Animal City: The Domestication of America. By Andrew A. Robichaud (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2019) 338 pp. $39.95

Abstract

One of the phenomena that has accompanied the impact of covid-19 on cities has been the appearance, or more accurately, the re-appearance of wild animal life in cities, as human activity has sharply deceased. This is not to say that all animals had vacated urban sites, but many of the species that have been returning had not been resident urban dwellers or at least not visible for many decades. These sites were originally the domain of many species of wild animals that were gradually displaced by human populations, the built environment, and domesticated animals. Coincidentally, even before the pandemic, while animal life was returning to cities, the publication of books about the history of animals in cities was also increasing after their absence for many years.In the introduction to his edited collection, Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories (New York, 2012), Peter Atkins asks the question “Why So Few Animals in Urban History?” Of the three reasons that he lists the most persuasive is that in the twentieth century, the study of cities was anthropocentric, leaving animals to play only “bit parts.” Now various historians attempt to fill this gap in the literature of urban history.In the book under review, Robichaud demonstrates the centrality of animals to urban life as he explores the “massive shift in how most Americans experienced and interacted with animals, with one another, and with their governing institutions” (10). He presents a series of chapters detailing different animal–human-related themes in a variety of cities but especially San Francisco and New York. These themes include the transformation of the city as a place of free-roaming animals to one of animal exclusion and control; the development, impact, and regulation of New York’s urban feedlot dairies; the emergence of organized slaughtering in San Francisco and the issues of changing location and nuisance; shifting animal–human relationships in the later nineteenth century as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (spca) attempted to enforce animal-welfare laws, including those relating to the labor of horses and dogs; and examples of animal entertainment and changing attitudes toward it.Robichaud deals with these issues in a thorough and sensitive fashion, viewing them from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives. He maintains that animals deserve a place in historical scholarship because of the perspective that they present on human–animal relationships. Although Americans live increasingly in a world devoid of overt animal suffering and death due to their own reform efforts, violence toward animals is inherent in the hidden “machinery” of “post-domesticity” (Richard Bulliet’s term, 265), though out of sight.Many of the insights that this book offers about animals in the life of the city are striking, especially regarding the places where Robicheaud uncovered unintended consequences of actions that had originally been intended as reforms. A real test of human–animal relations in the city will evolve from how cities and humans act as they confront the newly enlarged presence of wild animals on their streets, in their malls and parks, and in their backyards. If these confrontations can be managed humanely, they could possibly result in a new stage of urban animal–human interactions. Whether this outcome produces modifications of the “machinery” that oppresses animals outside the city has yet to be seen.One final note regarding the style of this book: A close reading reveals that it could have used a more thorough editing. Numerous passages contain excessive verbiage, word repetition, and unnecessary detail. The book would also have benefited from more images and, even though it is extensively documented, a bibliography of published sources. Despite these shortcomings, the book is a worthwhile addition to the historical literature of animals in the city.