The Shadow World

In a way, my proposed work picks up on the history-continuum where Kris Lane’s Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires leaves off; nestled in alongside and in cahoots with Paul Gootenberg’s Andean Cocaine: The Making of A Global Drug. The early period of what we now consider to be known as globalization. If nothing else, it is certainly in the same vein; in the sense that it deals with elites, exploitation, and to a much greater degree, the tools of war and death. As our human world grew larger – international trade, early-modern colonialism, and the constant redrawing national boundaries – so too did the interactions therein forced. War, war, and more war! The desire for things, emeralds, tobacco, timber, sugar, etc., etc., and the clashing of cultures and ideologies built the foundation of our current postmodern status-quo today (post-post-modern?). The minutia of human life – gaining wealth, conquest, genocide, war, famine, plague, war, and more war – has remained little changed over the millennia, but the tools with which we execute these dire human missions certainly have. My proposed work does not overtly deal with itself as an invention of commodity history. Whether it be in the vein of Sidney W. Mintz’s sugar study Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Paul Gootenberg’ Andean Cocaine: The Making of A Global Drug, or compilation works like From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500-2000; the structured ‘commodity chain’ or ‘web’ or ‘net’ approach we have so deeply investigated thus far this semester will not be found addressed in the text. Instead, it exists if analyzed and read between the lines. Part of my pleasure in rereading and selecting this work has been my reinterpretation of its content through a ‘commodity historian’s’ lens. Furthermore, shiny rocks and funky people make several appearances (after all, the author at one point served in the Gauteng, South African provincial legislature as an advisor to the then provincial premier Tokyo Sexwale…).

            The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade explores, well, the global arms trade; or, more accurately, the nefariousness of the global arms trade. As the dust-cover contends, “The Shadow World is the harrowing behind-the-scenes tale of the global arms trade, revealing the deadly collusion that all too often exists among senior politicians, weapons manufacturers, felonious arms dealers, and the military…”[1] The work is a product of the author Andrew Feinstein’s time in South African politics. Feinstein, now an anti-corruption and human rights activist with Friends of the Treatment Action Campaign (FoTAC) and the United Kingdom based Corruption Watch, served as a member of South Africa’s national Parliament until his resignation in 2001 in protest of corrupt dealings within his political party, the African National Congress (ANC).[2] Feinstein also writes for numerous media outlets the world over, and is a regular contributor to the BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, and Sky News.[3] The Shadow World is very much in line with the author’s social agenda; by that meaning, Feinstein highlights alleged corruption and the murky legal reality of today’s arms trade. It does not hide the fact that it is a call-to-arms against what the author sees is an out-of-control, dangerous world of death-dealing companies and individuals that sell the tools of discord with relative impunity; contributing to conflicts great and small the world over. Well written, narrative in style, The Shadow World blends investigative journalism, history, and memoir-like story telling into an easily consumed package. Additionally, Feinstein is the product of educational establishments including King’s College Cambridge, the University of Cape Town, and the University of California at Berkley.[4]

            The Shadow World will bring an interesting twist to our study of commodities in history. The more recent, continuously developing subject brings together politics, economy, crime, and a mess of other themes in our own time. Unlike similar works, however, The Shadow World concerns itself almost exclusively with conventional arms. That is to say, the dreaded Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that have grabbed headlines for the past seven decades get little treatment. This is in no small part due to the fact that conventional arms (bombs and bullets, the guns that shoot them and the planes that drop them) are responsible for the most deaths by violent means during this same period. The Shadow World examines a wide range of topics within the history and continuing endeavors of the global arms trade; including, “an arms company founded by a group of senior former Nazi officers,” the explosive wealth and influence of Saudi Arabia, specific case studies on major arms companies, and, of course, the global arms black market.[5] Moreover, the author exposes the arms bonanzas that are Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of multiple international invasions and years of civil war. Furthermore, this work provides us, as students and historians in training, the opportunity to apply our understanding of commodities to an effort that does not explicitly identify its main subject as a commodity.

            A great example of Feinstein’s work can be found in his treatment of the recent, and to a degree ongoing, AEY Inc. debacle. “AEY Inc.,” writes Feinstein, “was run out of a nondescript single room in Miami Beach, Florida, by Efraim Diveroli, a 21-year-old with a forged driving licence … [and his] sidekick David Packouz … a drifter who had trained as a masseur.”[6] Despite being on the US State Department’s Arms Trafficking watch list, “in January 2007, AEY received a $298m contract with the US military as the main supplier of ammunition to the Afghan security forces.”[7] Yes, that happened, and what ensued proved far worse… Diveroli’s company bribed Albanian politicians to facilitate the repackaging of decades old, dangerous Chinese and Soviet manufactured ammunition in order to maximize profits.[8] The ammunition proved utterly unusable and more deadly for those handling it than those it was meant to kill. Furthermore, the Albanian factory built to file serial numbers and Made-in-China stamps from brass casings and ammo crates eventually exploded; leveling the town of Gerdec, Albania.[9] Finally, these horrific events; the combination of untold Afghan and American deaths as the result of useless, dangerous ammunition, and the leveling of an entire European town; landed the young company president in federal prison on fraud charges… for four whole years.[10] This is but one of the many amazing stories found within The Shadow World.

In conclusion, if the story of a twenty-one year old American arms dealer leveling an Albanian town at the expense of three-hundred-million US tax dollars doesn’t convince you that this book isn’t worth the read… I don’t know what will!

Available from Amazon for $12 (the first edition, not the new one!); 531 pages (BUT IT IS DECEPTIVELY LONG! The text is large and it reads absurdly fast.)

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[1] Feinstein, Andrew. The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), dust cover.

[2] Feinstein, Andrew. About the Author. http://www.theshadowworldbook.com/the-author-2/

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] The Shadow World, xxix-xxx.

[6] Ibid, 343.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid, 343-52.

[10] Lawson, Guy. The Stoner Arms Dealers: How Two American Kids Became Big-Time Weapons Traders and How the Pentagon Later Turned on Them. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-stoner-arms-dealers-20110316?page=7