Welcome
Horses have played a critical role in human development since their first domestication around the fifth millennium BC. Yet, ‘breed’ as a way of identifying kinds of horses does not appear until the end of the medieval period, with its current form only developing at the end of the 1700s. This project encourages you to consider how and why breed emerged as an important category of identity from the Renaissance to the present by exploring online exhibits focused on specific breeds and their human communities. Bringing together research and scholarship of the history, culture, sociology, geography, and anthropology of horse/human relationships, it outlines the ways increasingly specialized kinds of horses helped shape the modern world.
This project draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
