Thoroughbred
The Thoroughbred is often regarded as the first “modern” breed—that is, a breed whose identity is governed by pedigree requirements that determine which horses may be included or excluded from participating in races convened by the Jockey Club. The history of the Thoroughbred has thus tended to focus on the period after 1750, the era in which the Jockey Club was consolidated and just before the first publication of the General Stud Book. Here, I look instead at the period from the mid-seventeenth century through the end of the eighteenth century, examining how the pressures of modernity—the political shifts that altered the power of the monarchy, increased social and actual mobility that reshaped social relations between previously stratified groups, the emergence and circulation of new forms of media, and the turn to organized record keeping—converged to create both the Thoroughbred horse and the “modern” idea of breed familiar today.