Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a broad range of contributions – epistemological and ontological, theoretical and empirical – as these scholars explore the unique methodological challenges of articulating an animal-centered historical geography. It explores socio-ecological histories of particular animals offering historical accounts of animal agency and subjectivity, taking seriously the notion that humans and animals have shaped each other in particular historical and geographical contexts. The book examines the re-introduction of pigs in wartime London as a necessary source of food and waste disposal. It focuses on elephants in India emphasizes their importance as actors and political subjects in military campaigns, as symbols of wealth, and as a means of transportation. The book describes re-conceptualizes the American West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also describes the equivalencies made between coal miners and pit bulls in nineteenth-century Britain.