A Taste for Purity - (Columbia Studies in International and Global History) by Julia Hauser

About the Book

Julia Hauser explores the global history of vegetarianism from the mid-nineteenth century to the early Cold War. She demonstrates that vegetarians in India and the West shared notions of purity, which drew some toward not only internationalism and anticolonialism but also racism, nationalism, and violence.

Book Synopsis

In nineteenth-century Europe and North America, an organized vegetarian movement began warning of the health risks and ethical problems of meat eating. Presenting a vegetarian diet as a cure for the social ills brought on by industrialization and urbanization, this movement idealized South Asia as a model. In colonial India, where diets were far more varied than Western admirers realized, new motives for avoiding meat also took hold. Hindu nationalists claimed that vegetarianism would cleanse the body for anticolonial resistance, and an increasingly militant cow protection movement mobilized against meat eaters, particularly Muslims.

Unearthing the connections among these developments and many others, Julia Hauser explores the global history of vegetarianism from the mid-nineteenth century to the early Cold War. She traces personal networks and exchanges of knowledge spanning Europe, the United States, and South Asia, highlighting mutual influence as well as the disconnects of cross-cultural encounters. Hauser argues that vegetarianism in this period was motivated by expansive visions of moral, physical, and even racial purification. Adherents were convinced that society could be changed by transforming the body of the individual. Hauser demonstrates that vegetarians in India and the West shared notions of purity, which drew some toward not only internationalism and anticolonialism but also racism, nationalism, and violence. Finding preoccupations with race and masculinity as well as links to colonialism and eugenics, she reveals the implication of vegetarian movements in exclusionary, hierarchical projects. Deeply researched and compellingly argued, A Taste for Purity rewrites the history of vegetarianism on a global scale.

Review Quotes

Hauser's work makes a significant contribution, both methodologically and topically. Her unique look at vegetarianism will be helpful to food scholars...[and] global historians.--Kathryn R. Falvo, Texas A&M University at Galveston "American Historical Review"

A groundbreaking approach to the history of vegetarianism in modern India and abroad.-- "Current History"

Central today to many modern lifestyles and movements, vegetarianism is in fact rooted in a deep history, now masterfully explored by Julia Hauser. Rich in detail, often surprising, and written in clear prose, this study is sure to challenge established notions of West and East, modern and traditional, left and right. Much food for thought!--Paul Nolte, Free University Berlin

Vegetarianism's political and ecological imperatives have long wanted for a historian capable of excavating their roots. Julia Hauser offers an electric, wholly original account of the nationalist and international politics, racial paradigms, and unexpected encounters between German, Swiss, American, and Indian thinkers as they crafted modern vegetarianism's moral stance.--Benjamin Siegel, author of Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India

About the Author

Julia Hauser is senior lecturer in modern history at the University of Kassel. She is the author of German Religious Women in Late Ottoman Beirut: Competing Missions (2015) and a coeditor of Insatiable Appetite: Food as a Cultural Signifier in the Middle East and Beyond (2019).