Synopses & Reviews
How Western Christianity and Eastern philosophy merged to spawn a political movement that had the prohibition of meat at its core.
The Bloodless Revolution is a pioneering history of puritanical revolutionaries, European Hinduphiles, and visionary scientists who embraced radical ideas from the East and conspired to overthrow Western society's voracious hunger for meat. At the heart of this compelling history are the stories of John Zephaniah Holwell, survivor of the Black Hole of Calcutta, and John Stewart and John Oswald, who traveled to India in the eighteenth century, converted to the animal-friendly tenets of Hinduism, and returned to Europe to spread the word. Leading figures of the Enlightenment among them Rousseau, Voltaire, and Benjamin Franklin gave intellectual backing to the vegetarians, sowing the seeds for everything from Victorian soup kitchens to contemporary animal rights and environmentalism.
Spanning across three centuries with reverberations to our current world, The Bloodless Revolution is a stunning debut from a young historian with enormous talent and promise. 24 pages of color illustrations.
Review
""[M]arvelously researched, deeply revealing....Students of this phenomenon will be forever grateful for Stuart's immense bibliography." Booklist
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"[T]here is nothing narrow about the author's focus. Both scholarly and entertaining, The Bloodless Revolution is a huge feast of ideas..." Mark Kurlansky, The Washington Post
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"[T]his work is extensively researched and includes detailed descriptions of ideological arguments advocating vegetarianism." Library Journal
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"An epic of non-carnivorous restraint....Culinary and cultural history intertwined: readable, and endlessly interesting." Kirkus Reviews
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"Whatever his dietary allegiances, Stuart...exhibits immense learning....Indeed, this book's appetite is so all-engorging and so tirelessly persistent, it does not stimulate easy digestion in others.... Yet once digested, Stuart's argument really does alter perceptions." New York Times
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"It is a beautifully written work of impressive scholarship, perhaps the most erudite yet to appear on the subject of vegetarian history." San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
A cultural and political history of vegetarianism explains how puritanical revolutionaries, European Hinduphiles, and visionary scientists conspired to overthrow Western society's fierce devotion to the consumption of meat, tracing three centuries of the movement from eighteenth-century converts to Hinduism to present-day environmentalism and the animal rights movement.
Synopsis
The Bloodless Revolution is a pioneering history of puritanical revolutionaries, European Hinduphiles, and visionary scientists who embraced radical ideas from the East and conspired to overthrow Western society's voracious hunger for meat. At the heart of this compelling history are the stories of John Zephaniah Holwell, survivor of the Black Hole of Calcutta, and John Stewart and John Oswald, who traveled to India in the eighteenth century, converted to the animal-friendly tenets of Hinduism, and returned to Europe to spread the word. Leading figures of the Enlightenmentamong them Rousseau, Voltaire, and Benjamin Franklingave intellectual backing to the vegetarians, sowing the seeds for everything from Victorian soup kitchens to contemporary animal rights and environmentalism.
Spanning across three centuries with reverberations to our current world, The Bloodless Revolution is a stunning debut from a young historian with enormous talent and promise.
About the Author
Tristram Stuart graduated from Cambridge University in 1999, having won numerous academic prizes. Since then he has been a freelance writer for a number of Indian newspapers. The Bloodless Revolution is his first book. He lives in London.