Animals crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the early modern period, both human and non-human. In her new book, Marcy Norton studies the “ontological divide” (3) in the ways Iberians and Indigenous peoples approached these animals and how their ideas of interspecies interactions became increasingly entangled through colonial processes. Using the early modern Spanish world as her testing ground, Norton argues that livestock husbandry was the driving motor of cultural change in the Americas and that this ancient practice cannot be divorced from settler colonialism and the violent practices that accompanied it: land dispossession, slavery, and ecological destruction. Her book is a deep reflection on the history of subjectivity through human–animal relationships as much as it is an unapologetic call to address climate change and embrace the “loving of non-human kin” (333).
Norton divides her book into three parts. In the first part, she offers the reader a look at how Iberians hunted, their approaches to livestock farming, and the ways they used animals—specifically horses and dogs—to establish colonial rule in the Americas. Shifting her attention to Indigenous peoples in the second part, Norton explains how they obtained prey for food and other purposes (predation) and how they tamed wild animals and made them kin (familiarization). In the final part, she provides a look at the entanglements that resulted in colonial interactions, specifically connections between witchcraft and the nahualli, the incorporation of animals into Catholic practices, exotic animal ownership, and the development of the natural sciences. The examples Norton uses come from highly urbanized societies in central Mexico and other semi-sedentary groups in South America and the Caribbean.
Norton challenges older models of Atlantic world exchanges such as Alfred Crosby’s idea of the “Columbian Exchange.” In her mind, extractivism is a far more accurate description of modes of interspecies interactions because it was the development of livestock husbandry and not the invasion of animals that devasted Indigenous communities. Norton also questions the disciplinary boxes into which scholars place animals. She suggests that, although they largely appear in social and ecological studies, animals need to form part of the ways cultural change is approached in religious studies, specifically in traditional narratives of the missionary theatre. Building upon a growing body of literature on early modern science, Norton also points to the multiple ways in which scholars have overlooked Indigenous contributions to natural history. In particular, she demonstrates how Spaniards such as Bernardino de Sahagún and Francisco Hernández relied heavily upon Indigenous knowledge keepers and other acculturated intellectuals for their own zoological knowledge.
Although Norton analyzes a wide range of Indigenous societies, some readers will be disappointed to know that she does not engage in cross-imperial comparisons between the Mexica and the Incas. Others will find fault with Norton’s failure to adequately discuss the ways in which many of the Indigenous and European sources she used—such as Mesoamerican codices and handpress European books—were made from or bound in animal skins. Several readers will contest her claim that ideas “of human subjectivity and exceptionalism found in Genesis and other ancient texts reflected as much as caused livestock husbandry” (331). Early modern interpreters used ancient texts to justify a wide range of colonial practices that were not intended by their original writers.
Norton’s book is a great read. The writing is highly accessible, the subject matter addresses important ecological and ethical questions of our times, and the illustrations—although in black and white—provide helpful visual reminders of the centrality of animals in colonial contexts. Readers will appreciate Norton’s insistence on carefully distinguishing between Iberian and Indigenous concepts and the ways in which she connects the history of modern meat to the early modern period instead of the industrial revolution. Norton’s book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students at all levels interested in animal, Latin American, Atlantic world, and colonialism studies.
