Camelid colonialism
A stuffed llama can tell a powerful story about imperial duplicity. Review: Llamas beyond the Andes, Marcia Stephenson, by Gavin O'Toole
Llamas beyond the Andes: Untold Histories of Camelids in the Modern World, Marcia Stephenson, 2023, University of Texas Press
A sad female llama stuffed in 1851 and now stored in the vaults of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris may not at first sight be the most obvious artefact of European imperialism.
But the fascinating story of this musty, dusty specimen recreated with forensic skill by Marcia Stephenson offers an insight into a forgotten target of western extractivism in this period—animals.
Stephenson ascertained that this particular beast belonged to a small flock of llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas shipped to England in about 1845, probably by an Englishman called Charles Ledger.
Then resident in Peru, Ledger supplied camelids to interested parties abroad, largely by smuggling them out of the region.
In this case, after the flock reached Britain, King William II of the Netherlands bought some of them and transported them to the Netherlands, before his successor William III sold some on to the French government.
At that time Paris had been trying to obtain llama and alpaca stock to acclimatise and naturalise, and the bemused beasts eventually arrived in Paris in 1849 where they were kept at the Museum of Natural History’s menagerie.
This story speaks of extractivism of a very specific type—of livestock and animals with potential commercial value—and the lengths to which outsiders would go to get their hands on this living commodity.
As the author notes, the significance of camelids beyond the Andes—where they have played an integral role in the survival of Indigenous peoples and their epistemologies—has remained largely overlooked, a theme Llamas beyond the Andes seeks to address.
As with the stuffed llama gathering dust in Paris, the histories of such animals removed from their native habitat and transported overseas have until now inevitably remained untold.
Stephenson therefore addresses the concerted efforts over centuries, primarily by Europeans, to transform living camelids and/or camelid fragments into valuable commodities for introduction elsewhere. In doing so, she contributes to growing scholarly interest in the roles played by animals in the histories of the Americas.
The author argues that these encounters with camelids offer insights in several areas: the animals’ increasingly important role as global commodities; the colonial legacies and contacts between the Andes and Europe, Australia, and the United States, where the animals were introduced; and how local knowledge about them was also extracted, appropriated, transformed, and redistributed through new global scientific networks.
A wool merchant, Ledger embodied the “neo-ecological imperialism” that aimed to improve the economy of the British colony of Australia at the expense of Bolivia and its Andean pastoral communities.
He became something of a schoolboy hero in one-sided tales of the British empire for recruiting Bolivian shepherds in the 1850s to help him smuggle a flock of llamas and alpacas to Australia.
Ledger and his herders eluded Bolivian authorities and irate Indigenous communities as they made their way to northern Argentina to prepare for the difficult journey across the world.
The aim, of course, was ultimately to introduce the animals into the local agrarian culture for profit—and this epic tale in which Ledger has been largely celebrated within imperial narratives of derring do created something of a buzz about his exploits at the time.
Nonetheless, this story of illegal extraction to benefit western imperial interests—perhaps fortunately—did not end well for its hero.
When Ledger set sail for Australia from Caldera in Chile with his flock, he held high expectations that fame and fortune awaited him in the young British colony.
It was not to be: once he arrived in Australia, debts, criticism of his management, and grievances with the government over its breach of trust, punctured the adventurous mythology that had hitherto surrounded him.
He was suspended from his position of New South Wales superintendent of alpacas and accused of negligence and misconduct, prompting a bitter legal dispute. Spurned and resentful, he decided to return to South America.
It is a salutary tale of an individual’s belief in his own heroic narrative set against the harsh, inhuman reality of the imperial enterprise.
Stephenson writes: “Ledger became a victim of the overreach of empire, having believed in its myths and dedicated himself to them, only to discover that in the end he was expendable.”
Nonetheless, through this story and others, the author compiles a fascinating deconstruction of the cultural narratives around the llama’s exchange.
As she points out the history of efforts to remove Andean camelids from their native habitat for export documents a neglected aspect of extractivism.
The significance of the contacts made through llamas can be assessed in several ways: how imperial, scientific, economic, and ecological interests converged over time in animal histories, as well as the impact upon the Indigenous communities of this trade.
As Stephenson shows, the animals were slowly transformed from exotic creatures into important commodities for export as European countries sought to acquire camelids with the goal of improving their own economies or those of their colonies.
Given this, we might go as far as to say that the humble llama which ended up on the bench of a Parisian taxidermist holds the silent key to a hidden aspect of imperialism.