Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire

In the 19th century, Britain maintained a complex network of garrisons to manage its global empire. British officers engaged in formal and informal scientific research, such as ornithology, which helped them map the British Empire and exert imagined control over it. Kirsten A. Greer's book "Red Coats and Wild Birds" explores the lives, writings, and collections of ornithologist-officers, arguing that these transnational encounters shaped military strategy, ideas about race and masculinity, and conceptions of the British Empire.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 190 pages
Publication date: 30 November 2019
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

During the nineteenth century, Britain maintained a complex network of garrisons to manage its global empire. While these bases helped the British to project power and to secure trade routes, they served more than just a strategic purpose. During their tours abroad, many British officers engaged in formal and informal scientific research. In this ambitious history of ornithology and empire, Kirsten A. Greer tracks British officers as they moved around the world, just as migratory birds traversed borders from season to season.

Greer examines the lives, writings, and collections of a number of ornithologist-officers, arguing that the transnational encounters between military men and birds simultaneously shaped military strategy, ideas about race and masculinity, and conceptions of the British Empire. Collecting specimens and tracking migratory bird patterns enabled these men to map the British Empire and the world, and therefore to exert imagined control over it. Through its examination of the influence of bird watching on military science and soldiers' contributions to ornithology, Red Coats and Wild Birds remaps empire, nature, and scientific inquiry in the nineteenth-century world.

During the nineteenth century, Britain maintained a complex network of garrisons to manage its global empire. While these bases helped the British to project power and to secure trade routes, they served more than just a strategic purpose. During their tours abroad, many British officers engaged in formal and informal scientific research. In this ambitious history of ornithology and empire, Kirsten A. Greer tracks British officers as they moved around the world, just as migratory birds traversed borders from season to season.

Greer examines the lives, writings, and collections of a number of ornithologist-officers, arguing that the transnational encounters between military men and birds simultaneously shaped military strategy, ideas about race and masculinity, and conceptions of the British Empire. Collecting specimens and tracking migratory bird patterns enabled these men to map the British Empire and the world, and therefore to exert imagined control over it. Through its examination of the influence of bird watching on military science and soldiers' contributions to ornithology, Red Coats and Wild Birds remaps empire, nature, and scientific inquiry in the nineteenth-century world.

Weight: 310g
Dimension: 155 x 233 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781469649832