Last year, my accelerating caffeine addiction drove me to read Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast, a tour-de-force narrative of the role of coffee in world history, with a particular focus on coffee's position as a global cultural totem, the fuel for intellectual ferment in Europe, a consumer product in the United States, and a staple commodity in neocolonial economies around the world. Pendergrast's love for coffee - and distaste for robusta beans - shone brightly as he guided me, the reader, through a complicated, fascinating, and occasionally bloody history of one of the world's greatest commodities.
So when I picked up Salt: A World History, I salivated at the thought of reading another tight narrative expositing on a profoundly critical good. As with other commodity histories, salt as an object of historical study has much potential due to its importance in human and animal health, role in preserving food, and trade value. Salt has even spawned entire etymological lineages! If only Salt was worth its salt.
First, Salt whiplashes the reader between chemistry, economics, geographies, and even time periods within the same paragraph, let alone entire chapters. Kurlansky occasionally interjects with salt-containing recipes from yesteryear which tend to be more tedious than interesting. Kurlansky's love of factoids absent investigation further obfuscates the narrative; a five-year-old salts dinner more scrupulously than Kurlansky writes fun facts.
Second, when Salt does broach topics of profound interest, they're glossed over. For example, Kurlansky briefly describes the importance of saltworks as strategic assets in the American Civil War, including a few examples where Union or Confederate detachments targeted saltworks. That's interesting! Surely salt has played a meaningful role in military strategy elsewhere? Don't expect to easily find an answer to this question. But please, give me more Scandinavian salt fish recipes.
Finally, although Salt claims to be a "world history," it's clear Kurlansky's focus is Europe and its colonial possessions. India is left without agency by being introduced under the British Raj, despite thousands of years of rich history - which doubtlessly includes salt. And Kurlansky flatly ignores entire continents. The most egregious omission is Africa. Although Kurlansky addresses Ancient Egypt, meriting a chapter, he only ever revisits Africa in relation to Western imperium. This, despite thousands of years of gold-salt trade, which served as a conduit not just for goods but culture and power. That a "world history" can ignore the rise and fall of some of the world's most influential empires - Ghana, Mali, and Songhai come to mind - whose fortunes were built on trading gold for salt, defies belief.
Despite faults in narrative arc and scope, Salt still manages to entertain now and then through finely detailing an everyman's history, vividly coloring daily life in relation to the title mineral. But I can't help thinking about what could have been. Reader beware.
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