Greenfield

As others have noted, A Perfect Red follows a narrative pattern similar to the Coes’ book, yet it has a slightly different focus.  Greenfield does more than follow the commodity; she uses it to explore the spheres that cochineal moved through.  Greenfield takes the time to examine the Spanish Empire, Medieval guilds, piracy, fashion, and so on, this is most clear in Greenfield’s exploration of studies of light and color and the technological effort to find out just what cochineal really is.  As elsewhere in the book the emphasis is on the world through which cochineal circulates, and especially on the personalities involved.

Significantly, this is the first book that seems to eschew the Marxian tradition.  This comparison is most clear in the different ways that the authors treat the pre-Columbian trade, whereas the Coes discuss the trade of chocolate in the rather superficial terms of ‘money you can eat,’ Greenfield prefers to examine cochineal as one of many items in a robust Mesoamerican economy.  Although it is subtle, Greenfield’s exploration of European and American markets avoids the Marxian conflating of industrialization and capitalism.

That said A Perfect Red is not an economic history, Greenfield only looks at the connections between Europe and the Americas, touching on European possessions occasionally.  She does not ask if cochineal was among the goods on the galleon route from Mexico to Asia, or compare imported Chinese cloth with European clothing.  This Eurocentric approach is most clear on page two hundred and forty-one, where Greenfield dismisses interest in dyes in Africa and Asia for the whole period discussed.  There may not have been a trade in dyes, but only because there was such a large trade in dyed cloth.  Greenfield ignores this possibility, dismissing African and Asian interest in cochineal and aniline dyes because of an instance on tradition that she simply states, instead of investigating.