Salt

 

Title: Salt – A World History

Author: Mark Kurlansky

Publisher:  Penguin, 2003 (First published 2002)

ISBN: 978-0-14-200161-5

Pages: 449

We’d wonder why anyone should bother to write a considerably sized book about a common mineral which is almost taken for granted due to its cheapness and ubiquity. Then again, we would be forced to accord the respect it deserves to salt when we remember that the most essential things for life are abundant and cheap or free – like air or water. Salt, the only rock we eat is so essential to sustain life that its production and trade influenced world history to no small extent. Even though ordinarily by salt we mean common, edible, table salt, it is actually a product obtained from the chemical reaction between an acid and an alkali. The book is a great collection of stories and facts related to its origins, production, trade, and the culinary aspects – over millennia. We learn about its extraction from brine lakes thousands of years ago. The earliest recorded reference to its production comes from Sichuan province in China around 250 BCE. Its governor, Li Bing, was said to extract brine by drilling bamboo poles into the earth to a depth of hundreds of feet. A quite unexpected feature of the enterprise was the oozing out of natural gas from the well. The Chinese cleverly used the gas to boil brine to make crystals of salt. Only during the last century was the secret of petroleum reserves occurring underneath rock salt beds was known. The salt seals the underground vegetation, which turns it to oil over great ages. Egyptian civilization also extensively used salt to preserve food and mummies. Since they relied solely on the annual flooding of the Nile, which was a narrow strip of fertility in an otherwise lapping sea of desert, preservation of food was a prime concern. Natron was used for mummification of the ricj, while the lay folk used common salt.

The Romans extracted salt from huge salt mines in Central Europe and also by evaportating sea water. They traded salt and transported it to great distances. The first Roman road was known as Via Salaria, the salt road. Soldiers were often paid in salt, hence the word salary, and the expressions worth his salt and earning his salt. The Latin word sal became French solde, meaning pay and the word soldier came into being. Medieval European merchant cities like Venice showed great interest in making a fortune out of salt administration. They stopped production of it at home and found that trading was far more profitable. They controlled salt production on the Mediterranean rim, sometimes forcibly and made huge profits out of it. Opening up of North American sea lines after John Cabbot’s voyages helped develop a lucrative trade in salted sea cod from Newfoundland.

Medieval European history is replete with attempts to control the salt trade. Production of salt no doubt affected the trading prospects of a region so as to name that location on the lines of salt works. In England, Anglo-Saxons called a saltworks a wich, and any place in England where the name ends in wich at one time produced salt. Newly existent American colonies found great leverage in selling salted cod to England, while importing salt from it. Soon, England was not able to find markets for the bounteous American produce, which forced the colonists to find markets elsewhere for their product. This was something impossible to acquiesce in to, by a colonizing power. It imposed harsh tariffs and taxes in the colonies, which was rejected and met with rebellion. The skirmishes ended with the birth of United States, after a protracted war of independence. The American Civil War (1861-65) employed strategies to control salt so as to cripple the war effort and administration of confederate states whose salt production was meagre in the first place. With salt works destroyed by enemies, and denied imported salt by naval blockade of ports, the South was greatly hampered in their efforts.

When thinking about salt, an Indian cannot help thinking also about the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, who led a subservient populace towards the goal of independence using peaceful means. It was heartening to note that the world also acknowledges his adroit manipulation of the lethargic masses by dangling the prize of salt in front of them. This book includes a chapter on Mahatma and his salt satyagraha. Gujarat and Orissa were the major salt-making regions in 19^th century and the British imported heavy duties on locally produced salt to make it unattractive against competition from Liverpool salt, made in Cheshire. The salt workers, called malangies, in Orissa became very poor as a result. Though the customers paid a large price, the makers were not getting enough money, as the difference went to government coffers. In 1923, the salt tax was doubled, and by 1929, Orissa reached near boiling point with discontent. Gandhi decided to use this weapon against the British. He marched in 1930 to the sea cost of Dandi, along with thousands of supporters and scraped salt on the beach – breaking British salt law. He was arrested, along with hundreds of thousands of protestors nationwide. The government found that the problem was larger than they could handle. A Round Table conference was called in 1931 to discuss a host of matters of national importance. Salt law was relaxed to allow people to make salt by evaporating brine for their own use. The movement, whose seed was sown, gradually metamorphosed into the national struggle for independence which India attained in 1947.

The use of salt has transformed dramatically over the ages. Earlier, it was mainly used to preserve meat and vegetables by salting, smoking or pickling. With the invention of canning and refrigeration, salt began to be used less and less. It lost its place of prominence on the dining table. Apart from flavouring, the most important use now is for deicing roads in Arctic countries and as an industrial raw material for producing chemicals. Salt intake has reduced considerably among all the nations of the world. It is said that a European now eats half the amount of salt than he did in the 19^th century.

The book is a great contribution to the culinary history of the world, comparable in relevance to An Edible History of Humanity, which was reviewed earlier in the blog. Recipes of many ancient formulations are given. But at one point, one wonders whether the description of old recipes slightly mars the readability of the text. The work is well structured and easily readable. The chapter on India and Gandhi illustrates the wide reading the author did while researching for the work.

Kurlansky accords undue prominence to Chinese inventions and technology, as to make irrelevant comparisons with 19^th century Western technology and reaching the consensus that ancient Chinese technology was better. He goes even to the extreme point of assigning Chinese provenance to some artifacts for which even the Chinese had not laid claim. The author says, “Some Western historians believe that the Chinese may have been the first to develop this technique (solar evaporation of salt) around 500 CE. But Chinese historians, who are loath to pass up founder’s rights to any invention, lay no claim to this one. The Chinese were not pleased with the salt produced by this technique. Slow evaporation results in coarse salt, and the Chinese have always considered fine-grained salt to be of higher quality” (p.83). Such allusions to real or imagined Chinese inventions appears several times in the text. The book is really lengthier than the subject matter warranted and it seems that the author has also become confused with how to end it properly, as evidenced by the rather haphazard finish.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star