With A Pinch of Salt

I am an unabashed economic history freak.  I recently heard two lectures that brought back fond memories of my university days.  If you are interested, you can hear the lectures by going to www.cbc.ca/ideas.  You can scroll down to the salt lectures and hear the nitty gritty for yourself.  But what about salt that's so intriguing?

Until the industrial revolution and beyond, salt was the common currency of commerce.  Cities were founded near salt supplies (the "wich" in Norwich or Sandwich stands for salt).  Armies were paid in salt.  City states killed and went to war over salt.  At one time salt, weight for weight, was more expensive than gold.  This was because salt had many uses that went well beyond cooking.  Before refrigeration, salt was the only means by which food could be preserved.  Therefore, cod caught outside Britain could be preserved for sale in, for example, Venice.  Salt was the main curative for battle injuries.  Armies without salt soon had soldiers whose wounds quickly turned gangrenous.

We forget that in each era there is a key element that drives economies.  Over time the key element becomes less important.  Salt became less essential with the discovery of antiseptics and ice retention (well before refrigeration).  But during its highest currency salt was an essential element of commerce.  The lack of salt meant that you had to trade for it.  And because of it, for the most part, trade became the foundation for wealth--instead of landholdings.  When trade overcame landholdings as a wealth creator landholding were soon traded to create wealth.  Adam Smith knew this only too well.

One of the interesting side notes of salt crunch (pun intended) was that Queen Elizabeth I declared that her nation had become too dependent on salt and had to find other means to achieve the ends that salt served.  Sound familiar?  Think of oil.  The discovery of oil as a commercial driver is one of the prime drivers of economies in the 20th century and beyond.  But history tells us that when a resource becomes overly scarce or when the dependance on a resource creates vulnerability for some countries, this resource will be replaced by something that levels the playing field.  This is happening before our eyes.  Most western nations recognize that their dependence on oil makes them vulnerable to unstable countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.  So we are going to solar power, nuclear power, wind power most of which do not require oil.  In the 22nd century many will regard oil as we now regard salt.  As a curiosity.

Bernie.