Riding High: Horses, Humans and
History in South Africa
by Sandra Swart
This is one of those books that will be compelling reading for
those interested in the history of the horse in South Africa,
but this time with a twist, for the human angle features very
strongly.
Says the author, Prof Sandra Swart, in the preface to the
book: “I took to socio-environmental history the way some
people take to whiskey. The strong emphasis it off ers on how
power operates through diff erences embedded in class, race,
gender and generation provides a framework for analysis. The
title, Riding High, refl ects the focus on power and class that
runs through the chapters and the hunger to understand it.”
Elsewhere she relates: “This research has led me to
encounter a variety of interesting people, both living and
dead: scientists, horse thieves, soldiers, settlers, sailors,
bureaucrats, family men and women, nations builders,
peasant farmers, wealthy stud farm owners, wild-eyed young
punters and even the leader of a paramilitary terrorist group,
who wrote me from his goal cell.”
Prof Swart is professor of history at Stellenbosch University.
With this book, she is quoted to say that she wanted to “write
a history that takes animals seriously”.
A quick glance through the various chapters illustrates
this: But where’s the bloody horse? Humans, Horses and
Historiography; The Reins of Power: Equine Ecological
Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century;
Blood Horses: Equine Breeding, Lineage and Purity in
Nineteenth-century South Africa; The Empire Rides Back: An
African Response to the Horse in South Africa; The last of
the old campaigners: Horses
in the South African War,
c 1899-1902; The Cinderella
of the livestock industry: The
Changing Role of Horses in
the First Half of the Twentieth
Century; High Horses: Horses,
Class and Socio-economic
Change in South Africa; and
The World the Horses Made.
Riding High: Horses, Humans and History in South Africa is published by Wits University Press, ISBN 978-
1-86814-514-0.
The Principles of Farriery
by Chris Colles & Ron Ware (Review by John Seggar, farrier)
Helen Divov of Horse Books Unlimited in
Johannesburg, asked me to have a look at a new
farriery book. Yet another book on the subject, I
thought. But The Principles of Farriery by Chris Colles
and Ron Ware may well be ‘the’ book on farriery.
The 374 pages cover everything from the legal
position of farriers, farrier/veterinarian conduct,
general equine anatomy and function to forge work
and disease relevant to farriery. The book is full of
diagrammes, photographs and graphs in an easy to
read format.
Anyone with an interest in fariery will fi nd the
book a brilliant source of information. Worldwide,
farriers need only follow the guide lines of the book
to aff ord horses the maximum benefi t of good
hoofcare. Any book on farriery should aim at the
horse being the ultimate beneficiary and this book
is a fi ve star example of just that.
A very special thank you to Chris Colles and Ron Ware.
These books are available from Horse Books Unlimited,
tel 011 315 5333, e-mail horsebooks@tiscali.co.za.
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