Imperial Creatures
Issued Date
Resource Type
Language
eng
Book
Book
No. of Pages/File Size
264
ISBN
9789813250871
Title
Alternative Title(s)
Humans and Other Aninals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942
Author(s)
Abstract
The environmental turn in the humanities and social sciences has meant a new focus on the history of animals. This is one of the first books to look across species at animals in a colonial, urban society. If imperialism is a series of power relationships, it involves not only the subjugation of human communities but also animals. What was the relationship between these two processes in colonial Singapore? How did various interactions with animals enable changes in interactions between people, and the expression of power in human terms?
The imposition of imperial power relationships was a process that was often complex and messy, and it led to the creation of new communities throughout the world, including the colonial port city of Singapore. Through a multidisciplinary consideration of fauna, this book weaves together a series of tales to document how animals were cherished, slaughtered, monitored and employed in a colonial society, to provide insight into how imperial rule was imposed on an island in Southeast Asia. Fauna and their histories of interacting with humans, thus, become useful tools for understanding our past, revealing the effects of establishing a colony on the biodiversity of a region, and the institutions that quickly transformed it. All animals, including humans, have been creatures of imperialism in Singapore. Their stories teach us lessons about the structures that upheld such a society and how it developed over time.
Table of contents
List of Images ix -- Chapter 1: Animals, Empire and Singaporean History 1 -- Chapter 2: Taming an Island 16 -- Chapter 3: Fauna in a Colonial Landscape 52 -- Chapter 4: Defining Cruelty 103 -- Chapter 5: Domestication, Regulation and Control of Dogs, and Other Animals 148 -- Chapter 6: Markets, Proteins and the Public Abattoirs 192 -- Epilogue: The White Monkey 236 -- Acknowledgement 242 -- Bibliography 244 -- Index 259