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Three workers taking a break inside a salt mine in the 1940s.

Salt of the Earth

In Winn Parish, an ancient salt dome has sustained life for centuries.
William McKinley

Trump Is Right About McKinley

“The most underrated president” was a model of successful governance in a world in flux.
"The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden.

The Desk Dispatch: Layla Schlack on What Jewish Food Means to Her

"Frustratingly, Talmudically, Jewish food is simply what Jews eat," she writes.
Collage depicting shipping containers, a scale weighing American dollars, and a screen of numbers and percentages

Free Trade's Origin Myth

American elites accepted the economic theory of "comparative advantage" mainly because it justified their geopolitical agenda.
WPA poster for the City of New York Department of Docks, showing smokestack of ship and cargo being loaded.
Exhibit

International Trade

Histories of how money and commodities have flowed across borders, from the slave-based economies of maritime empires to contemporary globalization.

A faux Brazilian village constructed for Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici on the banks of the Seine in Rouen, France, and inhabited by fifty Tupinambá people who were forcibly brought there from Brazil, 1550.

The Discovery of Europe

A new book investigates the indigenous Americans who were brought to or traveled to Europe in the 1500s—a story central to the beginning of globalization.
President Clinton walks with Jiang Zemin past rows of Chinese soldiers.

It’s the Global Economy, Stupid

A new book on the Clinton presidency reveals how it abandoned a progressive vision for a finance-led agenda for economics and geopolitics.
Cotton plants.
partner

Understanding Capitalism Through Cotton

Looking at the development of cotton as a global commodity helps us understand how capitalism emerged.
Sea Captains drinking alcohol

Ships Going Out

In "American Slavers," Sean M. Kelley surveys the relatively unknown history of Americans who traded in slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Imperial Daiquiri

The Imperial Daiquiri: A Brief History of American Empire in One Cocktail

From the Spanish-American War to modern cocktail bars, the daiquiri has a long legacy entangled with US imperialism in the Caribbean.
An ad for a runaway slave in the Virginia Gazette, describing Thomas Greenwich, an "East-India Indian."
partner

“Of the East India Breed …”

The first South Asians in British North America.
Painting of Noritoshi Kanai and Harry Wolff Jr. and various sushi preparations, by Yuko Shimizu.

How Two Friends Sparked L.A.’s Sushi Obsession — and Changed the Way America Eats

An unlikely pair of Southern California businessmen paved the way for the sushi revolution in Los Angeles, upending American dining — and their own lives.
1970s commercial airplane flying over a mountain range

How 1970s California Created the Modern World

What happened in California in the 1970s played an outsized role in creating the world we live in today – both in the United States and globally.
A roll of cotton thread in the shape of an eye.

Slavery and the Guardian: The Ties That Bind Us

There is an illusion at the centre of British history that conceals the role of slavery in building the nation. Here’s how I fell for it.
Samuel Cummings holding a gun in a lab.

The Last Honest Mercenary in the Business

International arms dealer Samuel Cummings blanketed the Western Hemisphere with guns.
A boat makes a morning trip through the Erie Canal in Rochester, New York, October 2021.

A Brief History of the Erie Canal

The waterway opened up the heartland to trade, transforming small hamlets into industrial centers.
Painting of the US army entering the city of Guadalupe Hildaglo
partner

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: Annotated

Signed February 2, 1848, the treaty compelled Mexico to cede 55 percent of its territory, bringing more than 525,000 square miles under US sovereignty.
Illustration of U.S. bomber droping brick to form a wall (representing sanctions).

The Folly of Sanctions

Sanctions were conceived as an alternative to war. But they may have made the world more violent.
The first informal meeting of the League of Nations in Geneva, 1920.

Do Sanctions Work?

A new history examines their use in the past and considers their effectiveness for the future.
A Coca-Cola billboard in Moscow in 1997.

Capitalism Triumphed in the Cold War, but Not by Making People Better Off

In the wake of economic crises, liberal democracies proved most adept at imposing austerity.
Illustration of a man hunched over a computer at work and another leaning back relaxing; the two drawings are positioned so that it looks like the relaxing man is leaning on the working man.

Why Isn’t Everybody Rich Yet?

The twentieth century promised prosperity and leisure for all. What went wrong?
Newspaper lithograph of people fleeing the yellow fever epidemic on a boat in Mississippi.

The Sick Society

The story of a regional ruling class that struck a devil’s bargain with disease, going beyond negligence to cultivate semi-annual yellow fever epidemics.
Book cover of "The Chinese Question The Gold Rushes and Global Politics"

Who Digs the Mines?

A new book recognizes the global character of Asian exclusion.
Palm Oil Farm from above

The Irreplaceable: Palm Oil Dependency

Cheap palm oil is part of an interlocking late capitalist system.
Sesationalized painting of Native Americans about to scalp a white woman. The Murder of Jane McCrae by John Vanderlyn, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut

“White People,” Victimhood, and the Birth of the United States

White racial victimhood was a primary source of power for settlers who served as shock troops for the nation.
Actress Bobby Bradshaw is tempted by a pearl necklace, 1925.
partner

Pearl Jam

In the twentieth century, the mollusk-produced gem was a must have for members of WASP gentility. In the twenty-first century, its appeal is far more inclusive.
BP is trying to divest its share of the Russian state-owned company Rosneft.
partner

Western Oil Companies Ditching Russia is a New Twist on a Familiar Pattern

For more than a century, Western oil companies have cycled into and out of Russia.
In this photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, a transport plane is framed in a shattered window at the Baghdad airport on June 24, 2003.

How America Learned to Love (Ineffective) Sanctions

Over the past century, the United States came to rely ever more on economic coercion—with questionable results.
Early 20th century black-and-white photograph of workers harvesting kelp.
partner

Burning Kelp for War

World War I saw the availability of potash plummet, while its price doubled. The US found this critical component for multiple industries in Pacific kelp.
Illustration of enslaved workers harvesting sugar cane.

Ethical US Consumers Struggled to Pressure the Sugar Industry to Abandon Slavery

Before the Civil War, US activists sought to combat slavery through sugar boycotts. Instead, consumption grew.
Illustration of burning cannabis with helicopters overhead

The Cold War Killed Cannabis As We Knew It. Can It Rise Again?

Somewhere in Jamaica survive the original cannabis strains that were not burned by American agents or bred to be more profitable.

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