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

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.