Written on 27 December 2012.

World Veganism - past, present and future

This is the complete index to all the blogs written by John Davis, former IVu Manager and Historian, between February 2010 and December 2012. That have attracted the most interest, including all the historical items, have been compiled into a FREE e-book.

If you prefer to download the e-book, it’s at: www.ivu.org/history/Vegan_History.pdf (PDF 8mb) - below is the introduction and contents, and links to all the articles on this website. The link to the PDF book is repeated at the bottom:

World Veganism – past, present, and future

By John Davis, former IVU Manager and Historian
A collection of blogs © John Davis 2010-12

Introduction

Creating this as an e-book, either on this website or the PDF versions, has several advantages. For example:

- in the blog about interviews on SMTV, just click on the links to watch the videos
- in the bibliography click to read a complete scan of an original very old book.
- on the contents page click a link to go direct to any item, then click ‘back to top’.
- you can also, of course, use other features such as search, zoom etc. etc.
- a great advance on printed books…

The blogs were posted weekly from February 2010 and each is self-contained, with the assumption that readers might not have seen any of the others. So feel free to start anywhere, and read them in any order, no need to read from the beginning.

The blogs are grouped into a few sections:

1 – History: It is impossible to consider a history of veganism without putting it in the wider context, so there is a lot that is ‘nearly vegan’ along the way. The word vegan was invented in 1944, but for a long time before that there were many people holding similar, though not necessarily identical views. The real beginning is from 1806, where see a movement that could be considered vegan by today’s standards. Before that there are some thoughts about people moving in the right direction.

2 – Regions – with histories: Deals with various regions of the world, and includes brief histories of those areas. Most inevitably start out as ovo- and/or lacto-vegetarian, but end up vegan, hence the use of veg*ism, or just veg, as a shorthand.

3 - IVU from 1908 and some highlights along the way – that is also all vegan by the end of the 20th century.

4 – World View: Some veg activities and events around the world in recent years.

5 – Activism around the UK: Ideas for local groups, based on some in the UK which could be adapted.

6 – Directions: A collection of thoughts about where we’re at and where we’re going.

Contents

1 - Blog of Blogs - top 20 most popular
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HISTORY

2 - Fast Food? – it’s just distorted jungle food
3 - Were there Vegans in the Ancient World?
4 - Medieval Mindsets – ‘vegans’ in the middle ages
5 - Veganism from 1806 - a brief timeline summary of most of this section
6 - Dr. William Lambe - father of vegan nutrition, and his vegan biographer
7 - Dr. Lambe's Rural Roots - his childhood and retirement in Herefordshire
8 - Prototype Vegans - PDF, link to vegansociety.com - written for The Vegan, Winter 2010
9 - John Frank Newton - and the 'vegan' commune of 1813
10 - Shelley - the first celebrity vegan
11 - Lewis Gompertz – Jewish ‘vegan’ and co-founder of the RSPCA in 1824
12 - Sylvester Graham - the original American vegan baker
13 - Taking the Waters - transatlantic pioneer plant-food doctors
14 - The Vegan School that invented Vegetarians
15 - Vegetarian equals vegan!
16 - The earliest known uses of the word 'vegetarian' (1842-48) - (link to ivu.org) the full and very detailed research showing how the first vegetarians were, in every respect, what we now call vegan.
17 - Bronson Alcott - American pioneer vegan
18 - Henry David Thoreau and the Roots of Plantism
19 - Dr. John Snow - a vegan of genius
20 - The Truth Tester 1846-48 - a vegan journal
21 - The Curious Affair of The Vegetarian Advocate (1848-50)
22 - London Vegetarian Association, 1850s – the world’s first ‘vegan society’
23 - Prof. Francis W. Newman and the attempted ‘vegan’ revolution of 1871
24 - The First Vegan Cookbook - New York 1874
25 - Gustav Schlickeysen – 1875 German vegan, raw-foodist, fruitarian
26 - Was Vitamin B12 a problem for 19th century ‘vegans’?
27 - The Vegetus Myth - an attempt to pretend that vegetarians didn’t just eat vegetation.
28 - Henry Salt - the father of animal rights
29 - Why Dresden? The origins of IVU
30 - Gandhi - and the launching of veganism
31 - The Invention of the Vegans - the first Vegan Society
32 - Vegans are Vegetarians too - early years of the Vegan Society
33 - Vegan Goes Global - the first ten years, 1944-54
34 - Hygiene cleans up - naturally of course
35 - How the Vegans landed in America
36 - The Veganizing of International Veg Events
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REGIONS with histories