Product Description

As globalisation wobbles into world crisis, a vividly written, brilliantly original history of world trade, the first for a generation is presented. '"A Splendid Exchange" is a splendid book' - "New York Times". "A Splendid Exchange" tells the epic story of global commerce, from its prehistoric origins to the myriad crises confronting it today. It travels from the sugar rush that brought the British to Jamaica in the seventeenth century to our current debates over globalization, from the silk route between China and Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the sixteenth. Throughout, William Bernstein examines how our age-old dependency on trade has contributed to our planet's agricultural bounty, stimulated intellectual and industrial progress and made us both prosperous and vulnerable.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32219 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Review
"'A highly entertaining read. Bernstein's enthusiasm for his subject and impressive organisation of a wealth of material enable him to plot with pace and verve... man's trading history.' Hugh Carnegy, Financial Times 'Timely and readable... The strength of Mr Bernstein's book is the analytical rigour that overlays the rollicking history.' Economist 'Superb... The chronological range of Bernstein's book is staggering... Graceful and insightful history with a delicate display of scholarship that conceals a vast erudition.' Paul Kennedy, Foreign Affairs"

About the Author
William Bernstein is an American financial theorist and historian whose books include The Birth of Plenty, which was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. He lives in America.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating history of world trade
The 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.

More Sustenance for Addicts of Economic History
This is, quite simply, a superb book, combining the virtues of Findlay and O'Rourke's Power And Plenty (my top book of 2008) and Landes's Prometheus Unbound, and better in many ways than Ferguson's The Ascent Of Money and Maddison's Contours Of The World Economy, and unlike the latter manages to steer clear of significant errors (on p155 he puts Aceh in India, not Indonesia, and on p216 he manages to render "Cyprus" as "Cypress").

Its subject matter crisscrosses all of the aforementioned works, with some pretty well inevitable overlap, even down to a quote from Jan Pieterzoon Coen - "We cannot carry on trade without war, nor war with out trade" - also used by Findlay and O'Rourke. But whilst Bernstein cannot avoid the viability of the central thesis of Power And Plenty - that trade and might are irrevocably conjoined - the emphasis is less on the martial than on the ineluctable urge, in Bernstein's thesis, of human beings to treat with each other in the exchange of goods or their proxy, money.

Reaching back initially to the fourth millennium BCE, Bernstein's story strictly speaking begins around 2500 BCE with the first known use of silver as a means of exchange in Sumeria (see also Ferguson's book and Cynthia Stokes Brown's Big History) and traces the history of Trade thenceforward through numerous nations and empires.

En route he throws in some enlightening asides. He speculates that the tendency of the channel between the Great Bitter Lake and the Gulf of Suez to occasionally dry up was the origin of the story of the Israelites' escape across the Red Sea. He tells us that Aden's name derives from the Arabic for Eden. And he reveals that, like the Christians, the Muslims were not above adopting existing traditions, such as the hajj.

Perhaps one of the highlights of the book is his exposé of the story of how the great plague was able to propagate, with the aid of trade. Something my old history teacher never told me was that the bacillus's victim of choice was a ground rodent called the tarabagan. The black rat, commensal with (living alongside) tarabagan and humans, acted as a bridge between the two courtesy of the vector, the flea, and all of those unfortunates were likely to fall victim to the bacillus. The fleas, which took longer to die than their sources of nutrition, would also use horses and camels as "hotels" after the rats had died, but were also likely to find sustenance in other creatures: Bernstein reports accounts of the ground littered with plague-infected birds.

Later he explains in detail the provenance of the Spanish dollar, or piece of eight, which was so unwieldy that it was often divided into its eight parts, hence the origin of the US quarter as "two bits". The Spanish dollar was legal tender in the United States until 1857. He also covers the origins of the coffee trade (a subject close to my heart - plenty was imbibed as I read), the reason why cotton is so widespread globally (because of its buoyancy and saline tolerance), and how, in the 17thC, the East India Company effectively invented the fashion industry, and product placement, by gifting wardrobes of cotton-based product to the most influential stars of the day, the royal family.

To finish, Bernstein warns of the dangers of a repeat of such excrescences as the Smoot-Hawley act, admits nevertheless that the benefits of global trade are not as clear cut as some would have us believe, but also contends that, on balance, the world is maybe a better, and more completely known, place for it.

A history of trade and the challenges of globalisation
When 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.