At the start of this book, Alexander Engel positions himself firmly inside major debates on the history of globalization and the history of markets. He distinguishes between ‘economic globalization’, which began in the late nineteenth century, and the far earlier ‘sociological globalization’ (as elaborated by Wallerstein et al.), and presents a very condensed, highly informative history of the concept of a market (Chapter 1). With such an ambitious start, the author makes it clear that he is perfectly at home with the broader issues relevant to his case study. In the rest of the book, in which he discusses the history of dyestuffs markets in the light of these broader issues, he also demonstrates complete mastery of his subject matter. He is at his best when showing the wider relevance of the minute details of the production, sales, and uses of certain dyestuffs.

For the readers of this journal, it is important to realize that Engel does not discuss the globalization of dyestuffs markets in general. Rather, he focuses on what he calls the ‘European global market’. Asian and American dyestuffs markets are not discussed in their own terms, but only in relation to European industry and trade. From that particular viewpoint, the author reveals how a European market for dyestuffs emerged during the Middle Ages, partly supplemented by dyestuffs traded via the Middle East. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, dyes cultivated in Europe (such as woad and safflower) were increasingly replaced by imports of dyestuffs from America and Asia (indigo, cochineal, lack dye, and logwood). With the emergence of the synthetic dye industry in the nineteenth century, especially after 1880, trade relations were reversed: Europe became a production centre of dyes that were now exported to Asia and other parts of the world.

These general trends are perhaps not very surprising, but the details presented and analysed in the core chapters of Engel's book (originally from a PhD dissertation) make this work the best synthesis available at present within the voluminous literature on the history of natural and synthetic dyestuffs. Two general features stand out: first, the book does a wonderful job of integrating the history of science and technology with social and economic history; second, it covers four centuries of market development, thereby showing that the transition from a natural to a synthetic dye industry was far more gradual than often claimed.

The author does not give a strict chronological account of the development of the dyestuffs market between 1500 and 1900. Instead, he approaches his topic from three thematic angles, and by so doing he achieves great analytical depth. He opens with an innovative overview of techno-scientific and commercial developments (Chapter 2), distinguishing four, partly overlapping, socio-technical regimes: (1) a regime of mercantile integration (c.1200–1700) between agriculture and trade, between northern and southern Europe, and between Europe and overseas areas; (2) a regime of ‘oeconomic botany’ (c.1600–1800), based on growing knowledge of improvements in cultivation, and characterized by attempts to transfer the cultivation of dye-producing plants to Europe and other parts of the world; (3) a regime characterized by innovations in the production of dyestuff extracts and preparations, based on the knowledge and skills of dyers and colourists in textile printing (c.1740–1860); and finally (4) the regime of the synthetic dye industry, based on organic chemistry and chemical technology. The coverage of the literature is on the whole superb, and the overview peerless; only the role of the colourists could have been elaborated by drawing on a relevant chapter to be found in Robert Fox and Agustí Nieto-Galan's edited collection, Natural dyestuffs and industrial culture in Europe, 1750–1880 (1999). That omission, however, does not in any way diminish the great achievement of this book: to analyse for the first time and in considerable detail the technical improvements that took place in the production of natural dyes.

After this technological overview, Engel analyses the quantitative development of sales volumes and prices of dyestuffs (Chapter 3). Given the poor state of early modern statistics, the author is compelled to focus primarily on Britain and Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite that limitation, he succeeds in integrating many different time-series of uneven lengths and contents into a synthetic picture, and in so doing produces novel results. He demonstrates, for instance, that prices generally rose until about 1810, as a result of the growing demand, and fell thereafter as a result of technical improvements in the production of natural dyes, long before the emergence of synthetic dyes. Another important finding is that, although in the technical and economic literature attention was paid almost exclusively to indigo, madder, and cochineal (high ‘discursive relevance’), in practice more than half of the textiles were dyed with dye-woods (high ‘material relevance’).

In order to explain these quantitative trends, the author gives a rich overview of the ‘institutional development’ of the dye market (Chapter 4). He discusses the role of fashion and government regulations, as well as the changing relations between agriculture, merchants, and manufacturers, the changing nature of the history of commodities (Warenkunde), and the growth of marketing. Particular attention is paid to the rise of the multinational corporation, with its vertical integration from raw material to final products, and its coordination between production, sales, and scientific research (which replaced a much more loosely coordinated network of farmers, manufacturers, traders, and colourists). The consequences of that change are analysed in depth by comparing the institutional aspects of the competition between natural indigo from India and synthetic indigo from Germany, thereby anticipating some of the results of Prakash Kumar's interesting monograph Indigo plantations and science in colonial India (2013).

This excellent book is a ‘must’ for all those interested in the history of dyes. For the general reader it is valuable for two main reasons: for its integrated long-term analysis of international markets during both the pre-modern and the modern periods; and for its ‘helicopter view’ of changing institutional relations between agriculture, trade, government, and production. These also make it a good starting point for studies of markets other than dyes.