The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400-Present

Abstract

Using a series of vignettes, Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik seek to elaborate upon the social dimensions of trade and economic activity. They argue that “markets are . . . socially embedded and socially constructed” (p. xiv). In order to support this notion, we are presented with narratives ranging in time from the ancient Greeks to the Marlboro man. The resulting work is similar to a collection of documents for a world history survey.At once reminiscent (at least in intent) of the edited collection of Arjun Appadurai and the recent detailed work of A.G. Frank, this volume is neither as theoretically challenging as the former nor as intricate or expansive as the latter. In fact, the authors’ treatment of markets, transportation, drugs and other commodities may have more in common with James Burke’s television series, Connections, although less evocative, informative or entertaining.While they “reject a Eurocentric teleology” (p. xiv), Pomeranz and Topik cannot avoid a heavy emphasis on Europe and Europeans. What emerges most clearly from this collection is a growing dominance of Western supply, demand, culture, and foreign policy. Fully three-quarters of the text treats relations between the West and the rest, with England playing a pivotal role.Latin Americanists will find familiar figures throughout, yet the presentation can be somewhat disturbing. A discussion of Aztec traders closes with the usual reference to Spanish conquest and destruction. One hundred pages later, in a vignette on guano, we receive word of the role of disease. Another twenty pages later, in an essay on African slavery, we learn that ten million Africans crossed the Atlantic in response to the Amerindian depopulation resulting from the Spanish introduction of small pox and measles. Spanish American silver receives similar treatment, while Brazilian gold is ignored. Dyewood, sugar, cacao, coffee, tobacco, and coca all receive mention, but largely in reference to European markets. There is little of the social, ecological or demographic impact on local producers, unless the reader is willing to flip continuously back and forth across dozens of pages to grasp the frequent cross-references within the text.What originally began as a series of columns in World Trade on the origins of the global economy carries no more force of argument as a unified whole. That “warfare and economic growth . . . are not contradictory” or what Grace Slick felt about the Vietnam War (p. 152) are as meaningful as the authors’ observation that “success . . . came to the successful, not necessarily to the most virtuous, hardworking or clever” (p. xv). For a more thorough rendering of this case, see David Landes’s Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Taken together with the absence of footnotes throughout, the scholarly value of this book may be somewhat less than its declared sale price.

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