Toni Morrison once observed: ‘If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.’ This is what I have set out to do in filling the historiographical lacuna in the literature on horses, and indeed the role of animals and the environment more generally, in the history of southern Africa. Horses act as a way into understanding social and political processes, as part of what has been termed the ‘animal turn’ in the social sciences. Recent historiography is beginning to explore the importance of animals in human affairs and has found that they have their own histories both independently of and profoundly revealing of human history. My principal research interest lies simply in the effects of an inter-species relationship between a particularly well-evolved primate (Homo sapiens) and an evolving odd-toed ungulate of the family Equidae (Equus caballus). In this book, I explore the ramifications of this relationship for both species and its significance in effecting change within their social and natural environments.

Adventures in fieldwork

Any research project that requires intense archival and field research faces constraints imposed on one's time – not by teaching, which is a pleasure, but by the continual hunt for funding and endless administrative duties of today's university. The shell-shocked state of academia is reminiscent of Marshall Foch's defiant summation at the Battle of the Marne: ‘Hard pressed on my right. My centre is yielding. Impossible to manoeuvre. Situation excellent. I shall attack.’ In much the same spirit, I embarked on this project.

So, to the surprise of my colleagues and the anxiety of my friends, I set off to pursue the stories about horses in southern Africa. I went from the more sedate state archives of Maseru, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Pretoria and London to the saddler and hackney communities of the Western Cape, to the race track, to the Boerperde of the Eastern Cape and Free State, to the Nooitgedacht enthusiasts of the north, to the mountain villages of the Highlands of Lesotho. One theme generated by far the greatest quantity of paper (the diet on which historians, like Coleoptera, feed) – the racing industry.