Historical and Cross-Cultural Enquiry into the Criminalisation of Animal Cruelty in the Early-Modern and Modern World

• In Event: Considering and Evaluating Choice-Based Policies and Perspectives

Abstract

This paper opposes the view that the prime mover in the emergence of anti-cruelty laws has been the growth of compassion as it is manifest in newly enlightened nation states and an increasingly sensibilised and humane citizenry. It examines the preambles, texts and significance of four early anti-cruelty laws: (1) Act Against Plowing by the Tayle (Ireland, 1635); (2) Of the Bruite Creature (Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1641); (3) The Mistreatment of Animals Act (Maine, 1820); and (4) The Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act (1822, England). It argues that the first three were aspects of the English project to colonise the Atlantic world and all four slavishly followed the English laws of (animals as) property. About then and now one is led to ponder how the extension of protection to a few favoured species coexists with or even engenders de-civilising countertrends, such as the geometrically expanding abuse of carnism manifest in today’s animal industrial complex.

Author

• Piers Beirne, University of Southern Maine