Last week I presented a paper as part of a panel on the history of lunatic asylums at the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies’ annual conference, hosted by the University of Vienna. It was the first time that I had returned to the subject of colonial psychiatry since I completed the research for my…
Tag: Animal History
Jackson the Rhinoceros
One of the exhibits to be included in the up-coming Buddhas and Bird-Skins online exhibition that I am working on with the Bristol Museum, is Jackson the rhinoceros. Here’s a brief biography. He was probably born in the Burma Delta roughly around 1880. He was captured on 27 March 1884 in the Bassein (or Pathein)…
Burmese Objects in Bristol Museum
As part of my Arts and Humanities Research funded early career fellowship, I am working with colleagues at the Bristol Museum to explore the items in their collections that came from Burma. Just before Christmas, I was invited to help with the photographing of some of the objects held in their East Asian Art and…
Milking It?
I have just come back from an amazing interdisciplinary conference on food in Asia organized by the Asian Dynamics Initiative at the University of Copenhagen. It was attended by historians, anthropologists, food scientists and many others, who talked on topics that included the production of sake, the ethics of vegetarianism, the authenticity of Anglo-Indian curry-houses,…
Elephant Steeplechase
So, on 25 May 1858, this apparently happened in Yangon. This chaotic scene is an elephant steeplechase. According to the newspaper report that accompanied this engraving, the officers of the garrison posted in Yangon organised this event as part of their celebrations marking Queen Victoria’s birthday. They dressed as jockeys and raced the elephants, which…
Colonial Canicide, Cruel to be Kind?
One of the ways in which British colonizers sought to distinguish themselves from the colonized populations that they ruled over, and to justify that rule, was through claiming that they treated animals more humanely than the ‘natives’. In Burma this claim was also made, but it was not always straight-forward. Buddhism was viewed by imperial…
Retiring Elephants in the Southern Shan States
In 1936 the imperial government sanctioned the abolition of the elephant establishments used by several colonial officials serving in the Southern Shan States—the more accessible part of the hilly regions of northeast colonial Burma. Most of the elephants were sold off. But two elderly female elephants did not attract any buyers. They were both around…
Hunting White Elephants Across Archives
It’s a miserably wet day in Delhi, so I’m using this as an opportunity to catch up on my blog, which has been neglected for the past few weeks. I’m in Delhi, instead of Yangon, in order to use the National Archive of India. This is the first time that I have used this archive….
Prisoners and Pariah Dogs
Many things have changed in Yangon since I first visited as a wide-eyed PhD student back in 2008, but the city’s street dogs remain a ubiquitous presence. Although, they have had their own share of difficulties since then. In 2013 the city’s authorities were accused of poisoning them in order to beautify the streets in…
Political Animals
I have just finished reading a story in which a community of pigs stage a revolution. No, not George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but a play called Sukra written by the Burmese nationalist U Nu in 1937. The play was published by the Nagani Book Club, a leftist nationalist publisher in the colony, and has been…
Marx’s Animal Other, Part 2
A few weeks ago I wrote a post exploring how animals appeared in Marx’s Capital, Volume 1. I drew attention to how Marx claimed that there was a fundamental difference between human and animal labour, and then suggested that other aspects of his argument could be used to historicise the division between humans and animals….
How to Post a Tiger
Over the last couple of weeks I have stayed in Bristol, London, Durham, Sheffield, Grimsby and Cambridge. Arranging places to stay and booking train tickets has been both tiring and expensive. I have had to rely on the kindness and generosity of friends and family. But then yesterday, whilst I was researching in the Centre…
Colonizing Animals 