Commodities have recently attracted a good deal of scholarly attention. Thus, historical trajectories of a range of commodities have been explored by scholars, mostly economic historians, from various regional and global perspectives. In the literature that has emerged over the last two decades, there are two main strands of scholarship, which use variants of the two major analytical frameworks—global commodity chains and imperial commodities. The first one examines the successive stages of production, trade, and consumption of a commodity at both local and global levels with a focus on control over production and distribution and capital accumulation. The second framework traces the growth and expansion or contraction in the production and trade of a commodity within an imperial arena with a major focus on the relationship between empire and its constituents and commodity production and trade. The book under review, Global Histories, Imperial Commodities, Local Interactions, represents the latter strand of scholarship. This book is an outcome of the collaborative research carried out under the “commodities of empire” project of the University College London and is published as a part of the Cambridge Imperial and Postcolonial Studies series. It is, therefore, no surprise that it focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and that the European empires and their post-imperial incarnations are at the centre of the commodity histories examined in this book. Contributors explore the dynamics of commodity production, distribution, and consumption primarily through the lens of empire and imperial expansion and consolidation.

Each of the twelve essays in the book presents a historical analysis of the growth and expansion in production and trade of a commodity and most of them treat this fascinating history within the context of empire and the Europe-dominated capitalist world system. Altogether, the book covers a good mix of commodities ranging from luxuries such as Havana cigar to articles of mass consumption like cassava and sugar. It brings new research and less-explored regions and trade networks into the discussion and offers new perspectives on global history, history of empires and commodities. Chapters on trade routes via Sikkim, Kongo rubber trade, cotton production in Africa, Mauritian sugar, Havana cigar, and a fascinating chapter on the global spread of cassava/tapioca consumption are some fine examples of the emerging scholarship in the field. In the introduction, the editor outlines the main objectives of the commodities of empire project and highlights the significant historiographical contributions of the chapters. Each contributor addresses one or more of the four major themes that the editor highlights as the key concerns of the global history approach to the study of commodities. They are the transcendence of borders, the role of local actors or agents, power and resistance, and frontiers. An emphasis is on the role of local actors in a commodity chain and their relative autonomy in the marketplace, a challenging theme that the recent literature on global commodities aspires to explore. While most contributions to this book emphasize the significant role of colonial/imperial power in the expansion and contraction of the frontiers of a commodity chain, only a few have explicated the dynamics of local resistance and the role of local actors in it. Some chapters highlight the global character of the commodity chain and show how the commodities transcended imperial or national borders.

The book is a useful addition to the literature on global commodities. It places commodities at the centre of the interconnected world and explores their role in transcending local, national, and imperial boundaries. While many contributors highlight the role of empire and capitalist imperial forces in the commodity chains, the book, in general, succeeds in demonstrating how imperial commodities were deeply rooted in the local societies and economies of the colonies and peripheral regions. The book proposes to make a conceptual advance in the study of imperial commodities by emphasizing agency and assertiveness of indigenous communities and suggesting that indigenous people defined and, in some cases, also controlled the destinies of particular commodities (6). Essays on Puerto Rican tobacco, Cuban sugar, African cotton, and the Kongo rubber trade illuminate the role of indigenous actors and show that they were not mere victims or a mere “instrument in the agenda of the Europeans” (6). They, as some essays in the book show, asserted their autonomy in the marketplace. A major contribution of the book is that it challenges the historiographical trend in world history to look at commodity production relations in the colonies or former colonies through European success-indigenous failure and domination-subordination binaries. The new research in the book seeks to underscore the complex nature of Europe’s interaction with indigenous economies and focus on local actors (i.e., producers, merchants, and middlemen) and their aspirations to retain their autonomy and resist imperial control and domination. This is not an easy task and the limitations and, in most cases, lack of accessibility to indigenous primary sources make this even more challenging.

This is very well reflected in some of the essays in this collection. Essays on Sikkim, Indian pale ale, port services in the Macaronesian Islands, and Mauritian sugar fall short on the role and agency of local actors and their stories become that of the triumph of western empire and capitalism. What is also interesting is the different ways globalization is understood in this book. Some essays, such as the one on cassava, trace the beginning of globalization with the dissemination of commodities and consumption cultures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For some, globalization is a nineteenth-century phenomenon and the [European] capitalist world system is central to it. In his essay on Mauritian sugar, Patrick Neveling writes: “It is this capitalist world system that ultimately defines globalization in a particular place” (121). Readers will find this book useful because of its two main strengths. First, it considers commodities, most of which were rooted in areas and societies on the periphery of the European capitalist world system, as central to the interconnected world and, thereby, contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the empires and nations and their interaction with the localities. Second, it brings into discussion many historiographically marginalized commodities, geographical regions, and trade networks and, thereby, stimulates further studies and a more detailed analysis of the role of commodities and local actors in the making of the modern globalized world.