Cattle, Chattel, and Capital: Animal Agency and the Alimentary Atlantic

Abstract During the first centuries of colonialism in the Caribbean, the choices of cattle influenced the establishment of European settlements, the creation of new legal regimes of enclosure, dietary fluctuations that changed perceptions of animal value, and ecological changes, both intended and unintended. The decisions made by livestock in the Caribbean reshaped island flora, attracted humans to follow herds into unknown interiors and set locations for imperial encounters. The plantation economy of enslavement grew into spaces once grazed by fleeing cattle. Over time, the material and discursive denial of agency to cattle on those burgeoning plantations influenced cultural senses of taste. During the early modern era, few in the metropole had consistent access to beef, and cows were often credited with causal force as labourers and were comparatively respected through agricultural policies involving relatively unrestricted grazing on the commons. In the Caribbean, however, cattle became objects for warfare, were enclosed in tighter pens, and regarded as necessary sustenance for survival and labour for increased profit. As colonists cultivated new tastes for eating bovines, they grappled with managing animal agency and built stronger physical barriers and created innovative legal regimes to control unwilling animals at the same time as establishing control over humans who were also deemed property. Partly due to violent penning on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, enclosing the commons for increased production and consumption of beef became socially accepted in the metropole. With the present global ecological condition of climate change tied to deforestation, as well as greenhouse gas emissions partly driven by demand for beef alongside general overconsumption, academic disciplines should work to overcome scepticism concerning environmental determinism through exploring a recuperative archive that includes how the choices of cattle influenced our shared planetary past, inform our environmental present and stand in possible futures.