Uncovering the violent history of man’s best friend
Across the Atlantic world, canines were bred, trained, and unleashed to hunt enslaved people, crush resistance, patrol colonial borders, and enforce racial terror. From slave plantations and colonial outposts to Jim Crow streets and modern policing, dogs became living instruments of surveillance and state control —not merely companions to empire, but one of its most effective weapons.
Canine Power traces the largely unknown roles of dogs in shaping slavery, colonialism, and racial control across the Americas and Africa from the pre-colonial era to the twenty-first century. At this same time, it is also a story of the resilience of the enslaved and colonized people who confronted, evaded, and survived these oppressive systems. Revealing how humans transformed dogs into instruments of domination, historians Tyler D. Parry and Charlton W. Yingling reveal the enduring legacy of that violence in the modern world.
