Salt

I read Mark Kurlansky's Salt as a selection for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge. It is a history of the discovery, mining, sale and taxing of salt by cities and nations from 3600 BCE to the present. It is Kurlansky's 5th nonfiction book and here he explains how salt has shaped civilization from its very beginning and how its story is an important part of the history of humankind. For most of its history salt has been used as a currency. It also influenced the establishment of European trade routes as well as cities, provoked wars between cities and inspired revolutions. Civilizations in China, Greece, Egypt and Rome all discovered salt on their own at about the same time. None of them can say that they discovered salt, although all of them make this claim. In each case, salt was discovered when lake and river waters evaporated in the sun. People harvested the square crystals on the surface of the water. Almost immediately it was used to preserve fish. As a necessary commodity for sustaining life, ancient politicians knew that they could make money by taxing the sale of salt. Cities that had saltmines made money from harvesting it while others that did not have this resource made money by regulating it. It is interesting that salt is a rock, the only rock that humans eat.

The book reads like a textbook, which in my mind is a negative. Almost every other sentence contains a new fact and made the book an overwhelming one to read. Kurlansky has found a salt connection nearly everywhere, especially in the modern era. The Erie Canal was built for the sake of salt, which needed to be moved from the upstate Onondaga region to New York City. The West Indian slave trade was primarily underwritten by sales of salt, even more than by molasses and rum. So how did salt encourage revolution?  It was the salt tax in India that inspired Mohandas K. Gandhi to start a rebellion that led to independence.  The American Revolutionary War was partly incited by salt shortages.

While it is pretty cool to amass these interesting facts about salt, the book itself is a hard and sometimes dull book to read. I am rating it 3 out of 5 stars.