Leeches Across Borders: More-than-Human Extractivism in the 19th-Century Ottoman-French Leech Trade

• In Event: More-Than-Human Histories of Extraction: Violence and Care in the Technological Landscape

Abstract

In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, the renewed popularity of bloodletting dramatically increased demand for leeches across Western Europe. As wild leech populations in France, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy were overfished and depleted by the 1830s, merchants looked further east, particularly to the Ottoman Empire. Although Ottoman leeches had long been collected for local use, the intensification associated with the emergent international market led the state to introduce new regulations, both to preserve leech populations and increase tax revenues. Meanwhile, French entrepreneurs, frustrated by these regulations and the challenges of long-distance transport, began experimenting with leech cultivation, using carefully managed ponds and pools to collect, store, and grow populations. In both cases, ‘waste’-lands transformed both literally and conceptually to generate new visions of capital. Centering how leeches crossed boundaries – from country to country, from natural swamp to artificial wetlands – this paper argues that the commodification of leeches challenged existing understandings of the environment and more-than-human life. More generally, it shows how one industry facing species collapse centered technological solutions as the only path to profitable and ethical extraction.

Author

• Caleb Shelburne, Harvard University History of Science, PhD Candidate