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wolffylunaI really like this book. To give context for how much I like it: I borrowed this from the library. I'm planning to buy my own copy so I can reference it in the future.
This book solved a problem I had for a long time, that I couldn't work out how to fix: I wanted to learn about the history of horses. Mostly for writing purposes, either for historical fiction or to crib worldbuilding ideas for fantasy fiction. But the thing is "the history of horses" is, uh, a rather large topic. I had no idea where to start. I wanted a broad overview, that gave me some ideas of for more specific searches. It didn't have to be comprehensive, or anything, but it had to be a starting point for the topic.
The Age of The Horse is a nice, broad starting point. It doesn't even try to be comprehensive, it's more of a sample platter of horse-y history. But it's a very delicious sample platter.
This book is divided into chapters based on themes, and then it looks at a historical and modern example of those themes. For example, the chapter on horses as a source of power (ie to move things, to harvest things, etc.) focuses on Industrial Revolution Britain, the current resurgence in America or horses as working farm animals. Which is interesting-- though sometimes that attempt to merge is kinda awkward. But the merge can also reveal new information. Fore example: The horse meat scandal in Europe around 2013? Entirely historically predictable. Recession hits the economy, the price of beef goes up, and the cost of keeping horses goes up while the sale price of any given horse goes down. And voilá, horses get used for meat in Europe.
And there's a lot of interesting information on other topics! Like how the Industrial Revolution actually increased the number of working horses at first (gotta move all those goods on and off trains somehow!) to China's Long-Lasting Horse Problem.
The chapter on Wealth, which was focused on China, was my favourite purely because of the Long-Lasting Horse problem. A lot of countries at the time cavalry was important military technology had the problem that warhorses were expensive to acquire and maintain, but also necessary for not getting your asses handed to you all the time. But China had a particularly awkward variant of this:
- A lot of China was just... bad for raising horses. (It's unclear in the book whether this was 'the land's comparative advantage is growing rice, not horses' or whether the land was actively bad for trying to raise horses on it. But it was Bad.)
- They had a lot of neighbours who had steppe-lands-- which were great for raising horses-- and a tendency to invade.
- So China needed warhorses to be able to not get invaded all the time, and because they couldn't raise them well, they needed to trade for them... with the people who kept invading them and were the reason they needed horses.
And that created a lot of interesting historical dynamics and events! This may be a bit "Lighthouse historians being convinced lighthouses were the key to historical success" but dynasties rose and fell on their ability to get horses. For example, A general, An Lushan, seceded from the rest of the empire towards the end of the Tang Dynasty-- and took with him the steppe lands China had conquered to raise horses on, and a lot of mulberry plantations they used to make the silk to trade for more horses. And to have a hope of getting the steppe lands and mulberry planations back, they needed more horses-- but silk was now way more expensive to produce, and their neighbours knew they were desperate for horses so charged huge amounts for them, and the Tang plunged themselves into debt and collapsed.
One big flaw in this book is that, apart from the chapter mostly about China, the author occasionally forgets that places that aren't Europe and America exist-- and quickly adds a paragraph or two about them, which only highlights the forgetfulness. It's a bit awkward to have hundreds of words about how people stopped using horses as working animals, and then add 'btw, some places in Africa never stopped.' (Especially when also discussing a resurgence of horses as working animals in America, that as far as I can tell is only happening because the Amish never stopped using them.)
The second big flaw is the War chapter. Which is also, unfortunately, the last chapter, and thus leaves a bit of the a disappointing taste in the mouth. The chapter jumps around between bull fighting and cavalry horses and and natural horsemanship and horse herd dynamics and horses as therapy for veterans-- and while all the parts are good, they don't gel into a coherent narrative like the other chapters. Which is unfortunate. (Though I am feeling vindicated that a) horse dynamics are only That Hierachical in domestic horses, and b) there are even more things that Equine Therapy That Knows What It's Doing is good for. Even if some of them are a little inexplicable. I have no idea how horse riding reduces traumatic brain injury induced dizziness, but apparently it does?)
Anyway, it's a good book.
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Date: 2019-07-25 07:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-25 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-25 10:51 pm (UTC)it sounds utterly cartoonish and I love it.