Academic Writing and Top-Down History - A Perfect Red

Concise, straightforward, and gets to the heart of her argument without much in the way of rambling or going on tangents.  Amy Greenfield's A Perfect Red:  Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (2005) displays an historical writing that is easy to follow and geared towards more than simply the academic community but to a wider, per se, more novice audience.  When I mean novice, I mean those who are not directly involved within academia--the monograph is approachable to a wider audience.  Other persons within this week's blog post, such as Kent and Candace, have pointed out quite nicely the more popular writer than those holding PhD's, writing primarily for academia.  Her biography, which is enclosed in the biography, states while she does not explicitly hold a PhD, she does have other academic background.  Additionally, she does pack some ammunition in the way of her sources in this monograph.  She consults a variety of sources, by reading through her "select bibliography" not only deploying primary sources but secondary source monographs published by the more academic presses, such as those by university presses.  Moreover, this monograph is published not by an academic publisher but by a much broader publisher, in this case Harper-Perennial.  But would she rate as an academic historian?  To those having read Peter Novick's That Noble Dream:  The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (1988), to the earlier historians, say those who were German trained in the late nineteenth century, not quite.  Yet, history is ultimately a subjective issue, to be analyzed by those studying it.  She analyzes and interprets how color plays a significant role to the cultural and economic history, not just to Europe but later a more transnational history.  Greenfield does have some academic credit to her merit, and she even does display some command of historiography, especially in the chapter "Wormberry."  Between the more 'academic-centric' historian writers and those writing for the more popular audience without the 'three-letter degree,' the latter can still produce a monograph, journal article, etc., of considerable contribution and substance.  Nevertheless, similar debates (and contestations) can arise even within academia, especially with those coming from a different discipline, writing in a different field--even academics within a same discipline with the same credentials writing just for academic publishers and those writing for more popular presses.  These combinations can continue.  When it comes down to it, can both academia and the broader audience learn, analyze, produce discussions, and take away valuable information from it?  I argue that it can.

The second thing I wish to pose is the issue of the top-down and bottom-up histories, which has come up quite a bit so far in the course.  I argue that Greenfield produced here is more of a top-down.  The example I want to bring up is through something yet discussed, which is the issue of law enforcement, particularly through her chapter "Trade Secrets."  The issue in particular was over receiving cochineal that was of subpar quality.  The Spanish Crown in the mid-1500s at first did not see much to enact much in the way of laws to protect cochineal as it was not the Crown's top priority and, "not enough officials were assigned to the job.  Officials also found it difficult to detect many common frauds, in part because there was legitimate debate about the proper way to kill and dry the cochineal insects" (105).  Simply, the lack of officials could not be produced to reduce fraud of cochineals, added the fact that persons did not know the correct standardized way to produce cochineal and whether that process was a way to produce legitimate product.  Yet, the more top players changed their mind due to it becoming more important to Spanish finances by 1572.  Viceroy Enriquez was in charge of this but ran into some problems with Spanish merchants.  Even after Enriquez left, Greenfield argues, "To Crown officials, merchants appeared sly-double dealers, bent on cheating the king his due.  To merchants, Crown officials seemed meddling busybodies whose arbitrary rules increased the costs of trade" (106).  The Crown and merchants continuously butted heads over the rules, regulations, and enforcement about cochineal.  The monograph further states that by 1580, "...he [Enriquez] had also appointed additional judges for other cochineal entrepots, an act that did much to improve the quality of cochineal exports, even as it tried the tempers of Spanish merchants" (106).  This suggests that the Crown wanted merely to make sure that cochineal coming into the market was of quality.  But as stated in the earlier quotation, the merchants saw the Crown as a controlling and manipulative body, only wanting to increase the power of the Spanish government's purse.  With actual trade of cochineal by the early 1600s King Phillip III forbade foreigners from trading the "dyestuff"  with "...harsh law against all foreign trade, the punishment was death" (108).  However, this law at the end of it was enacted and to be enforced to stop loss of goods meant solely for a Spanish economy, not meant to seep much more transnationally.  Yet with acts of piracy, especially with those coming from England, it did not hold up. Nevertheless, this indicates that cochineal was very much governed in a top-down process with not much voice from the everyday or common man to say but analyzes more of the thoughts and ideals, especially politically and economically coming from the more elite classes.