ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the First Age of Exploration, European ships have carried not only diverse human crews but also a variety of non-human animals into the Pacific. More than just ‘living provision’, these animals were instrumental in conquering new worlds: goods to be traded, gifts to impress with, and a stock with which to transform (un-)inhabited islands into ‘Neo-Europes’, making them habitable for future European colonization. At the same time, intercultural human–animal relationships hold the potential for experiencing difference, transgression, and transformation: the question which (animal) body is to be eaten, to be spared, or to be revered holds the potential for intercultural (dis-)agreement or conflict. Mira Shah explores the role that animals and their bodies play in Pacific travel literature from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Central to her analysis is the way traveling animal bodies facilitate practices of discovery, exchange, and conquest: how they can be understood as agents of exploration, intercultural encounter, and communication as well as imperial colonization and ecological change wrought on the islands of the Great Ocean.
