Abstract
The conventional history of animals could be more accurately described asthe history of human ideas about animals. Only in the last few decades havescholars from a wide variety of disciplines attempted to document the lives ofhistorical animals in ways that recognize their agency as sentient beings withcomplex intelligence. This collection advances the field further, inviting us toexamine our recorded history through an animal-centric lens to discover howanimals have altered the course of our collective past. The seventeen scholars gathered here present case studies from the PacificOcean, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, involving species ranging from gorillasand horses to salamanders and orcas. Together they seek out new methodologies,questions, and stories that challenge accepted historical assumptionsand structures. Drawing upon environmental, social, and political history, thecontributors employ research from such wide-ranging fields as philosophy andveterinary medicine, embracing a radical interdisciplinarity that is crucial tounderstanding our nonhuman past. Grounded in the knowledge that there has never been a purely human timein world history, this collection asks and answers an incredibly urgent questionfor historians and others interested in the nonhuman past: in an age of massextinctions, mass animal captivity, and climate change, when we know muchof what animals have done in the past, which of our activities will we want tochange in the future?