Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World

This book examines trades in animals and animal products in the history of the Indian Ocean World (IOW). An international array of established and emerging scholars investigate how the roles of equines, ungulates, sub-ungulates, mollusks, and avians expand our understandings of commerce, human societies, and world systems. Focusing primarily on the period 1500-1900, they explore how animals and their products shaped the relationships between populations in the IOW and Europeans arriving by maritime routes. By elucidating this fundamental yet under-explored aspect of encounters and exchanges in the IOW, these interdisciplinary essays further our understanding of the region, the environment, and the material, political and economic history of the world.

“This volume is the first of a series of multi-themed studies on the Indian Ocean World (Iow) … . a self-conscious ‘entry into the tent of the Iow to positively expand our understanding of the relationships between animals, human beings, commerce, and world systems’ … . The wealth of detail supporting this interpretive stance—such as how animal products turned into items as disparate as ‘hair ornaments, eye-glass frames, and dildos’ … will be enjoyable for readers to discover for themselves.” (Myfel D. Paluga, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Vol. 178, 2022)

Martha Chaiklin received her PhD from Leiden University, The Netherlands. She first became interested in animals when researching her book, Cultural Commerce and Dutch Commercial Culture (2003), and has since combined her interest in material culture and animals in publications on elephants, live animal gifts, tortoiseshell and ivory.Philip Gooding is a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Ocean World Centre, and a course lecturer in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University, Canada. He has published articles in Slavery and Abolition and The Journal of African History, among other journals.Gwyn Campbell is the founding Director of the Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University, Canada. His publications include Africa and the Indian Ocean World from early times to circa 1900 (2019), David Griffiths and the Missionary “History of Madagascar” (2012), and An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750-1895 (2005).