When you think of salt, you probably think of something you use to flavor your fried
potato slices or that thing that makes seawater undrinkable, but this combination of an explosive
metal and a deadly gas gives us what is in a sense the only rock that us humans eat,
and this little rock has come to build empires, define economies, pave trade routes, and both
start and decide the outcomes of bitter wars.
It was never actually more valuable than gold, but in a way it had an arguably much stronger
impact on history.
Ever wondered how Venice built such a huge trading empire?
Salt!
How India got its independence from the British?
Salt!
Why America wanted independence from the British?
Also salt!
How Spain suffered from hyperinflation after the conquest of the Inca Empire?
Well actually that was silver, but you get the idea.
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So why do we attach so much importance to this little white mineral?
Well for one, salt is essential for muscle control, neurotransmissions, and maintaining
proper fluid balance.
And a low salt presence in blood means hyponatremia, a condition which can include nausea, headaches,
fatigue, heart problems, and other lovely symptoms.
While salt is important for the functioning of our bodies however, that’s far from the
only thing salt can be used for, and indeed not what would come to kick off the importance
of the salt trade.
The same thing that makes too much salt dangerous to us also makes salt in a sense the original
preservative, as it absorbs water, leaving whatever it touches dry and inhospitable to
bacteria.
This made salt an important asset in a world where refrigeration was only really feasible
in these regions.
Salt allowed early civilizations to store perishable goods like meats for longer periods
of time, allowing them in a sense to declare independence from the seasons!
Or at least from seasonal food shortages, as well as transport food to faraway places
in a 5 km/h hour world.
Salt however isn’t all that easy to extract, now sure you could go to your nearest ocean
and boil off a bucket of water, but what if you don’t live near an ocean?
Or what if you do live near an ocean but the climate isn’t hot and/or dry enough?
If that’s the case, you’re going to have to rely on special salt deposits, which could
give an edge to any city near one.
While this was the case in most countries, China started collecting salt by evaporating
seawater as far back as the 27th century BC, and this early salt trade actually gave rise
to some of the earliest forms of taxation, with revenue from these salt taxes allowing
them to finance wars, expeditions, and construction projects.
Plus I suppose it’s a little fitting that one of the first things to be taxed was salt
of all things.
At the same time, Egypt was also harvesting salt from seawater, as well as from rock salt
in the desert, with one large source being the Wadi El Natrun, with a large deposit of
a particular type of salt named after this valley; natron, as well as the Latinized name
for the element sodium, natrium (which explains the Na).
The Egyptians also quickly learned of salt’s ability to preserve meats, and naturally also
used them to help preserve their oh-so famous mummies.
Over in Rome however, the expansion of the city during the early years of the Republic
necessitated the construction of a road across the peninsula to the town of Castrum Truentinum
(now Martinsicuro) on the coast of the Adriatic, which largely due to its shallow depths had
a higher salt content, allowing for easier harvesting of salt.
Now we’ll get back to this in a second…
This road, which had already been in use for several centuries as a trail by a people known
as the Sabines, was christened the Via Salaria in the 3rd century BC, a not-so subtle hint
as to its purpose.
And in fact the Latin word ‘salis’ or ‘sāl’ gives us many words for things
we don’t generally even associate with salt, like for instance a certain dish of salted
greens or ‘herba salata’ giving us salad, or *sausages* which you might accompany with
a *sauce*, and in fact the word salary also seems to have a connection to salt, though
etymologists aren’t actually quite sure how or why.
A common explanation is that Roman soldiers were paid in salt, as it was so valuable,
but there aren’t actually any records of this, though some propose that a ‘salarium’
was given as money meant to buy salt, as well as other goods, but again there aren’t any
written records on this.
Back on the topic of the Via Salarium though, this road was one of the earliest of many
different salt roads, connecting salt deposits with major cities and port towns largely across
Europe.
One of the most notable of these salt roads was the Alte Salzstraße (Old Salt Route)
connecting the salt mines in Lüneburg to the port city of Lübeck, both in the modern-day
German state of Schleswig-Holstein.
This route proved essential to the cities on the Baltic coast, in turn allowing for
the prosperity of the Hanseatic League.
Speaking of which, the Adriatic…
huh, maybe someone should set up a trading empire here.
“Lo farò!” said Venice, who for 1,100 years ruled a maritime republic situated throughout
the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.
In the early years the Venetian Republic prospered from the salt trade, with the aforementioned
abundance of salt in the Adriatic and especially in the lagoon surrounding Venice, even pioneering
a new technique of extracting salt from seawater, by evaporating the water away in stages, transferring
the brine into different pools as the salt concentration grew more and more, in turn
allowing Venice to expand its influence and import spices from the east to be traded among
the European market.
The Vikings also took over salt deposits across northern Europe, as an important staple on
Viking voyages was salted cod, as cod was a less fatty fish, and could therefore be
dried out and salted easier to be preserved for a long time.
It wasn’t just in Europe or China where the salt trade made empires prosper on the
economic stage, with both Ethiopia and the Ghana Empire (in modern day Mali and Mauritania)
growing crazy rich with the establishment of camel-based trade routes to other regions.
Of course, many towns and cities within Europe would be named after salt, reflecting their
proximity to salt mines, such as Salzburg from the German “Salz”, or Tuzla from
the Turkish “tuz”, or Mellieħa from the Maltese “melħ”, and many English towns
with names ending in “-wich”, like with Droitwich, Middlewich, Northwich, and Leftwich,
though this suffix can also refer to the trading of goods other than salt.
Not every country however was quite so lucky in this regard, with Sweden for instance briefly
establishing a salt refinery in Saint-Barthélemy in the Caribbean.
While Sweden’s colonial ambitions didn’t come to bear as much as hoped, Britain’s
early colonies prospered off salt they were able to harvest on their own, however self-sufficient
colonies are colonies that could potentially break away, so Britain made sure to keep British
salt cheaper than local salt, later only providing the settlers enough salt to produce goods
for themselves and Britain, but suspiciously never enough for export to other countries.
Tea taxes are of course the most well known of motivations for the American Revolution,
but taxes on salt were also a motivation, and a major political weapon in the ensuing
war for independence.
Salt had also proved an effective political weapon in Mahatma Gandhi’s fight for India’s
independence (or India-pendence) from the British, with his march to the sea to collect
salt from the beach-- something the British had banned in order to establish a monopoly
over salt and discourage protests-- itself sparking more protests for independence, but
that’s definitely a story for another time.
Salt has been used as a political tool by many empires over thousands of years, and
to many ancient cultures was (and still is) considered sacred.
Nowadays however, with the help of modern technology, salt has gone from something civilizations
use to wipe out enemy cities, to something we use to wipe out enemy… road ice.
We have gone from salt being essentially a luxury product to something so abundant that
many of us today are in danger of eating too much of it.
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