Salt is a mineral that Nature has generously disbursed around the globe and it has played a fundamental role in many cultures. It is indispensable to living beings, giving flavour to and permitting the conservation of foods. It has an important biological function associated with an organism’s equilibrium. For many it also has a ritualistic and symbolic value, indeed a magic power.
Salt is a unique and abundant product; however, it is often hidden, buried in the ground or dissolved in the sea. Since prehistoric times, man has used his ingenuity to extract it. How is salt produced? Where is it found? How is this commodity exchanged? Who extracts the most profit? This book responds to these questions and more, via 10 chapters – containing 10 studies – that can be read separately or together.
In From Slavery to Globalisation, the reader learns much about the history of salt, including the suffering of the slaves and those in penal servitude who worked in the salt mines and salt pans; the division of revenues that was to the detriment of the salt workers; the construction of fortified saltworks near the entrance to the Camargue in France; the efforts of the Swiss who impoverished themselves to obtain the precious mineral; salt’s entry into the globalised economy at the end of the Middle Ages; the powerful maritime nations that crossed the Atlantic in search of this strategic product; and the establishment of the unpopular salt tax in a large number of countries. A major agricultural, mineral, industrial and commercial product, salt was an early entrant in the industrial revolution and went on to open the way to globalisation…and this was well before the end of the 20th century.
