The Lion's Historian: Africa's Animal Past

by Sandra Swart

“Until the lion has a historian of his own, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Sandra Swart takes up the challenge of that African proverb and, with this book, becomes the lion’s historian. As a species, humans are not alone; but our history has been written as though we were. Swart insists on a multispecies retelling of our more-than-human past as she reconstructs a shifting series of significant interspecies relationships, from quirky, idiosyncratic connections to others that triggered major changes. Embracing a radical interdisciplinarity informed by a background in history and environmental studies, Swart combines the natural sciences with the social sciences, oral history, indigenous knowledge, and archival research. She blends current thinking about animal sentience, agency, cognition, and emotion to offer a new way to understand animals’ role in our shared history. The animals in this book—baboons, cows, elephants, hippos, horses, jackals, lions, Nazi cattle, okapi, police dogs, quagga, sheep, and white ants—exemplify different facets of our shared past. With this animal-centric lens, decades of research are brought together in a collection that takes animals seriously. It is a book with claws and fangs, tearing through conventional narratives to ask, Are we prepared to move beyond the convention that “history” is the story of only our own species? The entanglements between humans and other animals have shaped our past, but they suggest something more. The possibility of our shared future pivots on a reckoning with our shared pasts. Swart shows what human-animal history can do, not only to understand our place in the world better but to make our world—however slightly—a better place.

Genres: History

370 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[Ed Stoddard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply superb! Stay tuned for my Daily Maverick review of this stimulating and engaging book ... And here it is: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/artic...

[Lochlann Jain · Rating 5 out of 5]

fascinating study of the role of animals in history

Essential reading for anyone interested in colonial histories and the use of animals. Sweat is a superb story teller and analyst. Highly recommend!

[Jolanda Goede · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5