Horse Breeders and the Making of Razza

Today, for English-speakers “race” almost always refers to human diversity. However, in the early modern period, the term “race” and its variations across other European languages (razza in Italian, race in French, raza in Spanish) more often referred to nonhuman animal populations shaped through selective breeding projects. While we might use the word “breed” to describe these populations, in early modern European discourse “race” did much of the same work. When it came to breeding animals, race was not a fixed characteristic or a hierarchical quality of blood; it was the fragile result of reproductive work over generations of husbandry. To create animal populations distinct enough to merit the name “razza,” breeders sought to map out their reproduction and brand them to link their living bodies to the priorities of the elite families and institutions that owned them.

The Italian manuscript Urb.lat.254 held by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) and digitally published on the Digivatlib (DVL) site opens a window onto this animal valence of early modern race. The “Book of the Razza dei Cavalli of his Most Serene Highness” recorded the breeding efforts of Francesco Maria II della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, between 1614 and 1618. The scribe who penned this report on paper 32 centimeters in height by 21 centimeters in width used careful rubrication and fine, if not ornate, penmanship. This document was meant to be admired as evidence of the excellence of the animals it produced. Other archives suggest the trove of records distilled into this one: weekly correspondence between breeders and owners, daily logs of how much food each animal consumed, regular descriptions of the exercise and training the stallions, mares, and foals each received. Breeders had to have a working knowledge of veterinary medicine and animal behavior. While specialists like blacksmiths and farriers tended to their animals’ hooves and ailments, breeders and trainers did the daily work of creating and educating the animal laborers the early modern world relied upon for travel, warfare, and entertainment.

The term “razza” itself referred to the stud, or the horse breeding operation and the livestock it produced. The horses whose reproduction perpetuated this stock each had a name. Some names indicated the horse’s coloring. For example, the mare called “Baia” was a female with a bay coat, meaning that her fur had a reddish-brown color, and her mane, tale, and lower legs were black. Other names, like “Favorita” (“Favorite”), were terms of endearment. Still others, like “Turca,” indicated the type of horse as linked to its provenance. Italian elites regularly imported Turkish horses, which were known to be fast and reliable. While they often interbred with domestic stock, breeders emphasized that these animals remained “Turkish” in their physical characteristics and used their names and brands to highlight this provenance, even if the individual horse had never been to the Eastern Mediterranean.

While the word “razza” is on its cover, at its core this is a document about sex and its reproductive results. The book’s three-column structure featured the mare’s identity in the present alongside whether she had reproduced in the last year, and whether she would reproduce in the subsequent year. A good animal breeder thought across years to understand the dynamic cycles of animals’ lifespan and gestation. This book was intended as a tool to capture past sexual viability and the animals it created to strategically visualize future reproductive capacity.  The central column of each folio indicated the “animals covered by Belladonna, courser” in a particular year. Then as now, keeping breeding stallions proved expensive and laborious; multiple stallions often competed for dominance whether in the stable or the field. Still, the success of the breeding project would be determined by whether the stud’s desirable traits could be passed onto the next generation. To achieve this, the human breeders created a nonhuman harem – a group of females sharing a single mate.

In 1615, the mares bred included Baia (a seven-year-old chestnut bay of the marquis of Pescara’s razza), Zingana (a three-year-old dark bay of Pescara), Balzanella (a five-year-old golden bay with star and socks on two feet, of the prince of Santo Buono), Turca (a six-year-old bay from Santo Buono), Favorita (a four-year-old bay of the duke of Celenza), Montagnola (a three-year-old chestnut), Pavoneina (a three-year-old dapple gray of Pescara), Stornella (a nine-year-old dapple gray of Pescara), Bellafronte (a four-year-old gray of the prince of Stigliano), Mordecchia (a four-year-old gray of Stigliano), Serpentina (a three-year-old dapple gray of the marquis of San Eramo), and Learda (an eight-year-old dapple gray of the duke of Termini). Of these mares, Baia had a foal already— a bay without marking that “came from the Regno in the pregnant Mother.” One other mare, Innamorata, was struck from the list. The following year, a similar list was repeated, with one year added to the age of each mare; their inclusion on the list meant that each mare was bred to Belladonna again. New mares like Galeotta (a bay of the Archduke with a chestnut filly) and Morella (with her morel colt) were added to the list. By 1615, Stornella and Pavoneina had colts; by 1616, Galeotta had a new foal, as did Baia, Favorita, Montagnola, Turca, and Serpentina.

Such detailed attention proved exhausting. Even the scribe recording the few years of this breeding operation grew tired of the latest season of foals. His hand grew messier and more than two thirds of the pages remained unfilled. This loss of energy and growing disregard of careful record-keeping was often the case with animal breeding projects. Earlier breeders spoke rarely if ever about the blood purity of their stock, preferring to focus on the power of mixing types rather than fixing them into permanent categories. For them, type was less like a branch of a family tree and more like a tributary of a river, ever seeking to run together. By the seventeenth century, Northern and Central Europeans complained that the Italian razze were no longer what they had once been. Even Italian observers wondered if their house razze had degenerated with each animal appearing inferior to what his predecessors had been. Perhaps, they wondered, such degeneration came from the unfavorable climate? The food they ate? The time generations of horses like “Turca” spent away from her ancestral home? Enlightenment-era breeders and scientists alike would respond with systems designed to fix nature in place, rendering the slippery porosity of Renaissance razza more permanent.

Mackenzie Cooley is an intellectual historian who studies the uses, abuses, and understandings of the natural world in the early modern period. Her first book, The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022) concerns animal-human relationships, the history of biology, and race in Italy and the Spanish Empire. Her volume Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds (co-edited with Anna Toledano and Duygu Yildirim; Routledge, 2023) follows nature transformed into scientific specimens across the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman Empire, Pacific islands, Southeast Asia, the Spanish Empire, and Western Europe. Presently, she is working on a new project about the global medical market and its environmental ramifications. She is Assistant Professor of History at Hamilton College and Director of Latin American Studies.