There's a lot more going on in cows' inner lives than we give them credit for. Cows are highly intelligent and deeply sentient and emotional beings with distinct individual personalities, and have been observed using tools.1 Every individual has a unique personality, and it’s fair to say not a single cow enjoys being mistreated for human meals. But how did they feel about becoming "things" when humans choose to ignore their feelings and treat them as unfeeling commodities?

In a rare and unique discussion of how colonialism in Southern Africa affected cattle's subjective historical experiences, Dr. Michael Glover, in his new book Cattle's Experiences of Colonialism: An Animal History of Southern Africa, positions cattle as sentient, feeling beings and takes their point of view about their subjective felt experiences. While most researchers and non-researchers alike have come to think that cows are indeed sentient feeling beings, the Ontario (Canada) Federation of Agriculture claims animals don't think or feel, despite clear scientific evidence that they do.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Cattle's Experiences of Colonialism?

Michael Glover: I wrote the book to create a credible record of what happened to cattle during the colonial era because that epoch established the blueprint for the mass commodification and normalized violence towards animals in Southern Africa. With a few exceptions, how colonialism affected and transformed the lives and experiences of cattle is excluded from historical research. But cattle felt, heard, saw, smelled, experienced, and were greatly affected by colonialism.

Cattle are sentient creatures with deep and complex emotions and acute sensory perceptions. I wanted to demonstrate and remember, feelingly, empathetically, and with detail and compelling evidence, that cattle too were targets of colonialism, that cattle bore and still bear tremendous consequences from the colonial intrusion into Southern Africa. That cattle are part of society, part of history, that cattle matter, that they are here with us, experiencing life, possessing rich interior lives marked by fear, emotional connection, and psychological relief, and that, like us, they care deeply about their lives and each other’s lives. In Southern Africa, the wrongs of colonialism against humans are widely appreciated and regretted, but colonialism inflicted and we continue to inflict treacherous harms on sentient animals. A human-only lens blurs out this truth.

MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?

MG: My intellectual background is in analytic philosophy, English literature, economic history, and education technology. Since childhood, I’ve been attuned to and curious about how animals experience life, what life feels like for animals, and what their eyes, body language, and vocalizations communicate. I have been an ethical vegan for more than 15 years. I think writing an animal history that positions animals as subjects requires empathizing with them. And animal history is multi-disciplinary. Many forms of knowledge are needed to appreciate animals’ roles in and experiences of history. I think my background was helpful.

MB: Who do you hope to reach?

MG: I hope my book reaches the curious public, university students, animal historians, animal advocates, and researchers who are interested in the environment, animals, industrialisation, and African history.

MB: What are some of the topics you consider, and what are some of your major messages?

MG: The major message is that animals have histories of their own, that animal history matters, that animals felt and experienced colonialism, and that the legacies of colonialism still affect them. Ultimately, the book is about enabling greater understanding of and sensitivity towards animals. It’s about validating animals’ subjective historical experiences, and telling their stories with empathy and clarity, narrating the subjective consequences of colonialism for cattle in a credible, public-facing, and evidence-based way. To bring home to readers that each cattle is an individual feeling, knowing being, whose life matters to them.

It’s also about recognizing that the way we treat animals through mass breeding and industrial farming is something that only emerged in Southern Africa in the last hundred years or so. I cover four main impacts of colonialism: wagon labor, disease epidemics and veterinary control, the development of industrial slaughter, and the emergence of modern cattle breeding regimes. I believe it’s the first book on Southern Africa to explore in detail how industrial slaughter emerged in the region, and I show that slaughterhouses were designed to kill an animal in a minute over 100 years ago in South Africa. I also explore several previously unused historical sources to document how cattle experienced colonialism.

MB: How does your work differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?

MG: What’s perhaps most unusual is that I spent 30 days following a herd of free-roaming Nguni cattle in the semi-arid Karoo in South Africa as a form of immersive, emotionally priming fieldwork. That really deepened my sensitivity towards cattle and taught me so much about their intelligence, group cohesion, and emotional resonance abilities. Cattle are high-EQ (emotionally intelligent) beings and have very strong emotional connections. I think what’s distinctive is that I’ve really tried to position animals as sentient subjects in the narrative flow, to aim to keep them front and centre, to be interested in cattle’s subjective historical experiences as fascinating, important, and valid in their own right.

I also spent a lot of time reading about and trying to communicate cattle’s capacities for subjective experiences. It’s so much easier to write about humans, to unconsciously revert to centering humans, because the evidence is far more easily available to write about humans. I felt myself resisting the impulse to make it a fundamentally human story rather than stories about the cattle themselves.2

6) Are you hopeful that, as people learn more about cattle’s historical experiences, they will treat cattle with more respect and dignity?

I am hopeful. I think the more we understand about cattle’s emotions, their care relationships, and their subjective historical experiences, the more clearly we can recognize that cattle are not so different from humans. Like humans, cattle find meaning in relationships with their kin and community. Cattle want to enjoy lives that are free of coercion, incarceration, forced ejaculations and pregnancies, trauma, and violence. Like humans, cattle want to flourish, be among their kin, nurture social relationships, eat, sleep, forage, ruminate, be well, and live good lives.

I don’t think that knowledge of cattle’s lives alone creates empathy for them, but I do think it enables empathy. The more we understand cattle, the more we validate their subjective experiences, the more we can empathize with them and, in turn, treat them respectfully.

In conversation with Michael J. Glover, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at the International Studies Group, University of the Free State. He is also an associate fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and a member of the Australasian Animal Studies Association. Michael previously co-edited an anthology called Animals as Experiencing Entities: Theories and Historical Narratives. (For an interview about this book, see Respecting Animal Sentience and Rejecting Human Elitism.)

1) Is Dairy Farming Cruel to Bright and Emotional Cows?; The Mistreatment of Female "Food Cows" Includes Sexual Abuse; Cows: Science Shows They're Bright and Emotional Individuals; What Would a Mother "Food" Cow Tell Us About Her Children?; Do Cows Moo "Get me the Hell out of Here" on Factory Farms?; The Emotional Lives of Cows: Ears Tell Us They're Feeling OK; The Social and Emotional Lives of Cows From the Outside In.

2) There are some great animal histories out there, and I’d recommend Jonatha Saha’s Colonizing Animals, Saheed Aderinto’s Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria, and Sandra Swart’s The Lion's Historian: Africa's Animal Past.

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