In the nineteenth century, the colonial territories of California and Hawai'i underwent important cultural, economic, and ecological transformations influenced by an unlikely factor: cows. The creation of native cattle cultures, represented by the Indian vaquero and the Hawaiian paniolo, demonstrates that California Indians and native Hawaiians adapted in ways that allowed them to harvest the opportunities for wealth that these unfamiliar biological resources presented. But the imposition of new property laws limited these indigenous responses, and Pacific cattle frontiers ultimately became the driving force behind Euro-American political and commercial domination, under which native residents lost land and sovereignty and faced demographic collapse. Environmental historians have too often overlooked California and Hawai'i, despite the roles the regions played in the colonial ranching frontiers of the Pacific World. In Cattle Colonialism, John Ryan Fischer significantly enlarges the scope of the American West by examining the trans-Pacific transformations these animals wrought on local landscapes and native economies.

Kathryn Cornell Dolan examines the role cattle played in narratives throughout the nineteenth century to show how the struggles within U.S. food culture mapped onto society’s larger struggles with colonization, environmentalism, U.S. identity, ethnicity, and industrialization.

Spurred by the dramatic landscape transformation associated with European colonization of the Americas, this work creates a prototype theory to explain relationships between colonialism and landscape.

Focusing on the Ilparakuyo Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, Peter Rigby discusses why third world development policies with regard to pastoral societies are inappropriate and likely to fail. A political economy of development, Rigby maintains, must incorporate historical, cultural, linguistic, and even aesthetic dimensions of the peoples involved. Using ethnography and other research materials, and basing his understanding on his years of living with the people he writes about, the author illuminates the culture and explores the prospects for a distinct section of pastoral Maasai--the Ilparakuyo. In addition, he attempts to develop a historical materialist theory of language in relation to a specific East African culture. While rural development is a priority in many recently independent third world countries, it is often not designed for the benefit of the producer. Rigby analyzes the language and customs of the Maasai to chronicle the changes forces upon them by both colonial and post-colonial governments, and the complexity of their responses to these challenges. The cultures, languages, and aspirations of such pastoral societies are often overlooked by development planners. Rigby describes how government expectations should be based on an understanding and respect of such social conditions. Author note: Peter Rigby is Professor of Anthropology at Temple University.

This book presents a new perspective on colonialism in Africa. Drawing on work from a variety of subjects and disciplines – from the ancient Mediterranean to colonial Spain, and from anthropology to psychology – the author argues that colonialism in Africa needs to be understood through the medium of writing and the particular world it belonged to. Focusing on the LoDagaa of northern Ghana and their relationship with British colonialism, Hawkins describes colonialism as an encounter between a world of experience – a world of knowledge, practice, and speech – and "the world on paper" – a world of writing, rules, and a linear concept of history. The various ways in which "the world on paper" affected the LoDagaa are examined thematically. The first four chapters explore how writing imposed a form of historical consciousness on different aspects of LoDagaa culture – identity, politics, and religion – that was alien to them. The second half of the book examines how both the British colonial state and its postcolonial successor, the Ghanian state, attempted to regulate indigenous forms of knowledge, gender relations, and social reckoning through courts. This ambitious and richly detailed book will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in African history, British colonialism, and cultural and postcolonial studies.

Focusing on India and South Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the essays in this collection address power and enforced modernity as applied to medicine. Clashes between traditional methods of healing and the practices brought in by colonizers are explored across both territories.

As Britain industrialized in the early nineteenth century, animal breeders faced the need to convert livestock into products while maintaining the distinctive character of their breeds. Thus they transformed cattle and sheep adapted to regional environments into bulky, quick-fattening beasts. Exploring the environmental and economic ramifications of imperial expansion on colonial environments and production practices, Rebecca J. H. Woods traces how global physiological and ecological diversity eroded under the technological, economic, and cultural system that grew up around the production of livestock by the British Empire. Attending to the relationship between type and place and what it means to call a particular breed of livestock "native," Woods highlights the inherent tension between consumer expectations in the metropole and the ecological reality at the periphery. Based on extensive archival work in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, this study illuminates the connections between the biological consequences and the politics of imperialism. In tracing both the national origins and imperial expansion of British breeds, Woods uncovers the processes that laid the foundation for our livestock industry today.