ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Innovative periphery? Ram Brahma Sanyal and the Calcutta Zoo

• In Event: Animal Networks. Zoos in the Peripheries 1

English Abstract

In 1892, Ram Brahma Sanyal (1850-1908), superintendent of the Calcutta Zoological Gardens (CZG) published A Handbook on the Management of Animals in Captivity in Lower Bengal, securing him international renown. This article will ask how a “native of India”, subjected to the racial hierarchies of the British Empire, became a crucial reference in the global debate on zoo animal husbandry. How did a seemingly peripheral zoo such as the Calcutta one become the site of extensive knowledge production on the nutrition, husbandry and veterinary care of zoo animals? Sanyal’s initially subordinated position at the zoo, forcing him to gather on a daily basis his observations as an animal keeper, enabled him to systematize his practical knowledge in the Handbook and eventually to become a respected naturalist in British Bengal. His expertise was further enhanced by the role of the CZG as a hub of the international animal trade in which Sanyal oversaw the shipments of animals in all directions, not only to Europe. The case of Sanyal and his Handbook point to the urgent need to decentre zoo historiography, away from understanding Western zoos as the sole pacemakers in the evolution of zoos. Rather, zoo management, and, what later would be called “zoo biology” were knowledges created in the emerging global network of zoos around 1900.

Author

• Oliver Hochadel, IMF-CSIC, Barcelona