Animal History: Viewing the Ottoman-Turkish Past Through an Interspecies Perspective

Abstract

Animal history, which studies the changes in human-animal relations over time and the diverse roles of animals in the past, is a new subfield in Ottoman and Turkish historiography that has been developing since the 2010s. It aims to examine the past through an interspecies perspective as an alternative to the anthropocentric approach of historiography. This article analyzes animal history regarding its methodological limitations and its contributions to historiography when these limitations are overcome. Despite being important actors in almost all human activities in the past, animals are not included in historical narratives or are only seen as passive instruments meaning that current anthropocentric historiography offers an incomplete and insufficient knowledge of the past. Therefore, animal history allows us to get closer to the reality of the past and also helps to change the unequal and destructive relationships that humans currently have with animals since it illuminates the historical origins of humans’ self-positioning as superior to other species. The article offers a trajectory for future animal historians through a review of publications on Ottoman and Turkish animal history.