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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how eighteenth and nineteenth century natural histories presented and understood brown rats as a species novel to Europe, as well as declining black rat populations.

Paper long abstract

Brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) arrived in Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century and quickly became one of the dominant murid species on the continent, driving black rats (Rattus rattus) to local extinction in many areas. Their "invasion", although predating the concept of invasivity, did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. In this era of growing professionalisation and standardisation of natural history, many natural histories of the eighteenth and nineteenth century commented on these novel rats, and they came to be understood by some as a separate species. This period also featured many differing, competing meanings of the species concept. The arrival of brown rats troubled some definitions and confirmed others. This paper explores how brown rats featured in eighteenth century natural histories and how they challenged ideas of taxonomical nomenclature and animal behaviour. I trace how various natural historians viewed brown rats, and what stories of their spread through Europe were in circulation at the time. Brown rats' arrival cannot be understood separately from the related decline in black rat populations, and both will be considered in relation to one another.