In the most recent issue of Asian Affairs, the journal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, editor Bill Hayton notes that it is unusual to receive three unsolicited book reviews for the same book. He was referring to David Chaffetz’s brilliant new book Raiders, Rulers and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires[1], which fully deserves the attention it is now receiving.
Chaffetz argues, very convincingly, that to understand the vast interconnected system of trade routes that once constituted the ‘Silk Road’ we need to understand the fundamental role played by the trade in horses in particular. “No animal has had as profound an impact on human history as the horse,” he says. Domestication provided a source of both meat and nutritious milk, as well as transport. Horses regularly needed fresh pastures and this in turn provided the basis for pastoralism as a system that came to dominate the steppe regions.
Thus it was horses, rather than silk that dominated the Silk Roads. Chaffetz shows how the demand for horses bred on the Eurasian steppes came initially from the Chinese and then later from the Mughals and other dynasties in India. Chinese traders travelled as far as Iran, Afghanistan and the Ferghana Valley in present-day Uzbekistan in search of good horses that would give the northern Chinese huge advantages in their military campaigns against their neighbours to the south. As the Chinese Han General Ma Yuan remarked in the 1stC CE, “Horses are the foundation of military power, the great resources of the state…If the power of the horse is allowed to falter, the state will totter to a fall.” With the horses came men from the steppe to develop cavalry brigades and these men too eventually became powerful in their newly adopted homelands.
Mobile horsebreeders helped to connect the world in these early days, bringing sedentary agricultural societies in contact with one another: “Arts, religious beliefs, sports and fashion spread from one end of the old world to the other in the saddlebags of the steppe horsemen,” says Chaffetz. “The horse itself became both a vehicle and a symbol: gods manifested themselves upon them, kings were buried with them, princesses rode them in polo matches and poets praised them in verses that local schoolchildren still recite.”
Although settled peoples quickly began to breed their own horses, the steppe dwellers always held an advantage in the vast open spaces they inhabited. It was hardly surprising that at a certain point a steppe-based empire was able to take on the rest of the world – and win. Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire was the high watermark for the horsebreeders, until gunpowder put an end to their advantages, but not before both the Mughals and the Manchus had also built substantial empires on the back of horse power.
The impact of horses in Western Europe was far less significant. Horses were also used in battle, but usually only by the elites of mediaeval society and later by fancy cavalry regiments. If the peasants could afford a horse, its main use was in agriculture for ploughing – something no self-respecting steppe dweller would ever consider. The typical agricultural labourer could seldom afford to keep a horse. Without the open steppe and its limitless pastures, Western Europe could not sustain large number of animals reliant on grazing.
On the steppe in contrast, everyone rode, women included. And a huge mobile army could be raised in days using the ‘arrow’ system developed by the Mongols. Each rider provided his own horses and learned from childhood how to manoeuvre and perform complex cavalry attacks.
Chaffetz remarks that until now the importance of horses in the development of society has been either overlooked or underestimated by historians. That began to change with the break-up of the Soviet Union, which allowed Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Mongols and other horse-orientated societies to reexamine their histories and to make use of advances in carbon dating and DNA analysis to provide new insights.
The Silk Roads exhibition now showing at the British Museum in London, whilst illustrating the extent of trading links in the ancient world, makes little reference to the importance of horses. It is a pity that its organisers were unable to make use of Chaffetz’s superb research. Those of you who are members of the RSAA may well already have booked a seat for his talk (in person) on 22 January in London. Either way, this book is a must.
[1] David Chaffetz, Raiders, Rulers and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires, WW Norton, New York, 2024, ISBN 978 1 3245 05146 6.
Siberian Steppes 