| From the title, one gains the sense that this treatise is a different sort of history. It is not a narrative of the human domination of nature. Nor is it a tale of enlightened humanitarian progress. Rather, this is an historical monograph often told from the nonhuman, animal point of view. It begins with the story of the commons in England, Ireland, Scotland, and colonial America during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The dissertation then describes the enclosure of those commons, and how this event created a working class among animals. It speaks to how some of these new workers actually resisted the impositions of private property and their imposed labor, and of how these recalcitrant few were then criminalized for their actions. And, finally, the treatise recovers the writings of those humans who, from the 1640s to the 1790s, have identified with and fought for the rights of their fellow creatures. |
