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.