The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History: (Oxford Handbooks)

Commodities provide a lens through which local and global histories can be understood and written. The study of commodity history follows these goods as they make their way from land and water through processing and trade to eventual consumption. It is a fast-developing field with collaborative, comparative, and interdisciplinary research, and with new information technologies becoming increasingly important. Although many individual researchers continue to focus on particular commodities and regions, they often do so in partnership with others working on different areas and employing a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, placing commodities history at the forefront of local and global historical analysis. This Oxford Handbook features contributions from scholars involved in these developments across a range of countries and linguistic regions. They discuss the state of the art in their fields, draw on their own work, and signal lacunae for future research. Each of the volume's thirty-one chapters focuses on an important thematic area within commodities history: essential approaches, global histories, modes of production, people and land, environmental impact, consumption, and new methodologies. The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History offers insight into the directions in which commodity history is heading, and the multiple ways in which it can contribute to a better understanding of the world.

Table of Contents:
The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History Introduction, by Jonathan Curry-Machado and Jean Stubbs Part I: Approaches 1. 'Commodity Chains: Analytical Advantages and Challenges Applied to Coffee' Paul S. Ciccantell, David A. Smith, and Steven C. Topik 2. 'Approches Filières and Commodity Chains: Comparative Approaches in the Study of Cocoa' François Ruf, Franziska Ollendorf, and Enrique Uribe Leitz 3. 'Anti-Commodities Revisited: Food, Culture, and Resistance' Sandip Hazareesingh and Harro Maat 4. 'Commodity Frontiers: Linking Global Commodities and Local Resilience' Ulbe Bosma and Eric Vanhaute Part II: Global Histories 5. 'Early Modern Commodity Routes: Ottoman Silks in the Webs of World Trade' Suraiya Faroqhi 6. 'Port Cities and Commodities: Luanda in the Early Modern Period' Cátia Antunes and Jelmer Vos 7. 'Commodities Shaping a New Imperial History: Tobacco and the Iberian Empires' Santiago de Luxán Meléndez, João Figueirôa-Rêgo, Vicente Sanz Rozalén, and Jean Stubbs 8. 'Futures Trading and German Agricultural Markets' Alexander Engel 9. 'Commodities Across the Socialist World' Anne Dietrich Part III: Methods of Production 10. 'Mining Frontiers and the Making of the Modern World' Leonardo Marques 11. 'Towards a Technological History of Global Commodities' David Pretel 12. 'Plantations and Commodities: Indigo in Colonial India' Ghulam A. Nadri 13. 'Primary Commodities and Industrial Consumers: The Case of Palm Oil' Jonathan E. Robins Part IV: People and Land 14. 'Migration, Slavery, and Commodification' Michael Zeuske 15. 'Labour as a Commodity: The Case of Rough Diamond Mining' Karin Hofmeester 16. 'Land-Rights Commodification: Communal Land Control and Rural Conflict in Bolivia' Hanne Cottyn 17. 'Circuits of Knowledge of Tropical Commodities' Leida Fernández-Prieto Part V: Environments 18. 'Territorial Mapping and the Formation of Frontier Zones: The Trucial States (1930s-1950s)' Sabrina Joseph 19. 'Land Use and Commodities: Amazonian Cocoa Production' Rafael Chambouleyron, Luly Fischer, and Karl Heinz Arenz 20. 'Commodities, Trade, and Ecological Transformation in the Modern World' Corey Ross 21. 'Commodities, Carbon, and Climate' John L. Brooke, Eric Herschthal, and Jed Kaplan Part VI: Commodities and Consumption 22. 'Animals as Commodities: The Case of the Pacific Fur Seal' Helen Cowie 23. 'Producing Drug Histories: Conquest and Commerce, Culture and Control' Joyce A. Madancy 24. 'Culinary Commodities: Global Foods, People, and Cuisines' Elizabeth Zanoni 25. 'Historical Archaeologies of Commodities: Race and Consumer Culture in the United States' Paul R. Mullins Part VI: Methodologies 26. 'Seeing Things: The Visual Life of Commodities' Anna Arabindan-Kesson 27. 'Computational Methods for the History of Commodities as Illustrated by Apple Pie Recipes' Marieke van Erp and Ulbe Bosma 28. 'Mapping Commodity Histories: Historical GIS and Canadian Forest Products' Jim Clifford, Joshua MacFadyen, and Stéphane Castonguay 29. 'Commodities, Interdisciplinarity, and Historical GIS: Early Modern Maritime Routes and Timber Supply' Ana Crespo Solana Conclusion, by William Gervase Clarence-Smith and Jelmer Vos Index

About the Author :
Jonathan Curry-Machado is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London; Jean Stubbs is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London; William Gervase Clarence-Smith is an Emeritus Professor of History at SOAS University of London; Dr Jelmer Vos is a Lecturer in Global History at the University of Glasgow

Review :
The editors and publisher should be congratulated for demonstrating the broad diversity of commodity history in this collection. The huge variety of analytical approaches and evidentiary presentation in this handbook should remind everyone of the value of historical study of how connected all humans across the globe have been and remain.