The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900 by Rebecca J. H. Woods MAiSSAHUSETSsSTNTE "IF TEkCIHNCILnY M.A., B.A. University of Western Ontario, 2006 McGill University, 2003 L iB RAR1 E S Submitted to the Program in Science, Technology, and Society in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology September 2013 © 2013 Rebecca J. H. Woods All Rights Reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this tis isdocument in whole or in part in any medium now known or 1ereafter created. Signature of Auth OE I '/-~nthropology, f and Science, Technology and Society 24 June 2013 Certified by: Harriet Ritvo Arthur J. Conner Professor of History Thesis Supervisor Certified by: Dav*d Shumway Jones A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine (Harvard University; formerly MIT-STS) Thesis Committee Member Certified by: Janet Browne Aramont Professor of the History of Science (Harvard University) Thesis Committee Member Acceptcd by: ____________ ________ Harriet Ritvo Arthur J. Conner Professor of History Director pftqraduate Studies, History, Anthropology, and STS Accepted by: David Kaiser Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science, STS Director, Program in Science, Technology, and Society Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900 by Rebecca J. H. Woods Submitted to the Program in Science, Technology, and Society on June 23, 2013, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society Abstract This dissertation explores the relationship between types of livestock and place in the context of Great Britain's expanding agro-pastoral empire. Specifically, it examines how the distribution and circulation of breeds of livestock native to the British Isles influenced understandings of kind and location-of the dynamic interaction between heredity, human influence and environmental conditions, and their various fluid effects on ovine and bovine diversity. Drawing on extensive archival work in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, I trace both the national origins and imperial expansion of British breeds. As Britain industrialized in the early nineteenth century, breeders faced the need to convert the specificity of their animals into fungibility while maintaining the distinctive character of their breeds, seemingly incompatible aims that nonetheless guaranteed the economic viability of their stock. Thus they reoriented local variability towards market standardization, transforming regional types of cattle and sheep into geographically transposable, bulky, and quick-fattening beasts suited for increasingly sophisticated economies and industrialized production. Tension between standardization and specialization shaped the dispersal of breeds throughout the empire as well. Here, stockbreeders served two masters: the unfamiliar climates and topographies of Australia, New Zealand, and North America, which demanded local adaptations, and the British consumer, whose dinner table was the end of the line for the bulk of colonial beef and mutton. As they tried to balance local adaptation and metropolitan taste, breeders experimented with heredity, testing the limits of contemporary understandings of heritability and breed plasticity, and developed of new strains of livestock genetically derived from British breeds, but culturally, economically and environmentally hybrid. In the process, imperialism itself was instantiated in these animals. Bodies of sheep and cattle were remade to suit new lands and later to fill the refrigerated holds of ocean liners. The empire itself was recast as a vast apparatus for feeding Britons. This system, divested of its imperial trappings and disseminated still further, brings meat to tables around the world today. Thesis Supervisor: Harriet Ritvo Title: Arthur J. Conner Professor of History i ii Acknowledgments In researching and writing this dissertation, I have benefited from the support of several funding agencies. Tuition and stipend were provided by MIT's History, Anthropology, ans Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) graduate program, and by the MIT Kenan Sahin Presidential Fellowship. Early research in the United Kingdom was funded by a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship from the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC), while an extended research trip to New Zealand and the UK in 2009-2010 was possible thanks to an International Dissertation Research Fellowship (SSRC) and a Fulbright Fellowship to New Zealand (Fulbright-IEE and Fulbright New Zealand). Completing the final stages of the project would hardly have been possible without the benefit of a Mellon-ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship awarded by the American Council of Learned Societies in 2012. The History Project at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge also generously funded a final research trip to the United Kingdom in April 2013. Practical and material support from these funding agencies made it possible for me to undertake the work necessary for executing this dissertation, but without the intellectual and moral support of mentors and colleagues in the HASTS graduate program at MIT, I can scarcely imagine having brought this project to fruition. My greatest debt is to Harriet Ritvo, who has been a superb advisor and most generous mentor throughout. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with her. David Jones and Janet Browne at Harvard University have been integral to the formulation and execution of my dissertation, and I am grateful for their support. Stefan Helmreich, Heather Paxson, Leo Marx, Chris Capozzola, and David Kaiser have each made my time at HASTS intellectually richer, as have my fellows in arms in the graduate program. Special thanks to Etienne Benson, Laurel Braitman, Peter Doshi, Lisa Messeri, Sophia Roosth, Caterina Scaramelli, Ryan Shapiro, Shira Shmu'ely, David Singerman, Alma Steingart, Michaela Thompson, Emily Wanderer, iii and Ben Wilson. Karen Gardner, Bianca Sinaulsky, and Paree Pinkney in STS Headquarters, and Margo Collett and Mabel Chin Sorett in the History Department provided administrative support, and made it a pleasure to spend time in Building E5 1. I have benefited from a broad intellectual community throughout the process of preparing this dissertation. I thank the members of the Darwin Correspondence Project at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, and for Janet Browne for providing me with the opportunity to join a wonderful team of researchers. I also owe a special thanks to Bill Turkel at the University of Western Ontario, who deserves credit for setting me on this path, and gave me necessary early encouragement. Julie Kleinman, Jonathan Echeverri Zuluaga, Louisa Lombard, and Claudio Sopranzetti have been excellent remote colleagues in the Anthro Writers' Group. Parts of this dissertation benefited from feedback received at several conferences and workshops, including the HASTS Program Seminar (2012), the DPDF Animals Studies group (June and September 2008), the International Workshop for PhD Scholars in Environmental History (Australian National University, October 2010), the IDRF workshop (March 2011), the Harvard Symposium on Energy and Environment in Global History (Harvard University, April 2011), the German Historical Institute Conference on Global Cash Crops (June 2011), and the Nonhuman Empires: Between Agents and Actants Conference at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (University of Cambridge, March 2012). While researching this dissertation, I benefited greatly from the assistance and expertise of a number of librarians, archivists, and livestock breeders close to home and throughout the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Critical support came from the librarians and archivists at the British Library; the Walter Frank Perkins Agricultural Library (Southampton Univeristy); the Museum of English Rural Life (University of Reading); the University Library (University of Cambridge); the National Archives of Scotland; the Herefordshire Record Office; Lincolnshire Record Office; Derbyshire Record Office; the Hereford Cattle Society; Lincoln Sheep Breeders' Association; the Rare Breeds Survival Trust; the library of the Royal Agricultural Society of England; the Australian National Library; Archives New Zealand and the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand; and the Hocken Library (University of Otago). Special thanks to John Charles, Associate University Librarian at Massey University (Palmerston North, NZ), and Michelle Baildon at MIT. Les Cook, Peter Talbot, and Bev Trowbridge were among the practical breeders who generously shared their time and knowledge with me. Finally, I thank my family-my brothers Ned and Alex, and my parents, Betty and Frank-for their love, support, and patience. iv Contents Abstract Acknowledgements - III Introduction Chapter 1 - Defining the Problem 23 Chapter 2 - Much Ado About Mutton_ - 59 Chapter 3 - Measuring Purity 99 Chapter 4 - New Zealand's Own 145 Chapter 5 - Return of the Native Breed 199 Conclusion __ ___ 25 1 Bibliography-_ 261 v vi Introduction Introduction In 1949, the Earl of Halifax graced a promotional handbook on British breeds of livestock with an