Acknowledgments

Thank you for picking up this book, and I hope after reading it you will take something of value with you. Writing it has been both a thrilling and humbling experience. I am blessed to have had the support of family and friends on this steep path. My deep gratitude also goes to many colleagues who contributed in their own individual ways to this endeavor, from providing guidance on researching archival materials to reviewing portions of this work, and innumerable conversations sharing their wisdom, curiosity, and encouragement. For their formative influence on my development as a historian, I would like to thank Ann Blair, Margaret Jacob, Teófilo Ruiz, Kevin Terraciano, Mary Terrall, Carla Rahn Phillips, James Amelang, Lynn Hunt, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Barbara Fuchs, and Marcy Norton, among other professors and mentors.

History is rich in meaning and always incomplete. My research builds on the work of many other scholars, some of whom I have had the pleasure of meeting in person, and many more whom I have only encountered through their work. In pursuing the historical influences of the horse, I have found, to my great fortune, a vibrant and growing community of scholars through the Equine History Collective (www.equinehistory.org). This is an exciting time for research projects that span from the early archaeology of horse domestication to horses in global empires and burgeoning studies of equine genomics.

The research undertaken for this book introduced me to both incredible materials and inspiring colleagues; I benefited doubly from the journey as much as the proposed destination. Funding was generously provided by the Social Science Research Council; the Huntington Library; the John Carter Brown Library; the Spanish Ministry of Culture; the Casa Velázquez; the International Institute, Center for Europe and Eurasian Studies and Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies at UCLA; and the Mellon Institute for Paleography and the Renaissance Society of America at the Newberry Library. Archives and libraries I visited in the course of this research, aided by the generous assistance of archivists and local scholars, include the Archivo General de las Indias, Archivo General de Simancas, Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid), Biblioteca Nacional de España, Archivo y Biblioteca del Palacio Real (Madrid), Archivo de la Chancillería Real de Granada, Archivo Histórico Municipal de Córdoba, Archivo Histórico Municipal de Baeza, Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico City), Archivo Histórico Municipal de Puebla, Archivo Histórico Municipal de Oaxaca, Archivo Histórico Municipal de Pátzcuaro, Archivo Notarial Michoacán, Archivo Histórico Diocesano de San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Biblioteca Nacional de Perú, Archivo General de la Nación (Lima), Archivo Regional Cusco, Archivo Regional de la Libertad (Trujillo), Archivo Regional de Amazonas (Chachapoyas), the Library of Congress (DC), Newberry Library (Chicago), and the Huntington Library (San Marino, California). Transcriptions into Spanish and translations into English are mine, unless otherwise noted; all errors are my own.