Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T05:34:04.347Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Commodity Histories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Bruce Robbins
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One striking characteristic of commodity histories, a suddenly ubiquitous genre of popular nonfiction, is a certain overkill in their subtitles. A representative sample might include, say, Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance (Warman), Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization (Gately), The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World (Zuckerman), The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug (Weinberg and Bealer), Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World (Kurlansky), and Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World (Garfield). Only slightly less over-the-top than the “changed the world” clause, which also appears in recent histories of vanilla, house cats, Ping-Pong balls, dishwashing liquid, and pocket lint, is the vogue for two-word titles in which an adjective, usually a commodity-identifying color, is paired with the most coveted of precious metals. Some examples are Blue Gold (water [Barlow and Clarke]), White Gold (rubber [Yungjohann]), Black Gold (oil [Woodward]), and Green Gold (tea and marijuana—two books [Bennet; Macfarlane and Macfarlane]). Such titles suggest that all these commodities, even the humblest, have the power to get continents discovered, dynasties toppled, mountains moved. We take some of these commodities for granted, but all of them have changed the world.

Type
The Changing Profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 120 , Issue 2 , March 2005 , pp. 454 - 463
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ahluwalia, Pal, Ashcroft, Bill, and Knight, Roger, eds. White and Deadly: Sugar and Colonialism. Commack: Nova Science, 1999.Google Scholar
Allen, Stewart Lee. The Devil's Cup: Coffee, the Driving Force in History. New York: Soho, 1999.Google Scholar
Barlow, Maude, and Clarke, Tony. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water. New York: New, 2002.Google Scholar
Bennet, Chris. Green Gold in the Tree of Life: Marijuana in Magic and Religion. N.p.: Access, 1995.Google Scholar
Booth, Martin. Opium: A History. New York: St. Martin's, 1996.Google Scholar
Braudel, Fernand. The Structures of Everyday Life. New York: Harper, 1981.Google Scholar
Braudel, Fernand. The Wheels of Commerce. New York: Harper, 1982.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Piya. A Time for Tea: Women, Labor, and Post-colonial Politics on an Indian Tea Plantation. Durham: Duke UP, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. Cocoa and Chocolate, 1765.-1914. London: Routledge, 2000.Google Scholar
Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, and Topik, Steven, eds. The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, 1500.-1989. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Sophie D., and Michael D. Coe. The True History of Chocolate. London: Thames, 1996.Google Scholar
Daniel, Pete. Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures since 1880. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1985.Google Scholar
Dicum, Gregory, and Luttinger, Nina. The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to Last Drop. New York: New, 1999.Google Scholar
Drollas, Leo, and Greenman, Jon. Oil: The Devil's Gold. London: Duckworth, 1989.Google Scholar
Freese, Barbara. Coal: A Human History. Cambridge: Perseus, 2003.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine, and Greenblatt, Stephen. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garfield, Simon. Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World. New York: Norton, 2001.Google Scholar
Gately, Iain. Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization. New York: Grove, 2001.Google Scholar
Goodman, Jordan. Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence. London: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Knapp, Jeffrey. “Elizabethan Tobacco.” Representations 21 (1988): 27–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. New York: Penguin, 1997.Google Scholar
Macfarlane, Alan, and Macfarlane, Iris. Green Gold: The Empire of Tea. London: Ebury, 2003.Google Scholar
McPhee, John. Oranges. New York: Farrar, 1967.Google Scholar
Mills, James H. Cannabis Britannicus: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800.-1928. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Viking, 1985.Google Scholar
Moxham, Roy. Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire. New York: Carroll, 2003.Google Scholar
Parker-Pope, Tara. Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke. New York: New, 2001.Google Scholar
Richards, Thomas. The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851.-1914. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Saffron, Inga. Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy. New York: Broadway, 2002.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of ‘the World System.‘” Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory. Ed. Dirks, Nicholas, Eley, Geoffrey, and Ortner, Sherry. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. 412–55.Google Scholar
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. 1980. New York: Vintage, 1993.Google Scholar
Shiva, Vandana. Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit. Cambridge: South End, 2002.Google Scholar
Streatfeild, Dominic. Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography. London: Picador, 2001.Google Scholar
Striffler, Steve, and Moberg, Mark, eds. Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas. Durham: Duke UP, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szogyi, Alex, ed. Chocolate: Food of the Gods. Westport: Greenwood, 1997.Google Scholar
Topik, Steven C. “Coffee.” Topik and Wells 37–84.Google Scholar
Topik, Steven C., and Wells, Allen, eds. The Second Conquest of Latin America: Coffee, Henequen, and Oil during the Export Boom, 1850.-1930. Austin: U of Texas P, 1998.Google Scholar
Vickers, Michael J. Ivory: A History and Collector's Guide. London: Thames, 1987.Google Scholar
Wagner, Gillian. The Chocolate Conscience. London: Chatto, 1987.Google Scholar
Warman, Arturo. Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Trans. Westrate, Nancy L. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2003. Trans. of Historia de un bastardo. 1988.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Bennett Alan, and Bonnie, K. Bealer. The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug. New York: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Wells, Allen. “Conclusions: Dialectical Bananas.” Striffler and Moburg 316–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, Don. Black Diamonds! Black Gold! The Saga of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Yeomans, Matthew. Oil: Anatomy of an Industry. New York: New, 2004.Google Scholar
Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. 1991. New York: Free, 1992.Google Scholar
Yungjohann, John C. White Gold: The Diary of a Rubber Cutter in the Amazon, 1906.-1916. Ed. Ghillean, T. Prance. Oracle: Synergetic, 1989.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, Larry. The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World. New York: North Point, 1998.Google Scholar