'Kangaroo fever' and the 'patriotic victory' of Anglicizing 'exotic' knowledge/animals in the spectacle of 'Happy Britain,' 1790s

(Originally posted elsewhere on 24 February 2020.)

In jest: “Girl, what if … what if we … Let’s bring kangaroos to London. Hella cool? Kids can hand-feed them bread in the gardens. If the kangaroo can roam here, it would demonstrate the vitality not just of the physical qualities of the British countryside, but would also reflect the vitality of British ideologies. Aristocrats of London, giggling on a garden stroll, stewards of natural history knowledge. Britain, heaven-on-Earth, whose mastery over kangaroos, over Nature itself, express the Empire’s mandate.”

In seriousness: A fascinating doctoral dissertation by Christopher Plumb (think he’s done/is working on a book on the same subject, the “political ecology” of the kangaroo).

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Excerpt:

The significance of the kangaroo to nationalist discourse is indicated in Britain by the interest in the naturalisation of the kangaroos at Kew [Royal Botanic Gardens in London]. […] The adaptation of the kangaroo to the British climate had a distinct political economy at a time when the Georgian state looked towards Australia as a colonial replacement for the American colonies. Initially strange and climatically hostile, Australia could be made fertile and harnessed by English settlers who would foster English political ideals. […]

The return of ships in the Second Fleet in 1791 correlates with the exhibition of the first living kangaroo in 1791 at the Lyceum on London‘s Strand. […]

These routes of acquisition represented a temporary victory for British nomenclature and natural knowledge of the New World. British ascendancy in the new territories meant that any living kangaroo […] coming into Europe did so under British auspices. […] From 1792 kangaroos grazed at Kew Gardens, more than a decade before live kangaroos were seen in any other European collection. Around 1800 the kangaroo was familiar enough in British culture to find a place in a schoolroom natural history text, William Mavor‘s Natural History for the Use of Schools (1800). Accompanied by a plate of the kangaroo, the text celebrated the kangaroo as a patriotic victory for Britain - the kangaroo being first discovered by “our British colonists,” - unknown in other parts of the world.” […] When the Baudin expedition finally returned from “Terre Napoleon” in 1804 […] [t]he live kangaroos, black swans, and emus that were brought to France were presented [to] Empress Joséphine, twelve years after kangaroos has first grazed in Queen Charlotte‘s Menagerie at Kew. The title page vignette to the 1807 publication of the Baudin expedition […] victoriously portrayed kangaroos roaming the imperial residence of Malmaison. By 1805, another imperial menagerie could boast the acquisition of kangaroos in its collection […] at the menagerie of Francis II at Schonbrunn near Vienna […].

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In the eighteenth century the bodies of Britons and their national character had become increasingly understood as constituted by the British climate and susceptibility to the maladies of foreign climes. British writers of natural history like Samuel Ward was particularly keen to valorise the British climate and in particular the absence of “pernicious” or “rapacious” animals:

Happy Britain, as in a thousand other particulars, so in the peculiar favour of heaven on thy climate; which no pernicious or rapacious animals inhabit; through which never stalks, furious with hunger, the devouring tiger; over which never hangs threatening devastation, the voracious and unwieldy condor! Happy Britain, whose fields smile with plenty; and over whose plains roves fair freedom, unmolested, and blest to her with […].”

The kangaroos grazing on the green grass at Kew, on the banks of the Thames had reproduced in captivity and clearly demonstrated their naturalisation in “Happy Britain,” and the ability of Britons to alter nature. Yet the Anglicisation of the kangaroo was also seen to have at least some deleterious effects [on “vivacity” and subdued behavior]. […] If indeed the kangaroo did lose some of its leap in England this was but a small price to pay for the “permanent acquisition” of the kangaroo to England. Bullock‘s Museum on Piccadilly displayed two large kangaroos and a wallaby, and the companion catalogue to the museum considered the elegant kangaroo as a national asset:

“The kangaroo maybe considered in some degree as naturalised in England, several having been kept for many years at Richmond, which have during their residence their produced young, and promise to render this most elegant animal a permanent acquisition to our country.” […]

This political economy of the kangaroo, and especially those at Kew, was particularly meaningful when understood within much broader moves towards naturalising, “improving,” and disseminating other species of plants and animals throughout the Empire. The Banksian exchange of specimens for cultivation across the Empire and improvement at home rendered many plant and animal specimens useful as sources of food and raw materials. […] [But] this was not the rationale behind the naturalisation of the kangaroo in Britain. […] “[K]angaroo mania” was not predicated on any agricultural aspirations for the species in Britain. The mania for the kangaroo in late eighteenth century London was, at least in part, predicated on its eminent conformance to Enlightenment ideals. Attractive, graceful, (seemingly) docile, and naturalised to the English climate the kangaroo was a reassuring success for the Georgian State. Moreover the touching sight of young kangaroos, kangaroos that would dance the minuet, take bread from the hand, and make spectators laugh all confirmed the status of spectators as sensible and sensitive enlightened observers. Britons so suited to their own clime, observing kangaroos that had, with apparent ease, flourished in “Happy Britain.”

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Text above by: Christopher Plumb, “Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” PhD dissertation, The University of Manchester, 2010. Submitted in Museology in the Faculty of Humanities (Centre for Museology / Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine), date of award: August 2011. Accessed at: https :// research.manchester. ac. uk /en/studentTheses/ exotic-animals-in-eighteenth-century-britain [Emphasis mine.]