Horses represented an expensive and logistically challenging aspect of early expeditions, as they had to be brought by boat and then bred in colonial settlements to aid in expansion. This scarcity only elevated the cultural and political significance of horses, evident in the narratives of early Spanish or Indigenous chroniclers and also in strategic efforts to breed horses in colonial settlements, despite the challenging and varied new environments. Beyond the military lore of conquest, horses literally and materially served as the measure for establishing social status, access to political office, and territorial control by colonial representatives, shaping the structure and strategy of colonial expansion in powerful ways.

Chapter 3 examines the fighting over Shakespeare that takes place during the French Revolutionary-Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815). This period of prolonged conflict is characterized by an obsessive interest in position-takings and labelling, such as revolutionary/loyalist and Jacobin/anti-Jacobin; but, as this chapter demonstrates, these wartime binaries are protean. By deploying them we are at risk of under-interpreting the conflict. The performance of Shakespeare at the major and minor theatres in London reveals this distinctive political malleability. The chapter begins by considering pressure points in the conflict when Shakespeare seems to have been loudly mobilized in support of the British war effort – such as the resumption of conflict in 1803 – but concentrates for the most part on the contested political valence of Shakespeare. It examines the opposing political sympathies and theatrical interests of John Philip Kemble and Richard Brinsley Sheridan who were both connected to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, as well as the operations of the minor theatres that position Shakespeare within a battle over the democratization of culture and politics that strongly resonates with the period’s domestic and foreign conflicts. The chapter concludes by proposing that ‘conflicting Shakespeares’ become united through the vagaries of patriotism, a powerful and uncertain concept during this period and beyond.