“FOR RESCUING HIS HORSE”: AN ANTHROZOOLOGICAL APPROACH TO DISSENT IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEW ENGLAND
Date of Award
2026
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in History
Specialization
U.S. History
Department
History
First Advisor
Christian Gonzales
Abstract
The seventeenth-century colonization of New England entailed varying social, political, economic, cultural, and religious processes that were driven by and impacted several peoples. However, the presence of animals is undermentioned. This thesis forms an animal history of seventeenth-century New England, explains how different peoples understood human-animal relations, and evaluates how human-animal connectivity impacted how people conceptualized and conducted settler-colonialism. This thesis especially interrogates why some Puritan colonists limited different understandings of human-animal relations in the 1600s, namely from Indigenous Peoples, Quakers, and dissenting colonists deemed criminals. This thesis proposes that some Puritans restricted different concepts of human-animal relations because those conceptions directly challenged how they viewed settler-colonialism. Using human-animal relations as a lens, this thesis first examines how some Puritans tethered the ecclesiastical with the secular. Second, this thesis examines how Puritans limited Indigenous Peoples’ views on animals by subjugating them in ways that depended on their participation in colonialism. Third, this thesis uses human-animal relations to examine how Puritans purged Quakers from New England. Fourth, this thesis examines how some Puritans used laws on animals to control people within their colonies. This thesis draws on several primary sources, namely court records, laws, and published treatises, to demonstrate how human-animal relations provides important insight into how some Puritans justified colonialism as a secular ideological variant of their monotheistic theology.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
McGee, Richard, "“FOR RESCUING HIS HORSE”: AN ANTHROZOOLOGICAL APPROACH TO DISSENT IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEW ENGLAND" (2026). Open Access Master's Theses. Paper 2723.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses/2723