Page 358 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

sasanian empire 1659

they were sold, as Europeans began to do after about an ingredient for manufacturing such diverse items as
1450, made no sense without cheap and abundant salt alkali, analine dyes, rayon and innumerable other new
to preserve the catch. Japanese fishermen therefore lost chemicals. A still more recent use for salt is for melting
the chance of harvesting salmon and other fish in Amer- snow and ice from roads in winter.As a result, more than
ican coastal waters, and, of course, did not discover half of the total amount of salt produced annually at the
America either. close of the second millennium—something like 225 mil-
One may therefore argue that Europe’s expanding lion tons—was destined for industrial uses.And, strange
salt supply, by permitting deep sea fishing to flourish as to say, taxing cheap and abundant salt no longer attracts
never before, tipped world history towards transoceanic much attention from the world’s governments.
navigation and settlement—an achievement that domi-
William H. McNeill
nated human history for the next five hundred years by
profoundly reshaping global demography, economics
and politics. If so, this surely counts as the biggest impact Further Reading
salt ever had on human affairs. Adshead, S. A. M. (1992). Salt and civilization. New York: St. Martin’s
After about 1800, official salt monopolies and systems Press.
Bergier, J. (1982). Une histoire du sel [A history of salt]. Fribourg, France:
of taxation built upon them weakened or disappeared,
Presses Universitaires de France.
not just in revolutionary France, but in other European Ewald, U. (1985). The Mexican salt industry 1560–1980. Stuttgart, Ger-
countries and in Asia as well. In India, for example, many: Gustav Fischer.
Hocquet, J. (1978–1979). Le sel et la fortune de Venise. Lille, France: Uni-
British efforts to maintain salt taxes were never very suc- versité de Lille.
cessful and by the 1930s protest against the salt tax Multhauf, R. P. (1978). Neptune’s gift: A History of common salt. Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press.
became one of Mahatma Gandhi’s ways of mobilizing
Verlag.Litchfield, C. D., Palme, R., & Piasecki, P. (2000–2001). Lu
popular opinion against the Raj, when he went to jail for monde du sel: Mélanges offerts à Jean-Claude Hocquet. Innsbruck,Aus-
personally making untaxed sea salt. Even in China the salt tria: Berenkampf.
Vogel, H. (1993). Salt production techniques in ancient China: The Aobo
administration suffered serious disruption when a long Tu. Leiden, Brill.
series of rebellions broke out, beginning in 1774 and cli-
maxing with the Taiping convulsion of 1850–1964.
Wherever cheaper and more abundant salt became
available, whether from breakdown of tax monopolies
or through improved methods of production and dis- Sasanian Empire
tribution, it could be used to preserve meat and other
foods as well as fish.This added a good deal to human he Sasanians, or Sasanids (224–641 CE) were
food supplies in many parts of the world. In the Polish Tresponsible for the creation an important empire
and German part of Europe this was particularly evi- which included the Plateau of Iran, parts of Central Asia,
dent, beginning as early as the fourteenth century, for, Arabia, and Mesopotamia. During the height of their
in addition to salted ham and sausages, sauerkraut, power in the seventh century the Sasanians controlled
made by salting cabbages, provided a very valuable Anatolia (peninsular Turkey), Syria, Palestine, and Egypt
source of vitamins otherwise seriously lacking from as well. They were an important part of the Silk Road
their winter diets. economy, which controlled the sale of silk and other lux-
Eventually, beginning about 1800, all the age-old uses ury goods in Eurasia, and they produced the most rec-
of salt for human consumption and food preservation ognized monetary system, specifically the coinage known
were eclipsed, at least in scale, when chemists learned as the silver drahm. Their artistic talent and cultural
how to use salt in various industrial processes. It became creativity influenced their neighbors, and their history