Ships of empire carried not just merchandise, soldiers and administrators but also equine genes from as far afield 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.

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 professor of modern history in the Department of History, University of Hull. 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 co-editor of Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People (with Georg Frerks and Dorothea Hilhorst, London: Earthscan, 2004). Sandra Swart is an environmental and social historian of southern Africa. She received both a DPhil in Modern History and MSc in Environmental Change from the University of Oxford. She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch. She has published on themes as various as Afrikaner identity, animals in history and social rebellion in, amongst others, the Journal of Southern African Studies and Journal of African History. She is the co-editor, with Lance van Sittert, of Canis Africanis: A Dog History of Southern Africa and she is currently writing the history of horses in southern Africa.