Don’t be put off by the erudite title of David Chaffetz’s vividly narrated book. Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires reads like an enthralling travel memoir. It begins with the author perched uncomfortably on the back of a sure-footed pony on the steppes of Mongolia, where his arrival at a remote yurt is celebrated with ayraq, fermented mare’s milk. “We could no more drink all of the milky liquor on offer than we could take in all of the Milky Way above our heads,” he writes, charmingly. Likewise, Chaffetz’s account of how horses and landscapes shaped the distant past glimmers with myriad fascinating insights, seamlessly woven into a cohesive whole.
He begins at the very start of Homo sapiens-Equus interactions, when horses were hunted for meat and gradually domesticated for nutrient-rich mare’s milk. That, in turn, led to the need to ride horses to manage larger herds. Chaffetz demonstrates how the grassy steppes of Eurasia, rather than the forests of Western Europe, best suited horses, which led to their role as engines of war and empire-building in Persia, India and China.
Never dry, the narrative is enlivened by intriguing details. Chaffetz reports that the word “post” can be traced to Persian mounted messengers who navigated hundreds of miles of terrain. Along the messenger’s route, horses were tied to stakes, or posts, so a rider could quickly dismount a tired horse and remount a fresh horse and continue their journey, carrying a ruler’s decree across vast distances. In this way, horses were key to conquering territory in war and then governing it. Chaffetz sets the stage for his discussion of Genghis Khan with the observation of a medieval visitor: “When I travelled in the steppes, I never saw anyone walking. . . . Even the poor have to have one or two [horses].” The Mongols’ vast herds presented an opportunity. As Chaffetz explains, “The rains, the grasses, and the geldings of Mongolia did not create Genghis Khan, but his conquests are impossible to understand without them.”
Chaffetz, whose previous two books show him traveling through Afghanistan on horseback and celebrating Asian divas of old, exudes a contagious enthusiasm and curiosity. In Raiders, Rulers, and Traders, readers will happily follow his journey as he chronicles how closely our history is intertwined with the magnificent horse.
