 55, 61, 66, 78, 81, 105–17, 131, 137 candlemakers 56, 62–5, 67 guilds 106–7, 112–13 tanners 62–7, 81 Audubon, John James 78, 81–2, 224–5 Austria and Austrian Empire 94, 135–6, 190 Linz 136 Prague (now Czech Republic) 135 Vienna 106, 136, 190 Schö nbrunn 190 Aztec Empire 25–34 Bakhtin, Mikhail 188–9 theory of the carnivalesque 135, 188–9 Baratay, É ric 10–12 Barnardo, Thomas, philanthropist 149 Battersea Cats and Dogs Home 13, 147–55 Bender, Daniel 191–2 Berlin Wall 15, 209, 211 Bhabha, Homi 5, 56 Biehler, Dawn Day 2 biotechnology 4, 75 birdhouses 223–9 Borgards, Roland 4 Bourdieu, Pierre 76–7 theory of the habitus 12, 76–7, 86 Braverman, Irus 146 Brehm, Alfred Edmund, naturalist and zoo director 111, 113, 188, 190 Britain 13, 55–68, 94, 131, 148, 202, 209 Edinburgh 64 Glasgow 11, 58, 61–7, 78, 81–2 London 13, 131, 133, 147–55 cannibalism 165, 173 captive animals 7, 14–15, 46–7, 91–102, 181–92, 201–12. See also menageries; zoos Cartesianism 5, 12 Castelli, Signor, animal trainer 133–4 Charles V of Spain 28 Charles X of France 12, 91, 100 China 211 Christianity, proselytism in Africa 171–3 citizenship, animal 8, 145–7, 155 Cold War 210–12 colonialism 10, 14, 25–34, 56, 67, 161–75, 202 Columbus, Christopher 27 commensal animals 8, 13, 56, 67, 145, 221–32 Congo 163 contact zones 25–7, 56 Coppinger, Laura and Raymond 8 Corté s, Herná n 27–34 Cowie, Helen 183, 190 Cronon, William 228 Curran, Cynthia 149 Darwin, Charles 5 Dathe, Heinrich, zoo director 204, 206, 208, 209–10 Dayan, Colin 153 Dening, Greg 56 Descartes, René 5 Diaz del Castillo, Bernal 29–32, 34 Dickens, Charles 133, 149–50 Dinzelbacher, Peter 77 disease and urban public health 57, 60, 65, 83, 113–17, 174, 190, 230 Dittrich, Lothar 185 Index Dobson, Michael 130 Dollman, John Charles, artist 150 domestication and domesticity conception of 8–9, 11–15, 31, 34, 127, 148, 150, 186, 221–32 domestication of animals 15, 25, 30–4, 75, 99, 209, 221–32 Donaldson, Sue 8, 15, 145–7, 154–5, 209 Douglas, Mary 57, 165 Duclos, Charles, animal trainer 131 Dutch Republic 7–8, 59 East Germany 201–12 ecology 93, 145, 171 Edel, Bä rbel 128–9 Egypt 91–2, 94 Alexandria 92, 94 encyclopaedias 106, 110–11, 130–1 Enlightenment, the 108, 132, 135 euthanasia of animals 154–5 exoticism and animals 7–9, 34–47, 84, 100–1, 130–1, 146, 173, 182–92 falconry 45–8 Fanon, Frantz 153 fires in cities 64, 67, 83–6 Fissell, Mary 60 Florentine Codex 25–7, 31–2 France 10–12, 41–50, 76, 83, 91–102, 202, 209 Aix 99–100 La Roquette 46 Lyon 99, 102 Marseilles 91–2, 94–9, 102 Paris 12, 41–50, 91, 94, 99–102, 132, 202 Fontainebleau Palace 25–7, 31–2 Hô tel du Luxembourg 46 Jardin des Plantes 12, 91–2, 94, 101–2, 202 Louvre Palace 43–4, 46–7 Palais-Royal 41–3, 50 Saint-Cloud châ teau 91, 100 Saint-Germain châ teau 42–8 Tuileries gardens 43–4 Versailles Palace 43, 47–50 Poitou 209 Reims 43 241 French Revolution 50 Frey, Dennis 11–12 Fronde, the 41, 48 Fudge, Erica 191 German reunification 15, 211 Germany 11–12, 14–15, 75–86, 105–17, 130–8, 181–92, 201–12 Augsburg 133, 136 Bamburg 136 Berlin 15, 133, 184, 190–1, 201–12 Schlosspark Friedrichsfelde 201, 204, 208 Breslau 190 Cologne 185 Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) 132 Dresden 136, 138, 185–7, 191 Dü rnau 85 Erlangen 85 Frankfurt 136, 185, 189 Freiberg 136, 186 Gö ppingen 11–12, 76, 78–86 Hamburg 136, 184, 188 Hannover 185, 187 Heilbronn 106 Horn 184 Ingolstadt 136 Jena 136 Karlsruhe 185 Leipzig 106, 136, 183, 204 Ludwigsburg 136 Magdeburg 136 Meissen 132 Munich 133, 136, 184 Nuremburg 136 Passau 136 Regensburg 136 Schö nbrunn 190 Stuttgart 136, 183, 189 Tü bingen 79 Ulm 85 Weimar 130 Wolfenbü ttel 136 Glacken, Clarence 228 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 130 Greenwood, James, journalist 149, 152 Grotewohl, Otto 204 Ground, Ian 5 242 Haraway, Donna 4, 128 Hauser, Andrea 79 Hebel, Johann Peter, author 107, 110, 113 Heck, Lutz, zoologist and zoo director 203 Heinroth, Katharina, zoo director 203 Hengerer, Mark 75 Henri IV of France 43–6 Hé rouard, Jean 45–7 history animal history 1–16, 75, 92–4 environmental history 1, 228 social history 1 urban history 1–16, 26–8 Hollingshead, John, journalist 150 Howell, Philip 13 Human-Animal Studies 4 hunting 10–11, 41–50, 165–74 by leopards 168–72, 175 hunting parks 41–50 poaching 49 hybridity 3, 33 animal-human hybrids 31–3, 166–7, 172–4 India 154 Islam, proselytism in Africa 165 Italy 44, 133 Milan 133 Jackson, Louise 149 Jø rgensen, Dolly 15 Kennedy, Robert 210 Klö s, Heinz-Georg, zoo director 203, 206 Kö ring, Esther 129 Krü ger, Gesine 77 Kymlicka, Will 8, 15, 145–7, 154–5, 209 laboratory animals 6, 129 LaCapra, Dominick 75–7 Lang, Rudolf, animal trainer 134–9 language, facility in relation to animals 132 Latour, Bruno 4–5 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 132 Leiderer, Annette 12–13 Index Leisure and urban entertainment. See also menageries; zoos carnivals and fairs 182–5 restaurants, taverns, public houses 182–5 theatres 127–39 Lenné , Peter Josef, landscape architect 204 Leven, Franz, animal park owner 184 Liberia 163–4, 172 Lichtenstein, Martin Hinrich, zoo director 191 Liminality liminal animals, conception of 5–7, 11, 47–50, 78, 127–9, 145–7, 155, 207–9 liminality and space 7–8, 10–11, 14–15, 25, 33, 41–50, 55–7, 154, 163, 167, 172, 182–3, 201–5 liminality and time 14–15, 41–50, 162–1, 169–75, 182–3, 203–4, 209–11 liminality theory 1–16, 26–7, 33–4, 55–6, 75–6, 92, 127–8, 145–7, 164–7, 181–2 liminoid concept 3, 164, 170–1, 206 marginality, distinct from liminality 3, 6 ‘zombie liminality’ 11, 56, 61–4, 67 Lipsius, Justus 131 Louis XIII of France 11, 42–3, 44–7, 48 Louis XIV of France 11, 41–3, 48–50, 100 Louis XV of France 50 Louis XVI of France 50 McNeur, Catherine 1 Madagascar 44 Malamud, Randy 192 Mannheims, Hildegard 80 Marguerite, Queen of France 46 Martin, Henri, animal trainer 190 Marvin, Garry 207 Mazarin, Cardinal Jules de 41–2 media studies 222 Medici, Marie de' 11, 45, 48 menageries 14–15, 29–30, 34, 46, 101–2, 130, 182–92. See also captive animals; zoos Mexica culture and peoples 25–34 Index migration, animal 8, 15, 169–70, 221–32 migration, human 1, 57, 147, 171–3 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, USA 226 mimicry 3 missionaries 165, 172 Moctezuma 28, 34 modernity 1–16, 76, 105, 113–14, 127–30, 145–8, 171–2, 181–5, 206–7 early modern period 56–68, 75–86 modernization 106, 171–2, 203, 207 ‘Modern Nature’ 14, 485 Moore, Grace 149 Muller, Eugè ne 133 Mü ller, Max 5 Mundy, Barbara E. 28 natural history 94, 97–8, 100, 110–11, 184–5, 187, 227 nature conceptions of 1–16, 167, 187 ‘Modern Nature’, concept of 14, 185 nature-culture dichotomy 7, 9–10, 47, 75, 86, 127–8, 167, 175, 228–31 naturecultures, concept of 6 second nature, concept of 15, 228–31 Nazism 203–4, 206, 212 Netherlands, the 190 Amsterdam 190 Rotterdam 190 neuroscience 93 New Spain 25–34 Nigeria 161–2, 174 Norton, Macy 34 nuisance, law of, and animals 11, 55–68, 183 Nyhart, Lynn 185 243 performing animals 13, 127–39 Hanswurst, performing dog 134–6 Mosche, performing dog 134–6 Munito, performing dog(s) 132–5 Pollux, performing dog 131 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, educational reformer 107–10, 113 Philippines 186 Philo, Chris 201 Pieck, Wilhelm 204, 211 Pinkert, Ernst, pub owner and zoo director 183–4 Plumb, J. H. 55 Poro, West African hunting society/‘secret society’ 163–7, 170–2 postcolonialism 3, 5 probate inventories 79–84 promenading 184 prostitution 148–9 Prussia 112, 133, 201, 204 public and private spheres 11–13, 55–8, 76, 106, 117, 127–9, 154, 187 O’Connor, Terry 145 Opiz, Georg Emanuel 106, 108 Orleans, Philip, Duke of 132 Ravaillac, Franç ois 44 Reinert, Wiebke 14, 202 Richelieu, Cardinal 41, 48 Rieke-Mü ller, Annelore 185 rites of passage 2, 3, 6, 8, 11–12, 14, 56, 92, 106, 162–3, 208, 210 Ritvo, Harriet 183, 207 Robbins, Louise E. 192 Roberts, Les 205 Roscher, Mieke 15 Rosenberg, Emily S. 184 Rö slin, Adam Israel, author 80 Rothfels, Nigel 185 Royal Humane Society, Great Britain 133 Russia 209 Moscow 209 Palmer, Clare 146–7 panda diplomacy 211 pantomime 131 Pasha, Mehmet Ali of Egypt 91, 95 Pearson, Chris 127–8 pedagogical literature, animals in 107–11 Sabean, David 79 Sahagú n, Bernadino de 25 Saint-Hilaire, Etienne Geoffroy, naturalist 94, 100 Sala, George Augustus, journalist Schlä ger, Hermann, German parliamentarian 187 152 244 Index Schlegel, Franz, zoo director 190–1 Schmidt, Helmut 211 Schmidt, Willy 114–16 Schö pf, Alwin, zoo director 191–2 Schreyer, Heinrich, animal trainer 131 Schrö dinger’s cat 154 Schrö ter, J. F. Constanti 106, 109 Schü rch, Isabelle 10 Science and Technology Studies (STS) 5, 222–3, 231 Shepard, Paul 147 Sierra Leone 161–75 Bompeh (Bumpe) 172 Freetown 172 Waterloo 172 slaughterhouses 1, 6, 12–13, 62–8, 105–17, 129 slumming 149–52 smellscapes and odour, in cities 55–8 Smith, Kimberley K. 145 Soviet Union (USSR) 209 Spain 10, 25–34, 43 Squier, Susan Merrill 4–5, 75, 78, 86 Srinivasan, Krithika 154 Steeb, Martin, pastor 85 Steinbrecher, Aline 13, 77 Stranitzky, Joseph Anton, performer 135 Stricker, Wilhelm, physician 191 Sudan 92, 94, 210 Syse, Karen 211 Szakolczai, Arpad 9, 207–8, 210 Taverner, P. A., naturalist 226 taxidermy 184 Thomas, Keith 60 Thomas, Northcote Whitridge, anthropologist 161–2, 165–6, 173–4 Thomassen, Bjø rn 3–4, 5, 9, 15, 164, 207, 212 Totemism, animal 162 Townsend, Mary Lee 187 Tozer, Basil, journalist 154–5 Turkey and Turkish Empire 136 Turner, Victor 2–3, 5, 14, 56, 75, 91, 163–6, 170, 174, 183, 185, 206 Tuttle, Merlin 230 Twining, Louisa, philanthropist 149 Ulbricht, Walter 204, 210 United States 221–32 Austin, Texas 221, 229 Chicago 228 New York 1, 11, 58–61, 62–7 St. Johnsbury, Vermont 227 San Antonio, Texas 229 urban space 42–3, 44–7, 55–7, 61, 182–3, 209 van Dam, Petra 7 van Gennep, Arnold 2, 4, 6, 14, 56, 91, 162–3, 166, 189, 210, 212 Vayhinger, Ernst Jacob and Anna Barbara 84 Veblen, Thorstein 187–8 theory of the leisure class 187–8 veterinarians 106, 113 Wadiwel, Dinesh Joseph 9 war 11, 15, 25–34, 59, 83, 136, 202–3 Anglo-Dutch wars 59 colonial wars, modern period 164 French civil wars 11, 43 Russo-Austria-Turkish war 136 Second World War 15, 202–3 Spanish conquest of the Americas 25–34 wars of religion 11 waste disposal, in cities 55, 57, 62–8 Weber, Nadir 10–11 Weinland, David Friedrich, zoologist 189, 192 welfare reform, Great Britain 149–52 Wells, Andrew 11 Werner, Gustav Friedrich 183, 189 West Africa 14, 161–75 West Germany (FDR) 201–12 Whistler, Dale 230 White, Hayden 192 Wilbert, Chris 201 wild animal trade 184, 208–9 wildness difficulties of definition 207–9, 221 relation to ferality 7–15, 30–4, 42–50, 55–6, 65, 145–7, 190–2, 207–9, 221 wilderness 1, 8, 11, 42, 75, 163, 165, 167, 172–3, 206 Index Wilson, Alexander 225–6 Wilson, David 182 Wischermann, Clemens 77, 192 Wolfe, Cary 6–7 Wydra, Harald 204 Zedler, Heinrich, publisher 132 Zehnle, Stephanie 14 zoo keepers and workers 188–92 zoos 7, 14–15, 29–30, 34, 55, 101–2, 129, 181–92, 201–12 Amsterdam zoo Berlin zoo 190–1, 201–12 Breslau zoo 190 Cologne zoo 185 Dresden zoo 185–7, 191 Frankfurt zoo 185, 189 Hamburg zoo 188 Hannover zoo 185, 187 Jardin des Plantes, Paris 12, 91–2, 94, 101–2, 202 Leipzig zoo 183, 204 London Zoo 202, 209 Poitou animal park 209 Rotterdam zoo 190 Schö nbrunn zoo 190 Tierpark, East Berlin 15, 201–12 zoos, captive breeding programmes in 7, 209 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252