Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria

As I was preparing to write this review, I happened to pull from my shelf V. S. Naipaul's The Masques of Africa (2010), in which the author devotes a few paragraphs to discussing the place of animals in Nigeria. Naipaul reproduces the enduring stereotypes of white people as lovers and protectors of animals and of Africans as cruel and inhumane. Save one Nigerian Naipual met, only white people in the country (he claims) were concerned about alleviating the suffering of beasts. Into this flattened stereotype comes a fascinating new book by Saheed Aderinto, who presents a far more complex and nuanced account of the role of animals in Nigerian history, one that takes African perspectives seriously.Two aspects of the book ensure that it will be a seminal text in animal studies, in both African history and beyond. First, Aderinto incorporates an array of nonhuman animals and numerous approaches, in contrast to the still relatively small literature on the history of animals in Africa. Previous works have dealt with single species (for example, Robin Law's The Horse in West African History 1980 or Sandra Swart's Riding High: Horses, Humans, and History in South Africa 2016) or a single focus (Edward I. Steinhart's Black Poachers, White Hunters: A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya 2006). By taking into consideration species running the gamut from beef cattle and hogs to domesticated canines, and topics from rabies control and polo to the use of animals in political cartoons, Aderinto expands our appreciation for all the ways animals contribute to human history.Second, scholars will need to attend to his core argument that "colonialism was not just about humans; animals were also colonial subjects" and thus, "as with humans, laws and institutions of power governed animals' everyday life" (3). As colonial subjects, animals were envisioned, (mis)treated, and ruled in many of the same ways as were humans, through similar colonial frames of modernity. Thus the colonial attempt to create "modern" urban areas—to enforce particular ideas of sanitation and of orderliness—meant some animals were defined as belonging to the forest or the farm and made illegal in the city. The colonial state expected dogs, like Africans, to behave in a "civilized" manner, which included being tied to a particular place, being identifiable and traceable, and being subject to health regulations and other kinds of observation. The colonial state, then, was attempting to enforce a regime both on animals and, via animals, on Africans. Africans chafed under and resisted this aspect of colonialism as they did many others.There are a couple of areas that Adernito might have addressed a bit more. First, he points to animals having agency rather than simply shaping human history through their value as food, companionship, or labor. While "Western historical methodology" centers human agency, "neither indigenous African knowledge systems nor colonial archives . . . conceived of the past as an exclusively human realm, devoid of nonhuman agency" (5). He argues that "animals were political actors too." "Scholars," he writes, "may never agree on the extent of agency that animals wielded in the past, but it is undeniable that animals shaped the tenor of political and social processes, directly and indirectly." They have taken "independent action" by seeking food, water, and shelter, and they have "resisted human encroachment of their domain and violated human-made laws that undermined their livelihood" (6). These are provocative claims, and ones that I wish Aderinto had explored more fully. To be sure, a lion that enters a human settlement seeking food because its habitat has been denuded has instigated change, perhaps bringing poverty (through the loss of livestock) or sorrow (by killing a human). But are we to understand the lion to be acting as a historical agent the same way we think of humans as historical agents? If so, what are the implications? This is perhaps a greater philosophical (or biomedical) question than the author wishes to tackle. In broaching the topic in his introduction, however, he led me to wonder about the concept of agency throughout the book, but it is not something to which he returns.Second, the reader often loses sight of periodization. Aderinto organizes his book around topics—animals as meat, working animals, rabies, zoos, and so on—which makes sense and permits in-depth exploration of discrete arguments. However, periodization is lost between chapters, and at times within chapters. For example, in chapter 1, examples are drawn from as early as 1906 on through the 1960s, but not in a linear way. Other chapters are more chronologically focused, such as chapter 4 on the use of animals in political cartoons in the years leading up to independence. But a better sense of temporal change across the entire colonial period would have been helpful.With these caveats, this book will be useful for all scholars of Africa to consider anew the animals that regularly appear in the archives but to which we may not have given much thought, and for all historians to consider how forms of power are enacted on and through nonhuman animals.