What’s for Sale? A Commercial History of the 20th Century

This second installment of What’s for Sale? A Commercial History of the World explores how the trade in specific commodities drove local, regional, and global encounter and exchange. How and in what ways did demand for commodities, including food, oil, metals, chemicals, and information, drive and shape historical outcomes? In what ways did their production and distribution influence not only whole economies but also politics, society, and culture? While the scope of the course is primarily the twentieth century, we will spend time in our last session discussing 21st-century commodities in the new age of information. The first course, which spans early commodity history through 1900, is NOT a prerequisite.