A few days ago the great grandson of Percival Marshall—an employee of the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation during the interwar years—made contact with me to share his relavtive’s photographs of working in colonial Burma’s forests. The images document the labour that went into felling trees and transporting them across the country for export. They show…
Month: March 2016
A Beastly Bibliography
Over the last year I’ve been compiling an annotated bibliography. Originally I maintained it as a memory aid for my writing and in September I reworked it for my students. I’m now sharing it on this blog for anyone interested in the colonial history of animals: ‘Beastly Bibliography’. Recommendations for additional readings are encouraged! Hope…
Translating Titles
During the colonial period a series of white men published books about elephants based on their experiences of working with them in Burma. By independence in 1948, there was a clear canon of texts about elephants. Authors cited certain writers who were deemed to be ‘authorities’ in the subject: Mitchell, Pfaff, Hepburn, Ferrier, Evans, Sanderson…
Colonizing Animals 