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UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Bred for the Race: Thoroughbred Horses and the Politics of Pedigree, 1700-2000 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2x82b4d5 Author Tyrrell, Brian Patrick Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Bred for the Race: Thoroughbred Horses and the Politics of Pedigree, 1700-2000 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Brian Patrick Tyrrell Committee in charge: Professor Peter Alagona, Chair Professor W. Patrick McCray Professor Alice O’Connor Professor Paul Spickard June 2019 The dissertation of Brian Patrick Tyrrell is approved. _______________________________________________ W. Patrick McCray _______________________________________________ Alice O’Connor _______________________________________________ Paul Spickard _______________________________________________ Peter Alagona, Committee Chair Bred for the Race: Thoroughbred Horses and the Politics of Pedigree, 1700-2000 Copyright © 2019 by Brian Patrick Tyrrell iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A funny thing happened on the way to this dissertation. Despite my best efforts, I put down roots in Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara, a town of 90,000, sits on a narrow spit of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez Mountains on California’s Central Coast. It’s just far enough from Los Angeles to make frequent trips to Southern California’s megalopolis impracticable, and its vineyards, beaches, and sky-high real estate prices have earned the city its reputation as the American Riviera. Nothing about the place, in other words, suggested graduate school life. But when I arrived on campus in 2011, I encountered an extraordinary community. For better or worse, during my first years of course work the history department graduate student offices served as a social nexus. Any time day or night at least one of the following people could be found there, either working hard or looking to be distracted. Samir Sonti, Cody Stephens, Sasha Coles, Kit Smemo, Heather Berg, Kali Yamboliev, Jackson Warkentin, Chris Kegerreis, Sarah Hanson, Paul Barba, Eric Massie, Munther Al-Sabbagh, Ibrahim Mansour, and Joe Figluilo-Rosswurm all contributed to an intellectual atmosphere that was at once collegial and rigorous. The history department’s intramural basketball team deserves special mention for getting up off the mat after losing to teenagers—sometimes horribly—every quarter. Laura Moore, Casey Ortiz, Kolby Knight, and Will Murphey deserve special mention. Graduate school wasn’t all fun and games though. From my first day on campus, I benefited from a community of people interested in interdisciplinary environmental studies. iv Through a variety of field trips, pizza-and-beer seminars, and a long weekend in Yosemite we built, as our leader was fond of saying, “community in nature.” Members of the Santa Barbara Environmental History Workshop who read and commented on my work and helped this project along include Maximilien Stiefel, Sienna Cordoba, Jennifer Martin, Karly Miller, Paul Warden, Masha Fedorova, Elijah Bender, Tim Daniels, Tom Doran, and Zoe Welch. While I was at Santa Barbara, the history of science program flourished. Elena Aronova, Kate McDonald, and Gabriela Soto Laveaga helped me to put my dissertation in a transnational context. Eun-Joo Ahn helped me organize a conference and build relationships with graduate students at other UCs. The final chapter of this dissertation reflects the time I spent researching the history of DNA nanotechnology while a graduate fellow at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society. I’d like to thank specifically Amy Slaton, Cyrus Mody, Roger Eardley-Pryor, Tristan Partridge, Barbara Herr Harthorn, Miriam Metzger, and Brandon Fastman. I benefitted from intellectual relationships outside of UCSB as well. When I began this project, I thought I must be the only person studying the history of horses. Attending the Galloping History Conference in Ankara, Turkey, I met Kathryn Renton, Gwyneth Talley, and Philip Homan. Amazingly, that was not the only horse-themed conference I went to thanks to the Equine History Collective. Kat Boniface and Amber Roberts Graham. For my money there is not a better experience for history of science graduate students than the Biennial Ischia History of Science Summer School. The week-long seminar introduces graduate students to top international faculty and a worldwide network of graduate students as well as the curative effects of swimming in the Mediterranean and wine lunches. From Ischia I’d like to thank Nick Hopwood, Sujit Sivasundaram, Janet Browne, Joe Cain, and v Helen Rozwadowski. I’d also like to thank David Sepkoski, Garland E. Allen, and an anonymous reviewer at Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences for improving my work. Early on in graduate school, my advisor told me that a dissertation is a document that details what you’ve read and where you’ve been. I’d add that it’s also a ledger of debts accrued. Through the process of this dissertation, strangers opened their homes to me. Here I’d like to thank Shekinah Lavelle in Louisville and Dave Cohen in Charlottesville, as well as Sienna Cordoba’s grandmother, Heidi, in New York’s Finger Lakes region. Several librarians and archivists made suggestions or provided company that helped this project along. These are Anne Johnson in special collections at William & Mary, John Connolly and Mickey Gustafson at the National Sporting Library, and Stephanie M. Lang at the Kentucky Historical Society. My friends in New York and New Jersey offered me their couches or their floors while I visited home—and maybe most importantly called me out when I slipped up and referred to California as home. I’d like to thank Diana Valenzuela, Keith Cashman, Danielle Sansone, Dan Meehan, Katie Lacasse, Matt Caputo, Jayme Gonzalez, and Chris Barone for continuing to be there, both geographically and emotionally. They were all at some point inconvenienced by my long absences and long stays. Andy Kochman and Kelly Demyan opened their home to me two consecutive summers and allowed me to use the phrase “summering in London” to describe my time there. Without a doubt the reason I slipped up and called California home had to do with my friends and roommates in Santa Barbara. These people include Dave Baillargeon, Caitlin Rathe, Tim Paulson, Jessica Marter-Kenyon, Andy McCumber, Laura Halcomb, Kevin vi Brown, Andrew Elrod, Nick Trebelhorn, Beatrice Contreras, Jean-Paul de Guzman, Jesse Halvorsen, and Sarah Johnson. All of the people mentioned above contributed to this project in one way or another, but most of them probably didn’t read all that much of it. My committee members deserve special thanks for slogging through draft after draft of labored prose and bad ideas. Their critical feedback immeasurably improved the dissertation. While I’m sure that errors of fact and interpretation remain, I’m certain there would be more had they not read this dissertation. Paul Spickard challenged me to think more clearly about race and helped sharpen the writing as well as providing me with some cheerleading when I needed it. Alice O’Connor astounded me with the rigor she approached my dissertation with. It is humbling to have such an incredible scholar take my ideas seriously and spend so much time with them. Patrick McCray really took me under his wing, and while he was not formally my co-advisor he certainly spent an advisor’s amount of time with me and with my work. He hired me to work with him at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society where he oversaw my project as if we were scientists in a lab. Not only did he guide that project, but he helped me get comfortable making presentations and going to conferences. My advisor, Peter Alagona, is the kind of advisor any environmental historian would want. I came in with a cohort of four environmental historians, and Peter began advising us by taking us all camping at Figueroa Mountain. His idea of “community in nature” really took off with his environmental history workshop, which attracted graduate students from across the university, not just the humanities. Peter also introduced us all to the University of California Natural Reserve System, which includes ecological research sites throughout the state including Yosemite and Mammoth. Peter pushed this project along, coached me in my moments of doubt, and vii tolerated me when I was a know-it-all first year. The most important thing Peter taught me was how hard it is to write. Hopefully that has made me a more understanding and empathetic person. Nobody dealt with the ups and downs of graduate school than my family. For years I lived with my brother, Chris, as I pursued my dream of being first a professional dog walker then an environmental historian. Over those years Chris put up with my strange hours and weird habits, and I think we became much closer. A few years ago Paula joined the family, and I couldn’t be happier for her and Chris. Their son, Wesley, was a great distraction from my last year of graduate school. Words cannot express how much I owe my parents. Their support has carried me through all the obstacles I’ve faced in my life. Everything I’ve done I owe to them. viii VITA OF BRIAN PATRICK TYRRELL June 2019 EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts in History, University of Notre Dame, May 2007 Master of Arts in History, Rutgers,