September 2020 theme: I'll trade you...

…amber for bronze, wood for salt, gold for spices, tea for opium, furs for blankets, silver for silks…

One of the amzaing things of prehistory is how far some things were traded already. And while jewelry from bones or amber may have been gifts, flints for tools were a necessity and thus a tradeable good. Economics have been with us since the beginning.

But have no fear, you don't need to read Keynes or Friedman for this! There are so many historical fiction books exploring this side of human nature.

There are series and books about merchants House of Niccolò or industries Poldark is about tin-mining, Clavell's Tai-Pan, and so on.

There's tons of non-fiction, for instance about the Silk Road, England's Merchant Adventurers, the Robber Barons of the 19th century, histories of famous companies, histories of an important product (Cod, Salt..), a particular industry such as whaling, etc.

Have fun choosing a book and remember the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Challenge#SEPTEMBER...

I have had Silk Road by Colin Falconer on myTBR for quite some time and I think it would fit this theme so that's what I will be reading come September.

I am currently eyeing The Opium War but we all know how easily we get sidetracked.

ETC

I think I will continue with Poldark book #3 and kill two birds with one stone!

One that I read last year that should work: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel about the Dutch East India Company.

>5 Tess_W: Oh, thank you for reminding me of that!

Also, The Coffee Trader should work: 17th century Amsterdam, Jewish coffee trader who is a refugee from the Inquisition.

>7 Tess_W: Oh yes! I believe I still have the review from The Economist flying around somewhere to remind me of it.

>7 Tess_W:, >8 MissWatson: and I was thinking of A Conspiracy of Paper, also by David Liss.

>9 kac522: That one is on my wish list!

I really enjoyed the Coffee Trader several years ago!

I'm going to be reading early, now that I'm retired! Going to try to read all my CATS and RTT by Nov. 1, so that in Nov and Dec I can concentrate on exclusively on my own shelves! I read Jeremy Poldark book 3/12 in the Poldark Series. This book, probably more than the others, deals a lot in economics from the economics of the mines to the economics of the ship(s) that have crashed into the shores of Cornwall. This is a great series! I will, of course, be checking back to see what everybody else read and get some great book bullets!

Finished the rollicking adventure of Boston Jacky: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Taking Care of Business by L.A. Meyer.
Jacky is the owner of Faber World Wide Shipping Co. in the early 1800s.

A couple come to mind for anyone interested in a Brontëan read (though I've got so much new to read that I'm not currently planning rereads myself) — labor unrest in early Victorian England.

Charlotte's own Shirley, which tends to be a rather less popular novel among the Brontë canon, but I actually place it rather high, possibly even third after Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (or at the very least fourth, after The Tenant of Wildfell Hall). It does help if you know a bit of the Brontë biography, because there's a good bit of satire of the Haworth clerical establishment (both CoE and Dissenters) as well as memorializations of members of Charlotte's family ("Shirley Keedlar" = Emily; "Caroline Helstone" = Anne; and "Tartar" = Keeper, Emily's infamous dog) along with some friends like Margaret Wooler and the Taylor family. Charlotte, like the rest of her family, could best be described as a "reforming Tory."

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, a very close friend of Charlotte's last years. Gaskell includes a complimentary Brontëan reference, placing Rev. Hale's parsonage in the village of Helstone (as in "Caroline Helstone" of Shirley). Gaskell was a Unitarian and a Radical (a strongly reforming party), and Charlotte once jokingly referred to her as a "republican" (similar to calling someone a "commie" today!).

It's September and I completely forgot to come pick something out for this! Will need to do that this weekend.

That was easier than I thought! I looked at a few of the suggestions in >1 MissWatson: and - although it's not on my tbr - "Salt" is one I've considered reading. That will be the one!

I'm reading The Coffee Trader too as it is on my shelves and this challenge will help me get to it. My review of the book might be coloured by the fact that I don't like coffee.

I finished Jeremy Poldark (Book 3) in the series. I won't give a review here because the group reads are going to discuss it the last of September. It had a lot to do with mining/selling and also the plundering of shipwrecks; although that isn't necessarily trading!

Like Tess I'm reading Jeremy Poldark this month for a group read and will use it here as well.

My own choice for the theme is a short introduction to the German Hansa: Die Hanse by Rolf Hammel-Kiesow. Very interesting, if a bit too fond of technical terms that need looking up.

I also finished Rotes Gold which is a mystery but it also offers lots of information about tuna fishing, trading and the efforts to breed them in aquafarms because they are nearly wiped out.

I have completed my read of Silk Road by Colin Falconer and although it is set on the famed trade route that runs across Asia, this was more of a historical adventure story and less about trade. There was some parts that mentioned the caravans that travelled the route bringing silks and spices to the East and the towns of Samarkind, Tashkent and Kashgar were mentioned as trade centers. I was totally drawn into the story of a Templar knight and a fanatical priest that travelled east to try and make a treaty with the Tatars and bring Christianity to these infidel people.

>22 DeltaQueen50: Sounds like a ripping yarn!

>23 MissWatson: Exactly - a ripping yarn and great escape read! :)

Salt: A World History / Mark Kurlansky
2.5 stars

This is pretty much what the title says. It looks at how people have used salt throughout the world and throughout history – what they’ve used it for, how they’ve obtained it and made it useful to them, and more.

It was very long. Some parts were interesting, but much was kind of dry for me. I did learn a couple of interesting things, like ketchup was initially an anchovy sauce! Nothing to do with tomatoes! And places in England ending in “wich” in the name at some point had salt mines.

I won't be finished The Coffee Trader by the end of the month but I'll eventually make my way through it.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin. 2** because of its strong neoliberal bias which ignores the devastating effects of U.S. military, economic, and covert-action interventionism in the markets of emerging countries and resource producers (Venezuela and Bolivia, to name just a couple). Noted in a brief review which I'm working to expand into a full examen in the next couple of weeks.

Hi, somehow I missed this thread! A big fav of mine is Stones Fall by Iain pears one of my fave books. Covers a jouralist being paid to find the child of a widow. Takes you to three cities and three different time, the story is told backwards. When I first finished it I immediately went to the first section and reread it. Taught me a lot about how trading works, tho I still don't have much of a clue, but the storyis soooo good!

I know that books about trade was the theme for September and I did start reading The Coffee Trader in that month but it took me a while to read. It appears that I don’t enjoy reading about the intrigue of the trading floor or perhaps it was the commodity that I found off-putting. I’m not a coffee person.

>29 Familyhistorian: Hope you watched Trading Places. You don't have to know the trading floor game to really enjoy it!

>30 cindydavid4: Trading Places is one of my all time favourite Christmas movies. I've seen it many times.

Me too! We watch it during the season along with Christmas Carol (Alistar Sim) Grinch, Charlie Brown, and Harry met Sally.

>32 cindydavid4: Then you'll probably see it again this year. It's been a few years since I watched it. Enjoy your Christmas viewing!