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The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: vegetarian debate, dietary medicine, vegetarian arguments, Thomas Tryon, Turkish Spy, Roger Crab (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The word "vegetarian" wasn't coined until the 1840s, but Stuart's magisterial social history demonstrates how deeply seated the vegetarian impulse has been in Western culture since the 17th century. Thinkers such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Bushell contended that a vegetarian diet provided a key not only to long life but also to spiritual perfection: God had permitted Adam and Eve to eat only plants, fruits and seeds, and doing so could restore humankind to Edenic wholeness with nature. Seventeenth- and 18th-century travelers to India introduced the Hindu idea of ahimsa (the preservation of all life) as an ideal for a slaughter-free society. Stuart follows the development of vegetarianism through its Romantic proponents Shelley and Rousseau and on into the 19th century, when doctors proffered scientific evidence that human teeth and intestines were more similar to those of herbivores than of carnivores. Looking at literary culture, Stuart notes that Samuel Richardson, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen included vegetarian characters in their novels. Stuart offers a masterful social and cultural history of a movement that changed the ways people think about the food they eat. 24 pages of color illus., b&w illus. throughout. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Mark Kurlansky

Why do some cultures ban eating perfectly digestible, healthful and nutritious foods? In the realm of food anthropology, no subject is more mysterious and fascinating than that of food taboos, and no taboo is more fascinating than the one against meat that shows up around the world in diverse societies.

Tristram Stuart's thought-provoking book is not a global history of this taboo. Instead, it revolves around the vegetarian movement that began in 17th-century England -- the name first came into use in the 1840s -- and that remains strong today. But there is nothing narrow about the author's focus. Both scholarly and entertaining, The Bloodless Revolution is a huge feast of ideas -- ideas from India and France and America, from ancient Greece and Thoreau and Emerson, from Rousseau, Hobbes, the Kabbalah, the Old Testament, Descartes and Darwin, to name just a few of the better-known sources that weigh in on the meatless diet.

Vegetarianism illustrates the tremendous impact that India had on British culture but also the impact of the British on India. Mahatma Gandhi, Stuart tells us, didn't take up vegetarianism as a cause until he encountered the raw food movement, which dates back to the poet Shelley, while in London to study law. Gandhi embraced the diet -- he had rejected vegetarianism in his youth -- because he determined it was free of "himsa" or violence.

But the meatless diet couldn't be completely violence-free, for it also appealed to Adolf Hitler. Stuart points out that not only was Hitler a vegetarian but so were Himmler, Hess, Bormann and possibly Goebbels. They even argued about the purity of each others' diets, with Hess declining to eat meals cooked by Hitler's chef because the vegetables were not truly organic.

And these were not the only violent vegetarians. In the late 18th century, John Oswald advocated armed revolution in Britain while maintaining a vegetarian diet, convinced by his years in India that all killing was wrong. Therefore, he thought, killers must be killed. Although this sounds slightly mad, the same argument is frequently accepted as logic for capital punishment.

Fascinating as the array of moral, religious, philosophical, environmental and biological arguments in favor of vegetarianism is, the arguments against it are far more intriguing than even an inveterate meat-eater would imagine. For one thing, people long believed that life simply could not be sustained without meat. In 1654, the untimely death of Robert Norwood, an outspoken proponent of what today would be called a vegan diet, was widely believed to have been caused by malnutrition.

But do the animals that provide the meat that sustains life have souls, feelings? Could they be killed without remorse? Those questions long swirled around vegetarianism. Descartes, an advocate of vegetarianism for health reasons, nevertheless insisted that animals were incapable of thought or emotions. Even among those who otherwise admired Cartesian thinking, many took great offense at the suggestion that their cats and dogs were unfeeling beasts. In fact, as a reaction to Descartes, many philosophers started asserting that animals did have thoughts and feelings and therefore should not be consumed.

But we have to eat something. Today, many people accord feelings, emotions and thoughts to animals, but that has not stopped most of us from eating them. Even if we someday discovered that vegetables also have feelings, we would not starve ourselves because of it. In Hinduism, it is said that a true saint would live on nothing but air and that humans are incapable of such perfection.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 656 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton (January 8, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393052206
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393052206
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #121,809 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Tristram Stuart
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
vegetarian debate, dietary medicine, vegetarian arguments, radical vegetarians, vegetarian philosophy, vegetable regimen, happy lamb, vegetarian community, abstinence from flesh, vegetable diet, herbivorous diet
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Thomas Tryon, Turkish Spy, Roger Crab, Golden Age, French Revolution, John Robins, Scotland's Vegetarian Dynasty, Joseph Ritson, John Evelyn, George Cheyne, The Sparing Diet, Voltaire's Hindu Prophet, John Zephaniah Holwell, Hyder Ali, The Malthusian Tragedy, Royal Society, Feeding the World, Ananda Ranga, Brahmin of Britain, John Bull, Queen Mab, John Oswald, The Marquis de Valady, East India Company, Eating Beef
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Exhaustive, detailed, but sometimes narrow, history, April 7, 2007
By Julian Elson "Jules" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
There is no doubt that Tristram Stuart has conducted a great deal of research in order to write The Bloodless Revolution. He has a astute eye for minute details unique personalities. Doctors, cranks, religious fanatics, scientists, and others, some famous and some obscure, are rendered with thorough and loving detail. If nothing else, the sheer scope of Stuart's work is illustrative of how broad and diverse a movement vegetarianism is.

Yet sometimes I feel that Stuart was in some ways blinded by his own hypotheses and unwilling to look at alternative views. Stuart believes that European vegetarianism is rooted in Indian culture. This is not an indefensible view, but his case for it would have been stronger if he had answered some potential objections to such assertions, rather than ignoring them. Furthermore, literally all of European history between Pythagoras and English Revolution is simply missing. It is perfectly reasonable for Mr. Stuart to focus on a particular era, but readers with some preestablished famniliarity with vegetarian history -- a group likely to comprise a significant portion of The Bloodless Revolution's readers -- are likely to ask questions. For instance, why does St. Francis of Assisi not appear once in the entire book? Why is Leonardo da Vinci only mentioned in a quote comparing him to the Indians? Should the Cathars be ignored? It is one thing to focus on a specific era of history -- the English Revolution to the Second World War -- but it is another to leap straight from Pythagoras to Francis Bacon while ignoring virtually all of the intervening millenia. In short, if Stuart wants to emphasis the critical role of Indian influence on European vegetarianism, he should have investigated earlier indigenous European vegetarian movements or ideas and, if the evidence showed them not to be influential, shown us such evidence, rather than ignoring the whole question.

Second, Stuart often magnifies a dichotomy between animal welfare activists who called for less brutal treatment of domesticated animals and vegetarians who opposed meat consumption. While it is certainly true that there were and are numerous animal welfare activists who sought the reform, rather than abolition, of meat consumption (and vegetarians indifferent to animal welfare), Stuart seems to imply that these were each others' chief opponents. There is little mention of the arguments of those who opposed both animal welfarists and vegetarians. From my impression, it seems that Stuart himself happens to be an animal welfarist who has no problems with meat consumption so long as the animals involved are treated humanely. There is nothing wrong with this viewpoint, but sometimes I wonder whether Stuart's emphasis on welfarists as opponents, rather than allies, of vegetarians, is an attempt to defend his own position against worries about the persuasiveness of ethical vegetarian arguments, and whether Stuart ignores most views less sympathetic to animals than welfarism or vegetarianism because he personally finds them so unpersuasive that he feels they needn't be covered.

Lastly, while Stuart has a brilliant eye for detail and color, he has little time for facts or demographics. Such information may be hard to come by, but could there have been more information? For example, could there be some way of estimating the fraction of vegetarians in the British population from 1600 to modern times? Could we find out the average meat consumption per capita over time? I did not pick this up expecting a book heavy on statistics or demographics, but I nonetheless found the absence of even minimal attention to such matters disappointing.

Nonetheless, The Bloodless Revolution is a thoroughly researched, well-written, and original work. It provides a valuable resource to anyone interested in the history of vegetarianism in the modern era. I found it quite an enjoyable read, and the detailed portraits of the individuals, from meticulous scientists to enthusiastic religious cranks, were all a pleasure to read. I took great pleasure in reading it over several weeks.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A classic!, August 10, 2007
This is one of the most informative and important books that I have ever read. I have worked for a half century in the diet and health research and policy arena and have reluctantly but most assuredly because convinced of the health superiority of a diet comprised of plant-based foods. Along the way I also have become very much aware of the difficulty of communicating this message to the professional and public communities. Although serious interest in this topic is emerging in the last few years, even last few months, I am also aware of a visceral sometimes very hostile reaction against this view from a relatively small but sometimes influential group of people. The gap between the believers and non-believers in this way of eating could hardly be more contentious. Thus I have frequently wondered about the question of whatever happened to rational, civil discourse on a topic such as this, especially at a time when we are getting so much empirical data to support the use of a plant-based diet and so much demand for health care solutions.

This book comes as close as any to providing the explanation that I have sought. Although I am not a professional historian or philosopher, I have long had an avid interest in these disciplines. I strongly believe in that age-old adage that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it. However limited my perspective may be, I nonetheless find this book by Tristram Stuart to be an incredible presentation of some events and ideas that really go a long way to help provide an answer to my question.

I am still awed by the depth and sophistication of knowledge that existed among leading scholars and medical people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries concerning the use of a plant-based diet. I am sure that it is possible to quibble about Stuart's selection and interpretation of references, as is true of almost any historical account. Nonetheless, I am impressed with these references, not only because of their number, but also because of Stuart's liberal use of direct quotations--these can be easily confirmed, if necessary. But, more to the point, I found that so many of the views of these early writers, who had limited access to empirical data, to be remarkably well confirmed with the highly technical findings gathered in recent years. With my son, Tom, we write about these findings in our own book, "The China Study. Startling Implications of Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health".

There are many other impressive and largely unknown findings told in this book. I especially enjoyed the views on diet and health of these writers that were at the core of philosophical discussions that were to shape Renaissance thinking, especially on matters that led to political reform.

I highly recommend this book--it is full of enormously impressive content that says so much about what we are now experiencing in this field. Tristram Stuart is a remarkably capable young writer and I very much hope that he will continue writing more such material!

In the meanwhile, we now desperately need some of the courage and creativity of these early writers--a revolution in health could hardly be more needed. Thank you, Tristram Stuart, for sharing your thoughts.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A banquet for the mind, January 6, 2008
By Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
C.S. Lewis once delightedly insisted that he couldn't be offered "a mug of tea that was too big or a book that was too long." Being less stalwart than he, my heart sank when I saw the size of the wonderfully named Tristram Stuart's The Bloodless Revolution. But I was quickly captivated by Stuart's enjoyable style, his astounding erudition, the sheer interest of his subject matter, and the exquisite illustrations, in both color and black-and-white.

Stuart writes intellectual history in the old-fashioned graceful way of a Basil Wiley, Keith Thomas, or Carolyn Merchant. He excels at showing the cultural, economic, moral, and religious influences from Francis Bacon through the nineteenth century romantic period on attitudes towards a meatless diet. I was especially intrigued to discover that some of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century utilitarians and economists regarded vegetarianism as a means of overcoming the Malthusian disparity between population and resources--a very forward-looking strategy indeed. Stuart's epilogue, in which he discusses the early twentieth-century's "post-Rousseauist" back-to-nature movement that inspired folks as diverse as Gandhi and Hitler, is fascinating. I hope that it serves as the seed for Stuart's next book.

All in all, highly recommended for those interested in the history and culture of vegetarianism as well as those interested in modern British intellectual history. For collections of some of the primary sources referred to by Stuart, the reader may wish to consult Ethical Vegetarianism from Pythagoras to Peter Singer and Religious Vegetarianism from Hesiod to the Dalai Lama.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, could be better
Readers, take note of a few things -
Though the author comes up eventually in favor of cutting back on meat products for ecological reasons, it is my impression is not... Read more
Published 19 months ago by CJ

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring.
I've been a vegetarian for 25 years and was excited to get this book, which would give me insight into the history of 'my people'. Read more
Published on July 1, 2007 by Anonymous

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