Fluid alliances: Human, technical, and exotic aquatic actors in the making of the aquarium in Germany from 1870 to 1914

The movement of live animals has historically been shaped by trade networks, technological infrastructures, and multispecies interactions. Tropical freshwater fish, domesticated for over a century, exemplify these processes. Existing research often overemphasizes human agency, obscuring how fish biology, technologies, and material infrastructures shape domestication and the conditions under which animal life could survive and circulate. This study addresses that gap by examining how ornamental fish morphology and species-specific traits became entangled with humans, aquarium technologies, and material infrastructures in Germany between 1870 and 1914. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Haraway’s cyborg framework, domestication is reconceptualized as a co-produced, technologically mediated process embedded within asymmetrical relations of power, commodity circulation, and domestic environmental control. Drawing on German aquarium journals and related publications, the study shows that tropical fish domestication emerged through distributed interactions among fish biology, human care, food, and technologies that collectively stabilized tropical species within German domestic aquaria.