Introduction: Horses and Courts: The Reins of Power

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Notes

1 Animal humanities began with now classic historical studies such as Harriet Ritvo’s The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA, 1987), and theoretical groundwork such as Donna J. Haraway’s The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago, 2003) and When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). See, for example, Erica Fudge, Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (Basingstoke, 1999); Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY, 2006); Richard Nash, Wild Enlightenment: The Borders of Human Identity in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, 2003); Margaret E. Derry, Bred for Perfection: Shorthorn Cattle, Collies, and Arabian Horses since 1800, ‘Animals, History, Culture’ series, Harriet Ritvo (ed.) (Baltimore, 2004); Suraiya Faroqhi, ed., Animals and People in the Ottoman Empire (Istanbul, 2010); Harriet Ritvo, Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras: Essays on Animals and History (Charlottesville, 2011); Arthur MacGregor, Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interaction from the Norman Conquest to World War One (London, 2012); Alan Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford, 2014); Cosmopolitan Animals, Kaori Nagai, Karen Jones, Donna Landry, Monica Mattfeld, Caroline Rooney and Charlotte Sleigh (eds) (Basingstoke, 2015); Lucinda Cole, Imperfect Creatures: Vermin, Literature, and the Sciences of Life, 1600-1740 (Ann Arbor, 2016); and Laura Brown, Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination (Ithaca, NY, 2017).

2 Important studies focused on horses, in addition to works mentioned below, include Giles Worsley, The British Stable: An Architectural and Social History (New Haven and London, 2004); Karen Raber and Treva Tucker (eds), The Culture of the Horse: Status, Discipline, and Identity in the Early Modern World (New York, 2005); Peter Edwards, Horse and Man in Early Modern England (London, 2007); idem., Horses and the Aristocratic Lifestyle in Early Modern England: William Cavendish, First Earl of Devonshire (1551–1626) and his Horses (Woodbridge, 2018); and as editor, with Karl A. E. Enenkel and Elspeth Graham, The Horse as Cultural Icon: The Real and Symbolic Horse in the Early Modern World (Leiden, 2012); Greg Bankoff and Sandra Swart, Breeds of Empire: The ‘Invention’ of the Horse in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa, 1500–1950 (Copenhagen, 2008); Sandra Swart, Riding High: Horses, Humans and History in South Africa (Johannesburg, 2010); Susanna Forrest, The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey through Human History (London: Atlantic Books, 2016); Ulrich Rauff, Farewell to the Horse: The Final Century of Our Relationship, trans. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp (London, 2017); Monica Mattfeld, Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship (University Park, PA, 2017); and Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (eds), Equestrian Cultures: Horses, Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity (Chicago, 2019).

3 Antonia Fraser, King Charles II (London, 1979), pp. 121-4

4 See the British Library’s digital version of the lavishly illustrated book published to commemorate this event, Courses de testes et de bague faittes par le roy et par les princes et seigneurs de sa cour en l’année 1662 (Paris, 1670), by Esprit Fléchier, Charles Perrault and Israel Silvestre: https://www.bl.uk/treasures/festivalbooks/BookDetails.aspx?strFest=0061.

5 Philip Mansel, King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV (London, 2019), pp. 42, 51, 131, 212.

6 John Evelyn, Kalendarium 1673–1689: The Diary of John Evelyn, E. S. deBeer (ed.), 6 vols. (Oxford, 1955), vol. IV, pp. 398-9; this passage cited with commentary in Donna Landry, Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture, in ‘Animals, History, Culture’ series, Harriet Ritvo (ed.) (Baltimore, 2008), p. 97.

7 Mansel, King of the World, p. 212.

8 Reports from Her Majesty’s Consuls on the Manufactures, Commerce, &c., of their Consular Districts. Part I (London, 1875), pp. 43-7.

9 Donna Landry, ‘Habsburg Lipizzaners, English Thoroughbreds and the Paradoxes of Purity’, in Horse Breeds and Human Society: Purity, Identity, and the Making of the Modern Horse, Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (eds) (Routledge, forthcoming 2020).

10 David Oldrey, Timothy Cox and Richard Nash, The Heath and the Horse: A History of Newmarket (London, 2015); Sean Magee and Sally Aird, Ascot: The History (London, 2002); Landry, Noble Brutes, pp. 34, 56, 86-9, 102-03, 115.

11 Mansel, King of the World, p. 212.

12 Landry, Noble Brutes, passim.

13 Sylvia Loch, The Royal Horse of Europe: The Story of the Andalusian and Lusitano (London, 1986).

14 Treasures of Catherine the Great (exhibition catalogue, London, 2000), p. 41. The number of copies of this portrait suggests its popularity.

15 Philip Mansel, ‘The Politics of the French Royal Stables, from Henri III to Louis XVI’, forthcoming.

16 Barney White-Spunner, Horse Guards (London, 2006), p. 300.

17 Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, p. 130.

18 Landry, Noble Brutes, p. 145.

19 Margaret E. Derry, Horses in Society: A Story of Animal Breeding and Marketing Culture, 1800–1920 (Toronto, 2006), pp. 101-55.

20 Donna Landry, ‘Horses at Waterloo, 1815’, in Equestrian Cultures: Horses, Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity, Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (eds) (Chicago, 2019), pp. 26-38.

21 Lucio Lami, Isbuscenskij, l’ ultima carica (Milan, 1970).

22 John Ellis, Cavalry: The History of Mounted Warfare (New York, 1978), p. 185.

23 See for example https://spasstower.ru/en/participants/kremlin-equestrian-school/ [accessed 2 August 2019].

24 See Jane Ridley’s abstract: https://research.kent.ac.uk/studiesinthelongeighteenthcentury/wp-content/uploads/sites/133/2018/03/Conference-programme.pdf.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Donna Landry

Donna Landry

Donna Landry is the author of Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture (2008), and co-editor, with Kaori Nagai et al, of Cosmopolitan Animals (2015). She is Emeritus Professor of English and former Director of the Centre for Studies in the Long Eighteenth Century at the University Kent, Canterbury. Landry is one of the founders of the Evliya Çelebi Ride and Way that established Turkey’s first UNESCO-approved equestrian route and promotes horseback travel: http://kent.ac.uk/english/evliya/index.html.

Philip Mansel

Philip Mansel

Philip Mansel is a historian of France and the Middle East. His latest books are Aleppo: the Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City (2016) and King of the World: The Life of Louis XIV (2019). He is a co-founder of the Society for Court Studies (www.courtstudies.org) and editor emeritus of The Court Historian.