Elephants and Kings: An Environmental History

Elephants are immense and majestic. Ever since kingship first emerged, they have been an irresistible symbol of royal prestige. The practice of taming elephants existed in many early civilizations, including Egypt, Assyria, Mesopotamia, China, and the Indus Valley. In these places, elephants were mainly used as royal offerings and hunted as game. But Thomas Trautmann discovered a distinctive system of elephant use on the South Asian subcontinent, one that protected their habitats and populations: war elephants.

Beginning in the Ganges basin, war elephants gradually spread throughout South Asia, westward to Persia, Syria, Egypt, Carthage, Greece, and Rome, and eastward to the Indochinese Peninsula, Java, and other parts of Indonesia. Thomas Trautmann traces the origins of war elephants, their routes of spread, and their cultural legacy, painting a cultural panorama spanning 3,000 years.

To sustain this unique system, kings had to protect wild elephants from hunters, preserve the forests where they lived from being cut down, and maintain their relationships with forest peoples. The relationship between kings and elephants was therefore actually a four-way relationship among kings, elephants, forests, and forest peoples: a rich and complex web. All of this makes up what we call civilization.

In the 19th century, as the British arrived and came to rule most of South Asia, the population soared and elephant hunting became a sport. The war-elephant system faded into history, elephants' range shrank, and their numbers plummeted. All of this is a constant reminder that we need to find ways to protect our own future, and in doing so, safeguard the future of the creatures that share our world.