Examines how India’s cattle underwent profound changes during the years of British colonial rule.

Drawing on extensive, untapped archives, Modern Cowsand Bovine Transformations illustrates the radical remaking of India’s cattle against the backdrop of colonial policies, environmental change, and anticolonial politics. Historian David Arnold examines the history of cows in India from 1790 to 1950, focusing on science, technology, and medicine to provide a secular account of imperial animal husbandry.

Doing justice to the wide variety of Indian cattle breeds, Arnold unpacks “bovine technology” and its subaltern linkages, covering topics such as the role of cattle in agriculture and the military; haulage and transport; breeding strategies; bacteriology and nutrition science, and India’s milk revolution. He also examines the dispersal of Indian cattle around the globe and the role that colonial policies played in spreading knowledge of Indian cattle breeds and facilitating their export. Finally, he addresses the “cattle crisis” brought on by famines, droughts, and disease, and disputes between colonial rulers and Hindu nationalists. He concludes with the impact of World War II and Partition on bovine populations, illustrating the consequences for independent India’s attempts to restore the milk supply and rebuild cattle breeds while also respecting the Hindu cow protection agenda. In the end, Arnold argues, the history of cattle in India provides us with a new way of understanding the power of the colonial state, its ambitions to transform India, its appropriation of the Indian subcontinent’s resources, and the myriad contradictions of its policies.