Animal Labor and Colonial Warfare

James Hevia, Visitor, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU

Nineteenth-century colonial armies were reliant on animal labor to supply armies in the field.  In South Asia and parts of Africa, the premier pack animals were camels and mules.  This talk introduces some of the preliminary findings and the research design for a study of militarized human-animal relations in colonial Asia.  The topics to be discussed include reform of the Supply and Transport corps of the Indian Army from one based on impressment to the creation of permanent units made up of trained professionals.  The procurement system inaugurated in India in the 1880s for the acquisition of donkeys and mules came to include North and South America, southern Europe and north and southwest China by the end of the nineteenth century.  And, lastly, the role of veterinary medicine in creating a “rational” animal management schema and in identifying and treating animal diseases that appear to have been endemic in tropical and sub-tropical regions of Asia and Africa.

James Hevia's research has focused on empire and imperialism in eastern and central Asia. Primarily dealing with the British empire in India and Southeast Asia and the Qing empire in China, the specific concerns have been with the causes and justifications for conflict; how empire in Asia became normalized within Europe through markets, exhibitions and various forms of public media; and how the events of the nineteenth century are remembered in contemporary China. Current research centers on how European empires in Asia developed and became dependent upon the production of useful knowledge about populations and geography to maintain themselves. The focus is on British military intelligence in India from 1870 through the interwar period. In order to produce authoritative estimations of threats to British hegemony, military engineers, cartographers, statisticians, and translators created an information system that linked their "reconnaissance" missions to their vast library of contemporary source materials in multiple languages from northeast, southeast and south Asia, the Middle East and east Africa