Follow the money

11:51am Thursday 28th August 2008

A SPLENDID EXCHANGE: HOW TRADE SHAPED THE WORLD

William Bernstein (Atlantic Books, £22)

My reading of A Splendid Exchange was interrupted by a breaking news e-mail from the BBC: Geneva talks to liberalise global trade collapse'. World trade, if you think about it, is extraordinary. Much to the British phonographic Industry's chagrin, I can personally import a CD or DVD from Hong Kong for less than the cost of buying the same from HMV or Zavvi.

Meanwhile, try to find a domestically grown apple in your local supermarket, and more than likely you will end up with a Royal Gala imported from the orchards of New Zealand.

How we have reached this bizarre state of affairs is the subject of this absorbing new history of world trade.

The book divides neatly into four quarters. The first outlines the origins of world trade in prehistoric times, the export of surplus grain and cloth from Mesopotamia and the import of strategic metals.

From here, the focus shifts to the growth of trade around the Indian Ocean from late antiquity onwards, a vast trading system held together by the explosive spread of Islam.

Only following Portuguese Vasco da Gama's rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, in 1497, was the current era of western commercial dominance heralded by the growth of the Dutch and English East India Companies.

The final chapters examine the massive upheavals in today's ever more integrated global trading system.

Potentially somewhat dry subject matter, you might think, but Bernstein kept me interested and engaged with his knowledgeable but relaxed style, only very occasionally straying a short distance into the economics textbook arena of incomprehensible graphs and charts.

Overall, it's a story that tells us as much about the world we live in today as any aspect of global history.

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