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About
"Until the lion has a historian of his own, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." Sandra Swart takes up the challenge of that African proverb and, with this book, becomes the lion's historian. As a species, humans are not alone; but our history has been written as though we were. Swart insists on a multispecies retelling of our more-than-human past as she reconstructs a shifting series of significant interspecies relationships, from quirky, idiosyncratic connections to others that triggered major changes.
Embracing a radical interdisciplinarity informed by a background in history and environmental studies, Swart combines the natural sciences with the social sciences, oral history, indigenous knowledge, and archival research. She blends current thinking about animal sentience, agency, cognition, and emotion to offer a new way to understand animals' roles in our shared history.
The animals in this book-baboons, cows, elephants, hippos, horses, jackals, lions, Nazi cattle, okapi, police dogs, quagga, sheep, and white ants-exemplify different facets of our shared past. With this animal-centric lens, decades of research come together in a collection that takes animals seriously. It is a book with claws and fangs, tearing through conventional narratives to ask, Are we prepared to move beyond the convention that "history" is the story of only our own species?
Embracing a radical interdisciplinarity informed by a background in history and environmental studies, Swart combines the natural sciences with the social sciences, oral history, indigenous knowledge, and archival research. She blends current thinking about animal sentience, agency, cognition, and emotion to offer a new way to understand animals' roles in our shared history.
The animals in this book-baboons, cows, elephants, hippos, horses, jackals, lions, Nazi cattle, okapi, police dogs, quagga, sheep, and white ants-exemplify different facets of our shared past. With this animal-centric lens, decades of research come together in a collection that takes animals seriously. It is a book with claws and fangs, tearing through conventional narratives to ask, Are we prepared to move beyond the convention that "history" is the story of only our own species?
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Reviews
"Swart has written a wide-ranging, empathetic, and compelling account of the complex entanglements of humans and other animals throughout African history. She argues that human history is incomplete without acknowledging the participation of nonhuman actors, and she shows that the stakes are high for all of us."
Harriet Ritvo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"There are very few historians who are capable of writing as passionately and well as the self-proclaimed feral ape, Professor Sandra Swart of Stellenbosch University. The Lion's Historian is an astonishing, delightful, occasionally deeply depressing, but always highly enlightening, read detailing animal histories in Africa. Dr. Swart has set the benchmark high for a subject that is only set to gr
Jan-Bart Gewald, Leiden University
"Drawing upon oral history, ethology, and paleontology, as well as a veritable Noah's ark of animals, from the okapi to the quagga, Swart compels us to recognize our shared predicament. Written with erudition, verve, and wit, this book makes an urgent and ethical call to our better selves. A tour de force!"
Dilip M. Menon, University of the Witwatersrand