Here’s the video of the lecture I gave to the Royal Historical Society in September last year. I’ve realised there are a few videos of me giving talks out there on the internet, so I’m going to try to embed them into some blog posts. Hopefully, it’ll be a good nudge to start up blogging…
Category: Elephants
King Thibaw’s Elephants
It’s been a nearly two months since my last post. Childcare, trade union activism, departmental admin and a lovely holiday have kept me away. To catch up with my research I spent today looking at a collection of fifty Anglo-Burmese paintings held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, who have digitized them and made them…
Beasts of Rebellion
On Monday I had a couple of hours spare in London, either side of a meeting, so I did some lightning research in the British Library. I’d ordered some of the Public and Judicial Records on the Hsaya San rebellion of 1930-2. For those unfamiliar with the rebellion, it was the biggest one to hit…
Podcast
A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Luke Corbin for his “Myanmar Musings” podcast. We talked about some of my recent work on the history of animals, particularly elephants and cattle. Luke is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University researching the history and anthropology of beer in Myanmar. During his trip…
Animal Actors in the “Burmese Tarzan”
Animal historians routinely describe animals as “actors”. This is to emphasize the way that nonhuman creatures can effect change through their own actions and behaviours. They’re not bystanders in history, but active participants. But what about when animals are literally actors. Like, in films. What can animals acting tell us about animals as “actors”? This…
Undead Capital
Earlier this week I was really pleased to have had an article published as part of a special issue on animal agency in the history of science. It came out in the journal BJHS: Themes, an open access journal related to the British Journal for the History of Science dedicated to addressing provocative themes. The…
Proliferating Elephants
One of the things that I was not sure of when helping to set up the recent Elephants and Empire exhibition at Myanmar Deitta gallery in Yangon, was the intended purpose of these photographs. Originally taken by staff of the Steel Brothers company documenting the teak industry, there were no accompanying written documents explaining what they…
Animals Against Whiteness
Apparently, some animals in Burma had a particular loathing for White people. According to the Fitz William Pollok and W. S. Thom’s 1900 guide to wild sports, buffaloes were especially ill-disposed to White skin. Informing would-be imperial hunters of the animal’s general ferocity, they warned that, ‘Even the tame cow, that will allow itself to…
Historical Pose-abilities of Colonial Photography
I’ve just got back from Yangon where I was helping to set up the “Elephants and Empire” exhibition currently running at the Myanmar Deitta photograph gallery. The exhibition shows historical photographs originally taken for Steel Brothers & Co. Ltd, a British firm that operated in the teak industry, and that are now held in the…
Exhibiting Elephants
On January 7 an exhibition, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, displaying historical photographs of the teak industry will open at the Myanmar Deitta gallery in Yangon. I am really excited about it. The photographs that will be shown have been generously made available by the London Metropolitan Archives. The originals were taken…
Traps and Tangles
Last week I attended a brilliant conference on the topic of “Traps” over at the Centre for Research into the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities in Cambridge. The purpose of the discussion was to consider the utility of thinking with traps to understand the technological mediations of human-animal relations, across different places and times. The…
Animal Actors in Theatres of War
Total war was a more-than-human phenomenon and during the Second World War a variety of animals were mobilized and killed. The Burma theatre was no exception. I was recently reminded of this when a couple of friends shared a reprint of an article celebrating the war work done by carrier pigeons. The article details the…
Colonizing Animals 