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Animal Oppression & Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism and Global Conflict   David A Nibert Columbia University Press, New York, 2013   Review by Frank Armstrong     Scholars have argued that the domestication of animals for food, labour, and tools of war has advanced the development of human society. But by comparing practices of animal exploitation for food and resources in different societies over time, David A Nibert reaches a strikingly different conclusion. He implores humanity to shift to a vegan, or plant-based diet. Nibert maintains: “The emergence and continued practice of capturing, controlling, and genetically manipulating other animals for human use violates the sanctity of life of the sentient beings involved”. He tees up a neologism, ‘domesecration’, and deploys it throughout the book, arguing that “their minds and bodies are desecrated to facilitate the exploitation: it can be said that they have been domesecrated”. ‘He traces an upsurge in human violence to the practice of stalking and killing animals which “began no earlier than ninety thousand years ago’ He traces an upsurge in human violence to the practice of stalking and killing animals which “began no earlier than ninety thousand years ago – and probably much later”, but fails to acknowledge that this was connected to the expansion of humanity into northern latitudes where edible plants were not available throughout the year, often making hunting a necessity for survival. His basic thesis is that ‘domesecration’ has generated conflict between human societies because the amount of land required for raising animals for human consumption is far greater than that required to grow crops for direct human consumption. He emphasises how “domesecrated” animals act as vectors for zoonotic diseases, and displace countless free-living animals. As an abolitionist he does not envision any possible way humans could exploit animals in symbiosis with one another and their environment. He begins his account in 1237 at Riazan near Moscow as the Golden Horde led by Batu Khan lays the city to siege. Nibert links the cruelty of those Mongols to their treatment of animals and shows their reliance on them as weapons of war and mobile sources of food. Conquest, in turn, was fuelled by a need for more grazing land. They terrorised Eastern Europe and China which saw its population drop from 123 million in 1200 to 65 million in 1393, laying waste societies engaged primarily in crop cultivation. As part of their general unneighbourliness, in all likelihood the Mongols introduced the zoonotic bubonic plague to Europe, leading to a reduction in its population of a half. ‘he does not envision any possible way humans could exploit animals in symbiosis with one another and their environment’ The effect of colonisation of the Americas on its indigenous people has been described by historian Alfred Crosby as the “greatest tragedy in the history of the human species”. Large numbers were displaced to make way for livestock from areas where they cultivated crops or hunted free-living animals; and, with few domesticated animals of their own, they were ravaged by zoonotic diseases, especially smallpox. Their numbers were reduced by two thirds. It would be wrong to idealise the lives of indigenous peoples in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. But it seems the virtual absence of domesticated animals curtailed warfare: “archaeological evidence suggests that pre-Columbian warfare was limited to small-scale raiding, sniping, and ambush”, and that the numbers of “deaths by violence were relatively low”. Hernán Cortes whose expedition led to the fall of the Aztec Empire in Mexico instantly foresaw the possibility of developing a cattle industry there. Livestock products, especially hides, were integral to the wealth accumulated by the conquistadores. Nibert contrasts the colonisation of the Americas with the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, territory unsuited to livestock production. He says this supports “the thesis that colonisation was much more likely to involve large-scale violence when invasions involved expanding ranching operations”. To expand livestock numbers was also the primary motivation for the encroachment of Europeans into North America. The West was won by cowboys who cruelly displaced, and often massacred, large numbers from nations such as the Creek, Choctaw, Chicksaw, and Cherokee. In North America the fates of the native population and free-roaming buffalo, vital to their way of life, were intertwined. In the early nineteenth century there were up to thirty million buffalo roaming North America, but by century’s end they had been hunted to virtual extinction to make way for livestock. Nibert recalls the often wanton violence that accompanied their annihilation. In one account train passengers made a ‘sport’ of it: “As they neared a herd, passengers flung open the windows of their cars, pointed their breechloaders, and fired at random into the frightened beasts”. With the West ‘won’, industrial slaughterhouses emerged, especially in Chicago. It was not pretty. Rudyard Kipling was horrorstruck by what he saw in the late 1880s and worried “about the effect of so mechanical a killing on the human soul”, though in his occasional jingoism and patronising espousal of whiteman’s burden he did not always apply stringency to the worth of human souls, or human life. Nibert notes the important role of English capital in the expansion of livestock production into the Western plains of America in the nineteenth century. He also explores the English colonisation of Ireland and emphasises how Irish salt beef was a critical factor in the “profitable sugar production in the Caribbean because it was an important source of food for enslaved labourers on Britain’s plantations”. ‘In Ireland, primarily because of the Great Famine, there was a shift in the nineteenth century from tillage to pasture leading to depopulation of the countryside’ In Ireland, primarily because of the Great Famine, there was a shift in the nineteenth century from tillage to pasture leading to depopulation of the countryside. He quotes James Connolly’s description of this in Labour in Irish History: “Where a hundred families had reaped a sustenance from their small farms, or by hiring out their labour to the owners of