Splendid Exchange

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Contents

Introduction.......................................................11 Sumer............................................................182 The Straits of Trade.............................................393 Camels, Perfumes, and Prophets...................................494 The Baghdad-Canton Express.......................................715 The Taste of Trade and the Captives of Trade.....................1036 The Disease of Trade.............................................1217 Da Gama's Urge...................................................1418 A World Encompassed..............................................1879 The Coming of Corporations.......................................20210 Transplants.....................................................22811 The Triumph and Tragedy of Free Trade...........................26512 What Henry Bessemer Wrought.....................................30013 Collapse........................................................32014 The Battle of Seattle...........................................345Bibliography.......................................................363Notes..............................................................383

Chapter One

The messages we receive from [the] remote past were neither intended for us, nor chosen by us, but are the casual relics of climate, geography, and human activity. They, too, remind us of the whimsical dimensions of our knowledge and the mysterious limits of our powers of discovery.-Daniel Boorstin

Sometime around 3000 B.C., a tribe of herders attacked a small community of Sumerian farmers at harvest-time. From a safe distance, they used slingshots, spears, and arrows, allowing them to achieve surprise. The farmers responded by closing in on their attackers with maces. This weapon-a rounded stone attached to the end of a stout stick designed to bash in the head of an opponent-was the first weapon specifically designed for use solely against fellow humans. (Animals had thick, angulated skulls that were rarely presented at an ideal angle to mace wielders.) Capable of crushing a man's fragile, round skull whether he was coming towards an attacker or running away, the mace proved especially effective.

There was nothing unusual about an attack at harvest-time; the herders' goats and sheep were highly sensitive to disease and the vagaries of climate, and thus the nomadic tribe's survival required frequent grain-seeking raids on its more reliably provisioned crop-growing neighbors. In this particular battle, the herders wore a strange, shiny piece of headgear that seemed to partially protect them. Hard, direct mace blows, once lethal, now merely stunned, and many glanced off the headgear's smooth surface entirely. This protective advantage radically changed the tactical "balance of power" between the two sides, enabling the herders to devastate the defending farmers.

After the attack, the surviving farmers examined the headgear from the few fallen herders. These "helmets" contained an eighth-inch thick sheet of a wondrous new orange material fitted over a leather head cover. The farmers had never seen copper before, since none was produced in the flat alluvial land between the Tigris and Euphrates. Their nomadic rivals had in fact obtained the metal from traders who lived near its source hundreds of miles to the west, in the Sinai Desert. It was not long before Sumerian farmers obtained their own supplies, enabling them to devise more lethal spiked copper-headed maces, to which the herders responded with thicker helmets. Thus was born the first arms race, which to this day relies on exotic metals obtained through commerce.

How did these farmers and herders obtain the copper for their helmets, and how was this trade conducted over the hundreds of miles between their farms and pastures and the copper mines? Paleoanthropologists believe the best place to begin is about 60,000-80,000 years ago, when the first genetically modern populations of humans in Africa began to develop more complex tools, pierce shells (presumably used in necklaces), and incise abstract images into pieces of red ochre. About 45,000-50,000 years ago, small numbers of them probably migrated via Palestine into the Fertile Crescent and Europe. At some point in this trek, language developed, which enabled more complex, uniquely "human" behavior: adroitly carved animal bone and antler tools, cave paintings and sculpture, and improved missile technologies, such as the atlatl, a specially crafted stick used to improve the range and accuracy of the spear. This increasingly sophisticated skill set likely made possible yet another activity characteristic of modern humans: long-distance trade in the new weapons, tools, and tsotchkes.

Historians, on the other hand, traditionally start with Herodotus's description, written around 430 B.C., of the "silent trade" between the Carthaginians and "a race of men who live in a part of Libya beyond the Pillars of Hercules" (the Straits of Gibraltar), most likely today's West Africans:

On reaching this country, (the Carthaginians) unload their goods, arrange them tidily along the beach, and then, returning to their boats, raise a smoke. Seeing the smoke, the natives come down to the beach, place on the ground a certain quantity of gold in exchange for the goods, and go off again to a distance. The Carthaginians then come ashore and take a look at the gold; and if they think it represents a fair price for their wares, they collect it and go away; if, on the other hand, it seems too little, they go back aboard and wait, and the natives come and add to the gold until they are satisfied. There is perfect honesty on both sides; the Carthaginians never touch the gold until it equals in value what they have offered for sale, and the natives never touch the goods until the gold has been taken away.

Alas, Herodotus's description of the decorum displayed on each side carries with it an aroma of myth. Yet he probably got right the basic scenario. On some unrecorded occasion deep in prehistory, a man, or several men, took the seminal step of early long-distance trade by setting out on the water in boats.

Hunger most likely got man into those primitive crafts. Twenty thousand years ago, northern Europe resembled modern Lapland, a cold, uncultivated panorama dotted with fewer and smaller trees than today. Europe's first Homo sapiens, fresh from wiping out their Neanderthal rivals, subsisted primarily on large game, particularly reindeer. Even under ideal circumstances, hunting these fleet animals with spear or bow and arrow is an uncertain enterprise. The reindeer, however, possessed a weakness that mankind would mercilessly exploit: it swam poorly. While afloat, it is uniquely vulnerable, moving slowly with its antlers held high as it struggles to keep its nose above water. At some point, a stone-age genius, realizing the enormous hunting advantage he would gain by being able to glide over the water's surface, built the first boat. Once the easily overtaken and slaughtered prey had been hauled aboard, getting its carcass back to the tribal camp would have been far easier by boat than on land. It would not have taken long for mankind to apply this advantage to other goods.

Cave paintings and scattered maritime remains suggest that boats...