The Wild Men of Borneo (1855)

AUTHOR: Alcott, William Andrus

KEYWORDS: animals, food and diet, health, race

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Relying on and ventriloquizing racist and ableist reports on the native inhabitants of Borneo, Alcott argues that flesh-eating is not a prerequisite for physical strength, nor is a plant-based diet detrimental to it. Alcott uses ostensibly empirical evidence to counter the argument that vegetarianism leads to diminishing physical strength and health. Racist (“ourang-outang”) and ableist (“dwarfs”) tropes are weaponized to emphasize that the converse is actually true: Alcott observes that despite, or maybe because of, their vegetarianism and despite the fact that they are “a very great curiosity,” the Native inhabitants of Borneo are exceedingly “strong and muscular.” The occasion for Alcott's musings on Borneo's Native population seems to have been a traveling human exhibit, as the first paragraph of the article suggests: “Whether these remarkable individuals, now being exhibited in this country, are really what their owner and exhibitor, Dr. Warner, appears to believe, viz., hybrids – the production of man and the ourang-outang, or whether they are a couple of mere dwarfs, is a question I shall not now attempt to resolve” (78). The article uses this racist, ableist, and speciecist premise to emphasize the positive effects of vegetarianism on health and physical strength, and the absence of these positive effects caused by meat eating. The final lines of the article neatly summarize Alcott's view of the issue, as the Natives' preference for “bread and fruits” (despite attempts to induce them to eat meat) clearly shows that “strength does not belong exclusively to flesh-eaters; which, however, every one might have known long ago who has seen the horse, or the ox, even without having seen the ourang-outang, which, though a vegetarian, exceeds all other animals of his size for strength – the tiger and lion not excepted” (78).