Breeds of Empire

Ships of empire carried not just merchandise, soldiers and administrators but also equine genes from as far a field as Europe, Arabia, the Americas, China and Japan. In the process, they introduced horses into parts of the world not native to that animal in historical times. As a result, horses in Thailand, the Philippine Horses, the Cape Horse in South Africa and the Basotho Pony in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho share a genetic lineage with the horse found in the Indonesian archipelago.

This book explores the ‘invention’ of specific breeds of horse in the context of imperial design and colonial trade routes. Here, it focuses on the introduction, invention and use of the horse in Thailand, the Philippines and southern Africa as well as examining its roots and evolution within Indonesia. In addition, it examines the colonial trade in horses within the Indian Ocean and discusses the historiographical and methodological problems associated with writing a more species or horse-centric history.

This is a fascinating study that will appeal not only to scholars but also to the broad horse-reading public interested in all things equine.

1. Breeds of Empire and the ‘Invention’ of the Horse (Greg Bankoff and Sandra Swart)
2. Southeast Asia and Southern Africa in the Maritime Horse Trade of the Indian Ocean, c. 1800–1914 (William Gervase Clarence-Smith)
3. Horse Breeding, Long-distance Horse Trading and Royal Courts in Indonesian History, 1500–1900 (Peter Boomgaard)
4. The ‘Arab’ of the Indonesian Archipelago: Famed Horse Breeds of Sumbawa (Bernice de Jong Boers)
5. Javanese Horses for the Court of Ayutthaya (Dhiravat na Pombejra)
6. Colonising New Lands: Horses in the Philippines (Greg Bankoff)
7. Adapting to a New Environment: The Philippine Horse (Greg Bankoff)
8. Riding High – Horses, Power and Settler Society in Southern Africa, c. 1654–1840 (Sandra Swart)
9. The ‘Ox That Deceives’: The Meanings of the ‘Basotho Pony’ in Southern Africa (Sandra Swart)
10. ‘Together yet Apart’: Towards a Horse-story (Greg Bankoff and Sandra Swart)
Notes, Bibliography, Index

Excerpt:

Bankoff_extract.pdf

Greg Bankoff and Sandra Swart have shone a light into an important, but what they contend is a largely over-looked, connection between the horse and the expansion of trading and political empires.

Breeds of Empire is a worthy addition to that body of scholarship interested in uncovering and expanding the secluded minutiae of history.

Reviewed by Duncan Stearn, Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 97

This book is full of interest. The geographical and historical core of it may be found in the sub-title. Its chief authors, Greg Bankoff and Sandra Swart, are respectively authorities on the Philippines and Southern Africa: the former discusses the introduction of horses in the Philippines, their role in its colonial history, their impact on and adaptation to the environment; the latter the role of horses in settler South Africa and the emergence of the ‘Besotho pony’ in Lesotho.

Reviewed by Nicholas Tarling, New Zealand Asia Institute, IIAS Newsletter 52, 2009

Breeds of Empire is a marvelous book about the horses and people of a region that many readers from western countries know little about.

[It] is a major contribution to a more global perspective on the topic of domestic animals and people. Science and practice, animal versus human colonization, and animals personifying human values are all dealt with here, on the well-founded assumption that horses are particularlly central to human history and thinking.

Reviewed by Margaret E. Derry, University of Guelph, Agricultural History, vol. 83, no. 3, Summer 2009

This book is full of interest.

The principal authors comment on the story from many points of view and offer many insights on the relationships of horse and human and also some on the relationships among humans.

Reviewed by Nicholas Tarling, New Zealand Asia Institute, The Newsletter, no. 52, Winter 2009

Greg Bankoff

Greg Bankoff is a social and environmental historian of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In particular, he writes on environmental-society interactions with respect to natural hazards, resources, human-animal relations, and issues of social equity and labour.

Among his publications are Crime, Society and the State in the Nineteenth Century Philippines (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1996) and Cultures of Disaster: Society and Natural Hazard in the Philippines (London, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). He is also coeditor of Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People (with George Frerks and Dorothea Hilhorst, London: Earthscan, 2004).

Bankoff's most recent books include a co-edited volume along with Peter Boomgaard, A History of Natural Resources in Asia: The Wealth of Nature (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007).

Dr. Sandra Swart

Sandra Swart received her doctorate in history, and simultaneously an MSC in Environmental Management from the University of Oxford. She is currently a lecturer in history at Stellenbosch University. She has two books out, one co-edited (Canis Africanis - a dog history of Southern Africa, Brill, 2008) and one co-authored, (Breeds of Empire: The 'invention' of the horse in the Philippines and Southern Africa, 1500- 1950, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2007).

Swart is currently busy working on High Horses - essays on history and horses in southern Africa. In the last year she has won both an HB & MJ Thom award and an Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust award.

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Contents

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The ’Invention’ of the Horse in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa 1500-1950

by Greg Bankoff & Sandra Swart

Greg Bankoff

Dr. Sandra Swart

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