Trade Book Reviews

In The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, Virginia Postrel expertly demonstrates how the history of textiles is the story of human progress. Although textiles have shaped society in many ways, their central role in the development...

Written in engaging language, Smoke and Ashes is a scholarly follow-up to the author’s famous Ibis trilogy, a collection of fiction that uses the opium trade as its backdrop. In Smoke and Ashes, the author draws on his years-long research...

Centered around the story of the Sassoons, a Jewish family in Ottoman Baghdad that spanned two continents, this book is not only a family story but also a story of global trade and global capitalism. Although different members of the Sassoon...

While granulated sugar was produced in India as early as the 6th century BCE, its usage for a long time remained limited to royalty or ceremonial purposes. It was not until the 13th century that sugar became a major commercial product throughout...

Jonathan Barth argues that England expanded its empire overseas throughout the 1600s in order to collect precious metals and wealth. Barth’s thesis is that colonists tolerated economic subordination to England as long as they had political...

Over the last 20 years, there has been quite a boom in the publication of books about the Silk Road. The Silk Road would more accurately be referred to as the plural "Silk Roads," since it was a network of roads rather than a single highway...

Before he passed away in 2020, David Ringrose was Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, San Diego. He was an expert on the history of Spain while also having an interest in world history at large. As the book's Preface...

This book on trade and commerce in antiquity is a blend of papers that originated from a conference at the University of St Andrews on 11 and 12 July 1995. Additional contributions were also made by several scholars. The project aims at a...