Recommend and discuss books on history and international relations!

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ecthy


Food in history reminds me a bit about GGS. That Euro gold and silver part is interesting though. Thanks

An enthralling world history of food from prehistoric times to the present. A favorite of gastronomes and history buffs alike, 'Food in History' is packed with intriguing information, lore, and startling insights--like what cinnamon had to do with the discovery of America, and how food has influenced population growth and urban expansion.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0517884046/103-4436893-0975000?v=glance

I can't remember off-hand, but some talking head was on television saying something about how European civilizations were 'always' rediscovering India- as a source of luxury finished goods, and as a source of foodstuffs and science/philosophy.

Either directly, as conquerors (Alexander) or Romano-Greek-Egyptian traders who established a presence in Calicut and in Sri Lanka (especially after Trajan's time).

Huge amounts of Roman silver bullion were being traded either directly or indirectly with China and India, and although Rome also traded finished goods and raw materials such as glassware, metal goods and coral, there was definitely an economic imbalance.

Ancient India had considerable trade links with the Middle East, Europe (Greece and Rome) as well as China. This trade was carried out over land partly along what came to be alluded to as the silk route and partly through maritime trade. By the time of Pliny, the Roman historian, Roman trade with India was thriving, and indeed creating a balance of payments problem for the Roman Empire. In South India, which had a thriving maritime trade, Roman coins even circulated in their original form, albeit slashed at times as a gesture disclaiming intrusions of foreign sovereignty.

http://www.rbi.org.in/currency/museum/c-ancient.html

Roman Find in South India:

[VetLegion]

That is true. Romans whined about loosing hard currency every year on luxury imports from the east. Later, Europe's deficits with Asia were financed by the Potosi silver. Europe simply had nothing else to trade. It's cloth and manufactures were of inferior quality to those produced in the east until the industrial revolution.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by VetLegion
That is true. Romans whined about loosing hard currency every year on luxury imports from the east. Later, Europe's deficits with Asia were financed by the Potosi silver.

It's cloth and manufactures were of inferior quality to those produced in the east until the industrial revolution.

One thing that did interest me was talking with a doctor friend about some of the possible effects of lead poisoning- diarrhoea, depressed appetite, colic- and then thinking about the passion the Romans had for highly spiced foods, and combinations of salt and sour and sweet.

WINES
Peppers were known as an important import from India in biblical times. These spices were used in wine as medications for stomach pain, and similar spiced wines were used therapeutically for centuries afterwards by Greeks, Romans and medieval Europeans.

http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/biomed/spice/index.cfm?spicefilename=SpicesAsMeds.txt&itemsuppress=yes&displayswitch=0

Many pungent spices are unattractive to animals (excepting most, humans, many birds and some rodents), and they do have some antimicrobial, gastrointestinal, and mucus-loosening properties. Modern studies suggest that garlic, onion, allspice and oregano are the most potent antibacterial and antifungal agents; thyme, cinnamon, cloves and chile peppers are among the next best, while cardamon, black and yellow pepper, ginger, anise and celery seeds are less effective. However, there is lack of uniformity in findings, and this may reflect non-uniformity in source material.

I suspect it wasn't all about conspicuous consumption, although giving the most lavish banquets seems to have been definitely a nouveau riche Roman thing to do, sourcing the most bizarre and outre and costly ingredients.

It's fascinating as well that there was definitely a gourmet side to them- they shipped fresh mussels and oysters from the British Isles and were avid consumers of cured ham from Gaul.

I recall from reading Mary Seacole's autobiography that she used spices in tonic drinks in the Crimean War to combat intestinal upsets:

For centuries, people have been fascinated by cinnamon as a healing potential as well as its unique flavor. The use of cinnamon can be traced back to Egypt around 3000 B.C., where it was used as an embalming agent, to China around 2700 B.C., where it was used medicinally by herbalists. It was also mentioned in the Old Testament. Cinnamon has the distinction of being one of the first commodities traded on a regular basis from the East to the Mediterranean.

Cinnamon, Cassia: antiseptic, anti-diarrhoea

Clove: topical anesthetic, anti-dyspeptic

As for what the Romans traded, I'd recommend reading 'The Silk Road' by Frances Wood which contains a wealth of information:

And although a lot of silk did pass down the road(s), it was by no means the most prized commodity -- by the mid-nineteenth century the trade in rhubarb was so great that, when Britain flooded China with opium, the Emperor threatened to ban the export of the laxative, condemning Britons to eternal constipation. (He did not know that an Oxford gardener had been growing the stuff commercially since 1777.) Richthofen could, with some justification, have called it the Rhubarb Road.

http://www.powells.com/review/2003_11_09.html

It certainly acts as a necessary corrective to the old idea of the Chinese simply exporting everything and sucking up money- their eagerness for foreign novelties and foodstuffs at times rivalled the Roman epicures and gourmands:

Musk, rubies, diamonds, pearls, Baltic amber and jade joined the caravans, as did horses, elephants, lions and ostriches -- like their Roman counterparts, Chinese Emperors were fond of unusual fauna. Food was a prosaic bulk cargo, and medicinal plants made a tidy profit. (If the Chinese purged the West with rhubarb, they still relied on Persian spinach to cure their hangovers.)

It's a great read.

[VetLegion]

by the mid-nineteenth century the trade in rhubarb was so great that, when Britain flooded China with opium, the Emperor threatened to ban the export of the laxative, condemning Britons to eternal constipation.

Didn't know that.

I am going to read a book on The Silk Road some day, but there are many of them and I'd like to read the best one, so I've postponed it for now. In the near future I need to find a good economic history of USA and a good study of economic history of some east asian economy. I'm looking into causes and circuimstances of economic growth and especially the role of government intervention.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ecthy

That Euro gold and silver part is interesting though. Thanks

I thought I might be able to find it for you:

...spices at first remained scarce, pepper at one stage reaching the astronomical price of £ 50.00 per Roman pound (12 oz).

[...]

With trading conditions eased, Rome's avidity for the luxuries of China became insatiable. By the 2nd Century a.d. caravans regularly left the Chinese city of Lo-yang with silk, ginger, cassia, and malabathrum (cassia leaf), winding their way over the hundreds of miles by Tunhuang, Lop Nor, and Kashgar to the Stone Tower, a great meeting point somehwere north of the Pamirs.

There, in the wilds of Centarl Asia, exquisite Chinese silks and exotic spices were bartered for all that Rome could provide in exchange: glassware, pottery, asbestos cloth, coral beads, intaglio gems, grape wine for the emperor, and above all, gold and silver.

Pliny estimated that Rome was losing the equivalent of roughly £ 10 000 000 of today's money to Asia every year. *

* 'Food in History' was written in 1973.


The trade in coral:

“Since the period of the Former Han dynasty coral had been an extremely valuable commodity....

From where and on what route did coral – so highly valued by the Chinese – come to China? Red coral from the western Mediterranean and the Red Sea was one of the major items shipped to the East from the time of the Periplus (28, 39, 49). The histories of the Later Han (HHS: LXXXVIII, 2919), the Three Kingdoms (SKC: XXX, 861) and the Chin (CS: XCVII, 2544) mention coral as a product of Ta-ch’in, i.e. the Roman empire. A later Chinese account gives a detailed description of how coral was collected from the sea in Ta-ch’in: the Romans dropped iron nets on the coral reefs so that the yellowish young coral would grow on them. Three years later they came back to collect the coral once it had turned red (Hsin T’ang-shu: CCXXI, 6261).

Those records definitely refer to Mediterranean red coral. There were three possible routes to ship the coral to China. The most frequented route was the Southern Route to India. In the time of the Periplus the primary destination of coral in Roman cargo ships was India. Pliny mentions that coral was as highly treasured in India as pearls were in Rome (XXXII, 11). Coral beads along with beads of other precious materials have been found in north-Indian sites, for example at Rajghat in the level of the pre-Kushan period (Narain 1976-8: II, 12)....

http://depts.washington.edu/uwch/silkroad/texts/hhshu/notes12.html

The trade with southern India:

These sorts of jars were used to hold wine, sauce or olive oil. These things might have been shipped to Arikamedu for foreign traders who lived here and missed the kind of things they were used to at home. But things like wine could just as well have been bought by well-to-do Indians.

Ancient Tamil poems talk in several places about people they call "yavanas." They talk of yavana merchants bringing in merchandise like fine lamps, gold, and wine and buying cargoes of pepper at the ports of South India. At this time, the word yavana was a general word used for foreigners such as Greeks, Romans, and West Asians. There also some old books in Greek and Latin that tell us about trade between the Roman empire and India between about 200 B.C. and 200 A.D.. They give us the names of ports and lists of goods. Hundreds of Roman gold coins, most of them belonging to the reigns of the Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius, have been found at many places in India, mostly in the south. All these clues tell us that during this period, there was brisk trade going on between the Roman empire and India.

http://www.4to40.com/discoverindia/places/index.asp?article=discoverindia_places_arikamedu

An amphora from Arikamedu:

[Ecthy]

That's some damn good stuff, molly! Now I must get my hands on that stuff!

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ecthy
That's some damn good stuff, molly! Now I must get my hands on that stuff!

I warn you though- before you start reading some chapters of 'Food in History' make sure you've eaten.

On the other hand, before you read about garum and liquamen manufacture, make sure you haven't. Unless you're really keen on the 'aroma' of South East Asian fish sauce or shrimp paste...

http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/arl_roman_recipes-liquamen.htm

[Traianvs]

o m g

they must've had a strong digestion system

[Velociryx]

Hmmm....international relations?

Well, for starters, I highly recommend:

How to Build A Coalition of the Willing
~ George, "Dubya" Bush

and

The Big Book of Making Friends, the Old Fashioned Way (Bribe Them)
(also a US title)

and from France, you may want to check out the WWII classic

Surrender Tactics

Most insightful.

There are lots of others tho...

-=Vel=-

[Felch]

I enjoyed Paul Johnson's "Modern Times," although some might not like its right wing tone.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Seeker
Paris 1919

an excellent book for understanding modern politics, particularly when it comes to 'buffers, gatekeepers, and handlers'.

I just started this one a couple of days ago; so far, it's excellent!

[Uncle Sparky]

Paris 1919

Navigating A New World by Lloyd Axworthy, Random House.

Its from a center/left Canadian perspective.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Ecthy
"the RAND corporation" soooo reminds me of Dr Strangelove

[The Mad Viking]

Europe: A History, by Norman Davies.

[Odin]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
Europe: A History, by Norman Davies.