Anganamón and Martín García Oñez de Loyola ("Anganamón, yanacona del gobernador Martín García de Loyola, el cual mató al dicho gobernador. Este indio vive hoy, año de 1607, y es el que ha destruido todo el reyno.") from Diego de Ocaña’s Viaje a Chile (1608), University of Oviedo Fondo Antiguo 195. Coutesty of the University of Oviedo. Photo Credit: Marcial Gómez Martín
tracing the dramatic spread of horses throughout the Americas
Feral Empire explores how horses shaped society and politics during the first century of Spanish conquest and colonization. It defines a culture of the horse in medieval and early modern Spain that, when introduced to the New World, left its imprint in colonial hierarchies and power structures. Horse populations, growing rapidly through intentional and uncontrolled breeding, served as engines of both social exclusion and mobility across the Iberian World. This growth undermined colonial ideals of domestication, purity, and breed in Spain’s expanding empire. Drawing on extensive research across Latin America and Spain, Renton offers an intimate look at animals and their role in the formation of empires. Iberian colonialism in the Americas cannot be explained without understanding human–-equine relationships and the centrality of colonialism to human–-equine relationships in the early modern world.
Reviews
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a new chapter in the political ecology and history of the horse
‘Kathryn Renton has produced a thorough, richly detailed analysis of the significance of horses and horse-breeding in early modern Spain and its New World colonies. Questioning established narratives and backed by extensive research, she shows how horses were deeply entangled in, challenged, and supported constructions of power within the Iberian Peninsula itself, as well as within Spain’s expanding American empire. Her book writes a new chapter in the political ecology and history of the horse and should encourage similar work on other species and in other parts of the world.’
Peter Mitchell - author of Horse Nations: The Worldwide Impact of the Horse on Indigenous Societies Post-1492
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a rich collection of archival and visual sources
‘In this important contribution to the history of the horse in the premodern world, Renton mobilizes a rich collection of archival and visual sources to describe the pivotal role horses played in Iberian colonialism. Moving between the Old World and the New, she traces the Iberian horse’s centrality to systems of law, identity, and governance, as well as to patterns of environmental change. Her arguments offer new and surprising insights about the conceptual and bodily entanglements that linked settlers, indigenous peoples, and domestic and feral equines in ‘lively assemblages’ of influence and resistance.’
Karen Raber - author of Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture
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A lucid, thoughtful examination of more-than-human relations
‘A lucid, thoughtful examination of more-than-human relations, with a particularly illuminating analysis of indigenous equestrianism in the Americas. It takes local context seriously and insists on a rigorous delineation of a range of human-horse relationships, which does not condemn or romanticize, but rather nuances the trilateral multi-species relationships between people and horses and between varying groups of people over horses.’
Sandra Swart - author of The Lion’s Historian: Africa’s Animal Past
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Choice Review, American Library Association
It has been argued that horses have walked the earth for over 56 million years, going as far back as the Eocene epoch. During that time, horses (obviously) played an integral role in human history. Renton (Getty Research Institute) concentrates her study of the horse on the animal's societal and political influence during the first century of Spanish colonization in the Americas. She argues that Iberian colonization in the Americas cannot be explained without an understanding of the human-horse relationship. As Renton writes, "Tracing the dramatic movement of the horse from the Iberian Peninsula to the Americas in the15th century provides a unique view into the social logic of empire," such as imperial notions of social hierarchies, land control, and race (p. 4). The list of bibliographic references supplementing the text is long and cites both primary and secondary sources. This very well-written and well-researched study is an important contribution that adds much to Spanish colonial history. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.
David Lewis Tengwall - emeritus, Anne Arundel Community College