Tulips

Who knew tulips could be so contentious?!

Mike Dash's Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions it Aroused explores the evolution of what appears to be the most interesting flower in history.

First and foremost, Dash's work on the Ottomans leaves much to be desired. I don't know if anyone else read it the same way, but I interpreted his treatment to be along the lines of see? even these conquering, bloodthirsty conquerors became enamored with tulips! Is that not quaint? For instance, Dash wrote, "Europeans who traveled to Istanbul ... were generally surprised not merely by the city's size and opulence but by its masters' manners and good taste," (17). Dash, it would seem, shared in that sentiment; or, at the very least, utilizes the cruel yet flower loving Ottomans to lend the plant a sort of mysticism. In part I think he is attempting to argue that tulips moved west as a result of European views, but, again, it would appear that he shares in some of them. All in all, Dash certainly takes an uncritical approach to his work; and that, I think, creates issues most of you have picked up on in other areas.

As far as this work fitting into our broader discussions on commodities, I tend to agree with Susan's summation. Dash certainly proves that tulips not only traveled great distances, but also transcended what he claims to be wildly different cultures. That alone, I should think, proves that tulips came to possess a social life; in that the people growing, trading, and buying them ascribed certain values to them that changed over time. Whether tulips only existed as a 'fad' or within a specific caste is of no consequence. Tulips had demand and they had cultural significance - the latter points proving to be evidence of that. I found numerous correlations, in that regard, with Kris Lane's work on emeralds. Both tulips and emeralds found niche markets and were really only open to (available to) and desired by select groups. Further, I would question the existence of a standard in any of the products we have viewed. Off the top of my head I can think hierarchies existing for all of our subjects.

Overall, I found this work to be an easy and interesting read; but I also found it unbelievably frustrating. There was too much left untouched and I just couldn't get over the Ottoman issues.

Bursting Your Bubble

Mike Dash's Tulpomania is a fascinating read, but perhaps a drop in the bucket of literature on the Holland Tulip Bubble. Some interesting facts about the book's place in academia, the book as been cited a bit more than 100 times (source: Google Scholar), in contexts as varied as Emily Martin's 2007 book Bipolar Expectations: Mania and depression in American culture and Evelyn Brannon's 2005 book Fashion Forecasting: Research, Analysis, and Presentation.

Since 1980, the "tulip bubble" has gained in popularity, even outstripping the housing bubble sometime during the mid-1990s. But wait, wasn't the housing bubble a product of the 21st-century? Not exactly, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's legacy included riding the wave of several asset bubbles (source: The Guardian). In fact, if anything, Dash's book reminds us that asset bubbles have been with us since at least the 16th-century.

In case you were wondering, these are tulips....

Chris Martenson offers his "crash course" on the collapse of the housing market in the U.S. in the 21st-century as well as bubbles over on his website in a series of informative videos. He discusses the tulip bubble as well, in fact this is where I first heard about this historical event. I highly recommend taking a weekend to watch his videos, it might help answer any questions you have about bubbles, exponential growth, Federal monetary policy, etc.

I have first hand experience of this most recent asset bubble, working as a bankruptcy paralegal in central Florida, specifically the Middle District, which is one of the busiest districts in the nation. During the housing bubble years (c. 2007-2012) over 213,000 Chapter 7 bankruptcies were filed. This is roughly 6% of the total population of central Florida. Interestingly, only some of our firm's clients at this time were speculators. Mostly, we helped people who worked in industries connected to the housing market: construction, sales, repairs, etc. There were also several small business owners who used the new found equity in their homes to capitalize an expansion of their businesses. When their homes lost equity, in many cases falling below its original value, these individuals wound up paying interest on undersecured loans. Not a great situation to be in.

So when I read about the housing bubble or the tulip bubble, I think about all of the people who were either raised up or dashed to bits by these things. Dash talks about the charity that used a tulip auction as a means to amass a small fortune. This would be akin to a nonprofit organization taking out an equity loan on its real estate holdings in order to expand its facilities only to suddenly find that the value of these holdings have fallen dramatically. Perhaps not as dramatically as tulips, which are of course still flowers, but a shallow drop on an economic roller coaster can still turn stomachs.

Commodity or roulette wheel?

What is the culture that can be attached to the commodity of the tulip? After all, if it is a commodity, it must have some kind of social life.

The answer is easy if you are talking about non-western views on the flower. Islamic people, notably the Ottomans, loved the flower because of its beauty, blood red color, and links to fertility and love. Remember that one of the first impressions of the flower was that it was a herald of spring. The flower also came to be seen as a mark of heaven or paradise. In the same way that green emeralds became linked to the prophet Muhammad, tulips became symbols of garden paradises. As the author points out, this is hardly surprising considering that those who saw the flower lived in arid, unfavorable lands. Finally, the flower also became tied (albeit slightly) to life and death. Given that the chief gardeners functioned as executioners and that the tulips blood red color could be tied to death, commanding the tulip could be seen as one owning the powers of life and death. Again, this links back to how emeralds related power in Muslim courts.

That said, what are tulips to westerners, namely the Dutch? Primarily, it is best known as a money-making scheme. And that, it seems, does not seem to be tied into any particular Dutch cultural practices. The boom seemed to arise out of chance: the flowers happened to grow in Dutch soil and there happened to be a demand for them among rich Dutchmen. that said, the latter does speak to Dutch taste: while Europe was buying red dye for their clothes, the Dutch were buying flowers. Still, much of the tulips and tulip trade was handled by people who couldn't care less about the bulbs; their only interest (again, perhaps in true Puritan fashion) was the bottom line. The money. Susan makes this point, as the sellers of the bulb weren't interested in the flower but were caught in the "get rich quick" atmosphere of the time. If there is a cultural link between tulips and the Dutch, it might be seen as an extremist stance of Puritan thrift and trading logic. Do away with government control! Trade freely with each other! Enrich yourself with your own virtue!

Susan also points out that fungibility does not create a commodity on its own. While I agree, I do not believe the tulip can count as a commodity because it rested on shaky cultural ground.
There didn't seem to be a cultural basis for it. Indeed, the sections and walks of Dutch life that weren't trading in bulbs were protesting against it because it was too risky. Again, we return to Puritan logic, albeit less extreme: work hard and be frugal. And the tulip trade went against both ideals.

Luke argues that the tulip is a commodity in that it reflected the period. Again, I disagree. In this case, anything that becomes popular or valuable becomes a commodity. Stocks in the 1920s along with Moon Shoes in the 90s. While many of the commodities we have looked at have had a "fad" period in which they were found everywhere, none of them seemed to have disappeared entirely. They have had some cultural ground to throw roots down it. Mahogany tables are still sought. Sugar, while no longer having a "culture" about it is still used frequently. Even commodities like cochineal have not faded entirely in the sense that cultures still value vivid reds.  

But tulips? They are only known as a product of their adaptive country along with wooden shoes and windmills. Only a symbol, if that. Certainly a commodity no more.

Tulipomania

In Tulipomania by Mike Dash we are presented with the story of flower that found its way from the Himalayas, to the gardens of Istanbul, and to the greenhouses of Dutch horticulturists. The tulip bulb's transformation from accidental dinner to something worth risking the farm over is a perfect example of the kind of power the 'social life of things' can have on a society. Most surprising, the myriad types of people involved in the tulip trade show that although it was in many ways a luxury good the trade itself involved the interaction of many people who were not wealthy or powerful. Thus, the tulip bulb bubble is a warning to those who would leave the machinations of markets to the those questionably rational creatures we call people. Moreover it raises questions over the nature of a commodity. Is participating in the futures market for tulip bulbs the same as participating in the trading of the bulbs themselves? How much does the social life of a thing depend on the social environment in which the thing exists versus the social environment the thing creates? Joe's critique about the fungibility of tulips with regards to the wildly speculative prices they were traded in casts doubt on whether the 'commodity' nature of tulips were what caused the crash but doesn't necessarily show that tulips were not a commodity.

So are tulips a commodity? I would say yes because they were more than something that was bought and sold. Tulips, for a time, inhabited a space in the consciousness as well as daily life for many Dutch people in the 1630s, so even though the kind of price speculation that caused the crash was not reflective of the activities of most Dutchmen the tulip bulb still transformed the life of people in the Netherlands.

The Virtues of Coffee, Chocolate, and Tea (or Thee)...as if we needed an excuse!

Source: Harvard Library

fungi-what

I'm not sure I understand the concept of fungibility enough to decide it if it necessary for a good to be a commodity.  But then we haven't defined exactly what a commodity is either...a dilemma. I don't think that just because a good is popular or unique means it can't be a commodity. Clearly, the Mona Lisa is not a commodity, but are diamonds? Emeralds? Things can have artistic value beyond the standard set for it as a traded commodity. Tulips are reproducible and are grown in many places (today), so they would be a commodity just as the roses from Colombia. They were definitely a fad (I still have a Princess Diana beanie baby somewhere...). The Coffee Paradox defined a commodity as "goods in a world market where all the actors recognize a standard of quality that is not attached to processing or manufacturing". We haven't agreed on that definition but it could be a good place to start. And using that definition, I think tulips are a commodity.

Tulips and the Commodification of Beauty

   In Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Passions it Aroused, Mike Dash shows how simple commodities such as tulips can be imbued with diverse cultural meanings.  He begins by looking at the Turks for whom tulips were laden with symbolic, religious, and sexual meanings.  They were linked to ideas like fertility, perfection, eternity and modesty. Pious Muslims also treated the red mountain tulip as a religious relic, Dash tells us.  When the plant reached the Lowlands of Europe via trade networks, it was, like most of our commodities, eyed by physicians as a potential medical resource. It proved useless for doctors, but the unpredictable beauty of the commodity led connoisseurs and careful growers to affix cultural significance to the item, and rare bulbs became a highly sought-after symbol of status, wealth, and good taste.  As Dutch culture became comfortable with conspicuous display and the market for tulip bulbs began to strengthen, the scarcity of the commodity led to a greater demand and higher prices. This is when, Dash suggests, things took a distasteful turn.

   Former tradesmen (and they all are men, no women ever worked in the tulip trade, apparently), like weavers pawned their looms, styled themselves "florists" and began buying and trading tulips.  This new type of buyer cared nothing for the beauty of the commodity, they simply wanted to make a quick buck.  Dash paints a very unsavory picture of these traders whom he labels greedy, inexperienced, and short-sighted.  They thrived on the unregulated and unconfined trading scene, often conducted in a "haze of inebriation" in tavern rituals designed to boost the self-importance of the florists.  They wrecked the traditional, common-sense rules of tulip trading by making it year-round thus boosting the futures market and leading to short-selling and potential fraud.  "It became perfectly normal for florists to sell tulips they could not deliver to buyers who did not have the cash to pay for them and had no desire ever to plant them."  It is little surprise that this volatile market with no safeguards eventually crashed in a spectacular way.  The message Dash is offering is that unregulated capitalist situations are weak and prone to bubbles that can destroy markets, individual livelihoods, and the psyche of an entire nation.
 
   In a post below, Joseph rejects the idea that the tulip is not a commodity because it lacks fungibility, which he defines as an accepted standard for trade.  The finest tulips, because they were rare anomalies, were part of a fad and not a commodity, he writes.  It is an interesting idea, but I disagree with the premise.  Fungibility cannot be the only criteria for a commodity, and I reject that because a commodity becomes temporarily popular and expensive, it loses commodity status.  Fungibility to me, simply means replaceable, as Marcy Norton mentions in Sacred Gifts, cacao beans were a fungible wealth, competing with precious metals as a currency." (64)  Cacao beans could act in place of silver as money.  In the blood banking book, also, Swanson says that a donation to a blood bank was a fungible unit, creating a credit was inserted in place of a pint of blood. (57)  Even if my definition of fungible is off, though, I still believe that it cannot be a sole criteria for what constitutes a commodity.  The most important criteria, I think, is that a group of people agree that a concept or item has a value, and that they are willing to pay for that thing.  This suggests a cultural significance that is more important than fungibility.  As Norton shows us with chocolate and tobacco, these goods were never just "things" in that they always existed in conjunction with their symbolic associations.  Consumption is as much cultural as it is somatic and biological, therefore a commodity must be culturally framed and valued, as tulips were for a brief, majestic turn.

Tulipomania

In Tulipomania Mike Dash details the spread of the tulip from Central Asia, through Turkic and later Islamic culture, and then into Europe.  Dash then examines the dispersal of the tulip in the Netherlands, especially focusing on academic horticulturists.  From here the interest in new varietals and unusual patterns takes off.  Dash shows a growing interest in the tulip, which drives up prices, but attributes some of this to investors who have minimal interest in the flower itself.  Dash mentions many factors in the rising prices for tulips, including the impact of the plague on the willingness to take risks and the evolution of what Dash considers a futures market.

The key question concerning Tulipomania is whether or not the tulip is a commodity.  The demand for tulip bulbs is overwhelmingly in favor of bulbs that produce unusual flowers, and because the vicissitudes of a virus produced some of the most spectacular colorations, there was little assurance that the bulb would sprout into the pattern claimed by the grower.  This is a stark contrast with most of the other commodities we have studied this semester, in which a hand of Cavendish bananas is the same whether it comes from Vietnam or Honduras.  This characteristic is called fungibility, and I contend that it is the fundamental distinction of commodities.  This is not the same as arguing that all forms of a commodity must be exactly the same, but rather to say that there are different standards, and a commodity must meet one of those many standard in order to be exchanged.  For example light sweet crude is the same whether the oil comes from Nigeria or Texas, but in order to meet that designation the oil must have a certain sulfur content and specific gravity.  Some tulips, sold by the bed, might meet this standard, but the overwhelming majority of blubs that achieve high prices in Tulipomania are idiosyncratic and thus not fungible, and are therefore not commodities.  This seems to tend towards the position that the tulip mania was a fad for a luxury good, rather than a commodity bubble.

Marx, Mahogany, Slaves, & the Enlightenment

"The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious." --Walter Benjamin (On the Concept of History, c. 1940)

Despite our opinions about what the Enlightenment was/is all about, it is clear from her book on mahogany that Anderson feels it was unsuccessful, at least as far as her commodity is concerned. Human "mastery" of (capital-N) Nature couldn't save Jamaican mahogany from extinction. The might of the imperial powers could not reverse a fate they had sealed for themselves. This is usually because (lowercase-n) nature cannot be mastered nor controlled, only an abstraction of it, and only then by the hubris of H. sapiens.

A common thread runs through most of the texts used in the course, and indeed, through much of the story of humanity since its origins: slavery. While the manifestations of slavery may have changed over time, slavery as praxis has not. It is grounded in the theory that one human being is innately superior to and therefore the master of another typically because of a quality that one has that the other can never have, e.g., skin color, bloodlines, the blessing of god/God/gods, etc. The status of slave is imposed and cannot be lifted except by the self-proclaimed master. Slavery doesn't have to be black-and-white, it can be the indirect result of political economy as well, thus we get the call of Marx to the proletariat.

Historical materialism has taken a lot of fire for imposing its own imperialistic strictures on the study and practice of history, for being Eurocentric, and for its seeming denial of agency (see Chakrabarty). But Marx is still relevant because he demonstrates, perhaps unintentionally, how slavery transcends material conditions and is incorporated in economic relationships--true, based partially on ownership of material wealth--deployed by a system comprised of the totality of human interactions that is ruler of all, and beholden to none.

In the same essay quoted above, Benjamin states that the idea of progress is, in the minds of certain political actors, linked to the unfurling and ever increasing sophistication of technology. That once this has been linked to progress, "it was only a step to the illusion that the factory-labor set forth by the path of technological progress represented a political achievement." [13] In other words, laborers felt that their station in life had improved because the technology used (now) in their homes and at their workplaces had improved. This feeling, it seems from Benjamin's essay, smothered their belief in the goal of achieving a working class utopia via armed revolution.

I raise this issue because there was a statement made in class--which I have been guilty of believing at various points--that workers in "developing" nations don't view themselves as working class slaves but feel they've been given opportunities heretofore unavailable to them, e.g., Chinese laborers in a Foxconn sweatshop are happy to be earning a wage away from the village compound. But does this mean that they aren't slaves? Why, because they can chose something else? But again, can they? If circumstances take away all possible or reasonable alternatives, doesn't one become a de facto slave because one has no other choice? Run away, die of starvation, stay and work, earn enough for bread.

This is important, I think, in keeping us mindful of the inequality of power running through commodity chains (see Talbot). Someone or some group is always getting their neck stepped on by pullers further down the chain. Even Lavaega's attempt to show how rural Mexican yam farmers were able to achieve some sense of autonomy fell flat when it failed to address the almost certain gender inequalities that kept their wives, daughters, sisters, et al. silent. It only goes to serve the agenda of the pullers (read victors) to show the quasi-autonomy that exploited peoples had in the past, as Lavaega has--probably inadvertently--done. Because it obscures the systematically imposed slavery, or perhaps servitude, and coercion that is taking place.

Mahogany

“Depending on the historical context,” writes Jennifer L. Anderson in Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America, “mahogany has been regarded as utilitarian (cheap and abundant), precious (expensive and rare), desirable (sensual and exotic), respectable (refined and genteel), deceptive (duplicitous and false), and nostalgic (elegiac and reminiscent),” (15). This sentiment reflects what can now be described as a trend in our readings; and the further recognition of the social life of things. In yet another instance, we are made to understand the transient existence of commodities, or at least some commodities. As with other luxury goods, emeralds and red coming to mind, mahogany’s life as a commodity depends on the subjectivity of culture; especially as a reflection of status. Thus, as other commodities we have explored illustrate, certain things – oft depending on their use, availability, and, more often than not, cultural reception – enjoy lasting, continuous use while others die off. Mahogany seems to have straddled this line in a way; never fully dying out, but certainly filling a limited niche role in contemporary society.

After our first weeks’ readings (Appadurai!), I very much hoped for a more expanded idea of commodity. Now, after surveying a wide variety of commodity histories, I am ever more certain of the need to expand the definition and concept. As Kent and Susan point out, people have proved to be very much in the same boat as our other subjects throughout this semester (factually and figuratively). A single line in Mahogany, for instance, hints at the enormity of human commoditization: “Compared to other places where slaves enmeshed in the tangled web of the Atlantic slave trade might end up – as plantation fodder on a sugar island, up to their knees in the rice paddies or tar pits of the Carolinas, or in a sweltering tobacco field in the Chesapeake – the mahogany forests of Belize might have been one of the more tolerable outcomes,” (157). Broken down, this single sentence points to the movement and utilization of people as a commodity across an incredible space and for numerous purposes. Moreover, and beyond Anderson’s depiction of slavery, the experiences of laborers, from the extractors and polishers Lane’s emeralds to the cutters and refiners of Mintz’s sugar, demonstrate that the movement and utilization of people very much reflected the movement and utilization of things. With this in mind, I would really like to see studies on people and ideas using the same structure these scholars have applied to things; and if nothing else, this course has opened my eyes to viewing people, things, and thoughts in a much broader light.

(Sorry for the late post, I somehow forgot to hit publish at 3am!)

Its Captives for me...

There are several books submitted that sound interesting to me. First, Kirsten’s submission on the Tulip trade and the chaos of speculation; then there is Rum, I am a Sailor, do I need to say anything else. Salt could be interesting, given my submission is Cod and they kinda go together.  Now Hockey night might work too because that falls in to my interest as labor as a commodity and there might be something there. But, alas, the winner for me is Nadine and her recommendation of Captives as Commodities.    

Mahogany... a hard commodity...

Anderson has given us a very thorough examination of the mahogany trade and the commodity web. This book is definitely about mahogany but it does an excellent job of defining many of the actors engaged in the identification, harvesting, distribution [exporter, importer and shipper], the finisher of the product made of the commodity and the consumer, which I feel is only done as well in Lanes book on emeralds.

I found he section on the life of the “huntsman” and slaves that worked on mahogany cutting crews interesting. I concur with Kirsten on this point Andersons description of their lives was “improved” [better may be true but is a stretch, after all they were still slaves] over the lives of other slaves we have read about.  

It is interesting that Lineaus is mentioned in multiple monographs, A Perfect Red, True History of Chocolate and now here in Mahogany. To me this supports the intertwining [commodity web concept] of the early commodities and the value they represented to nations as a “Thing” that could be used as a means to generate wealth.

Mahogany resembles emeralds in that they are scarce and take a significant amount of time to be created or grow to a size worth harvesting. Mahogany also, lives on as a finished product like an emerald and in fact can grow in value because of its age. [For example there is a settee in the official residence of the Chief of Naval Operation that was once owned by John Paul Jones and it is made of mahogany. This is a testament to its durability, and in case you are wondering no one sits on it].

It is unfortunate that early harvesters of mahogany did not recognize the by-product of deforestation of fields to grow sugar cane and the side business of selling the beautiful trees would eventual cause the demise of and entire species of plant. But as Kirsten points out there are consequences for modernity and environmental issues is only one of them. Now lets not just blame the harvesters for the demise of the mahogany tree, consumer demand too was a contributing factor and the fetishism that we have often discussed.   

Mahogany is an excellent book to follow the Colour of Paradise, but I must say they are both dense and deserve more time to contemplate. There are lingering questions for me. Mahogany is a book and I will most likely read it again. 

Mahogany trade: Human consumerism and it's ecological impact.

Jennifer Anderson’s introduction in Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America is intriguing and pulls the reader in. She uses mahogany as a lens to view the now familiar themes in commodities history which I found to be surprisingly compelling. Last week’s book on emeralds gave us a commodity that was different from the previous commodities we’ve learned about and this week’s book followed in its path. Anderson proposes that mahogany is different from sugar, tobacco, chocolate, coffee, bananas, etc because of “its limited availability, its durability, and its increasing scarcity.” (7) I find it an unusual commodity because of its status as a nonrenewable resource, but to categorize it as such makes it even more interesting as a luxury commodity. 

Another aspect of the story that I really liked was her inclusion of slave labor, another commodity, depending on who you talk to, and the part it played in the mahogany trade.  Slaves weren’t the only part of the commodity web that she traces. Although her strength isn’t found in the discussion of slave labor it is found in her discussion of other players in the mahogany commodity web. Her other players include woodcutters, naturalists, sailors, cabinetmakers, furniture buyers, and Anglo and American consumers. One of the most important things I took away from this book, like Soluri's book, is the long-lasting ecological impact that human desire and consumerism can cause. 

Nadine

Premium Wood

In Mahogany Jennifer L. Anderson gives a look at the cultural and political effects the trade in wood created in the context of the Anglo-Atlantic world. The trade in mahogany from its felling in the Caribbean by African slaves to its transformation into furniture by New England craftsmen fueled the cultural transformations occurring in Britain and America. The furniture craze that began among English aristocrats and spread among the 'middling sorts' in North America certainly had an impact upon the cultural make-up of these regions. Anderson gives a lot of agency to the material of mahogany itself because of its, "enduring cultural significances were (and are) predicated on its physical and aesthetic properties that made it an extraordinarily durable, versatile, and attractive wood." (9) This places the work in the position of promoting the importance of sensory experience in a commodities social life. After all you can build a cabinet out of any wood, but it won't have the look of mahogany. I think it is fascinating how demand for a certain 'type' of something can compel interactions on the scope that Anderson shows us and spur cultural change that crosses generations.

Insert Clever title about Mahogany here

As ever, the first things I look for in a new commodity book is how the commodity is different from the others we have read about and discussed. At this point, it has become rather hard to do. As Kent pointed out, this book hearkens back to Mintz and how a commodity can be removed from not only production but how it effects culture itself. Much like sugar (according to Mintz) prompted the industrial revolution, mahogany, almost by chance, becomes the premiere wood for luxury items. And again, both become completely removed from its source of labor, although in the wood's case, this lack of information might be due to the fact Abolitionists and similar groups never discussed Benzene mahogany hunting in their sugar and cotton sermons.

I also see some similarities with cochineal: two luxury items brought in partly as a way to ease past stocks (deforested England and inferior reds of the east). Both were marks of both class and empire, although in mahogany's cases it was much more about the English empire, and later about American ingenuity (in that the wood was greatly subjected to examination). There are similarities with bananas, in that both commodities created massive deforestation and environmental decay. That said, the book doesn't go into detail with environmental issues, partly since some planters actually took to replanting some of the felted trees. It also holds similarities with The Pill (if I can continue to use the moniker) in that they were both instrumental in defining a nation. Whereas the Pill brought presage to the Mexican government and scientific community, well-processed mahogany became a stable in the fledgling American republic, if for no other reason as a vehicle for neoclassicism.    

The big difference I notice with this commodity is that it is another one that is not farmed like sugar, cochineal and yams. Even bigger is the delicate relationship to the slaves that harvested it. Unlike the emerald miners, these slaves had autonomy to a great degree and, when wedged between a powerful empire and a quasi-legal outpost of that empire's rival, actually had a fair degree of power. As Susan notes, the relationship is much more dynamic than anything we have seen thus far. If anything, I would say this book outlines a sort of "power web," in that no one group is on top and are connected to each other in alternating bonds of dominance and subservience.

The Price of Luxury

Like Kent, I, too, was put in mind of the Banana Cultures book often when reading Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America by Jennifer L. Anderson.  This book, like Soluri's, places the environmental impact associated with a commodity at the forefront of the story.  While the environment is the main player in the banana book, however, Anderson's book also elevates the people - those slaves in Jamaica and Honduras who felled the trees, the landowners who (too often carelessly) deforested the land for quick profit, and the craftsmen who worked the raw product into stunningly beautiful furniture.  These figures become the supporting actors alongside Mahogany's starring role.  (I write this sitting at a recently-purchased desk that mimics mahogany veneer with walnut inlay -- a lowbrow imposter.)  

I particularly enjoyed the lesson at the beginning of the book that people in England and Colonial America had to be taught how to understand and appreciate new goods, like mahogany furniture, in order to discern quality and judge good workmanship.  Cultural education like this that accompanies new material goods in any time period serves to separate one class from another.  (Today we tend to do the same thing with the ways we speak about, brandish, and perhaps disdain personal technology devices.) If exquisitely-crafted tables and bureaus can create class distinction, it shouldn't be surprising that Anderson contends they are also linked to nationalism and Empire.  She notes that the way the English and Americans thirsted for mahogany reflected the "growing sense of self-confidence and entitlement" that were the "rightful rewards of Empire."  Like Mintz's sugar, mahogany was an Imperial product.  Unlike sugar, mahogany was also an Imperial casualty. 

The most impressive information in Anderson's book came from her chapters on slavery and mahogany.  The relationships negotiated by landowners, overseers, and slaves or indentured servants is a truly complex and dynamic issue.  In this world of island or Honduran mahogany cutting and collection, slaves took on a multitude of roles.  They were forced into heavy labor some, but not all, of the time, and the close proximity of deep forest and Spanish lands (on which they were free if converted to Christianity) meant that owners had to woo them with positive inducements or threaten harsh discipline to keep them enslaved.  Some slaves petitioned against ownership by certain men and were then re-sold to other, apparently more acceptable, men.  Some slaves were manumitted in large numbers upon an owner's death, while others spent a lifetime in bondage.  Some slaves received specialized training as hunters of mahogany groves and used this skill to play off an owner's interests against that of his neighbors for personal gain.  I learned from this book that there was a status structure within slave communities, which I was not aware of.  For our class vote on a the final book, I was swayed by Marie's support of the book suggested by Nadine on slavery as a commodity.  As Marie noted, slavery is at the heart of many of the stories and commodities we've examined in class.  After reading this section of Mahogany though, I'm seeing that slavery is perhaps too intricate a story for just one text.    

Pleasure from Polished Wood

State University of New York professor Jennifer L. Anderson demonstrates a healthy fixation with wood in her 2012 study Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America, published by Harvard University Press. But I’m sure at least one or two of us were wondering upon first handling this book, what makes this a commodity? Perhaps it was the tenacity of a few “hard-driving merchants”?

As Anderson elucidates, the two species of mahogany typically used in activities like ship-building and furniture making, were basically differentiated based on the size of their leaves: one species was shorter and the other longer. Surprisingly, this distinction seems not to have impacted the overall desirability of the wood; however, it did lead to some consternation among people like Benjamin Franklin, who could not understand why wood of different calibers nevertheless went under the same name. However, Anderson is quick to point out that the quality of one’s experience with this wood will differ if it is of inferior quality.

Anderson also raises the point of mahogany’s tropical origins, that it had no problem growing amongst a wide diversity of other tree species. This seems to also have been the case with the final products conceived of the wood. Tables, chairs, china cabinets, etc. were desired and apparently within the grasp of people from a wide range of socioeconomic classes.
A practice of particular interest is that of removing the covering on a mahogany table at dessert during formal dinners so that guests might swoon over the impressiveness of the specimen before them. I suppose this is not hard to imagine, considering that such pieces were somewhere around twelve feet long!

Cut out of the trade

Mahogany is a wood that evokes refinement, class and prestige.  In her book Mahogany, Jennifer Anderson describes a world of refinement during the British colonial era that was built on the backs of exploited slaves, cut throat traders and environmental destruction.  The incredible qualities of this tropical wood are well explained by Anderson as insect-resistant, very strong and easily shaped by craftsmen.   One of the most prize virtues of mahogany is its use towards furniture by being able to hold a high polish.  I really liked the how Anderson presented the push-pull dynamics of the Eighteenth century market, answering the North American craze for mahogany furniture.  Demand for fine mahogany furniture really ramped up fast, similar to the rapid increase in Americans appetite for bananas found in Banana Cultures.  

Anderson looks at two grave consequences of the mahogany trade – slavery and environmental destruction.  Anderson skillfully expounds the tragic and horrible use of slaves in the harvesting of the tropical towers.  Like Mintz in Sweetness and Power, Anderson drives the point of exploitation of labor and its complete removal from what these biological giants become in North American colonial homes and businesses.  This of course is a grand example of Marx’s “commodity fetish” – James favorite theme.  I particularly like Candace’s reference to Anderson treatment of this idea - “Marx’s dancing table, mahogany was transubstantiated through human effort into objects” (15).

As the agribusiness such as sugar cleared jungle in Jamaica, the “gold standard” trees of the mahogany trade became extinct on the island, extraction began on the mainland of Central and South America.  Due to the nature of a several centuries maturity rate, the treasured trees were basically wiped out.  This environmental “clear cutting” was seen in renewable commodities such as sugar and banana’s, but the mahogany trade cut itself out of the market.   

This book is well written, mapped, illustrated and sourced.  As a recent publication I feel Anderson depicts a maturity in the field of commodity history.