This book argues that the movement to protect animals from cruelty never lost its essentially anthropocentric outlook. It details the history of long-running debates on the question of the moral status of animals in eighteenth and nineteenth-century... MoreThis book argues that the movement to protect animals from cruelty never lost its essentially anthropocentric outlook. It details the history of long-running debates on the question of the moral status of animals in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain. The emergence of animals as subjects worthy of ethical consideration is traced back to philosophical ideas dating to antiquity, which gained renewed popularity in the early eighteenth century.
The sense of urgency with which the subject was taken up can be explained by a critical need to understand and to account for human pre-eminence in the world. Closely examining questions of animal pain and suffering, the concepts of cruelty and of kinship, and the social implications of newly codified and legally enforced configurations of human-animal relations, this study comprehensively documents the changing place of animals in human life. It will appeal to scholars and students of the emerging field of animal studies who specialize in history, philosophy, gender studies, anthropology and politics, as well as to British historians in general.