Contents
This book explores the ‘invention’ of specific breeds of horse in the context of imperial design and colonial trade routes. As a phenomenon in world history, colonialism is shown to have had repercussions beyond those usually associated with its impact on colonial peoples and environments and to have also had long-lasting consequences on animal populations like the horse. 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. The Philippine Horses, horses in Thailand, 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.
Divided into two sections, the book deals respectively with the introduction, invention and use of the horse in the Philippines, Thailand and southern Africa as well as examining its roots and evolution within Indonesia. The study is supplemented by a discussion of the colonial trade in horses within the Indian Ocean and by introductory and concluding sections written by the principal authors that discuss the historiographical and methodological problems associated with writing a more species or horse-centric history.

About the (principal) authors
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. He is Associate Professor, History Department, University of Auckland.
Sandra Swart is a social and environmental historian of southern Africa. She received both a DPhil in Modern History and MSc in Environmental Change from the University of Oxford. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch, where she is researching the history of the horse and horse-based society in southern Africa.