Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria by Saheed Aderinto (review)

Reviewed by: Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria by Saheed Aderinto Odinaka Kingsley Eze Aderinto, Saheed. 2022. Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria. New African Histories. Athens: Ohio University Press. 261 pp. $80.00 (hardcover), $36.95 (paperback). Since the 1990s, African historians have been encouraged to investigate the complexities of the colonial past, the intricacies of its operation and imagination, and the interplay of power beyond the locale in a more extensive manner, one that would demonstrate the connectivity of Africa's past with global history while writing for African audiences. Saheed Aderinto's Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa not only answers this call, but charts innovative and groundbreaking terrain in African historiography. In only a few books on African history will readers find interactions between humans and animals, involving symbolism, representation, and embedded characterization of animal personae in historical narratives, as Aderinto has done—which compels us to rethink and reimagine what we know about history, how we interpret it, why we choose a particular narrative over another, and the implications of what we decide to write about in the present. Indeed, Aderinto's prescient inclination makes this book capable of stimulating other scholars to undertake further research in this field. Moreover, writing a history that includes animals not only assigns agency to them, but lifts them from their position as objects to subjects, whose place is not "at the nibbling edge" in the footnotes of African historical texts, conferences, and journals (5). Aderinto boldly seeks to challenge the conceptualization of history as a discipline that has concentrated on the human past, sidelining animals despite ubiquitous relationships forged between them and humans since time immemorial. Therefore, Aderinto insists that "we may not truly comprehend the extent of imperial domination until we bring animals into our understanding of colonialism" (3). He uses animals to portray familiar themes in African historiographies, such as colonial modernity and civilization, ideology and subjecthood, ethnicity, violence, resistance and hegemony, and colonial power and nationalism. For instance, discussing dogs, he contends that dogs owned by British colonial administrators enjoyed more privileges than their counterparts that belonged to Africans. [End Page 103] Similarly, Aderinto weaves donkeys, cattle, and horses into the tapestry of the colonial political economy. Donkeys and horses were significant for transportation—which made them accomplices in colonial conquest and consolidation, utilized by the British colonial power to exploit Nigeria's resources. Donkeys conveyed mineral resources and agricultural products, but horses were the most reliable means of moving across unmotorable topographies and a spectacle of imperial domination. As these animals assisted the British colonizers in actualizing their day-to-day administration, Aderinto investigates their role in colonial modernity. Such discussions as the tons of materials a donkey should carry; the ways that the stables of horses should be built, cared for, and transported; the method to slaughter cattle for consumption to ensure it met public health standards; the control of stray dogs; combating the ritual murder of horses in southeastern Nigeria; and the restriction of wild animals in built environments are all elements of modernity that Aderinto observes have dotted the relationship of people and animals during the colonial period. In two equally paradoxical but complementary sections, Aderinto employs different animals to locate the convergence of the built environment, veterinary and human medicine, welfare, modernism, and nationalism. In chapter 1, he introduces the history of meat consumption in colonial Nigeria and how beef emerged as "the primary source of protein in twentieth-century Nigeria" (36). In chapter 2, he examines the roles that animals such as donkeys and horses played "as combatants, working animals, symbols of pride and power and athletes" (65). However, while beef became a protein staple, and horses and donkeys became spectacular animals in the colonial economy, Aderinto complicates this narrative by stressing how various colonial welfare policies attempted to control the consumption and management of these animals, whether as beasts of burden, athletes, or meat (chaps. 7–8). Furthermore, while chapter 3 features the "social history of dogs in colonial Nigeria" (93), chapter 5 highlights the pathology of rabies, its dreadfulness, and implications in colonial...