Louise E. Robbins's Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in PDF

In 1775, a customer to Laurent Spinacuta's Grande Ménagerie on the annual wintry weather reasonable in Paris may have visible tigers, numerous sorts of monkeys, an armadillo, an ocelot, and a condor—in all, forty-two stay animals. In Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots, Louise Robbins explains that unique animals from around the globe have been universal in eighteenth-century Paris. within the streets of the town, citizens and viewers may possibly notice appearing elephants and a scuffling with polar undergo. these trying to find strange pets may well buy parrots, flying squirrels, and capuchin monkeys. The royal menagerie at Versailles displayed lions, cranes, an elephant, a rhinoceros, and a zebra, which in 1760 grew to become a massive courtroom attraction.

For Enlightenment-era Parisians, unique animals either piqued clinical interest and conveyed social prestige. Their availability was once a boon for naturalists like Buffon, writer of the best-selling Histoire naturelle, who saw strange species in numerous destinations round the urban. Louis XVI observed his menagerie as a manifestation of his energy and funded its maintenance for this reason, whereas critics used the caged animals as metaphors of slavery and political oppression amidst the starting to be political turmoil. In her enticing and sometimes impressive account, Robbins considers approximately each element of France's obsession with unique fauna, from the huge literature on unique animals and the interior workings of the oiseleurs' (birdsellers') guild to how the animals have been transported, housed, and cared for. in accordance with wide-ranging and resourceful study, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots stands as a big contribution to the background of human-animal family, eighteenth-century tradition, and French colonialism.