A Short History of Vegetarianism

I just want to say I got my calendar mixed up. May, not April, is Local History Month, so I was a little premature with my Luddite post last month. This month, I’m delving into the history of vegetarianism.

In my time-slip trilogy, my heroine is a vegetarian sent back to 1812. She has several amusing conversations about her diet, which, amongst other things, causes her to be labelled as a radical.

This week in the UK it’s also National Vegetarian Week. Modern vegetarianism has been argued to have come to the fore in the eighteenth century following the new humanist ideas of the Enlightenment.

However, vegetarianism has been around for thousands of years. For some, it was grounded in religious beliefs and rituals, but for most because of necessity. Meat and dairy products were often a luxury enjoyed only by the wealthy.

Before we get to the meat (or lack of 😉) of the topic, vegetarians were not labelled so until around the 1830s. Before that, they were said to follow the “Pythagorean diet” after the Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras. Pythagoras (580 BCE) abstained from the consumption of the flesh of slaughtered animals.

Antiquity

Several famous figures practised vegetarianism. Free thinkers believed animals should be treated as kindred spirits. Some Babylonians and Egyptians followed a vegetarian ideology. Based on karmic beliefs in reincarnation, many did not eat flesh or wear animal-derived clothing.

In a society that killed wild animals for entertainment, the Romans found Pythagorean beliefs subversive. Vegetarians kept their eating habits quiet, but the meat-free diet continued to spread over the centuries.

History of vegetarianism — Photo by Eva Bronzini

The Middle Ages

A meat-free diet was central to early Eastern religious philosophies, like Buddhism and Hinduism, that promoted non-violence and respect for all life forms.

However, vegetarians were despised and persecuted by the Christian Church, which advocated human supremacy over all living things. Some notable vegetarians who escaped persecution were St. David, the patron saint of Wales, and St. Francis of Assisi, a famous friend of animals and their patron saint.

The Renaissance and Enlightenment

The rediscovery of classical philosophy led to the realisation that animals, too, could communicate and experience pain and emotions. Man’s place in the order of creation was re-assessed, and many raised moral objections to the mistreatment of animals.

Meat was also an expensive luxury, but imperial expansion also brought new vegetables to Europe such as potatoes, cauliflower, maize (corn/sweetcorn). This made a meat-free diet easier, and the health benefits became apparent.

Romanticism

Many romantics promoted a meat-free diet as part of their close relationship with nature and denounced the consumption of meat as inhumane.

Alexander Pope wrote an essay in 1713, Against Barbarity in Animals. In 1803, Joseph Ritson wrote An Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food, as a Moral Duty. Bothcriticised the cruelty of killing animals and promoted the health benefits of the meat-free diet. In 1813, Percy Bysshe Shelley published A Vindication of Natural Diet, and Lord Byron also tried to go meat-free but did not enjoy it and gave up.

Like many romantics, Shelley saw vegetarianism as a form of political activism and believed it would end social injustice, poverty, crime, aggression, capitalism and war.

The Victorians

The Vegetarian Society was established in Salford in 1847. In 1888, the group split, and the London Vegetarian Society was formed.

By the 1880s, vegetarian restaurants had sprung up in London and were a popular choice for a cheap and nutritious meal in a respectable setting.

Eighteenth-Century Vegetarian Cookbooks

There are few vegetarian cookbooks from the period. If you’re interested, you can still buy Primitive Cookery; or the Kitchen Garden Display’d. This cookbook from 1767 would loosely meet the needs of an ovo-lacto diet. It’s a collection of recipes to encourage healthy eating for those who could not afford to eat meat, rather than chose not to for ethical reasons.