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A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World Hardcover – 11 April 2008
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- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGrove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
- Publication date11 April 2008
- Dimensions15.88 x 3.81 x 23.5 cm
- ISBN-100871139790
- ISBN-13978-0871139795
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Splendid Exchange
How Trade Shaped The WorldBy WILLIAM J. BERNSTEINGrove/Atlantic, Inc.
Copyright © 2008 William J. BernsteinAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87113-979-5
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..............................................................383Chapter One
SUMERThe 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 first appeared in Northern Europe around 15,000 years ago. These early watercraft were made from animal skins sewn over rigid frames (most often antler horns) and were used for both hunting and transport, most commonly with a paddler in the rear and a weapon-bearing hunter or passenger in front. It is no accident that the reindeer-bone sewing needle appears simultaneously in the archeological record, since it is necessary for the manufacture of skin-sewn vessels. These first boats predate the more "primitive" dugout canoe, for the cold, steppe-like vista of northern Europe could not grow trees wide enough to accommodate a fur-clad hunter.
Only the most durable remnants, mainly stone tools, survive to provide hints about the nature of the earliest long-range commerce. One of the earliest commodities traded by boat must have been obsidian, a black, volcanic rock (actually, a glass) that is a favorite of landscapers and gardeners around the world. Prehistoric man did not value it for its aesthetic properties, but rather because it was easily chipped into razor-sharp, if fragile, cutting tools and weapons. Obsidian's historical value lies in two facts: first, it is produced in only a handful of volcanic sites, and second, using sophisticated atomic fingerprinting techniques, individual samples can be traced back to their original volcanic sources.
Obsidian flakes dating to over 12,000 years ago found in the Francthi Cave on mainland Greece originated from the volcano on the island of Melos, one hundred miles offshore. These artifacts must have been carried in watercraft, yet there are no archaeological remains, literary fragments, or even oral traditions that inform us just how the obsidian got from Melos to the mainland. Were these flakes conveyed by merchants who traded them for local products, or were they simply retrieved by expeditions from the mainland communities that valued them?
Obsidian atomic fingerprints have been used to examine flows of the material through regions as disparate as the Fertile Crescent and the Yucatan. In the Middle East, researcher Colin Renfrew matched up sites with sources dating from around 6000 B.C. The amount of obsidian measured at each excavation site fell off dramatically with distance from its source, which strongly suggests that this was the result of trade. For example, all of the stone blades found in the Mesopotamian sites came from one of two sites in Armenia. At a site 250 miles away from its volcanic source, about 50% of all of the chipped stone found was obsidian, whereas at a second site 500 miles away from the source, only 2% of the chipped stone was obsidian.
These stone-age obsidian routes put into modern perspective the costs of prehistoric commerce. Transporting a load of obsidian between Armenia and Mesopotamia was the prehistoric equivalent of sending a family Christmas package from Boston to Washington D.C. But instead of paying a few dollars and handing the package off to a brown-clad clerk, this ancient shipment consumed two months (including the return trip) of a single trader's labor-very roughly, about $5,000-$10,000 in current value.
With the advent of agriculture, this new maritime technology spread to settled farmers, who adopted the skin-and-frame design for river travel. A pattern of commerce commenced that would remain unchanged for thousands of years: traders from advanced farming communities would transport grain, farm animals, and basic manufactured items such as cloth and tools downriver to exchange for the wares-mainly animal skins-of the hunter gatherers. Archeologists usually find the remains of these prehistoric markets on small, unforested river islands. This is no coincidence; these locations not only took advantage of boat transport but also minimized the odds of a successful ambush.
Axe and adze (chisel) blades, dating to about 5000 B.C., survive as the main evidence of this stone-age water-borne commerce. Archaeologists have identified Balkan quarries as the source of the axe and blade material, fragments of which are found all the way from the Danube's Black Sea mouth to the Baltic and North seas. These durable stone artifacts, found far from their identifiably unique sources, attest to a lively long-distance exchange in a rich multitude of goods.
Water transport is by its nature cheaper and more efficient than land carriage. A draft horse can carry about 200 pounds on its back. With the help of a wagon and a good road, it can pull 4,000 pounds. With the same energy expenditure, the same animal can draw as many as 60,000 pounds along a canal towpath, a load that could be managed by small ancient sailing ships.
Herodotus also described similar vessels carrying wine "stored in casks made of the wood of the palm-tree." The ships were "round, like a shield," made of hide, and propelled by two Armenian merchants down the Tigris to Babylon. Here, then, is the direct descendant of maritime trade's earliest cargo ship, relatively round in shape-and thus slow-so as to accommodate the most weight with the minimal amount of crew and building material. (By contrast, warships since ancient times have been narrow and fast, with somewhat smaller carrying capacities.)
The largest of these boats carried about fourteen tons and came equipped with several donkeys, so that at journey's end the wood frames could be scrapped and the precious skins packed up and carried back to Armenia on the beasts. Herodotus explains:
It is quite impossible to paddle the boats upstream because of the strength of the current, and that is why they are constructed of hide instead of wood. Back in Armenia with their donkeys, the men build another lot of boats to the same design.
After returning to Armenia, the farmers would refit the skins over new frames and load the boats with fresh cargo, and the several-month journey to bartering centers would begin anew. No doubt, the Stone Age hunter-gatherers and farmers of northern Europe also paddled their goods downstream and packed their craft upstream in similar fashion.
Such were trade's likely nascent beginnings. Yet out of the desire to attack (or defend) territory was born one of the earliest and most enduring motifs of trade's history-the exchange of grain from advanced farming communities living in alluvial areas for metals, generally found in less fertile locales.
Around six thousand years ago, man figured out how to purify the abundant copper ore found just below the layers of the pure metal of the first virgin mines. Not long after, the Ergani mines in mountainous Anatolia (modern-day Asian Turkey) began shipping the metal to the early settlements at Uruk (in what is now southern Iraq, about a hundred miles west of Basra). The Tigris River connected Ergani and Uruk, and while the vessels of the day could easily float several tons of copper downstream to Uruk in a few weeks, the transport of hundreds of tons of grain to Anatolia, against the current, would have been much more problematic.
Later Mesopotamian civilizations took advantage of more favorably placed Persian Gulf mineral sources. The appearance of written records just before 3000 B.C. offers fleeting glimpses of a massive copper-grain trade that flourished along this route. The land of milk and honey from the ancient Sumerian creation myths was a place known as "Dilmun," celebrated for its wealth and probably located in modern-day Bahrain. Its prosperity, however, did not come from its relatively fertile soil, but rather from its strategic position as a trading post for copper produced in the land of Magan, in what is today Oman, just outside the Persian Gulf's entrance at the Strait of Hormuz.
Not far from modern-day Qal'at al-Bahrain, the archaeological excavation of ancient Dilmun's likely location has yielded a treasure trove of Bronze Age objects. The site covers only about fifty acres but contained a population of about 5,000, likely far more than could have been supported by the city's agricultural hinterland. Cuneiform texts record that small shipments, usually consisting of a few tons of barley, began to travel down the Gulf towards Dilmun and Magan around 2800 B.C. By the end of the millennium, these grain cargoes increased to as much as several hundred tons per shipload. At an astonishingly early point, history affords an ancient equivalent of Las Vegas-a large population living in relatively barren surroundings whose very survival depended upon large amounts of food imported from hundreds of miles away.
Dilmun's excavation provides a tantalizing, and oft times highly personal, window on what the Sumerian Persian Gulf grain-copper trade might have looked like. The town sat on an island and was supplied with a generous spring issuing what the ancients called "sweet," or fresh, water. By 2000 B.C., its city walls enclosed an area almost the size of the biggest Mesopotamian city, Ur. In its center sat a municipal square, one end of which opened on the sea gate; at the other end stood a building filled with seals and scales, almost certainly a customs house. Piled high around the square would have been huge baskets of barley and dates from the banks of the Tigris, while the more precious cargo-Mesopotamian cloth as well as ivory and ingots of copper bound for Ur-stood just outside the customs house, guarded by nervous sailors while their officers argued, bribed, and cajoled the officials inside.
If the year was 1800 B.C., these ingots would likely have been bound for the warehouses of Ea-nasir, the largest copper merchant in Ur, where archaeologists have discovered a large cache of clay tablets detailing this strategic trade. One tablet records a shipment of twenty tons of the metal, while another bears the complaint of a client, one Nanni: You said, "I will give good ingots to Gimil-Sin." That is what you said, but you have not done so; you offered bad ingots to my messenger saying "Take it or leave it." Who am I that you should treat me so? Are we not both gentlemen?"
The curiosity and drive of the first metal craftsmen who produced the copper in Ea-nasir's warehouses must have been remarkable. The process in which sulfur, oxygen, chlorine, or carbonate, depending on the type of ore, are removed from it to yield the pure metal-smelting-first saw the light of day in approximately 3500 B.C. The metallurgists of the Fertile Crescent soon began mixing their local copper with an exotic imported metal, tin. Not only was the new hammered copper/tin alloy as hard and durable as that of the previous copper/arsenic and copper/antimony alloys, but it melted at a much lower temperature than pure copper. Better yet, it did not bubble and was thus easily cast.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Splendid Exchangeby WILLIAM J. BERNSTEIN Copyright © 2008 by William J. Bernstein. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
- Publication date : 11 April 2008
- Edition : First Edition
- Language : English
- Print length : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0871139790
- ISBN-13 : 978-0871139795
- Item weight : 771 g
- Dimensions : 15.88 x 3.81 x 23.5 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 957,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,360 in Business & Economic History
- 5,208 in World History (Books)
- 52,450 in Society, Politics & Philosophy
- Customer reviews:
About the author

William Bernstein has authored several best-selling books on finance and history, is often quoted in the national financial media, and has written for Morningstar, Money Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. His title on the history of world trade, A Splendid Exchange, was short-listed for the 2008 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs best business book award, and was designated a best book of the year by the Economist. He was the 2017 recipient of the CFA Institute's James Vertin Award for financial research.
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- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 August 2009Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseWhen an author sets out to write a history of trade and starts off in 3000 BC, with Sumerian farmers being attacked by raiders wearing helmets made from a material that the farmers have never seen before (copper), you know that the writer is serious about history. Bernstein is a heavyweight financial analyst, and this book might be expected to focus more on the economic impact of trade. In fact A Splendid Exchange is a rollicking read that rattles through the millennia, uncovering fascinating historical facts at every turn. Did you know that the camel, easy prey for predators such as lions, was heading for extinction until the species was domesticated by man? Some three and a half thousand years ago, the international traders of Mesopotamia and Asia realised that the dromedary's unique ability to go without water for days (it's all about their kidneys, and being able to raise their body temperature in the daytime to reduce sweating) made them the ideal beast of burden for the desert. One camel driver with several camels could transport at least a ton of goods twenty to sixty miles per day. Trade in the Middle East and on the steppes of Asia was transformed.
Bernstein whisks us from the dawn of trade to the modern day via the ancient trades in silk and spices between East and West, and highlights the dramatic cultural shifts brought about as an indirect result of the opening up of new trade routes, enabling the spread of new religions, empires and diseases.
Bernstein's ultimate purpose is to highlight and debate the constant seesaw between free trade and protectionism. He looks unflinchingly at both sides of the argument: this is no polemic for unthinking globalisation. His ultimate conclusion is that free trade is the best system available to us (although there will indeed be winners and losers). In discussing the pitfalls and perils of the various forms of protectionism that have existed throughout history, Bernstein hopes to help us to steer a more effective course in the future. A noble aim. A great book.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 February 2009Format: HardcoverThe appeal of this comprehensive history of world trade is rooted in its valuable information, thoughtful insights and brilliant writing. But, you'll also be delighted with the fascinating, little-known details that financial theorist William J. Bernstein throws in along the way. For example, did you know that the Boston Tea Party, the legendary event that helped launch the American Revolution, was not a selfless act of patriotism, but a venal stunt by greedy smugglers and merchants that actually cost the colonists a lot of money? How about the fact that an Ethiopian herder may have discovered coffee in A.D. 700 when he noticed that his goats and camels bounced merrily around all night after chewing on the red berries of an unknown shrub? Or that the early Chinese sometimes adulterated their precious tea exports with sawdust? Bernstein fills his book with such beguiling minutiae, but primarily he presents a knowing, comprehensive, discerning report on world trade from its prehistoric beginnings to the present. getAbstract predicts that Bernstein's saga will engage you from the first page to the last, and from sea to shining sea.
Top reviews from other countries
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下町大家Reviewed in Japan on 6 January 20115.0 out of 5 stars 良書。
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase人の歴史は交易の歴史。交易と言う単語を軸に歴史を摘み取った良書。
有史以来、人々は交易を繰り返してきた。例えば、中世においてアフリカで特注品をオーダーし中国で作りアフリカに納品する何て事が実際に行われていた。こう言った具体例を踏まえながら、貿易のスキームや興亡の要因を時系列的に捉える事が出来る。
21世紀は交易の時代だと言われている。世界がより結合していく中で、この書は最良のヒントを読者に与えてくれるだろう。
Brian Van NormanReviewed in Canada on 9 June 20225.0 out of 5 stars Superb, Detailed History
I realize not a lot of people read history but this book is for anyone in business as well. It is the story of business and merchandizing from beginning to end. How ancient are the trade routes, how globally it spread (and I'm talking 16th C and earlier. The narrative is written brilliantly and there are so many arcane facts and actions I'd known nothing about... I may even read it again!
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Gustavo CalvoReviewed in Spain on 16 March 20185.0 out of 5 stars un libro muy intesenate para entender la historia y el presente
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchasemuy bien escrito y la calidad del libro cuando se mando. precio calidad y contenido muy adecuados a los esperado
Allan M. LeesReviewed in the United States on 23 August 20085.0 out of 5 stars Something new on every page
Format: HardcoverVerified PurchaseWhat could be more boring than a book about the history of trade? This may well be the thought that passes through most people's minds when they contemplate the rich cover of Bernstein's latest tome. Yet such an expectation turns out to be totally incorrect. A Splendid Exchange is also A Splendid Read.
Bernstein has a remarkable ability to inter-leave arcane details with big-picture perspectives and the result is a work that delights as it informs. I personally learned something new on almost every page, even though I thought I was already fairly well informed about several of the subject areas covered in the book. Second-rate writers often try to impress with displays of recondite learning or excessive verbosity; Bernstein does neither. His prose is light and assured and carries the flow of his thesis forward as on a bubbling ever-cresting wave.
He superbly illustrates a general historical point with the specifics of an individual life, as when he notes almost in passing that the first human to circumnavigate the globe was not a well-known historical personage such as Magalhaes (Magellan) or Drake, but rather a slave who has hitherto largely remained absent from the annals of nautical history.
As Bernstein points out, humans are the only species to engage in trade. It is a fundamental characteristic of our species, and all the rest of human nature comes into play in its furtherance. The rapid expansion of Islam is partly explained by the fact that Muslims were under religious injunction not to pillage fellow believers, but could consider pillage an almost blessed act when perpetrated on non-believers. Not surprisingly, upon learning of this useful distinction the non-believers rapidly converted, thus sparing themselves further depredations - but forcing the might of Islam to push its boundaries ever-forward in search of new people to loot and slaughter. And lest we fall into the lazy trap of equating Islam alone with violence and intolerance, there's a salutory chapter of the Portugese expansion into the East, which amply demonstrates that no religion, nationality, or ethnic group has any monopoly on repellant behavior.
Equally interesting is Bernstein's observation that the Boston Tea Party, far from being all about "no taxation without representation" as faithfully portrayed in the Disneyesque world of American school text books, was actually cant to disguise the protection of middle-men and thus ensure the continuation of overly-high prices for the hapless American consumer of tea.
Despite the catalogue of stupidities, atrocities, and double-dealings that is inevitably a large part of any history of humanity, this book ultimately is an optimistic work. Trade, as Bernstein enables the record to show, has been almost single-handedly responsible for the fact that the vast majority of humankind no longer has to grub roots out of parched ground nor resort to trying to bring down the occasional ruminant with wooden spears. Just as today finds no shortage of anti-globalisation protesters, so throughout history people have complained that this wicked invention called trade has been upsetting cozy monopolies and creating social unrest. In the process, it has also created opportunity and wealth and well-being for the vast majority of humankind. This really should be a basic text book for anyone at undergraduate level who has any curiosity at all about why humans have been able to construct this modern world in which we live.
If there were only three books I could take into exile, this would be one of them. The other two would be The Constitution of Liberty by Hayek and the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. All three shed important light on the human condition in realms both large and small, and all three are a pleasure to read and re-read at one's leisure.
BernereggReviewed in Germany on 4 November 20165.0 out of 5 stars World History Explained
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseWe didn't ever really learn a general view of why the history of the world unfolded as it did. We just learned what happened and then what happened after that as if history was just a matter of action and reaction.
This book starts with the Stone Age, what people wanted and what they had to offer.
History is explained as a competition for goods, some of which people really needed and others such as spices, coffee and tea, that they just thought they needed.
Bernstein explains all the myths and fallacies in history and tells us what really happened, where cloves and nutmeg really came from - also coffee is a surprize. And we certainly never suspected what the Europeans were trading for all the shiploads of spices, silk, porcellan, coffee and tea they were bringing back to Europe!
An added bonus is Bernsteins style. The text flows so easlily punctuated with wonderful succinct remarks that sum up so much and which just stay in your memory for ever,
History suddenly becomes logical and absolutely fascinating.
This book is a MUST for any student of history.





