Session Abstract

Animals have long been of deep interest to humans, yet were not serious objects of academic scholarship until the recent “animal turn” in the humanities and social sciences.  The magnitude and swiftness of this turn is clear in light of a 1974 parody social history that used the history of pets.  Anyone reading that piece today without knowing its context would miss the joke.  As recently as twenty years ago the study of animals was often dismissed as strange or silly, but there now exists a substantial body of animal studies scholarship, and a growing professional infrastructure of journals, list-serves, conferences and societies.  Older work on animals depicted them as passive objects, and as blank slates for human ideas and attitudes.  Current historical scholarship examines the significance of animals as historical beings that shape material and social realms, and develops theoretical foundations for animal agency and human-animal relations.  Though many historians may not place themselves within animal studies, they are nonetheless paying serious attention to animals as historical subjects within their periods and sub-disciplines.

 Within the animal turn, there has been surge of work about horses in recent years.  Horses have a unique relationship with humans; perhaps no other animal has been important in so many ways. Horses have provided power and mobility; they have functioned as prime movers, workers, companions, co-residents, patients, athletes, entertainers objects of art, prized possessions and means to power; they have been crucial to agriculture, industry, urban life, military power, trade and the rise of the state.  The history of horses is inseparably intertwined with that of human society, and out of this rich shared history come questions for scholarly investigation in many historical fields. 

The purpose of this panel is to examine a variety of approaches within this multi-faceted topic, and to suggest research agendas for future scholarship.  The participants work in global and national history, imperial, borderland and environmental history, and the history of science and technology, and people interested in these areas and in animal history/studies.  The papers explore these themes: 1) Horses within the process of imperial conquest and resistance; 2) Horses as agents of environmental change; 3) Horse-human relations; 4) Horses as site of scientific knowledge, traditional practice, market interests, and state power.  Pekka Hamalainen compares the “kinetic empires” of the Mongols and Comanches to reevaluate the meaning of empire and mobility.  Richard Slatta looks at the horse empires and cultures of North and South America to explore horse human relations and to suggest a research agenda for the horse history.  Working at the intersection of environmental and colonial history, Sandra Swart analyzes horses as factors in conquest, resistance and state building in South Africa.  Margaret Derry provides a case study of horse breeding,  examining conflicts over stallion enrollment in nineteenth and twentieth century North America that reveal the interplay of scientific knowledge, breeding practice, horse markets and state interest.