The Once and the Future Cow: Agency, Appetite, and the Anthropocene

This groundbreaking book shows how cows’ choices have influenced the economic, agricultural, and socio-political development of the Americas.

Tracing the interconnected transformations of cattle, land, and labor from the 18th-century colonial Caribbean to the early national period of the 19th century to the present day, Kettler and Yingling demonstrate how cows impact on nearly every major aspect of development in the Americas, including colonization, slavery, our ability to objectify animals we consume, our current foodways, environmental degradation, and the climate emergency. Bringing together research from many fields, but proceeding always in a straightforward, chronological, historical manner underrepresented in other areas of animal studies, this book ultimately restores cattle as subjects of their own lives who in seeking to escape exploitation have deeply affected the legal, property, and geographical frameworks that haunt us today.

Andrew Kettler is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, USA.

Charlton W. Yingling is Associate Professor of History at the University of Louisville, USA.