Animal Labor and Colonial Warfare

James L. Hevia

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780226562315
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Until well into the twentieth century, pack animals were the primary mode of transport for supplying armies in the field. The British Indian Army was no exception. In the late nineteenth century, for example, it forcibly pressed into service thousands of camels of the Indus River basin to move supplies into and out of contested areas—a system that wreaked havoc on the delicately balanced multispecies environment of humans, animals, plants, and microbes living in this region of Northwest India.
 
In Animal Labor and Colonial Warfare, James Hevia examines the use of camels, mules, and donkeys in colonial campaigns of conquest and pacification, starting with the Second Afghan War—during which an astonishing 50, 000 to 60, 000 camels perished—and ending in the early twentieth century. Hevia explains how during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a new set of human-animal relations were created as European powers and the United States expanded their colonial possessions and attempted to put both local economies and ecologies in the service of resource extraction. The results were devastating to animals and human communities alike, disrupting centuries-old ecological and economic relationships. And those effects were lasting: Hevia shows how a number of the key issues faced by the postcolonial nation-state of Pakistan—such as shortages of clean water for agriculture, humans, and animals, and limited resources for dealing with infectious diseases—can be directly traced to decisions made in the colonial past. An innovative study of an underexplored historical moment, Animal Labor and Colonial Warfare opens up the animal studies to non-Western contexts and provides an empirically rich contribution to the emerging field of multispecies historical ecology.
 

* Prologue to Part One *

Warfare and Logistics in Saharasia

The variety of supply and transport issues the British Indian Army faced in the nineteenth century was neither unique nor unprecedented. Other powers that attempted to dominate the subcontinent had faced similar challenges. More important, with the possible exception of river steamers and an improved halter for draft animals, the technologies of transport, as well as the topography of India, had changed little from the time of Alexander’s invasion of Afghanistan and the Indus River basin in the third century BCE.1 The region itself was part of an ecological continuum of arid tracts stretching across North Africa, through the Middle East, and well into India. Sometimes referred to as Saharasia, the region’s low levels of rainfall have meant that large-scale human habitation has been sustainable only along river systems such as the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates, and the Indus and its tributaries. Over hundreds of years, much of the rest of the land was thinly populated, if at all, by nomadic pastoralists and their animals.

Nevertheless, the riverine agrarian populations were not completely isolated from one another or from larger forces shaping the region, such as Islamic proselytizing, religious pilgrimage, and interactions with war bands of various stripes. In addition, substantial and sustained commercial intercourse fashioned links between the Levant and South Asia, as well as across North Africa from Cairo westward. Overland caravan trade also connected the Mediterranean with equatorial Africa, and with cities and towns across Anatolia and Central Asia. In the case of northwestern India, trade flowed through passes leading to northern and southern Afghanistan and on to Silk Road cities in Central Asia and the markets of eastern Persia. Much of this commerce was made possible through the exploitation of the labor power of an animal unique to the region: the dromedary or one-humped camel, whose many breeds had adapted to variations in plant life and topographies found in different parts of Saharasia. In a landscape where water and flora were scarce, the capacity of camels to live off the plants of arid regions was perhaps the critical element that made long-distance trade and communication possible. Where there was sufficient plant life for camels to graze on, the amount of grain, fodder, and water a caravan needed to carry in order to sustain its pack animals could be much reduced.2 Caravan operators thus needed an intimate knowledge of routes and plants across the arid plains in order to make adequate plans for supply requirements. An understanding of desert vegetation and its impact on camel physiology was thus basic knowledge among pastoralists. According to one source, for example, Tuareg camel herders of the Sahara identify forty-seven species of herbs, shrubs, and trees that their camels eat, and they know the effect of these plants on the taste and quality of camel milk.3

If such logistical knowledge was unavailable, then travelers, be they merchants or armies, had to obtain it by seeking out local informants or by employing advance scouting parties. Large-scale operations, like those of Alexander the Great, whose cavalry and infantry forces have been estimated at over sixty thousand men, used such methods as they moved across Mesopotamia toward India. In his study of the logistics of Alexander’s Macedonian army, Donald Engels has calculated that supplying this force each day required 1,492 camels (or the equivalent in horses and mules, each of which had about half the carrying capacity of a camel) to carry a little over half a million pounds of supplies comprising food and grain for humans and fodder for animals. If water was not readily available on the army’s route of march, an additional 7,000 pack animals would have been needed. Alexander also supplemented supplies where possible by marching the army near the coastal ports and rivers to which grain and other foodstuffs could be moved by ship. In addition, he frequently launched the start of a campaign soon after grain crops had been harvested—this was the case for the passage of his forces in and through Afghanistan, for example.4

The sources used by Engels to reconstruct Alexander’s logistics are limited in some respects. It is, for example, difficult to discern how the Macedonian army acquired its pack animals and supplies (did they commandeer them, hire animals, or purchase them?) as well as how supply and transport were organized. Far more source material is available for the study of more recent campaigns in Asia. For instance, the logistical operations of the Ottoman and Mughal Empires have been studied with particular attention to how armies were formed and maintained in the field. In both these cases, Ottoman and Mughal military leaders were often operating in territories about which they were much more knowledgeable, and where they enjoyed greater command of resources, than seems to have been the case for the Macedonian army. Nevertheless, Ottoman and Mughal armies were challenged by the same geographic, agricultural, and transport animal constraints faced by the ancient Greeks and their own Saharasian predecessors.

In the Ottoman case, supply and transport issues were extremely complex, given that the empire’s armies fought on two fronts: one in Europe, the other in the East against the Safavids of Persia and others.5 One solution Ottoman planners found was to take advantage of preexisting Roman and Saljukid road systems in the Balkans and Asia Minor respectively. Along these roads, the Ottoman commissariat placed grain storage depots. When, however, campaigns ventured farther from the road and depot system,6 the army had to rely on extra animal power, primarily camels, to deliver food for soldiers and fodder for cavalry horses and other transport animals.7 In such areas, the army also, like the Macedonians, relied on light cavalry units (in the Ottoman case, Tatars) to scout for water and fodder along the line of march (67).

As for the transport animals themselves, the Ottoman army faced the same conundrum that all premodern armies faced. To what extent should the state maintain its own transport corps, as opposed to hiring animals as needed? The former scheme, as Rhoades Murphey points out in his study of Ottoman warfare, left the care, feeding, and general upkeep of pack animals and their trained caretakers in the hands of the state. In such a system, while state actors were in a position to ensure the quality and health of the pack animal force at any given time, the structure was costly (74). Hiring transport was generally cheaper than year-round maintenance of a pack animal workforce, but prices could be unpredictable, and there was little or no control over either the quality of the animals and their handlers or the costs. The state could ameliorate the vicissitudes of the market in part by granting various kinds of tax relief to guarantee a certain amount of reserve transport for hire; or it could plan military action far in advance to ensure that campaigns were launched when weather conditions were at their best, minimizing the need for additional transport.

But regardless of how well transport was organized, the scale of requirements was in all cases daunting. Murphey estimates that on average, 11,500 camels were required for the transport of the Ottoman sultan and his personal army, the Janissaries. This was only part of the force that took the field, however. There were also auxiliaries and allies, as well as irregular cavalry forces, termed Tamirot, who would muster when called on in exchange for tax relief (36). The addition of these forces to the sultan’s army could raise the number of pack animals to fifty thousand or more, with a substantial number of them supported by camp followers made up of grain transporters, merchants, food suppliers, and sutlers (48). These vast numbers of followers, as Murphey and others point out, made the army in the field much like a mobile city, one that wherever it might come to rest provided a stimulus to local economies (82).

Mobility was a key feature of Mughal rulership as well. Whether it involved warfare, hunting, imperial tours, or the seasonal movement of the court from India to Kabul in Afghanistan, Mughal emperors spent about 40 percent or more of their time away from Delhi, often in shifting camps near the military campaigns or sieges under way.8 Mughal mobility was completely dependent on animals, from their cavalry warhorses to their transport camels, mules, and bullocks. Various sources indicate that there were large numbers of animals involved in these activities, including over one hundred camels and elephants to carry the royal treasury and administrative records alone.9 Like other groups who emerged from Central Asia and established empires and khanates in southern and western Asia, the Mughals were primarily a horse cavalry army. By the reign of Akbar (r. 1560–1605), the warhorses that made up the imperial Mughal cavalry, all of whom required special provision of fodder supplies when on the move, numbered some 12,000.10 Maintaining the number of cavalry horses was, however, a challenge for the Mughal court. Because of the scarcity of grazing lands and the poor quality of many Indian grasses, few of the Mughal warhorses were bred in India, however. It was more common for members of the court to purchase Central Asian horses in the markets of Kabul when they wintered there.11 Others were bought at markets in, for example, Lahore and Peshawar from Afghan and Persian traders, who were given incentives by the Mughal court to bring their animals into India.12 Most of the horses were Turkic breeds from Central Asia and Persian breeds, but there were also horses from Arabia who arrived by sea at Indian ports.13 In addition to the court’s cavalry, the mansabdars (feudal lords) were required to maintain a reserve force of some 26,000 horses, almost two-thirds of which had to be Persian and Turkic according to Mughal regulations.14 Shireen Moosvi has estimated that in order to maintain the cavalry of the court and the mansabdars, around 22,000 horses from Persia and Central Asia were required.15

In addition to the horses of the imperial cavalry, a large and shifting number of horse soldiers with their own animals could be included in the war band of the Mughal court. These were auxiliaries who mustered when the overlord called on them to join in a campaign. The largest group of auxiliaries comprised warlords, hereditary rulers, and recruitment brokers who were collectively known under the aforementioned term mansabdar. The holders of mansabs pledged fealty to the Mughal emperor and were bestowed with a certain status, often in the form of a khilat (robe of honor) and/or emoluments.16 Mansabdar ranks and statuses were based on the number of horsemen the recipient could put into the field when called on.17 In turn, mansabdars could rely on a large pool of armed peasants and itinerant fighting men in the Indian countryside to fulfill their quotas.18 In addition to filling their ranks with fighting men, the mansabdars were responsible for provisioning them and supplying the necessary pack animals—camels and mules—to carry supplies.19 A second kind of auxiliary force was made up of part-time combatants termed Silladars. When called on, these men were expected to appear for service with their weapons and one or more horses.20 The Mughal emperors could also count on a host of adventurers and mystical warriors, such as Turani, Afghan, and Persian freebooters attracted by the promise of plunder, as well as armed Sufi and Hindu ascetics in search of religious fulfillment; all of these came with their own animal transport.21

Whether it was the court displaying its wealth, splendor, and power during inspection tours or the emperor making pilgrimages to Sufi shrines22 or joining his army on campaign, the number of animals required to carry the food, armaments, tents, and equipment of the Mughal emperor or court and its standing and auxiliary armies was formidable. For its part, the imperial household had several thousand elephants, some of whom were used in military engagements and others for transport. But the bulk of transport relied on camels, mules, and oxen, the last of which required reasonably decent roads on which to pull their carts. For imperial tours, the oxcarts functioned fairly well, but for military campaigns, camels had the great advantage of being able to not only traverse roadless tracks but keep up with the cavalry. They could in many terrains live off the land, reducing the amount of animal feed the army had to carry, while their dung could be used as fuel for cooking fires.23

Estimates are that Akbar’s standing army maintained a transport force of six thousand to seven thousand camels.24 According to Abu al-Fazl in the A’in-i-Akbari, the royal camel corps was divided into qatars, and each of these small groupings had a sarban (sarwan in later British sources), or camel driver, whose primary duty was to care for and properly load his camels. To ensure that this job was being done properly, imperial camels were periodically inspected by soldiers and court officials. They were also fed and supplied with equipment paid for by the imperial treasury, and medicated: they were given an annual injection of sesame oil, brimstone, and buttermilk via their nostrils.25 This concoction may have been a preventive to deal with nasal bots, or botflies that commonly could block the nasal passages of many kinds of animals.26

For either imperial inspection tours or military campaigns, the numbers of camels available to the court would be supplemented from other sources. During Akbar’s reign and perhaps earlier, the court formed relations with camel breeders among the Baluchi chieftains around Dera Ismail Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan in the Punjab, as well as with the Raibari camel breeders in the Indus valley. In discussing these sources of camels, Abu al-Fazl noted that to guarantee a supply, the court provided allowances to these herders for camel feed. He added that the Raibari bred multiple kinds of camels. One sort, probably bred to work in the mountains, was produced by crossing the two-humped Bactrian male camel with the single-humped lowlands female. Fifty of these lowland females, a Bactrian, and two one-humped male camels, called loks, comprised a breeding herd overseen by one of the Raibari herders. The loks were also of interest to the Mughal because the Raibari trained some of them to run; the Mughal used these swift animals to carry messengers.27 As for the other key transport animal, the mule, Abu al-Fazl had little to say. But if the figures noted in the A’in-i Akbari for mansabdar transport are considered, they suggest that the ratio of camels to mules was approximately four to one.

Supply for both the court and the army was, however, not exclusively in the hands of the imperial household or the mansabdars. Camp followers, a population perhaps twice the size of the court and army together, made up a substantial element of the imperial entourage. Like the Ottoman camp followers, the Mughal assemblage was composed of grain transporters, merchants, and food suppliers, as well as grass cutters, who sold their gleanings to the cavalrymen.28 Francis Bernier, a seventeenth-century French physician who participated in the emperor Aurangzeb’s (r. 1658–1707) inspection tour to Kashmir, estimated that there were some 150,000 animals—warhorses and pack animals—50,000 of which were camels. His estimates included the animals of camp followers from the bazaars of Delhi.29 In addition, the court might also be followed by a multitude of itinerant ox herders known as banjara, who regularly carried foodstuffs, salt, sugar, and textiles and other finished goods all over India. During his campaign to Kandahar, the Mughal emperor Jahanjir noted that upwards of one hundred thousand banjara oxen were following his army from Multan into Afghanistan.30

The scale of the Mughal court and war band assemblages speaks to the ability of a succession of rulers to attract fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• contents
• List of Figures and Maps
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• prologue to part 1  Warfare and Logistics in Saharasia
• prologue to part 2  Colonial Transformations
• Postscript
• Acknowledgments
• Footnotes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index