Amy Butler Greenfield’s A Perfect Red was very approachable
and yet informative monograph. I found particularly interesting the explanation
of the encomienda “system” that was not mentioned in Mintz book and only
briefly touched on by the Coes. Really
Greenfield provided some context to the conquistador’s actions. Being the
second son of a second son, at that time, ensured you did not have much of an
opportunity to “make your fortune” unless you went to the new world.
Additionally, these men paid there for there own equipment in hopes of earning
a commission once they found the gold they sought but many of the lower ranking
men didn’t receive enough to pay for the sword they carried and, most likely, were
not raised to lead.
Reds and subsequently cochineal’s rise and fall as a
commodity were, like many commodities, linked to cultural fashion trends.
Clearly the colors popularity among the ruling classes plaid a roll in its
demand in society. This is in line with the spread of sugar and chocolate
throughout society. The role of guarding trade secrets and patents is
interesting to see how that developed from the guilds fiercely protecting the
knowledge to the government protecting the patents.
Over all I feel this book is as advertised a store about empire,
espionage, and the quest for the color of desire and because it has a more
historical slant to it I will most likely keep this in my final project syllabus.
Just for fun,
Because the last three books are linked to the conquest of
Mexico in I decide to pull a tool in from the Clio Wired class to see what
would come up. The link below is for Google books Ngram; this tool tracks the
frequency of use in literature (texts Google has digitized). I plugged in the
term cochineal, chocolate, cacao and sugar just to see what the result would
be. Notice the spike in 1587 for sugar and cochineal.
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