Historians customarily treat animals as instrumental figures whose significance derives from their roles as tools, symbols, pets, property, pests, or food for humans. Steering clear of the dreaded labels of anthropomorphism or sentimentality, this analytical approach yields a “just-the-facts” account of human-nonhuman relationships. Many of the contributors to this volume, edited by Roel Sterckx, Martina Siebert, and Dagmar Schäfer, adopt this perspective, offering insights on changes over several millennia in human beliefs and practices involving animals. If we understand “Chinese history” to mean the history of Homo sapiens in the geographic entity called China, this anthropocentric approach is appropriate.
It is increasingly clear, however, that many animals are sentient, social, actors capable of pleasure, pain, fear, contentment, loneliness, boredom, and excitement. When historians overlook this mental complexity, they risk a distorted view of the past that reinforces hierarchies of dominance and exploitation by effacing the suffering and delight of nonhuman subjects. It is time to reckon with the subjectivity and inner lives of nonhuman subalterns, and to recognize them as indispensable members of our multispecies societies.
Historians have belatedly recognized the value of at least attempting to excavate the voices and experiences of human subalterns. We now realize that socially constructed categories such as race, gender, and class are no basis for excluding or overlooking the histories of marginalized groups of people. Species is another such porous and artificial category. As an extreme example, our mood and metabolism are shaped by the activity of billions of symbiotic microbes in our guts. These life forms do not share our DNA or species classification, but they are inextricably part of who we are. More familiar examples of interdependence among species include the relationships among draft animals and farmers, warhorses and cavalry officers, and flocks with their shepherds. In these and many other ways, human agency is extended and constrained by the life processes and agendas of myriad other beings, sentient or otherwise. Reluctance to transcend the timeworn categories of traditional analysis does not justify restricting our investigations solely to human activities and experiences.
Space limitations preclude the detailed synopsis that each chapter in this collection deserves, so a few selections must suffice to show how some contributors have addressed (or not) the experiences of their animal subjects. Sare Aricanli uses examples in the Chinese, Mongol, Manchu, and Uighur languages to illustrate how humans in the multicultural Qing Empire described and understood their horses’ anatomy and appearance. Aricanli also acknowledges the subjectivity of these sensitive animals, noting that letting horses roam “maintain[ed] their spirit,” allowing the animals “some time and space to exercise their sense of being free horses among other horses” (p. 216). There is obviously no textual record from a joyful mare, bounding across the steppe, exulting in her freedom. But Aricanli is plainly justified in this thoughtful interpretation of equine emotion. An analysis concerned mostly with human perceptions of horses gains strength from the inclusion of a mind on the other side of the species’ line.
Keith Knapp traces the perception among early medieval scholars that animals, like humans, practiced filial piety. Knapp credibly argues that this belief was not simply anthropomorphic projection. To be sure, humans’ interpretive framework was likely inspired by notions including universal Buddha nature and the Confucian ideal of filiality as “part of Heaven's endowment that all creatures share” (p. 65). Yet people also observed reciprocity, concern, and altruism among flesh-and-blood animals. Crows regurgitated food for their nestlings, and gibbons displayed compassion for wounded kin, while dogs’ loyalty to their masters secured their place as valued members of a household. While humanists have been slow to embrace or even acknowledge nonhuman agency, scientists have noted moral attributes such as reciprocity and justice in the behavior of many social animals, including those discussed here. Knapp skillfully reads his primary sources in conjunction with this recent scientific literature on animal behavior. The animals in his chapter thus emerge not only as cultural signifiers or economic units, but also as moral agents. This research is an important contribution to understanding China as a multispecies formation of moral beings, of which humans are but one kind.
Vincent Goossaert's chapter on eschatological discourse during the late-Qing Taiping war is another highlight of this collection. In a striking example of “caring for life in an era of massacres” (p. 196), many authors of that blood-soaked time called for bans on animal slaughter in hopes of saving the world from apocalyptic devastation. These authors were not simply using “‘hypothetical creature[s]’” or metaphorical “paper animals” to obliquely criticize human politics or statecraft. Rather, their “detailed discussions about the sufferings of butchered oxen or mistreated dogs” suggest that these texts were about “actual animals which require attention” (p. 197). Concern about the well-being of nonhumans is by no means exclusive to soft-hearted modern animal fanciers. Goossaert shows that many people in China's last dynasty keenly sympathized with animals in pain and strove to persuade their fellow humans to share this compassionate worldview.
Mindi Schneider's chapter on hog farming in contemporary China extends the book more than one hundred years beyond the date suggested in the title. Declining to engage with the scientific evidence of pigs’ intelligence and emotional complexity, Schneider advances a strictly anthropocentric perspective. After outlining the structure of the hog production sector, she addresses the harmful effects of industrial pork production on food safety, the natural environment, and public health. This is valuable information about real problems—but what about the pigs? Schneider never mentions the appalling conditions in which tens of millions of sentient animals per year are confined, separated from their kin, sexually assaulted through castration and artificial insemination, and painfully slaughtered for the delectation of newly prosperous diners. Most researchers would no longer conclude their analyses of sweatshops, slave plantations, concentration camps, or other sites of oppressive exploitation without at least gesturing toward the suffering of the inmates.
Interpreting porcine experiences is challenging. Pigs do not write down their feelings for the convenience of scholars. But the literature on animal ethology and food science includes careful studies of pigs’ preferences and aversions at virtually every stage of meat production. The animals’ vocalizations, levels of stress hormones, eye movements, and other empirical indices provide ample grounds for parsimonious interpretations of their inner states. Particularly now that China is a leader in using biometrics to capture everything from pigs’ ovulation cycles to their body fat percentage, it would be possible to offer a rich and convincing portrayal of how these intelligent, sociable animals experience the post-Reform political economy.
Schneider takes a different approach, quoting a pork tycoon on the social and cultural significance of swine as both status symbols and reminders of traditional customs and practices. She glibly concludes that “for those who can afford it, modern life means living high on the hog” (p. 243). Like the other authors in this volume, Schneider reveals much about the role of animals in human society. This is a crucial element of the story of the “global agrifood system” (p. 234), and no full history can omit it. Yet, focusing only on the consumers and exploiters of animals obfuscates the violence and abuse at the heart of industrial husbandry. It may well be true for many people that “the pig as pork factory now supersedes the pig as living being” (p. 234). But, again, what about the pigs? Not only does a one-sided history fail to capture the full scope of the participants’ lived experiences. By reinforcing the hierarchy of power, this framing also denies readers an opportunity to examine their own participation in the politics of violence against nonhuman subalterns. As anthropogenic climate change is obliterating people and animals alike, scholars and their readers can ill afford this curiously complacent focus on human interests above all else.
As an examination of human understanding and treatment of animals across a longue durée, this book is a success. The most compelling chapters treat animals as active agents capable of thought and emotion. Graduate seminars or advanced undergraduate classes will find this collection a provocative launching point for discussions of historical method. The authors have ingeniously extracted a wealth of information about animals from a diverse array of sources, ranging from oracle bones and paintings to agricultural treatises and religious handbooks. The bibliography is a treasure house of animal history materials in European and Asian languages.
Like people, animals experienced the cultural, technological, and economic changes described in this volume. How did the Mongol conquest affect the diets, workloads, and sexuality of warhorses? What did a sacrificial ox feel as its blood trickled away? This book cogently traces many animals through Chinese history. What might we gain by studying Chinese history through animals?
