 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Adam Smith wrote that man has an intrinsic “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” But how did trade evolve to the point where we don’t think twice about biting into an apple from the other side of the world? In this sweeping narrative history of world trade, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. He transports readers from ancient sailing ships that brought the silk trade from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the sixteenth; from the American trade battles of the early twentieth century to the modern era of televisions from Taiwan, lettuce from Mexico, and T-shirts from China. Lively, authoritative, and astonishing in scope, A Splendid Exchange is a riveting narrative that views trade and globalization not in political terms, but rather as an evolutionary process as old as war and religion—a historical constant—that will continue to foster the growth of intellectual capital, shrink the world, and propel the trajectory of the human species. |
Average Customer Rating:   Occasionally Insightful This book starts off as a relatively ordinary history book, then toward the end offers a moderate number of valuable insights. Those insights don't appear to be original, but he performs a valuable service by drawing attention to ideas that aren't as widely known as they should be.
He argues that the Boston Tea Party was intended to keep tea prices high, and instigated by the merchants who were threatened by increased competition, using the much of the same rhetoric that modern protectionists use.
He describes a strong connection between a decrease in the price of mailing a letter and the ability of people of ordinary wealth to organize opposition to the Corn Laws.
He has an interesting argument that the benefits of international trade is the resulting desire for peace between people who have business relationships with each other, rather than the more obvious but apparently small benefits that are more direct. I wish there were stronger evidence that trade generates peace.
He makes a moderate number of claims that seem poorly thought out. E.g. "a national or central bank" is "the bedrock financial institution of the modern world".
Good History Tainted by Modern Liberal Political Slant There is so much good material in this book, I hate to downgrade it to two stars. But I am so sick of people using whatever medium to insert their personal liberal activist ideas into every venue (like comparing Bush to some greedy, militaristic Portuguese of the long past) ...which really has no place in a book like this, and there are plenty of other examples... well, sorry. It just won't do. I didn't buy this book as a member of the author's imagined liberal in-group. And I didn't appreciate his little liberal in-group jabs at Bush.
What a strange perspective, by the way, this book presents. While being anti-corporate and anti-American, it touts -- over-touts, really -- the grand contribution of Islamic cultures to the development of modern world trade. And yet, modern world trade is something America has excelled at, and Bush sought to defend.
I think the author obviously did a great deal of historical research and presented some worthy interesting historical descriptions, but could not resist the temptation to insert his own, current, modern political point of view as a lesson of some kind -- which is oddly inconsistent with the history he researched.
Very strange book, on thinking about it. Kinda gives me the creeps, actually, it's so slimey the way he slips little liberal messages into his narration of historical events.
Liberals will love this book... or maybe not. I mean... the book is kind of saying that commerce is a good thing. That would be commerce as opposed to, say, barter, the true New Age way of doing business.
The more I write this review, the more inclined I am to give it just one star. But I'll leave it at two, just for the sake of the author's good writing skills.
Easy and Insightful Reading A good historical description and defense of free trade. Light and enjoyable reading. Not too heavy on the theory or polemics A fascinating adventure in world trade This is a thoroughly enjoyable book that anyone interested in history and trade or economics should acquire. Mr. Bernstein writes well. He has an elegant and witty prose and whilst obviously well versed in his subject he is never pompous or boring. He takes the reader through the history of world trade from Mesopotamia to Doha. Obviously a free trader at heart he has however no religion he tries to preach - indeed he makes the point that the United States would not have grown the way they did in the 19th century without fierce protectionism - and he peppers his account with plenty of fascinating anecdotes. Who would have suspected for instance that an enterprising trader was delivering ice - yes, blocks of ice sawed off in the North - to Calcutta, of all places, shipping it from the New World long before refrigeration, steam powered ships or even electricity ?
My only criticism is for the publisher. Once again, we are treated as imbeciles assumed not to buy or read a book that has footnotes in the text. The footnotes to Bernstein's masterpiece are at the end of the book, which is an absolute pain in the neck to the eclectic and curious reader. Moreover they are not complete. For instance, if you are interested in finding out why President Andrew Jackson was actually against lowering tariffs for certain goods from the South, footnote 15 on page 322 sends you to page 418, which cryptically says "Ellis, 158-177". Now, who on earth is this fellow "Ellis"? To find out, you have to work your way through the bibliography and go to page 433 to learn of a Richard Ellis who wrote a book entitled "The Union at Risk". For his next book, Mr.Bernstein may consider going to a publisher who does better in this respect. Otherwise, the book is a delight. An informative, well written overview of world trade The age of trade is well documented and mapped in this fine history. One now long forgets the high school survey classes about the Dutch East India Company, the English East India Company, the English Corn laws, the Sugar and the Nutmeg Islands. Bill Bernstein refreshes those long ago concepts in a thorough readable history. At the end, he deals honestly with all the issues surrounding recurrent protectionism, tariffs and free trade which affect our lives. |  |
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