When German painter and illustrator Heinrich Leutemann (1824–1905) observed a herd of wildebeests around 1900, their ‘exuberant temper’ and ‘boisterous frolics’ on a Prussian pasture distracted him from his ‘scientific considerations’.Footnote 1 Though he had seen individual wildebeests in menageries before, it was the first time he had observed several at once and they clearly left an impression on him (see Figure 1). His inability to continue his contemplations need not have worried him: over the next few weeks, the animals would find their way to various zoological gardens, which at the turn of the century were self-proclaimed scientific spaces for zoological studies on live animals.Footnote 2 Showcasing ‘wild’, ‘exotic’ animals in (semi-)public spaces was neither a new nor uniquely European phenomenon: during the height of the Roman Empire, killing ‘wild beasts’ in amphitheatres was a popular public pastime, while princely menageries were representative institutions in both Europe and Asia in the early modern period.Footnote 3 Yet the nineteenth century had marked the beginning of a remarkable increase in the interest in the display of foreign animals in Europe and North America alike, and the widespread establishment of zoological gardens intensified in the early twentieth century, demanding a continuous supply of wild animals.Footnote 4
Leutemann produced a wood engraving based on his encounter with Reiche’s imported animals. Note how the house cat is juxtaposed with the wildebeests. Image from the Heimatarchiv Alt-Alfeld, collection Reiche/Ruhe.
Burgeoning demand brought more and more traders onto the scene. One such trader was Charles Reiche Jr (1845–1925), whose freshly imported wildebeests Leutemann visited at his premises in Alfeld, a provincial town roughly a hundred kilometres south of Hanover and 250 kilometres west of the capital, Berlin. Reiche was one of the biggest dealers of wild animals in the German Empire, itself a hub of the wildlife trade around the turn of the century, but he was not the only one. He was not even the only one in Alfeld: the L. Ruhe company originated from the same area and developed into another globally leading importer of wild animals.Footnote 5 For both these companies, the wildlife trade was only one part of their business, attracting the fascination of various individuals and media outlets. Previously, however, they had also dealt in a less sensational species: canaries. Originally ‘exotic’ imports themselves, these small songbirds were brought from the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira to Europe, where they gained popularity as cage birds. Selective breeding in the seventeenth century emphasized colour, song and form, gradually producing distinct varieties and fully domesticated strains.Footnote 6
In this paper, I argue that the canary trade of both Reiche and Ruhe was not merely a side business, but foundational to their engagement in the wildlife trade. They serve as a prime example to examine how the commodification processes of different species of live animals significantly overlapped, making certain know-how developed in the canary trade transferrable to, and formative of, the wildlife trade. My focus lies on the practical knowledge generated or adopted in trading, understood as part of a broader body of knowledge tied to scientific engagement.Footnote 7 As major suppliers of wild animals, Reiche and Ruhe contributed to zoological knowledge by providing live and dead specimens to zoological gardens and institutions such as universities. Furthermore, canaries and other domesticated birds also played significant roles in scientific engagements.Footnote 8 Yet the traders themselves produced and applied an independent set of specific know-how that focused on the logistical challenges of intercontinental transport. While it was removed from scientific ambitions, it still ensured the supply of scientific ‘objects’ and was sometimes translated into zoological knowledge.Footnote 9 Looking at this cosmos of knowledge allows for a deeper understanding of the connections between scientific engagement and commercial processes.
Although frequently unacknowledged by Reiche and Ruhe, a broad array of individuals shaped the production of this knowledge through the skills and labour they contributed to the wildlife trade. This paper aims to bring those hidden histories into view by examining the neglected actors whose knowledge underpinned both companies’ authorities. It highlights how expertise was not solely concentrated in the hands of the traders, but co-produced through unequal, often obscured, collaborations that were fundamental to sustaining the trade and the scientific knowledge it supported. In doing so, my analysis contributes to a growing body of research that interrogates the often omitted material and discursive contributions that precede natural-history knowledge, particularly in imperial contexts.Footnote 10 I begin with a brief overview of the history of the two companies, before showing how the canary trade signposted their involvement in the wildlife trade and where their trajectories diverged, particularly in terms of appropriation processes. By tracing commodification and logistics, I analyse how expertise was formed, whose knowledge it drew on, and whose labour was necessary – not only for the trade’s success but for the companies’ own claim to expertise.
Canary capital and the facilitation of the wildlife trade
Both the Reiche and the Ruhe companies originated from a sparsely populated region close to Alfeld that had developed around a local plate glass factory. Many of the people who migrated to the area in search of work came from regions with strong mining traditions, where bird rearing was a widespread pastime and source of auxiliary income among families.Footnote 11 As a result, they introduced these birds to the area and established a lively bird-breeding scene. Charles (Carl) Reiche Sr (1827–85), himself the son of a smelter, was born into a family of canary breeders, while Louis (Ludwig) Ruhe (1828–83) was introduced to the trade after marrying the daughter of a local bird breeder. Reiche and Ruhe traded the offspring of these birds not only on local markets, but throughout Germany and beyond, their trade reaching as far east as St Petersburg, following an established trading route.Footnote 12 In 1842, Reiche took up transatlantic endeavours, embarking on his first journey to the US East Coast when only fourteen years old, hoping to sell canaries on North American markets. He might not have been the first bird trader to do so, but he became one of the dominant ones on the US market in the years that followed.Footnote 13 Although, as in Europe, some canaries were used in the mining industry, they were predominantly pets, becoming sought-after and popular companions for different social groups, a trend which continued well into the twentieth century.Footnote 14 As business took off, Reiche founded Chas. Reiche & Bro at 55 Chatham Street, Manhattan, in 1849, with a Boston branch following twenty years later. Louis Ruhe followed the example of his regional neighbour, first establishing a branch in New Orleans in 1869 before also settling in Manhattan a couple of years later. Both were operating as family businesses, involving brothers or brothers-in-law, and their sons, who later took over from their respective fathers.Footnote 15
Europe and North America were not their only regions of distribution. Before landing in New Orleans, Ruhe had sold some canaries in South America, and Reiche was sending canaries and other songbirds to India and Ceylon and established a shop in Cape Town in the 1870s.Footnote 16 Wild German birds had been ‘add-ons’ to their canary business; Reiche and Ruhe acquired them from the breeders from whom they bought the canaries.Footnote 17 Additionally, they imported birds that they had bought from local markets in South Africa, Ceylon and Australia, the places where they were distributing canaries.Footnote 18 It is unclear when exactly they started selling wild animals that they procured from regions where they had no connection through the canary trade. Reiche is said to have undertaken an expedition as early as 1851, when he travelled to California via the Isthmus of Panama to capture wild animals with the help of local workers. By the 1860s, he had begun to intensify his efforts by catching larger mammals such as giraffes in North East Africa.Footnote 19 Around the same time, the Ruhe company also successfully imported African animals to Europe, being active in the same region as Reiche in North Africa.Footnote 20 Meanwhile, they continued their canary business, which remained a central enterprise even after their ventures expanded to include wild mammals.
Reiche and Ruhe shared the stage with other wildlife dealers. In the United Kingdom, the influential Jamrach family in London and William Cross in Liverpool remained important dealers, while in the United States, Reiche and Ruhe, alongside the well-known German dealer Carl Hagenbeck (1844–1913), dominated the scene, together with other dealers such as William Bartels.Footnote 21 Within the German Empire, an important hub of the wildlife trade, four entrepreneurs – Hagenbeck, Reiche, Ruhe, and Julius Mohr in Ulm – were recognized as the main stakeholders and granted governmental privileges when importing wild animals.Footnote 22 However, a closer look at the collaborations and practices of these dealers complicates this compact arrangement of actors. As Elle Larsson’s contribution to this special issue details, Walter Rothschild played a considerable role in the British wild-animal trade. Meanwhile, Carl Hagenbeck frequently collaborated with Josef Menges (1850–1910), a dealer in his own right.Footnote 23 Reiche, too, worked with an Alfeld native called Hermann Windhorn (1856–1924), who is often described as an employee, but was acting independently as well, and Ruhe bought animals from German-born Franz Katzenstein, who operated as a dealer in South Africa and Central Europe.Footnote 24 These connections illustrate that different animal dealers worked together to tackle the challenges of procuring wild animals, blurring the line between employee and own business. Furthermore, the businesses themselves sometimes operated in close cooperation, selling stock to one another or providing temporary accommodation for animals en route to other destinations. Although they competed in the same markets, their activities were equally marked by collaboration.Footnote 25 These exchanges also allude to the fact that several individuals participated in shaping necessary know-how: subsidiary suppliers contributed their own sources of knowledge into the commercial exchange.
In this evolving and professionalizing trade, connections in distribution markets were vital – one of the first crucial advantages that Reiche and Ruhe had by way of their canary trade. They could tap into relations that they had established through trading canaries, e.g. to shipping companies, local officials or economic business partners. Reiche and Ruhe counted not only zoological gardens among their clientele; circuses and private buyers were important and directly addressed customers too, though it is hard to gauge their share in the sales.Footnote 26 Moreover, as numerous players were trying to gain a permanent foothold in the wildlife trade, having access to another distribution market like the United States gave them a second leg to stand on. Reiche in particular had privileged access to the US market in animals for menageries thanks to his good standing in the canary trade.Footnote 27 Besides business relations, the canary trade gave Reiche and Ruhe the necessary financial funds that were needed to trade wild animals. Travel, acquisition and transport had to be paid upfront, before any hope of getting a return on the investment. Since the canary trade was a lucrative business and had accumulated considerable wealth for both companies, it allowed for that capital to be invested in their first ventures into the wildlife trade.Footnote 28
The fact that canary capital enabled the growth of trade in other species begs the question of how commodification was connected to knowledge. Animals do not simply become commodities, but are actively turned into them, and this requires constant human labour.Footnote 29 Consequently, the knowledge and experience of how to commodify one species likely fostered Reiche’s and Ruhe’s belief and ability to commodify other species. Canaries shared overlaps with wild animals in that their value generation was sourced out of what has been termed ‘encounter value’; that is, specifically their liveliness was constitutive of rendering them a commodity.Footnote 30 Hence, how to work with the animals, albeit in highly asymmetrical fashion, was key to generating value and profit, and experiences gathered in the canary trade gave valuable insights in how to do so. Reiche and Ruhe capitalized not only on newly traded species, but also on their previous knowledge. The know-how accumulated in the one business was used to build and expand in another space entirely, thereby generating not only more capital, but also more knowledge that had the potential to be reinvested and applied in other contexts.Footnote 31
This transferable knowledge was less biological than procedural. It garnered the understanding of animals as transportable ‘units’, the management of large consignments and the routinization of care under commercial conditions. The logistical practice honed for the mass circulation of canaries reappeared, in modified form, in the wildlife trade. Reiche and Ruhe drew on their experience and ‘best practices’ in the canary trade to streamline their approach to transporting live wild animals. Transporting live animals was one of the most delicate and challenging aspects for Reiche and Ruhe, because it required a high level of organization and supervision. Early in his business career, Charles Reiche Sr took only several hundred birds with him. By 1869, he was sending 26,000 canaries annually across the Atlantic.Footnote 32 Just over a decade later, the number of traded canaries had grown even further, with 60 per cent of the birds destined for the United States, while about 25 per cent were sold in Europe and the remaining 15 per cent in South America, South Africa and Australia.Footnote 33 With the increasingly organized canary trade, Reiche himself spoke of ‘bulk importations’.Footnote 34 Similarly, the Ruhe company was transporting 100,000 canaries annually to US shores by the turn of the century.Footnote 35
These ‘bulk importations’ needed to be well managed. Although some birds were bred in proximity to Reiche and Ruhe, the companies largely depended on off-site breeding supplies that then had to be collected in one place until a sufficient number could be dispatched for overseas transport. The canaries were brought from different towns and villages to the premises of the Reiche and Ruhe families in Alfeld. Consequently, collection points were crucial to the infrastructure for transporting increasing numbers of animals. Though Alfeld lies over 150 kilometres south of the coast, it sported a substantial advantage: since 1853, a railway had connected Alfeld with Hanover and thereby to the main port cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck.Footnote 36 This raises the question: why did Reiche or Ruhe not relocate to any of the harbours, since this would have simplified their trading logistics even more? Staying rooted in their region of origin must have given them other opportunities, such as drafting employees from the town, keeping closer proximity to the canary breeders, and allowing for more space to expand their property. Indeed, ‘storage’ spaces were crucial. By 1902, the Ruhe branch in Alfeld, then in the hand of Louis Ruhe’s son Hermann Ruhe (1861–1923), had built an expansive estate with several bird houses as well as stables for larger animals, and they continuously extended their premises over the following decades.Footnote 37 At the same time, in the United States, the brother of Hermann, Bernhard Ruhe (1862–1930), in addition to their pet shop in Manhattan, had procured farmland in Woodside, Queens, where the larger animals were kept.
Collection points were an indispensable part of the infrastructure for managing the increasing importations of live animals. Reiche and Ruhe applied the same streamlining efforts that they had developed for transporting canaries between different collection points to the wildlife trade. Once the animals were in captivity, they were brought to collection points that, depending on the region, were either temporarily or permanently installed. There, they were further prepared for the next segment of the journey. Enough specimens had to be captured to make transporting them profitable. Only with the increasing establishment of trade routes and locations, individual animals were sent on their way; around the turn of the century, they were almost always sent in larger consignments. This meant that even if certain individuals had been captured already, they had to be kept in one place while hunters continued to look for more specimens. From the moment of capture, the movement of the animals was drastically restricted. Although collection points provided enclosed pastures, photographs show that their range of movement was often further limited. Antelopes and zebras, for example, were confined by halter and a rope fixed in the ground, despite being in a fenced pasture.Footnote 38 Smaller animals, and even big cats and hippopotamuses, were placed in crates as soon as they had been captured.Footnote 39
In the canary trade, cages had been the norm from the beginning of Reiche’s trade, as well as Ruhe’s. The birds spent most, if not all, of their lives in these confinements that measured approximately forty-five square centimetres.Footnote 40 By the turn of the century, cages and crates had become a necessity for transporting nearly all species. They were technologies to keep animals apart more easily, to prevent the spread of disease and to streamline the handling and care of large consignments.Footnote 41 For the animals, they represented extreme limitations on movement that lasted for months. The group of wildebeests that Leutemann admired at Reiche’s premises in 1900 had been placed in crates at the collection point in South Africa, and moved first by ox cart and then by train to Cape Town, before being shipped via London to Bremen. The journey took two months in total, and for its duration they remained confined except for a couple of occasions where they were allowed to step out.Footnote 42
Technologies of containment made transporting larger numbers of animals feasible. In the mid-nineteenth century, canaries were carried by foot to harbours in so-called reffs, wooden constructions strapped to a human carriers’ back, that could hold up to two hundred bird cages.Footnote 43 The journey, covering 250 kilometres, could take up to two weeks, with the carrier feeding the birds and cleaning the cages along the way.Footnote 44 When the railway line was installed from Alfeld to Hanover, switching to motorized means drastically sped up transport and reduced the amount of time needed. In addition to the faster overland transport, the steamboat replaced the sailing ship and further shortened the subsequent sea journey.Footnote 45 By the turn of the century, the trade had become so frequent and lucrative that the North German Lloyd furnished a special deck on their Ballin steamers which was dedicated to bird transport from German shores to North America.Footnote 46
Mechanizing their cargo transport by switching from muscle to machine power also allowed for larger volumes to be transported, with fewer people overseeing more birds. Ship’s personnel could then stack cages on top of each other and secure them with a tarpaulin.Footnote 47 Accompanying carers placed food next to the cages and did not need the help of an additional person to carry it. Consequently, one person could oversee more than two thousand birds at once.Footnote 48 The same applied to other animal species. Once animals were in crates, a multitude of different resources moved them further. Beyond the importance of technological innovations, non-human as well as human power was continuously employed in both the canary as well as the wildlife trade. Photographs demonstrate that horse-drawn carriages carried canaries in panniers to Alfeld, a method that had been avoided in the mid-nineteenth century, since traders thought that birds were too fragile to endure the shocks of carriage transport. By the turn of the century, however, traders disregarded this as superstition.Footnote 49 Meanwhile, a mixture of transport methods conveyed wild animals, as the case of the wildebeests indicates. When mechanical transport was unavailable, oxen, horses and camels had to carry or pull the confined animals, often combined with human effort.Footnote 50 Locked in their confinements, the traded animals were lifted by crane or human and non-human muscle power onto trains, cars and ships.Footnote 51 Clearly, civil infrastructure was fundamental to the movement of animals and business expansion. However, traders’ claims that emphasized advances in transport were also expressions of the contemporary belief in progress and the notion of an increasingly interconnected world.Footnote 52 Consequently, at the turn of the century, ‘old’ and ‘new’ transport methods coexisted, with some practices persisting when they were cheaper or easier to implement.
Knowledge on the move: transport, handling and training
Applying the insights gained during canary trading to similar practices in the wildlife trade reached its limit when it came to species-specific requirements. While the liveliness of the canaries informed certain expectations about the needs of other ‘lively commodities’, biological knowledge did not easily transfer across species. The logic of scaling from domesticated birds to heterogeneous large mammals proved difficult beyond logistics. Yet keeping the animals alive during the journey remained crucial to the success of both the canary and wildlife trades. After all, liveliness constituted the core value of their commodified animals. Both companies therefore claimed handling animals with due ‘care’ as their core competence and expertise. And still, liveliness and its maintenance were inseparably linked with death. Behind each animal that Reiche and Ruhe imported was a great number of those that had started the journey but did not survive it. While the import numbers make it seem like the canary trade operated with clockwork precision, at least 5 per cent of the original dispatch typically perished en route.Footnote 53 The losses in the wildlife trade were even heftier, with sometimes only one specimen surviving out of twenty.Footnote 54 The aforementioned wildebeests had been luckier: only one out of sixteen died on the way, an extremely good quota, as Leutemann himself remarked.Footnote 55
As existential as these failures were to the individual animals, they were core sources of ‘learning’ for the business. Looking after the captured animals was the most crucial, yet hardest, task of animal dealers. With the canaries, however, they could fall back on a catalogue of knowledge that had been produced by the breeding hotspots. Though the Reiche and Ruhe families were bird breeders themselves, as soon as their sales picked up, they mainly relied on purchases. Many canaries that they sold came from small villages of the Harz region, a low mountain range some seventy kilometres south-east of Alfeld and known for its mining history. Keeping and breeding birds formed an established tradition among families connected to the mining industry, a practice that likely developed because birds, and canaries in particular, were used to detect toxic gases such as carbon monoxide in mines. Yet canary keeping was not confined to mining contexts. Before their introduction to northern Germany, they had already been kept in Southern Europe as fashionable domestic birds, while Tyrol emerged as an important centre for breeding and trade.Footnote 56 Miners from this region are said to have brought canaries with them to the Harz mountains in search of work in the seventeenth century, when the area was a flourishing mining district; however, canary rearing was also practised in other parts of Germany at the time.Footnote 57 Nevertheless, the breeding became an important local tradition in the Harz region, with specialist breeders who saw the development of distinct varieties.Footnote 58 Eventually Reiche as well as Ruhe had standing orders with canary keepers from different towns, who provided them with enough birds to take up strong positions in overseas markets.
The families who bred the canaries, sometimes for generations, had a wealth of knowledge on how to look after them. The passion for breeding and the knowledge associated with it was shared in the form of aficionado magazines.Footnote 59 This was also where one of the ‘unique selling points’ of German canaries was discussed: their singing voice. German canaries were particularly favoured for their song, a quality that gave rise to elaborate competition scales and breeding programmes.Footnote 60 This preference meant that the trade focused on the sales of male over female canaries, as the former were deemed the ideal singers and thus were higher priced.Footnote 61 The fancier’s fixation on the vocal quality affected not only breeding systems but also training methods. Over decades, the bird owners bred the song quality of the formerly imported canaries so that a new breed with a distinctive song developed: the Harz roller. Their characteristic song had to be trained, meaning that breeders created special cages, so-called schläge, in which younger birds were put in the proximity of experienced singers to learn from them. Noises that could distract them were to be eliminated, as were individuals deemed to be ‘troublemakers’.Footnote 62
The active canary fancier scene in the Harz mountains provided Reiche and Ruhe not just with their ‘goods’, but also with information on how to handle and further train these birds. Yet in accounts of their trade, the breeders remain remarkably obscure and nameless. Instead, Reiche’s or Ruhe’s own family history of canary rearing is emphasized, and Reiche himself marketed a manual for bird owners in the United States.Footnote 63 Besides, the skills of men employed by the canary dealers are highlighted; they were the ‘specialists privy to all secrets’ who sorted the birds according to sex and song quality – that is, their suitability for sale.Footnote 64 They were also the ones transporting the canaries, when they had to provide them with water and food and keep an eye on their training routine.Footnote 65
Looking at these ‘specialists’, the transfer of skills from the canary to the wildlife trade was facilitated by the hands-on experience of employees who honed their craft in the former before transitioning to the latter. Take, for instance, Karl Kreth (1873–1963), one of the most prolific animal hunters in the Ruhe company. Born in Alfeld, Kreth was first bringing canaries to the United States, before being tasked with engaging in the wildlife trade for Ruhe in the first half of the twentieth century. Described as their ‘India traveller’, he was initially in Calcutta, later also travelling in Siam and the Dutch East Indies (mainly Java and Sumatra), and in East as well as West Africa.Footnote 66 One of the company founder’s great-grandsons later claimed that the canary trade was a way of gaining experience in the Ruhe company.Footnote 67 To the employers, it was a way of testing the ability of their employees. Hence other employees, too, seem to have first had to prove their abilities in the handling of canaries before they were deployed in the wildlife trade.Footnote 68
This notion of a transferable skill set across species reveals an underlying assumption about the unification and comparability of living beings within commercial practice. Scaling from canaries to wild mammals required a conceptual abstraction: the different animals were treated less as species-specific organisms than as ‘lively commodities’.Footnote 69 What employees demonstrated in the canary trade was therefore not zoological expertise but proof of their capacity to sustain life under conditions of confinement, transport and unfamiliar environments. Besides their ‘caring’ abilities, their competence was measured through their capacity to manage animals across long distances and shifting contexts. Traders treated these abilities as transferable skills, privileging logistical know-how and practical experience over zoological knowledge.
In everyday practice, the limits of transferability often became glaringly obvious. Feeding proved to be one of the most immediate and major challenges. Though canary carers relied only on seed during the journeys, they knew what the birds thrived on. Reiche’s instructions for bird owners stress that fresh fodder was important.Footnote 70 In advising the customers on how to feed their pets, bird traders presented themselves as experts once more, and they also produced an additional income source as they offered bird fodder in their shops. Formula for bird food was among the first to be offered for pet holders in the United States.Footnote 71 Beyond the canary trade, however, dealers lacked not only resources, but more crucially knowledge to meet wild species’ dietary needs over long journeys – or even after. Often, it worked on a trial-and-error basis, incorporating knowledge gained from local people.Footnote 72 Consequently, what food an animal could survive on was sometimes kept a secret, only passed on to perspective buyers once the animal, too, was handed over.Footnote 73 Even the limited knowledge that was available was capitalized upon to showcase expertise.
The companies did not only train canaries. Since both Reiche and Ruhe collaborated with circus showmen, training wild animals for performance purposes was also part of their job. Ruhe’s premises in Alfeld became a well-known site for the training of big cats and elephants in the first half of the twentieth century, often drawing on the knowledge of people who had experience in handling these specimens. An elephant driver called Suklal Mandall (c.1907–37), originally accompanying an animal cargo from India to Germany, stayed in Alfeld and helped with training the pachyderms in the 1930s, passing on his knowledge to local employees.Footnote 74 Asian elephant drivers helped with the handling of the animals even earlier than this, as they appear in pictures in Alfeld around 1900. One of them might have been Said Ali (c.1888–1928), an Indian mahout who had spent large parts of his time in the United Kingdom, successfully training elephants (see Figure 2).Footnote 75 Furthermore, individuals who came for so-called Völkerschauen, highly staged shows in which the ‘performing’ people were exoticized, might also have taken on different roles for the companies.Footnote 76 As early as 1879, Machmud Ibrahim (born c.1854), Jacub Ismael (born c.1855) and his brother Mohamed Ismael (dates unknown) were part of such a show organized by Reiche.Footnote 77 They were also all Beja hunters who had worked for him in North East Africa, suggesting that they not only performed in the shows and aided hunting efforts, but also applied their knowledge during their time in Germany, and thus passed it on to Alfeld employees.
Elephants arriving at Alfeld from Hamburg port. The person in the foreground on the right, looking at the camera, could be Said Ali. Date and photographer unknown. Image from the Heimatarchiv Alt-Alfeld, collection Reiche/Ruhe.
As these hunters accompanied the animals from the hunting grounds to the locations in Europe, it is likely that they took on caretaking responsibilities for them during transport to the German Empire too: in fact, Jacub Ismael visited Germany at least one more time.Footnote 78 Thus the individuals who appeared in the exoticizing shows organized by Reiche und Ruhe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did so after chaperoning the animals to Europe.Footnote 79 Their involvement in the shows obscured their key roles in the logistics of wildlife trade commodification. Meanwhile, Reiche and Ruhe profited twice over from them, on the one hand from their work in the trade and on the other from their performances in front of an audience hungry for spectacle.
Practices of capture and the politics of expertise
In contrast to the canary trade that relied on established breeding networks, the procurement of wild animals required a greater variety of practices. Yet it did not always entail hunting expertise. Buying animals, rather than hunting and capturing them, was an important acquisition method in the wildlife trade, because not all the animals that were branded ‘exotic’ were wild or needed to be hunted. Cattle, camels and llamas, for example, were already domesticated. Even if not, many wild animals were bought at local markets or from local hunters. Nigel Rothfels has shown that dealers like Carl Hagenbeck initially relied on local markets in North East Africa before gradually organizing their own expeditions to capture specific species as demand increased.Footnote 80 However, buying animals from local hunters or markets remained an important method well into the twentieth century, and neither Reiche nor Ruhe were any different.Footnote 81 Some species they tried for years to capture, but never succeeded, depending for the most part on local communities to capture them and bring them to their farms.Footnote 82 Even early reports of the conduct of the professional animal trade acknowledged the transactional character of the dealers, who were presented as mere middlemen.Footnote 83 In general, appropriation methods varied according to landscape, infrastructure and species, with expeditions being just one of several acquisition methods.
Still, stories about hunting feature heavily in the wildlife trade, as Daniel Bender highlights by stating that ‘the real money in animal trading was not in selling live animals to zoos or circuses but in selling animal capture stories’.Footnote 84 This should not obscure the fact that, as important as these stories may have been to the profitability of some animal dealers, the animals themselves represented considerable material value. The Ruhe company is a fine example of how success and money were not dependent on publicizing power. Even though family members and employees marketed their stories, they were remarkably poor in placing them competitively, causing the company to remain relatively unknown publicly.Footnote 85 Regardless of their weak publicity, they had a strong position in the trade precisely because the sales of animals yielded substantial profit.Footnote 86 This explains why some public accounts did not necessarily serve the desire for the adventurous colonial hunting stories of the time. On the contrary, some descriptions of the catching expeditions around the turn of the century tried to dial down the attention-grabbing tone of the genre.Footnote 87 The purported rational approach to the trade was intended instead to showcase one’s expertise.
The capturing itself was never without violence, although the stories of catching expeditions varied. Some describe extremely fatal and bloody methods in hunting animals, where adult animals were killed to catch the younger ones.Footnote 88 This modus operandi was described as a ‘rule’, creating the appearance that it was the only and most widespread way to go about it.Footnote 89 Descriptions of hunting patterns conveyed not only common practices but also an impression of standardized methods, reinforcing the image of expertise. This course of action appears in the early decades of wildlife trade and persistently occurs, lasting up to the early twentieth century, possibly longer. However, in 1926, when the then head of the US branch of the Ruhe company, Bernhard Ruhe, reminisced about hunting explorations that he was part of between 1877 and 1881, he describes the animal hunt very differently, saying that ‘the natives lead the hunters to the dens and wait nearby until the mother goes away in search of food. They then kidnap the little ones’.Footnote 90 Certainly, his remarks must be seen in the context of a general shift away from violence due to increasing public criticism of wildlife traders, and not as a truthful depiction of how the hunt unfolded.Footnote 91 It also suggests variability in actual practices, rather than a consistent reality.
Reiche and Ruhe applied different methods in different locations at different times and to different effects. African elephants were hunted by killing adult animals, while Indian elephants were bought on markets. Animals that opted for flight, such as giraffes, antelopes and zebras, but also ostriches, were followed on horseback until the younger and weaker ones fell behind and could be captured by lasso.Footnote 92 Elaborate traps were installed in order to capture big cats, and species living in burrows, such as the porcupine, were driven out of them.Footnote 93 These species that kept to burrows and thus spaces that are hard to penetrate, such as the porcurpine or warthog, were among the most difficult animals to catch.Footnote 94 Other times, wild animals would be trapped on fenced pastures, where they could be cornered and contained by several people – as had been the case with Reiche’s wildebeests, where the help of horses was needed too.Footnote 95
Traders thus used a variety of methods depending on landscape and possibilities. Some methods persisted and complemented, rather than replaced, each other, despite accounts suggesting that they continuously evolved. Similarly, it was not only young animals that landed in their custody. Many accounts stated that the traders focused on young specimens since they were deemed easier to handle, despite their vulnerability to dire climate, long marches and food alteration.Footnote 96 However, pictures in the context of the Alfeld trade around 1900 show that the captured animals at the local collection points were by no means all young, and the dispatches announcing arrivals of animals name paternal animals that accompanied their offspring or single individuals who were used to nurse all of the accompanying young ones.Footnote 97 These discrepancies in the accounts hint at the fact that the dealers acted upon opportunity and availability. Even in regions where dealers were outfitting their own expeditions, they bought animals from salesmen when the opportunity arose.Footnote 98
While methods of capture differed, a remarkable consistency in the acquisition methods can be found in the essential role non-European actors played in it. Regardless of whether the public accounts maintain that the herd was killed to capture the young ones, whether they caught the animals with a lasso or ‘kidnapped’ them, whether they bought them on local markets, whether the animals were young or adult ones: humans from African, Asian or South American regions sometimes carried out all the labour involved. The visibility of their contribution in published accounts varies. They are sometimes not mentioned at all, while other accounts do speak of large numbers of nameless workers, which significantly exceeded the number of European employees. Unpublished photographs further document that expedition group members largely consisted of non-European actors carrying out essential deeds such as carrying material, restraining newly caught animals, feeding captured ones and helping to load them onto ships and trains.Footnote 99 From Reiche’s and Ruhe’s early engagements in the wildlife trade through the turn of the century, reliance on locally recruited workers remained consistent well into the interwar years.
Despite their significance, their role remains largely neglected. Given that the primary focus was on coordinating the various hunts, managing their execution and supervising logistical operations, expertise was attributed to the European personnel. Individuals involved in the hunting and transport processes, when mentioned, are typically portrayed as operative labour rather than as contributors to know-how or decision making. This is consistent with other imperial cross-species encounters, where the roles of non-European people were often concealed or downplayed, despite their essential contributions.Footnote 100 The ad hoc, experimental and opportunistic character of capturing animals suggests that the applied technique and the resulting expertise were in a constant state of adjustment, a process that involved all expedition members. Since local actors were familiar with the landscape and the regional species, they possessed vital knowledge, such as the hiding spots of herds. Certain methods required skill and experience which Europeans did not have. For example, Beja hunters bent to sever the tendons of adult animals so that they would not be able to follow their captured offspring, while Bengali trappers carefully tied up a tiger caught in their elaborate trap.Footnote 101 These tasks exposed them to high personal risk.
From the surviving sources in the context of the Alfeld wildlife traders, the specific recruitment and working conditions of the labourers in the field are difficult to assess, as is the case for many other wildlife traders. Certainly, the hegemonial standing and understanding of the traders often tilted negotiation power towards European individuals, and Reiche and Ruhe’s expeditions also made use of enslaved labour.Footnote 102 Accounts of the expeditions indicate that workers in the region of appropriation received substantially less or no payment and endured near-casual acts of violence.Footnote 103 Numerous published articles underline the danger of the catching expeditions by mentioning the deaths or physical injuries of the non-Europeans involved, which is depicted as a frequent occurrence and at the same time evokes the impression that they could be easily replaced.Footnote 104 These dismissive accounts point to a colonial mindset that devalues non-European people and disregards their lives; it is also on par with other hunting narrations.Footnote 105 However, the fact that labourers familiar with the region performed these tasks suggests a skill set that European employees either lacked, did not readily acquire or were unwilling to develop. Indeed, lack of knowledge of the landscape, of relations to local communities and of hunting skills made the European employees extremely dependent on the support of on-site employees, and they were acutely aware of these facts.Footnote 106 That some accounts depict local workers as easily replaceable seems to speak to the wish for independence from their support rather than to the actual situation in the hunting grounds. It was not in the interest of the traders to lose skilled and experienced hunters with whom they had established relationships.
These relations could differ, also within groups. Some persisted over long stretches of time, with workers having more secure and personal relations with their European employers. Others were only temporarily recruited. As detailed above, some individuals took on multiple roles and accompanied animals to Europe, which challenges their characterization as ‘local’. Not only European employees travelled across natural and national borders; so did African and Asian employees of Ruhe and Reiche. They brought their experienced know-how with them, sometimes decidedly to teach Alfeld natives.Footnote 107 If it is indeed Said Ali in the Alfeld pictures, this further points to the trans-imperial entanglements of the wildlife trade, in which a continuous knowledge exchange took place across social and national demarcations. Ali, then, not only accompanied animals from India to the United Kingdom and trained them there, but also travelled within Europe, likely being desired for his knowledge on elephant training. Similarly, German employees such as Karl Kreth circulated their knowledge. After initially working in South Asia, he travelled to East and West Africa, where he was sent specifically to mentor a younger employee.Footnote 108 The experiences and knowledge he had gained, first in the canary trade and then in the wildlife trade (in the latter in exchange with Asian caretakers), he adapted and applied in other regions, passing it on to his co-workers there.
Conclusion
The wildlife trade carried out by Reiche and Ruhe reveals a complex interplay of knowledge, expertise and often-overlooked labour, which was integral to the success of their operations. The overlapping practices involved in the commodification of canaries and ‘exotic’ wildlife enabled a transfer of practical knowledge across different animal trades, creating a foundation upon which their expansion into the wildlife market rested. The canary trade was not merely a precursor but provided both the financial capital and the logistical expertise that enabled the companies to scale up to ventures in the wildlife trade. What this reveals, however, is that traders implicitly assumed that the management of life itself – rather than an understanding of individual species – constituted the core expertise required for expanding trade. This transfer of practices was far from seamless: it required translation and adaptation, and produced failure, and it was not species-specific biological knowledge that carried over. Nevertheless, the canary trade functioned as a critical training ground to refine skills essential for successfully navigating the global logistics of wild-animal trading.
The reason why Kreth and others were ‘testing’ their caring capabilities on canaries was that this species was more accessible to Reiche and Ruhe than wild animals were. The sheer number of canaries traded evokes resemblances to so-called livestock, but unlike the latter, canaries were sold in the retail market. In contrast, wild animals received higher individual attention, although in economic terms they were still replaceable. The increasing trade in canaries saw a drastic drop in prices, and wild animals were no different in this respect: prices dropped the more animals were brought on the market.Footnote 109 Once animals were acquired, whether through capture or market purchase, they were swiftly integrated into the economic logics and logistics – even if their bodies resisted or disrupted these efforts.
Equating animals with commodities meant that business acumen was linked to knowledge of animal care, even though high losses were endemic to the trade. Remarkably, these losses were not framed as failures of expertise but as inherent to a complex trade itself, of which Reiche and Ruhe were the masterminds. Due to their standing as logistical ‘middlemen’, they emphasized exactly this organizational know-how and practice. Their expertise was an amalgamation of local and global knowledge, refined through practical experience and continuous adaptation. The examples of individuals like Karl Kreth, Suklal Mandall, Jacub Ismael and Said Ali illustrate the trans-imperial exchange of knowledge and the fluid roles that employees played in different regions. The trade was distinctly opportunistic; it evolved through a dynamic process that allowed various people to engage at different stages of the transaction. The acquisition of animals, for example, was often more a spontaneous endeavour than a meticulously planned affair, reflecting the adaptive, improvisational nature of the trade.
Despite the pivotal contributions of a multitude of actors, narratives often focus on prominent European figures within the companies, obscuring the significance of the broader network of collaborators. Especially in Alfeld, where the wildlife trade and the companies present a lieu de mémoire to this day, employees such as Kreth benefited from symbolic capital, in addition to any financial profit. The majority of those crucial to the trade’s success remain sidelined. In the case of the canary trade, the families that bred the birds, often from rural communities, fade into the background. In the context of the wildlife trade, where contributions of non-European actors were vital, from acquisition to transport, the omission runs along imperial lines, where these workers and local partners were integral yet invisible to the dominant narrative.
Although the modes of appropriation diverged between the canary and wildlife trades, both systems rested on a shared reliance on marginalized actors – working-class families in the former, and racialized subjects in the latter. This persistent dynamic underscores the need for a more nuanced understanding of the knowledge production processes that sustained these operations. By highlighting these entanglements, this analysis has tried to illuminate the interconnectedness of labour and expertise, and to reveal how the processes of the commodification of live animals – despite contextual differences – shared structural similarities that were fundamental to the success of companies like Reiche and Ruhe.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to the contributors to this special issue, as well as to my co-fellows at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz, who took the time to comment on earlier drafts of this paper. Bernhard Gissibl’s remarks and his suggestions for titles were likewise immensely helpful. I also wish to thank the two anonymous peer reviewers, as well as the editor, Amanda Rees, for their detailed comments and insightful critique, from which the final version benefited greatly. All remaining errors are my own.
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