Animals and the Ethics of Domination

Abstract

When first encountered by Europeans in 1642, Tasmania, lying about two hundred miles off the southeast coast of Australia, supported an indigenous population of about five thousand people. The Tasmanians, isolated from other cultures for perhaps ten thousand years, were technologically about the most unsophisticated people on earth. They were hunter-gatherers, equipped with only a few simple stone and wooden tools. They had not even invented fire. British sealers and settlers arrived in 1800, and within just threequarters of a century, the genocide was complete. The last Tasmanian man died in 1869, and the last Tasmanian women in 1876. According to Jared Diamond’s account, “Whites kidnapped Tasmanian children as laborers, kidnapped women as consorts, mutilated or killed men.” “One shepherd shot nineteen Tasmanians with a swivel gun loaded with nails.” A bounty was placed on their heads: “five British pounds for each adult, two pounds for each child, caught alive.” Government-sponsored groups “consisting of convicts led by police, hunted down and killed Tasmanians.” Soldiers “were authorized to kill on sight any Tasmanian in the settled areas.” Scientists took an interest in the last few surviving natives. When William Lanner, the last Tasmanian man, died in 1869, scientists “alternately dug up and reburied Lanner’s body, cutting off parts of it and stealing them back and forth from each other.” One scientist removed Lanner’s head, another his hands and feet, yet another his ears and nose. One scientist “made a tobacco pouch out of Lanner’s skin.” This is by no means an isolated example. The same drama, altering the details here and there, is repeated throughout history whenever a “civilized,” “powerful” or “superior” people encounter a “primitive,” “weak” or “inferior” people. When Christopher Columbus and his men came ashore in the Bahamas, the Arawak Indians— the people who originally populated most of the Caribbean islands—reacted to their arrival with the awe and innocence of children. From Columbus’s own journals we learn: “They willingly traded everything they owned.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.” And then these