President's LectureGoing Forth and Multiplying: Animal Acclimatization and Invasion

Abstract

The nineteenth century saw numerous transfers and attempted transfers of animal populations, mostly as the result of the spread of European agriculture. The exchange of animal populations facilitated by the acclimatization societies that were established in Europe, North America, Australia, among other places, had more complicated meanings. Introduced aliens were often appreciated or deplored in the same terms that were applied to human migrants. Some animal acclimatizations were part of ambitious attempts to transform entire landscapes. Such transfers also broached or blurred the distinction between the domesticated and the wild. The intentional enhancement of the fauna of a region is a forceful assertion of human power. But most planned acclimatizations failed, if they moved beyond the drawing board. And those that succeeded also tended to undermine complacent assumptions about human control. People were on the move in the nineteenth century. Millions of men and women participated in massive transfers of human population, spurred by war, famine, persecution, the search for a better life, or (most rarely) the spirit of adventure. The largest of these transfers-although by no means the only one-was from the Old World to the New. Of course, people are not unique in their mobility, as they are not unique in most of their attributes. And many non-human animals followed the same paths during that period. Most of the animals thus transplanted were members of domesticated species long accustomed to moving in the human wake. But a small, yet compelling, fraction moved in the service of what was called "acclimatization." In its most expansive nineteenthcentury sense, this meant: to introduce, acclimatize, and domesticate "all innocuous animals, birds, fishes, insects, and vegetables, whether useful or ornamental." 2 As

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“…In multiple studies, we have explored the ways that mobile nature transcends the artificial lines with which we seek to, in the words of James Scott, make the world 'legible'. 5 In so doing, scholars such as Samuel Truett, Kurkpatrick Dorsey, Joseph E. Taylor III, Mark Fiege, Lissa Wadewitz and Mary E. Mendoza have vastly expanded 2 Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, 'A shark cull divides a nation', BBC News, 10 April 2014. www.bbc.com/news/ magazine-26937924, accessed 6 May 2015. 3 'More than 170 sharks caught under Australia cull policy', BBC News, 7 May 2014. www.bbc.com/news/ world-asia-27304580, accessed 6 May 2015.…”

“…4 'Shark cull in Western Australia blocked by regulator', BBC News, 12 September 2014. www.bbc.com/news/ world-asia-29170035, accessed 6 May 2015. 5 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 11, 138. our understanding of intertwined human and natural histories. Their research reveals a world far more fluid and interconnected than conventional state-centred narratives can convey.…”

“…4 The 'cultural turn' that stimulated research across the humanities from the 1980s to some extent divided the field of environmental history into those primarily concerned with the 'so-called material dimensions of history' and others interested in 'changing ideas about the natural world' with a focus on representation and culture; however, some scholars have drawn on both strands. 5 Environmental historians, together with other historians, have long found race, gender and class to be useful categories of historical analysis. The development of the sub-discipline of environmental history in Asia, Australasia, Europe and South and Central America, in each case drawing on differing academic traditions, has made it truly global in its scope and reach, and created a global pool of expertise on which genuinely global environmental histories can draw.…”

Mammal extinction by introduced infectious disease on Christmas Island (Indian Ocean): the historical context

“…The precise circumstances under which alien species are introduced to novel habitats are usually little known and poorly documented. Obvious exceptions to this would be the deliberate introduction of alien species either for sport (e.g the European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus -Myers et al 2003, brown trout Salmo trutta -Townsend 1996), acclimatization (Ritvo 2012), botanic garden acquisitions (Hulme 2011) or as biocontrol agents gone wrong (e.g the cane toad Bufo marinus Low 1999), but rarely are the precise circumstances surrounding the accidental introduction of alien species well known and documented. Similar arguments can be made for species extinctions.…”

History writing, anthropomorphism, and birdwatching in colonial india

“…Perhaps the best example of how birds might have helped strengthen the feeling of familiarity was the importation of certain species from “back home.” Harriet Ritvo notes how the sparrow became really well‐established in America but was originally introduced by a nostalgic Englishman: Ritvo (, p. 406).…”