This lively history “adds a new dimension to our understanding of 18th-century France” by exploring the Parisian fashion of importing exotic animals (American Historical Review).
In 1775, a visitor to Laurent Spinacuta’s Grande Ménagerie at the annual winter fair in Paris would have seen two tigers, several kinds of monkeys, an armadillo, an ocelot, and a condor—in all, forty-two live animals. In the streets of the city, one could observe performing elephants and a fighting polar bear. Those looking for unusual pets could purchase parrots, flying squirrels, and capuchin monkeys. The royal menagerie at Versailles displayed lions, cranes, an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a zebra, which in 1760 became a major court attraction.
For Enlightenment-era Parisians, exotic animals piqued scientific curiosity and conveyed social status. Their variety and accessibility were a boon for naturalists like Buffon, author of Histoire naturelle. Louis XVI use his menagerie to demonstrate his power, while critics saw his caged animals as metaphors of slavery and oppression.
In her engaging account, Robbins considers nearly every aspect of France’s obsession with exotic fauna, from the animals’ transportation and care to the inner workings of the oiseleurs’ (birdsellers’) guild. Based on wide-ranging research, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots offers a major contribution to the history of human-animal relations, eighteenth-century culture, and French colonialism.
Louise E. Robbins is an independent scholar and an editor at Cornell University Press. She has a doctorate in history of science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Live Cargo Chapter 2. The Royal Menagerie Chapter 3. Fairs and Fights Chapter 4. The Oiseleurs' Guild Chapter 5. Pampered Parrots Chapter 6. Animals in Print Chapter 7. Elephant Slaves Chapter 8. Vive la Liberté Epilogue Abbreviations List of Primary Resources Bibliographical Essay Index
What People are Saying About This
Richard Burkhardt
Eighteenth-century Paris abounded with animals captured in faraway places and brought to the French capital. Louise Robbins has done a masterful job recapturing this phenomenon, bringing it to the attention of modern readers, and making sense of it. She reconstructs the diverse material, social, and cultural settings in which exotic animals played a role. At the same time, she analyzes the multiple meanings French observers derived from these animals in their midst. The reader will find here a wealth of insights regarding the ways ideas about human social relations have influenced representations of animal behavior or human-animal relations, and vice versa. This is a marvelous book, wonderfully researched and engagingly written.
— Richard Burkhardt, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Robert Forster
An impressive work that uses exotic animals as a vantage point from which to expose the behavior and attitudes of Parisians, not only toward the animals themselves but also toward a range of important issues in French history.
— Robert Forster, The Johns Hopkins University
Orest Ranum
[A] beautiful, indeed wonderful... learned, engaging book... Dr. Robbins is not afraid to tackle difficult questions.
