Riding High

Sandra Swart

Description

Horses were key to the colonial economies of southern Africa, buttressing the socio-political order and inspiring contemporary imaginations. Just as they had done in Europe, Asia, the Americas and North Africa, these equine colonizers not only provided power and transportation to settlers (and later indigenous peoples) but also helped transform their new biophysical and social environments.
The horses introduced to the southern tip of Africa were not only agents but subjects of enduring changes. This book explores the introduction of these horses under VOC rule in the mid-seventeenth century, their dissemination into the interior, their acquisition by indigenous groups and their ever-shifting roles. In undergoing their relocation to the Cape, the horse of the Dutch empire in southeast Asia experienced a physical transformation over time. Establishing an early breeding stock was fraught with difficulty and horses remained vulnerable in the new and dangerous environment. They had to be nurtured into defending their owners’ ambitions: first those of the white settlement and then African and other hybrid social groupings. The book traces the way horses were adapted by shifting human needs in the nineteenth century. It focuses on their experiences in the South African War, on the cusp of the twentieth century, and highlights how horses remained integral to civic functioning on various levels, replaced with mechanization only after lively debate.
The book thus reinserts the horse into the broader historical narrative. The socio-economic and political ramifications of their introduction is delineated. The idea of ecological imperialism is tested in order to draw southern African environmental history into a wider global dialogue on socio-environmental historiographical issues. The focus is also on the symbolic dimension that led horses to be both feared and desired. Even the sensory dimensions of this species’ interaction with human societies is explored.
Chapter 1: ‘But where’s the bloody horse?’ Humans, Horses and Historiography
Chapter 2: The Reins of Power: Equine Ecological Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Chapter 3: Blood Horses: Equine Breeding, Lineage and Purity in Nineteenth-century South Africa
Chapter 4: The Empire Rides Back: An African Response to the Horse in Southern Africa
Chapter 5: ‘The last of the old campaigners’: Horses in the South African War, c.1899–1902
Chapter 6: ‘The Cinderella of the livestock industry’: The Changing Role of Horses in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Chapter 7: High Horses: Horses, Class and Socio-economic Change in South Africa
Chapter 8: The World the Horses Made

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Horses
• África
• General officer
• History of Africa
• Animals
• General
• Horse
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781868148547
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Riding High
Horses, Humans and History in South Africa
Sandra Swart
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
2001
http://witspress.wits.ac.za
Copyright Sandra Swart 2010
First published 2010
ISBN 978-1-86814-514-0 (Print)
ISBN 978-1-86814-854-7 (Digital)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Wits University Press has made every reasonable effort to locate, contact and acknowledge copyright owners. Please notify us should copyright not have been properly identified and acknowledged. Any corrections will be incorporated in subsequent editions of the book.
Cover design by Hothouse South Africa.
Book design and layout by Sheaf Publishing.
Printed and bound by Ultra Litho (Pty) Ltd.
Contents Acknowledgments vi Preface vii Chapter 1: But where s the bloody horse? Humans, Horses and Historiography 1 Chapter 2: The Reins of Power: Equine Ecological Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 18 Chapter 3: Blood Horses: Equine Breeding, Lineage and Purity in Nineteenth-century South Africa 38 Chapter 4: The Empire Rides Back: An African Response to the Horse in Southern Africa 77 Chapter 5: The last of the old campaigners : Horses in the South African War, c.1899-1902 103 Chapter 6: The Cinderella of the livestock industry : The Changing Role of Horses in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 137 Chapter 7: High Horses: Horses, Class and Socio-economic Change in South Africa 171 Chapter 8: The World the Horses Made 194 Endnotes 221 Bibliography 300 Permissions 331 Index 333
Acknowledgements
M Y RESEARCH IS only one voice in what I hope will become a conversation about animals in history in southern Africa. As they say in Lesotho, Petsane e gola kago amusa : a foal only grows by suckling . I would like to thank the horse riders, breeders, owners and experts who received me so generously in my journeys to Lesotho, the Free State, Kwa-Zulu Natal, the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape. Although we debate and differ on many points, they are always willing to talk horse . I single out especially Frans van der Merwe, and also Ezelle Marais, Cecily Norden and Koof Snyman.
I am grateful for an Oppenheimer Grant, an HB Thom Grant, a National Research Foundation Grant and the support of the office of the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Stellenbosch, Hennie Kotz . Thanks to the National Research Foundation, the Research Office of the University of Stellenbosch and the wonderful academic staff of Stellenbosch University History Department.
My friends and colleagues, especially, need a damn good thanking. Particular thanks to Pete Edwards, Bill Storey and Dan Wylie for commenting closely on the manuscript. Thanks also to Andrew Bank, Greg Bankoff, William Beinart, Karen Brown, Sam Challis, William Clarence-Smith, Bob Edgar, Malcolm Draper, Erica Fudge, Rob Gordon, Fraser Griffin-Gulston, Albert and Annamari Grundlingh, Lindy Heinecken, Nancy Jacobs, Donna Landry, Helena Lategan, Jesmael Mataga, Clay McShane, Bill Nasson, Gordon Pirie, Harriet Ritvo, Joel Tarr, Motlatsi Thabane, Liz Tobey, the late Stanley Trapido, Treva Tucker, Karen Raber, Ian van der Waag, Lance van Sittert and Wendy Woodward. Thanks also to our wonderful students who shared parts of this experience: Sarah Duff, Danelle van Zyl, Chet Fransch, Christina Kgari-Masondo, Lindie Korf, Stef Vandenbergh and Lize-Marie Van der Watt. Thanks to the Swart family, easily my favourite critics. Thank you to Adrian Ryan, the best friend I ever had. And also appreciation to my partner, Graham Walker. Thank you for accompanying me to the field when you could and, when you could not, thank you for being there when I returned. May all my journeys end in your arms.
Preface
T ONI 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. However, this is discussed here only as it pertains to the broader societal role of horses, as even a cursory examination of the paperwork would cause it to loom disproportionately large compared to its actual impact. 1
My methodology includes the use of oral history, with research trips to a variety of places in South Africa and Lesotho, often pursuing fieldwork on horseback in otherwise inaccessible areas. Unlike some other historians (like Robin Law, for example, who wrote the history of the horse in West Africa, but was at pains to point out that he did not undertake this project because [he was] an enthusiast for horses and had in fact, no special affections for these animals ), 2 I have an unabashed fondness for these creatures. But I approach this project first and foremost as an historian, with my affection following, like a dog, at my heels.
The not so small matter of a horse
Perhaps for some, this project skirts perilously close to the strangely neglected topic that Kingsley Amis s hapless young academic Lucky Jim tried to hammer into a publishable article entitled The economic influence of the developments in shipbuilding techniques, 1450-1485 . Jim starts his article with the words: In considering this strangely neglected topic ... Then he pauses and anguishes: This what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what? Like Jim, I have sometimes worried that my attentiveness to the apparently marginal might seem like nothing more than the self-indulgence, quite literally, of riding my own hobbyhorse. But I believe this research does indeed reveal the significance of the horse to human history. Insights about the contingency of history, seen through the agency of animals themselves and the human ideas about them, resonate with much of the recent scholarship about human-animal relationships, which has revealed the profound connections between how we think about and interact with animals and how we think about ourselves, our cultures and those of other humans. The history of horses is the history of desire - and the desire for power in particular, so effectively analysed in social history.
I took to socio-environmental history the way some people take to whisky. The strong emphasis it offers on how power operates through differences embedded in class, race, gender and generation provides a framework for analysis. The title Riding High reflects the focus on power and class that runs through the chapters and the hunger to understand it. This is because history is not so much a discipline as a pathology. It engenders obsession. This work grew into my passion, filling several years of my life. And with passion comes pain. I have been bored, lonely or terrified as often as I have been happy while doing my fieldwork. This brings me to the everyday dangers of fieldwork. For years there has been a poster on my door:

To accompany environmental historian working on horses in eastern Free State and Lesotho.
The pay is low, the area fairly dangerous, the hours long and the work physically challenging.
A week- to two-week-long periods at a time - usually during university holidays.
Oddly, I have never had any enquiries.
To turn from academia and to borrow an anecdote from another arena of unnecessary conflict: in about 1973, former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier and a non-boxing friend were watching a match, and the friend exclaimed how easy it looked to fight in the ring. It s harder than it looks , Frazier said dryly. The same is true of writing history. And, sometimes, it can be just as painful. The final product - the story - is presented as seamless - but the process of achiev