Trade, ancient and modern: from China to the Sharing Economy

Two micro-reviews for you...one on The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia, the other on Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing.

The Silk Road consists of several chapters in central-Asian history, with generous photographs of the landscape or art connected to the region. If readers are interested primarily in the Silk Road's heyday, the volume may be mildly disappointing, as the chapters on exploration, archaeology, and looting in the 'modern' age (19th century and continuing) constitute half the book. There is much of interest, however, and all of that archaeological looting is still firmly connected to central Asia's golden age. I would read it as a supplement to a more substantive history of the Silk Road trade than a history of it, however.

Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing introduces the notion of 'mesh' businesses, which sustain themselves on a great deal of interaction between customers and the business itself, typically involving 'sharing' resources.  Sometimes the business may merely be the platfom through which customers interact with one another -- AirBnB, for instance. The book is written almost as a pitch, urging people in the wake of the Great Recession to consider what kind of mesh businesses they could think of. The author argues that the market is ripe:  because of the recession, trust in traditional brands is or was at an all-time low, and people are more willing to experiment.   Many successful companies were founded amid recessions, says the author, because their founders saw a way to create something useful in the rubble.  Because mesh businesses are all about using goods more efficienctly, they can grow even in an economic crunch: indeed, that's their selling point. Why waste money buying a car when one can be borrowed at-will through Zipcar?  This more efficient use of resources is also more sustainable from an environmental point of view: to use the same example, a Zipcar's pollutants are not only spread out among many people's use, but they and services like Uber mean that cars no longer need to waste their potential sitting around in a parking lot or on the street all day,  consuming space or clogging the arteries of trade.    I found Mesh interesting, but slightly dated, not mentioning services like uber which were technically around back then,but hadn't exploded in popularity the wav they have now.  

Danger Heavy Goods

Danger Heavy Goods: Driving the Toughest, Most Dangerous Roads in the World
Also known as: Juggernaut: Trucking to Saudi Arabia
© 1988 Robert Hutchinson
288 pages

"Makes Smokey and the Bandit Look Like Smokey and the Boy Scouts"

When is a lorry not a lorry? When it's leaving the country, according to the British drivers here. A continental trip makes a lorry a bonafide truck, and the run covered here puts even American transcontinental trips to shame. In Danger: Heavy Goods,  Robert Author recalls a run from England to Saudi Arabia he participated in in the early 1980s, at a time when Arabian ports were so overcrowded that ships sat at sea for weeks waiting for their turn to unload.  He takes readers through a string of countries which no longer exist, across the Bosporus Bridge, and down to Ar'ar by way of  Iraq -- which is invading Iran. Well, golly.

Where to start with this book?  It is a snapshot of Europe in the early 1980s, where Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the DDR were still destinations and  Gorbachev is trying to reform the Soviet Union by banning alcohol. It is a road trip of epic proportions and epic aggravation. Time and again the drivers that Hutchinson partnered predict that the middle east run is doomed. The pre-EU customs inspections of Europe -- the frequent scrutiny of their records, the endless paperwork -- was bad enough, but the middle east is a bonafide nightmare. From Turkey to Saudi Arabia, every official from customs agents to parking attendants wants their cut,  a little bit to grease the palm The preferred bribe is cigarettes, and every country has its most-favored denomination: Turkey is Marlboro country,  Syria swears by Gitanes, and Rothmans rule in Saudi Arabia.   Bureaucratic delays are endless, some of them lasting as long as a week, and once the cigarettes are exhausted anything else is up for grabs. English newspapers, catalogs, canned food?  The amount of aggravation drivers throughout Eurasia receive at the hands of customs officials in Iraq and Saudi Arabia  amaze the author: it's like they don't want goods.

If one can get by the customs agents without being arrested for mysterious circumstances, there's still everything else to contend with. Take your pick -- roads that turn into bobsled runs as soon as they're wet,  or threaten to throw trucks into rig-destroying quagmire if they stray from the beaten path. And which is more dangerous, Turkish prostitutes or the fact that Iran and Iraq are bombing one another? Tough call.  There are plenty of surprises which far friendlier, though. Although drivers on the mid-east run are technically in competition with one another, there's a mild level of camaraderie in the face of a common enemy, customs. In one chapter, the British drivers warn a drunken Turk of a heavy police presence despite Turks being the main rival of British firms for transeuropean traffic. (They warn him in German, while in Czechoslovakia.  German is also used as a go-between language in Ar'ar,  Saudi Arabia.)

Danger is a most interesting 'memoir', delivered by a guide who has an honest interest in every country he visits, frequently regaling readers with historical background on the places he and his coworkers are passing through in their two trucks.  Virtually every aspect of the run has been overtaken by history, though. I haven't been able to find any stats on truck traffic to Saudi Arabia from western Europe, but with a few decades of oil money sunk into the ports I doubt it's as thick as it was when featured here

Related:
Truck this For a Living: Tales of a UK Lorry Driver, Gary Mottram

West of the Revolution

West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776
© 2015 Claudio Saunt
288 pages

In 1776, the bid of thirteen colonies for independence wasn't the only interesting goings-on in North America.  From Alaska to Cuba, colonial and native powers were fighting, trading, exploring, and competing with one another. West of the Revolution begins with Russian forays into the Aleutian islands,  moves south to Calofornia, where Spain frantically attempted to create a safeguard after catching wind of the Russians,  and then takes readers across the Rockies and plains until the Mississippi is reached. There, we travel south to Cuba, which was not only a prospering sugar plantation but a potentially powerful trading partner of the Creek people in the Southeast.   Brief and full of interest,  West of the Revolution not only sheds light on what else was happening in 1776, but provides the context for future developments in American history --  the drive towards the Mississippi and the hunger for Florida.  There's also a rare look into Canada, or rather the Hudson Bay area and still later, a region that encompasses both Canadian and American states. A section on the Black Hills, known to Americans as the home of Mt. Rushmore,  makes plain their importance to the Sioux and other tribes: the Hills are an oasis of rain in a relatively dry region, and for generations a source of food and materials in lean periods.   I discovered this book via a podcast (Ben Franklin's World) and can pass on the recommendation,  no less for the information on Russian and Spanish colonization as for the tour of North America, this most diverse and extraordinary continent.

When Asia was the World

When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the 'Riches of the East
© 2009 Stewart Gordon
256 pages

When Asia was the World revisits, through the lives of traveling monks, traders, and warriors,  the extraordinary vistas and cultures of greater Asia from 500 to 1500 A.D.   It is not a conventional history of Asia before the ascendancy of Europe,  but allows the reader to play the part of historical tourist, tagging along with various men traveling circuitous routes from Iran to China. Some are traders, bringing to life a robust economy that nearly covered a hemisphere,  Others are pilgrims -- Buddhist monks, traveling from China to India and back, visiting every monastery they can and soaking in wisdom -- Muslims, too, made treks to learn from courts afar. These men circulated not only spiritual insight, but secular knowledge, connecting courts across the continent.  Others are Mongolian raiders,who don't bask in civilization so much as incinerate it.  This is ideal reading for someone who has a vague interest in Asia, or in global history in general, but who doesn't want to deal with an actual history book. Here, the history is absorbed through men of zeal and ambition, willing to transverse epic mountains, forbidding deserts, lush forests, and pirate-filled sea planes to see what's beyond the horizon.

Related:
The Spice Route, John Keay
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, David Bernstein