Prologue: The Rock and the Economy
Salt stands as one of the first international commodities of trade. This substance, essential for human survival and health, inevitably became the focus of the world’s first state monopoly. Long before it fueled empires in Europe, salt drove politics, philosophy, and technology in China. Chinese history, documented across 4,000 years, begins as a history of pivotal inventions. Leaders throughout China, including Mao Zedong, proudly list the numerous Chinese firsts. These inventions include the papermaking process, printing technology, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass.
The earliest attempts by humans to domesticate animals required understanding their need for salt. People observed reindeer seeking out human encampments where urine provided a source of salt. Providing salt allowed humans to attract and tame reindeer, turning the animals into a food source. Around 6000 B.C., people achieved the formidable task of domesticating the aurochs in Turkey or the Balkans. These animals were transformed into cattle by controlling their diet, castrating the males, and corralling them into small spaces. Cattle quickly became a mainstay food source, consuming huge amounts of both grain and salt. Once humans adopted diets consisting largely of grains and vegetables, supplemented by domestic animal meat, the procurement of salt became an absolute necessity. This necessity immediately gave salt immense economic value and symbolic importance.
The search for salt has historically provoked revolutions, secured empires, and established enduring alliances. It spurred the creation of major public works and challenged engineers across millennia. Salt production existed as one of the very first industries on Earth. The ancient fascination with salt extended into the spiritual realm. Homer called salt a divine substance, and Plato described it as especially dear to the Gods. Religious ceremonies, magical charms, and covenants frequently assigned high importance to salt. In medieval Europe, etiquette demanded careful handling of salt at the table. People were instructed to touch salt only with the tip of a knife, never by hand. Jewish law specified that salt could only be served safely using the middle two fingers. Using the thumb when serving salt was believed to cause the death of one’s children. Using the little finger brought poverty, and using the index finger risked turning the person into a murderer.
Ancient Chinese Ingenuity
Chinese salt history traces its roots back to the mythical Yellow Emperor, Huangdi. Legends credit Huangdi with presiding over the first war ever fought specifically for salt control. Huangdi is also credited with inventing writing, the bow and arrow, the cart, and ceramics. The legendary rulers who preceded documented history supposedly invented the elements that established China as the first civilization. Following the creator Pangu, the sage Fuxi domesticated animals and invented marriage. Shennong then introduced medicine, agriculture, trade, the hoe, and the plow.
One of China’s earliest verifiable saltworks operated in the arid northern province of Shanxi. This region, characterized by dry yellow earth and desert mountains, features a salty lake called Lake Yuncheng. The control of this lake provoked constant warfare in the area. Chinese historians assert that by 6000 B.C., the yearly evaporation of the lake’s waters already triggered these wars.
Around 1000 B.C., iron first entered use in China, though evidence of its use in salt making dates later. By 450 B.C., a man named Yi Dun achieved prominence by producing salt in pans. Yi Dun is believed to have boiled brine in iron pans, pioneering a technique that dominated salt making for 2,000 subsequent years. Yi Dun worked with an ironmaster named Guo Zong. He also maintained a friendship with Fan Li, an enterprising, wealthy bureaucrat credited with inventing fish farming. Fish farming remained associated with salt-producing areas for centuries. The Chinese realized that salt and fish complemented each other, viewing them as partners. Mencius, the famous Confucian thinker (372 to 289 B.C.), reportedly worked selling both fish and salt.
Chinese cooking uses soy, a legume, to create pastes and condiments when fermented with salt. The earliest written mention of soy in China appeared in the sixth century B.C., describing the plant as already 700 years old and originating in the north. The pre-Mao character for the soy plant, su, features little roots at the bottom, symbolizing soil revival. Soy came to Japan from China in the sixth century A.D. via Chinese Buddhist missionaries. The Japanese did not start making soy sauce until the tenth century A.D.. Once they mastered the process, they industrialized it, called it shoyu, and sold it internationally.
In the Sichuan capital of Chengdu, the provincial salt town of Zigong flourished due to its many brine wells. Zigong’s busy, narrow, downhill open-air market still sells specialized pickling jars for local specialties like paocai and zhacai. Paocai, eaten within 2 days, focuses more on flavor than long-term preservation. The salt keeps the vegetables crisp and brightens their color. Zhacai is cured using alternating layers of vegetables and salt crystals, rather than brine. The salt extracts juices from the vegetables, forming a brine over time. A tradition exists where a peasant family puts up a vegetable every year a baby girl is born, giving the jars to her when she marries. This demonstrates the extended preservation time necessary before eating zhacai.
Li Bing and the First Brine Wells
Around 250 B.C., Governor Li Bing of Shu (modern Sichuan Province) stood as one of history’s greatest hydraulic engineering geniuses. The coincidence of political leadership and hydraulic skills was common, reflecting that water management represented a critical issue for developing China, a land plagued by floods and droughts. The Yellow River, known as “the father of floods,” constantly silted up and raised its bed, necessitating dikes. In contrast, the Yangtze, a wider river, flowed through the rainy center of China, bisecting the world’s third largest country.
Li Bing’s existence is well documented, unlike the purely mythical figures of ancient Chinese history. His most impressive achievement involved building the first dam, which operates in modernized form today. At Du-jiangyan, he divided the Minjiang River, a Yangtze tributary. The diverted water flows through channels and spillways designed to open for irrigation during droughts and close during floods. He used three stone figures placed in the water as gauges. If the feet of the figures were visible, it signaled drought, and the dam gates were opened. If the shoulders were submerged, floodwaters were too high, and the gates were closed.
The dam’s successful operation guaranteed agricultural richness, earning the Sichuan plains the name “Land of Abundance” in ancient records. In 1974, workers found two water gauges carved in A.D. 168 near the dam site, apparently replacements for the originals. One of these statues, the oldest Chinese stone figure of an identifiable individual ever found, depicted Li Bing himself. Four centuries after his death, Li Bing achieved the status of a god of flood control.
Li Bing made a simple but crucial discovery concerning Sichuan’s long-standing salt production, which dated back to 3000 B.C.. He realized that the natural brine used to make salt did not originate in the surface pools where it was found. The brine actually seeped up from underground sources. In 252 B.C., Li Bing ordered the drilling of the world’s first brine wells.
This technological foundation led to further innovations. By A.D. 100, well workers discovered invisible substances escaping from holes in the ground. These invisible substances, which were disturbances in the ground, were lit and used for cooking. Workers soon learned to insulate bamboo tubes with mud and brine, piping the invisible force (natural gas) to boiling houses. These open sheds contained pots of brine, which cooked until the water evaporated and left salt crystals. By A.D. 200, the boiling houses utilized iron pots heated by the natural gas flames. This marked the world’s first known practical use of natural gas.
The earliest bamboo piping probably originated in Sichuan. This material proved salt resistant, and the salt itself killed microbes and algae that would otherwise cause rot. Workers sealed the bamboo joints either with mud or a mixture of lime and tung oil. Chinese across the entire country learned to build irrigation and plumbing systems based on the piping used at the Sichuan brine works. By the Middle Ages (around the time of the Norman conquest of England), a bureaucrat from Sichuan named Su Dongpo designed sophisticated urban bamboo plumbing. Large bamboo water mains were installed in Hangzhou in 1089 and in Canton in 1096. These systems included ventilators and holes designed to manage air pockets and blockages. Salt producers spread the bamboo piping across the countryside in a complex web, utilizing gravity and creating loops and long downhill runs, resembling a roller coaster.
Percussion Drilling and State Power
In the mid-eleventh century, while King Harold defended England against the Normans, Sichuan salt producers developed percussion drilling. This technique remained the world’s most advanced drilling method for the next seven or eight centuries. The process involved digging a hole roughly 4 inches in diameter. A worker dropped a heavy 8-foot rod tipped with a sharp iron bit, guiding it through a bamboo tube to ensure it repeatedly struck the same spot. The worker stood on a wooden lever, using their body weight to counterbalance the 8-foot rod. This repetitive, see-saw motion caused the bit to pound down continuously. After 3 to 5 years, this rigorous method could strike brine at a depth of several hundred feet.
At the same time, the Chinese had discovered gunpowder. They found that mixing potassium nitrate, a salt known as saltpeter, with carbon and sulfur created a powder. When ignited, this powder quickly expanded to gas, producing an explosion. Gunpowder became one of the first major industrial applications for salt. In the twelfth century, Arabs started learning the secret Chinese powder during the European Crusades.
Li Bing lived during one of the pivotal crossroads in Chinese history, the consolidation of warring states into a unified China. Intellectual debate concerning the rights of rulers and the nature of government accompanied this unification, and salt lay at the center of that debate. Chinese governments had viewed salt as a source of state revenue for centuries. Texts mentioning a salt tax have been found dating back to the twentieth century B.C.. The ancient Chinese character for salt, yan, is a pictograph composed of three parts. The lower section depicts tools, the upper left shows an imperial official, and the upper right represents brine. Therefore, the character itself symbolically represented the state’s complete control over salt manufacture. Since salt is necessary for survival and good health, taxing it guaranteed that everyone supported the state through purchasing the commodity.
The philosophical debate surrounding the salt tax originated with Confucius (551 to 479 B.C.). Confucius served as an intellectual adviser in the “think tanks” assembled by the rulers of various Chinese states. As a philosopher of morality, Confucius sought to raise the standard of human behavior. He taught that treating fellow humans with respect, avoiding arrogance, and practicing loyalty formed the basis of good government.
The Legalist faction offered a distinct perspective on salt administration. The earliest written text detailing a Chinese salt administration is the Guanzi, which supposedly contains the economic advice of a minister who lived from 685 to 643 B.C.. However, historians agree the Guanzi was actually composed around 300 B.C.. At that time, only 7 states remained, and the eastern state of Qi, influenced heavily by Legalism, was fighting for survival against the western state of Qin.
The Rise and Fall of Monopoly
By 221 B.C., Qin defeated its last rivals, and its ruler became the first emperor of a unified China. The emperor’s rule continued until 1911. The proposals detailed in the Guanzi, originally policies of Qi, became the binding policy of the Qin dynasty and the new Chinese empire. The Qin dynasty was defined by Legalist tendencies, characterized by massive public works and extremely harsh laws. The state implemented a price-fixing monopoly on both iron and salt, keeping prices excessively high. This action represents the first known historical instance of a state-controlled monopoly over a vital commodity. Salt revenues financed the construction of armies and defensive structures, including the Great Wall, intended to keep nomadic invaders like the Huns out of China. Despite these efforts, the harsh Qin dynasty collapsed in less than 15 years.
The Han dynasty replaced the Qin dynasty in 207 B.C., ending the unpopular monopolies as a display of wiser, better government. However, by 120 B.C., military expeditions to repel the Huns still drained the treasury. The Han emperor hired an ironmaster and a salt maker to study the possibility of reinstating the salt and iron monopolies. Four years later, the emperor reestablished both monopolies.
The salt and iron monopolies, though funding many military ventures, remained deeply controversial in China. In 87 B.C., Emperor Wudi, considered the greatest emperor of the 4-century Han dynasty, died and was succeeded by the 8-year-old Zhaodi. Six years later, in 81 B.C., the young emperor decided to convene a debate among 60 notable wise men from across China regarding state administrative policies, with the monopolies as the central subject.
The event quickly expanded into a major contest between Legalism and Confucianism. The participants debated the responsibilities of good government, defining the limits of military spending and the government’s right to interfere in the economy. They also explored the philosophical conflict between state profit and private initiative. The arguments presented by the participants were preserved from the Confucian perspective in a text titled the Yan tie lun, or Discourse on Salt and Iron.
The Confucians argued that the military actions were causing immense suffering to the interior population, turning the borders into permanent military camps. They stated that even if the monopolies were initially useful, they would inevitably become damaging in the long term. The necessity of state revenue was directly challenged by one participant, who quoted Laozi, the founder of Daoism: “A country is never as poor as when it seems filled with riches”.
The debate concluded without a clear winner, considered a draw. Emperor Zhaodi, who ruled for 14 years, continued the monopolies, as did his successor. In 44 B.C., the next emperor, Yuandi, abolished them. Just 3 years later, however, the treasury was emptied by a third successful western expedition to Sogdiana in Turkistan, forcing Yuandi to reestablish the monopolies. The monopolies were subsequently abolished and reestablished regularly, typically based on military budgetary needs. Toward the end of the first century A.D., a Confucian government minister abolished the monopolies once more, declaring that “Government sale of salt means competing with subjects for profit. These are not measures fit for wise rulers”.
The state salt monopoly vanished entirely for 600 years. It was resurrected during the Tang dynasty (618 to 907). During this period, fully half of the revenue generated by the Chinese state originated from salt. Aristocrats who profited from salt displayed their wealth ostentatiously. They began the unusual extravagance of serving pure salt at the dinner table, a rare custom in China, presented in lavish, ornate saltcellars.
The state control over salt consistently provoked bitter popular uprisings over the centuries. In 880, an angry mob seized control of the city of Xi’an, just north of Sichuan. The great political and moral questions surrounding the salt and iron debate—the appropriate tax burden, the need for state profits, the importance of a balanced budget, and the line between rule of law and tyranny—remained unresolved issues.
Early Preservation and Egyptian Natron
Long before Chinese emperors solidified their “Mandate of Salt,” ancient civilizations grappled with preservation. The earliest burial sites in Egypt, dating to about 3000 B.C., contained surprisingly well-preserved corpses. These bodies, found where the desert met the fertile Nile strip, still retained skin and flesh, though they were not mummies. The dry, naturally salty desert sand provided the preservation. This natural desert phenomenon established the rudiments of flesh preservation.
The Egyptians viewed a dead body as the necessary vessel connecting earthly life to the afterlife. Eternal life ideally required permanent preservation of the body. A tomb always contained two parts: the underground section for the corpse, and the above-ground area for offerings. Poor Egyptians subsisted on unraised bread, beer, and onions. The Greeks later recorded that, during the 20 years of construction of the pyramid of Giza (circa 2900 B.C.), the workers were supplied with onions, garlic, and radishes worth 1,600 talents of silver, approximately $2 million in contemporary dollars. Onions, credited with great medicinal qualities, were sometimes placed in mummified cadavers to serve in place of the eyes.
Whether the Egyptians were the first civilization to preserve food on a grand scale is unknown, but they certainly developed the most extensive early methods. They relied on narrow fertile strips along the Nile; thus, preparations for dry years required stockpiling food through curing, fermentation, and massive grain silos.
Ancient civilizations recognized different types of salts existed with distinct chemical properties and tastes suitable for different tasks. The Egyptians discovered a specific salt naturally occurring in a dry riverbed, or wadi, 40 miles northwest of Cairo. They named this location Natrun, and the salt itself netjry, or natron. Natron, referred to as “the divine salt” by ancient Egyptians, is a mixture primarily of sodium bicarbonate and sodium carbonate, containing only a small amount of sodium chloride. It is found in “white” (usually gray) and “red” (pink) forms.
The culminating funerary ritual, “the opening of the mouth,” symbolically freed the corpse to eat in the afterlife. The tomb of the child pharaoh Tutankhamen (died 1352 B.C.) contained bronze knives for this ritual, surrounded by four shrines filled with cups of two vital ingredients for preservation: natron and resin.
Herodotus, the Greek historian, documented the most perfect mummification process. After removing the brain and abdominal contents, the cavity was cleaned with palm wine and spices. It was then filled with spices like cassia and myrrh, excluding frankincense. The body was placed in natron, covered entirely, for exactly 70 days. After washing, the body was wrapped in linen strips smeared with gum and placed in a human-shaped wooden case. For the poor, the least expensive method involved simply washing the intestines and keeping the body in natron for 70 days. The parallel between preserving the dead and preserving food was confirmed in the nineteenth century, when mummies transported to Cairo were taxed as if they were salted fish.
Salt, Trade, and the Phoenicians
Long before the rise of Rome, the Phoenicians were an economic powerhouse operating from major ports like Tyre. They exported timber and craftsmen, providing the wood (their famous “cedars of Lebanon”) and labor when Solomon built his temple in Jerusalem. Old Testament accounts mention that Jerusalem fish markets received their supply from Tyre. This fish was likely salted, since fresh fish would spoil before reaching Jerusalem.
The Phoenicians are often credited in the Mediterranean with introducing chickpeas and spreading the olive tree. The Sicilians maintain that the Phoenicians were the first to catch bluefin tuna off Sicily’s western coast. To cure this catch, the Phoenicians established a saltworks on the western side of Sicily, near modern Trapani.
The Phoenicians strategically founded tuna fisheries in the Mediterranean near the bluefin migration routes. They founded Sfax, a seaport on the coast of modern Tunisia, around 800 B.C.. Sfax has remained a source of salted fish and salt for Mediterranean trade. They also established Cadiz in southern Spain, which they used to export tin. Almost 2,500 years before Portuguese mariners explored West Africa, the Phoenicians sailed from Cadiz through the Strait of Gibraltar to the West African coast.
The Phoenicians are credited with the first alphabet. Earlier Egyptian and Chinese languages relied on pictographs, drawings depicting concepts or objects. Babylonian, the Middle East’s international language, used a long list of characters representing sounds or words. The Phoenician alphabet, however, was a Semitic forerunner of ancient Hebrew, featuring only 22 characters, each representing a distinct sound. The simplicity of this alphabet, combined with their commercial prowess, revolutionized trade across the ancient Mediterranean.
In ancient Africa, poor people in Egypt were mummified using sodium chloride, while the rich used natron, suggesting natron was valued more highly. Conversely, in other parts of ancient Africa, wealthier individuals generally used salt with a higher sodium chloride content, reserving natron for the poor. Natron (trona) was preferred for bean dishes because its carbonate content was believed to counteract gas. It also served as a stomach medicine (a natural bicarbonate of soda) and was thought to be a male aphrodisiac. In Timbuktu, a trade center for salt and tobacco, a mixture of natron and tobacco was chewed. Natron was also used by the Hausa to dissolve indigo and fix the color. Soap was made by combining natron with oil from the shea butter tree kernel. African merchants, healers, and cooks maintained a detailed knowledge of an array of different salts, most of them impure, each known by specific names. Salt that consisted mainly of sodium chloride was reserved exclusively for eating.
The Salt People of Central Europe
In central Europe, the Celts were known as “the salt people”. Their land spanned Austria, Hungary, and Bavaria. The name Celt is not derived from their own Indo-European language, but from the Greek Keltoi, meaning “one who lives in hiding or under cover”. The Romans called them Galli or Gauls, a name rooted in the Greek word hal, meaning “salt”. Many towns built on salt beds—like Halle in East Germany, and Hallstatt, Hallein, and Swäbisch Hall in Austria—have this same root. The Celts, like the ancient Chinese, built their economy on salt and iron. They relied on waterways like the Rhine, Main, Neckar, Ruhr, and Isar (all Celtic names) to transport their heavy goods.
The Celts used rivers for both trade and conquest. They moved south into northern Spain, west into France, and north into Belgium (named after the Celtic tribe Belgae). In 390 B.C., the Celts sacked Rome, traveling 80 miles in 4 days on horseback. Western Europeans had not previously encountered mounted cavalry. They terrorized townspeople with loud war cries and heavy swords. The Celts controlled Rome for 40 years. In 279 B.C., they invaded what is now Turkey.
From their salt mines, like the one at Dürnberg, the Celts extracted rock salt. The miners’ bodies, trapped in their ancient work sites, date back to 400 B.C.. The salt preserved their clothes, leather shoes, tools, and torches. Objects found nearby date back to 1300 B.C..
The Celts, or their ancestors known as the Urnfield people, developed the first organized agriculture in northern Europe. They pioneered fertilizer use and crop rotation. They introduced wheat to northern Spain. They were sophisticated bronze casters, skilled iron miners, and expert forgers. They brought iron and many iron inventions—including the feared 3-foot-long Celtic sword, the seamless iron rim for wagon wheels, and possibly the horseshoe—to much of western Europe. They may have been the first Europeans to ride horses.
In the 1990s, Westerners became aware of mummies found in China’s Uyghur Autonomous Region, near the Silk Road. These people lived about 2000 B.C. and were preserved by the naturally salty soil. The mummies were tall, with blond or light brown hair and red beards. Their conical felt hats and twill jackets closely resembled those of the salt miners found in Hallein and Hallstatt. The red-and-blue pinstripes on their clothing were almost identical to fabrics discovered in the Dürnberg mine. Why Celts were present in the salty Asian desert many centuries before their known existence remains a mystery.
The Celts, who loved pigs, valued the leg of wild boar as the choicest cut of meat, reserving it for warriors. It is likely that the Celts contributed the first salt-cured hams to Western culture. A Greek living in Rome wrote that the upper part of the ham was reserved for the bravest warrior. Disputes over this cut were settled by combat. This tradition of savoring a salt-cured leg endures in remaining Celtic cultures, such as the Scottish tradition of salted haunch of venison.
One 1930 recipe for salted haunch advised putting the venison in a wooden tub with salt and spices for 10 days. If the meat was then pressed to exclude air, it should keep for months. If salted for about 3 weeks, it could be dried like a ham. This practice may have used natron, though the original Celts would not have included the sugar specified in the recipe.
Rome: Salt and Pungent Sauces
The Romans paid lip service to democracy and republicanism, but their history was marked by the persistent struggle between the privileged patricians and the disenfranchised plebeians. To maintain their status, patricians often insisted on providing lesser rights to plebeians, including the right of every man to salt. The concept of “common salt” originated with the Romans.
Patrician cuisine displayed opulence through elaborate ingredients and presentation. Roman cooks favored the esoteric, such as sow’s vulva and teats. Food also served as a boast of conquest, featuring sturgeon from the Black Sea, oysters from Britannia, and hams from Germania. Meanwhile, plebeians ate coarse bread, olives, and a little salted fish. The government ensured that plebeians always had salt.
The earliest record of Roman government interference with salt prices occurred in 506 B.C., 3 years before the kingdom became a republic. The state seized control of the private saltworks in Ostia, Rome’s main salt source, because the king deemed the prices too high. The Salt Road, the Via Salaria, carried salt from Ostia up the Tiber to Rome. The title of the treasury official responsible for salt price decisions derived its name from this road.
Most Italian cities were founded near saltworks. Rome began in the hills behind the saltworks at the mouth of the Tiber. Etruscans controlled the saltworks along the northern bank. To avoid dependence on Etruscan salt, the Romans founded their own saltworks in Ostia across the Tiber in 640 B.C.. They built a single, shallow pond to evaporate seawater into salt crystals.
The Romans salted their greens, believing it counteracted the natural bitterness. The word salad originates from this practice (salted). Cato’s second-century B.C. guide, De agricultura, recommended eating cabbage chopped, washed, dried, and sprinkled with salt or vinegar.
Salt was served at the table, ranging from simple seashells at a plebeian’s meal to ornate silver saltcellars at a patrician’s feast. Because salt symbolized the binding of an agreement, omitting a saltcellar on a banquet table implied suspicion or an unfriendly act.
Most salt consumed by Romans arrived already incorporated into their market-bought food. They even added salt to wine in a spicy mixture called defrutum, used for preservation before bottling corks were common. Pliny estimated that the average Roman citizen consumed only 25 grams of salt daily. This low table-salt consumption, despite the saltiness of the food, indicates the quantity already present in preserved goods.
The Romans imported hams from Celtic regions, including present-day Germany. The dry-salted and smoked Westphalian hams were highly popular. Cato, whose family name Marcus Porcius meant “Porky Marcus,” was an enthusiast. His mothproof ham recipe used vinegar and oil to simulate the “savage taste” of the wild north.
Fish constituted the centerpiece of Roman cuisine. Salted fish formed the core of Roman commerce. The Greek physician Galen (A.D. 130 to 200), known for understanding the significance of reading pulses, wrote about the Roman salt fish trade. Salt fish was considered both a food and a medicine.
Sicily, famed for its coastline, produced the most celebrated salted bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean. Sicilians boiled trapped seawater from marshes to produce salt. Excavations show ancient saltworks concentrated near Trapani and Favignana, the prime bluefin tuna fishing areas. Typically, when a tuna was caught, the choicest upper body parts were eaten fresh, reserving the drier tail meat for salting. Archestratus, the Sicilian gourmet (fourth century B.C.), praised his native island’s tuna. He suggested baking the tail of a large female tuna, sprinkling it lightly with salt and oil, and eating it hot dipped into a sharp brine. He warned against sprinkling it with vinegar, as it would be ruined. Archestratus also admired the Black Sea tuna from Byzantium (modern Istanbul).
From the Black Sea to the Strait of Gibraltar, salt production areas typically stood near fishing grounds, creating industrial zones. These zones produced salt fish, fish sauces, and purple dye. Salsamentum, derived from sal (salt), was the Roman term for salted products. While the Greeks developed an extensive vocabulary for salt fish—describing cure type, origin, cut, and whether the fish was salted with or without scales—the Romans simply used the term salsamentum.
Garum and the Purple Dye Trade
The pungent fish sauce garum became indispensable to Roman cooking and commerce. Pliny documented that the best garum was made from mackerels. A first-century A.D. recipe described mixing the fish’s entrails and smaller fish (anchovies, sprats) with brine. This mixture was placed in a vessel under the sun for 2 to 3 months. The fermentation of the fish created the sauce. The liquid strained through a basket was called liquamen. The remaining refuse was called allec. Alternatively, garum could be boiled immediately instead of being sun-fermented. The brine needed sufficient salinity to float an egg or an anchovy.
Asia was the only other ancient region to use garum. The Asian sauce may have originated in Vietnam, possibly derived from early Chinese soy sauce, which involved fermenting fish with beans. The Vietnamese sauce, nuóc mam, has variations using squid (mam muc), crab (mam cáy), and shrimp (mam tôm). The French were horrified by the Vietnamese eating “rotten fish,” forgetting their own Latin heritage.
In the early twentieth century, the celebrated Institut Pasteur in Paris studied nuóc mam for 16 years, from 1914 to 1930. The two necessary ingredients were fish (usually small Clupeidae like herrings or sardines) and salt. The fish sat in salt for 3 days, producing a juice, part of which ripened in the sun. The remaining juice was pressed with the fish to make a mush. The mush and ripened juice were mixed and left for 3 months or longer, then strained.
The Romans used garum much like the Chinese used soy sauce. Instead of sprinkling dry salt, a few drops of garum seasoned meat, fish, vegetables, or even fruit. The oldest surviving complete cookbook, De re coquinaria, credited to Apicius (first century A.D.), features far more recipes with garum than with salt. Apicius, who wrote for the elite, reportedly committed suicide after spending so much of his fortune on his kitchen that he could not maintain his chosen lifestyle.
A simpler recipe using garum was for braised cutlets: placing the meat in a pan, adding 1 pound of garum, an equal quantity of oil, and a trifle of honey, then braising. A fish sauce recipe included pepper, lovage, rue, honey, pine nuts, vinegar, wine, garum, and oil, which was heated and poured over roasted red mullet.
Despite its use in high cuisine, garum was often described as putrid. Pliny called it “that liquid of putrefying matter”. Seneca, the philosopher, described it as “expensive liquid of bad fish”. However, the salt, when mixed properly, prevented putrefaction until fermentation took hold.
The murex snail yielded the precious purple dye of the ancient world. Pliny described the process: the murex was opened, and the fish was removed. The raw juice was heated in lead pots (about 7 gallons of water for every 50 pounds of fish). The liquid was then heated until the dyers felt confident of the result.
In 1826, Antoine Jérôme Balard, a 23-year-old pharmacy student, studied the composition of salt marshes. He concluded that the foul-smelling, blackish-purplish liquid residue remaining after salt crystallization was a new chemical element. He named it muride, because the liquid was chemically identical to the purple secretion of the murex. The Académie Française renamed it bromine, a word meaning “stench”.
Murex production occurred across the Roman Mediterranean, including North Africa and the Mediterranean coast of Gaul. Mountains of ancient murex shells have been found in the Israeli port of Accra. The combination of the stench from the dyeworks’ bromine solution and the smell of fish curing meant the Roman Empire’s coast must have been “redolent”.
After the Roman Empire’s collapse in the fifth century, garum was often seen as an unpleasant hedonistic excess of Rome. The idea of leaving fish organs to rot did not appeal to less extravagant cultures. Anthimus, writing in sixth-century Gaul, rejected garum in favor of salt or brine. His pronouncement, “We ban the use of fish sauce from every culinary role,” echoed through Western cooking. Garum disappeared from the Mediterranean. The purple dye industry faded, and the region lost its importance as a salt fish producer. However, the fundamental Roman idea that building saltworks was synonymous with building empires endured.
Venice and the Adriatic Monopoly
The fall of Rome left the Mediterranean, the Western world’s most economically vital region, highly competitive with many aspirants for leadership. Venice, founded in the swampy region near Ravenna, rose to prominence. Cassiodorus, writing in 523 A.D., described the early Venetians as focusing all their emulation on the saltworks. He stated that their industry made all other products dependent on them because everyone desired salt.
Between the sixth and ninth centuries, the last major technical advance in salt manufacturing until the twentieth century was invented. Instead of relying on a single artificial pond, salt makers built a series of successive evaporation ponds. A large open tank held seawater. Pumps and sluices moved the water to the next pond after it reached a heightened salinity. Each successive pond allowed the water to evaporate further, resulting in an increasingly dense brine. Simultaneously, fresh seawater was introduced into the first pond, ensuring continuous production.
When brine achieves sufficient density, salt precipitates, crystallizing and sinking to the bottom where it can be scooped out. In a single solar-heated pond, this process can take 1 year or more. However, with ample wind, sun, and dry seasons, production is limited only by the available surface area and the number of ponds operating simultaneously. This systematic process requires minimal investment and equipment, except for the final harvest stage.
Some Western historians believe the Chinese may have pioneered this successive evaporation technique around A.D. 500. Chinese historians, however, claim no rights to this invention. The Chinese preferred fine-grained salt, whereas this slower evaporation method produced coarse salt. The coarse salt was valued in the Mediterranean for curing hams and salting fish. The North African Muslims, operating in the early Middle Ages, may have been the first to use such a system, introducing it to Ibiza in the ninth century.
Venice exploited this technology. The city secured a monopoly on salt sales and transportation along its trade routes. From 850, Venice began prohibiting the import of salt from rival saltworks. It forced cities under its control to purchase all their salt exclusively from Venice. In 1300, Venice forced Crete and Cyprus to stop salt production and buy all their salt from Venetian merchants. The city used its naval power to enforce these restrictions.
Venetian policy focused on controlling the supply chain. The city bought salt at low prices from remote coastal operations, such as those in Crimea, and then sold it at a fixed, high profit margin. The government even established a minimum price below which its citizens were forbidden to sell salt.
The agricultural wealth of the Po Valley depended on a source of salt for farming and a port for goods. Two commercial competitors, Venice on the Adriatic and Genoa on the Mediterranean, became the greatest ports of the Middle Ages by competing for this business. The Romans built the Via Emilia (now the 8-lane A-1 superhighway) connecting major commercial and cultural centers from Piacenza to Parma to Bologna and the Adriatic coast.
The earliest record of salt production in Veleia dates from the second century B.C.. Charlemagne restarted Veleia’s saltworks after the Roman Empire’s collapse to supply his army. The name Salso first appeared in an 877 document. Ancient brine wells used massive wheels with interior and exterior slats for footing. Two men chained at the neck walked inside the wheel, and two others walked outside, hoisting buckets of brine. Boiling the brine required immense quantities of wood for fuel, meaning that controlling the wells also required controlling a wide surrounding forest area.
From the eleventh century, the Pallovicino family controlled the Salso wells and the region. However, in 1318, the city of Parma seized control of 31 Pallovicino wells. This takeover represented the transfer of power from the feudal lord to the city government.
In the seventh and eighth centuries, before Charlemagne revived the Salso wells, sailors transported salt from the Adriatic to Parma. For this labor, they received either money or goods, including Parma’s most famous salt product, prosciutto di Parma. Parma proved ideal for ham production because the mountain peaks trapped the sea air, producing rain and drying the wind. This dry wind was essential for aging the salted leg without rotting. Hams were dried on racks arranged east to west to optimize the wind exposure.
Genoa and the Mediterranean Salt
Genoa, originally a thriving Ligurian port, became an independent city-state dedicated to commerce by the twelfth century. Genoa purchased salt from Hyères, near Toulon in French Provence. The name Hyères means “flats,” likely referring to salt flats. Genoese merchants enhanced Hyères’ production by building a system of solar evaporation ponds in the twelfth century. This success caused the decline of Pisa’s Sardinian salt trade. Genoa then developed the saltworks of Cagliari in Sardinia, making Sardinia a major Mediterranean salt producer.
Meanwhile, the Dukedom of Cardona in Spanish Catalonia held a salt mountain. The owner peered down at his prize possession, a mountain striped in salmon pink, white, taupe, and bloodred rock salt. Since salt is soluble, rainwater etched curved indentations on the surface. Inside the mine, snow-white crystal stalactites ornamented the pink-striped shafts, where dripping rainwater had sealed over fissures. The salt mountain stood next to a winding tributary of the Ebro River.
There is evidence that people harvested salt from Cardona as early as 3500 B.C.. Prehistoric stone tools, 6-inch-long black rocks used for picking and scraping, have been found. The Romans, who generally preferred sea salt, considered Cardona’s rock salt to be of high quality. The dukes of Cardona, owners of the mountain, presided over a dank brown village of salt workers. Starting in the sixteenth century, the salt workers were allowed to take salt for themselves every Thursday. These workers carved religious figurines out of the soft, soluble rock salt, which resembles pink marble.
The Genoese pioneered maritime insurance and banking. They used huge Atlantic-sized ships, often leased from the Basques, in Mediterranean trade. These ships had ample cargo space for salt on return voyages. Genoa ensured control of saltworks wherever they traded to load up for the trip home.
Ultimately, Venice secured commercial dominance of the Mediterranean due to its cohesive political organization and system of salt subsidies. In the War of Chioggia (1378–1380), Venice’s decisive ability to convert its commercial fleet into warships allowed it to defeat Genoa, eliminating its only major competitor.
Salt and the Sea Routes to the North
By the seventh century A.D., the Basques, living on the Atlantic coast in their small, mountainous land (partly in France, partly in Spain), were the only people in Western Europe not speaking an Indo-European language. Their culture and laws survived all major invasions, including the Romans and the Celts. The Basques were the first commercial whale hunters, centuries ahead of others. The earliest record of commercial whaling is a 670 A.D. bill of sale for 40 pots of whale oil sent to northern France.
The medieval Catholic Church dramatically expanded the number of religious “lean” days, forbidding meat consumption. Lent was increased to 40 days, and all Fridays, the day of Christ’s crucifixion, were included. This resulted in about half the year being subject to strict food prohibitions. Under English law, the penalty for eating meat on Friday was hanging, a law that remained until Henry VIII broke with the Vatican in the sixteenth century.
Fresh whale meat was a delicacy for the wealthy, especially the tongue. For the peasantry, there was craspois, also known as craspoix or grapois. This was salt-cured strips of the fatty parts of the whale, sometimes called lard de carême (lent blubber) in French. Even after a full day of cooking, craspoix remained tough and hard, typically eaten with peas. Rouen merchants sold craspoix to the English, where high tariffs suggest this salted whale blubber was considered a luxury product in England.
In 1393, an elderly Parisian published Le mèsnagier de Paris, a lengthy instruction guide for his 15-year-old bride on running a household. The book advised that craspoix, or salted whale meat, should be cut in slices, cooked in water like fatback, and served with peas (dried peas cooked like modern beans).
Basques built stone towers on high points along their coast to spot whales. Lookouts shouted coded cries telling whalers the whale’s size and location. A crew of 5 oarsmen, a captain, and a harpooner rowed silently out. Basque harpooners were legendary for their physical strength, able to plunge a spear deep into a sleeping giant.
In those northern waters, Basques found an even more profitable commodity than whales: Atlantic cod. Cod preserves exceptionally well because its white flesh is nearly fat-free. Fat resists salt and slows its penetration, requiring fatty fish to be pressed tightly in barrels. Cod, however, can be simply laid in salt. Cod and its relatives (whiting, haddock) can be air-dried before salting, yielding a superior cure difficult to achieve with oily fish like herring or anchovy.
In France, Guillaume Tirel (Taillevent), head chef for King Charles V, detailed cooking practices in his cookbook Le viandier (1330 to 1395). His apprenticeship included desalinating salted meats, a fundamental skill. Le viandier instructed that “Salt cod is eaten with mustard sauce or with melted fresh butter over it”. The later Le mèsnagier de Paris added crucial advice: too little soaked cod is too salty, and too long soaked is ruined. Cooks should test the saltiness with their teeth immediately after purchase. An eighteenth-century Neapolitan recipe advised soaking salt cod (the most salted part of the catch) well, then sautéing it with minced onion, oil, raisins, pine nuts, and parsley. Tomatoes could be added when in season.
All northern European fishing nations sought access to the rapidly growing, profitable salt cod market. They had the fish but lacked sufficient salt.
Viking travelers may have helped solve this problem. The island of Noirmoutier, a Viking base in the Loire estuary, contained a natural tidal swamp. Though Vikings had utilized solar evaporation in Normandy, the northern climate (high rainfall, insufficient sunlight) rendered these operations unproductive. It is uncertain exactly when Noirmoutier and the nearby mainland marshes of Bourgneuf and Guérande began building systematic artificial ponds. Vikings arrived around the ninth or tenth century, and production increased significantly. They had previously seen successive artificial pond systems in southern Spain. The Vikings were certainly the first to establish a major salt route by trading this salt to northern and Baltic nations.
The question of whether Basques reached North America before John Cabot’s 1497 voyage remains debated. Many Atlantic fishing communities believed this in the fifteenth century. While Viking turf house ruins dating from A.D. 1000 were found in Newfoundland in 1961, Basque whaling station ruins in Labrador only dated back to 1530. The Portuguese and British both claim their fishermen reached North America before Cabot. After Cabot’s journey, the news of limitless cod fishing spurred large expeditions from Bristol, St.-Malo, La Rochelle, La Coruña, and numerous Basque ports. Every vessel employed a “master salter” who made critical decisions about the proper drying and salting to avoid spoilage.
Portugal, which needed protection from the French, formed an alliance with England, trading naval protection for sea salt. Aveiro became the leading Portuguese salt source in the tenth century. As demand grew, the saltworks at Setúbal, located south of the capital, became Portugal’s largest supplier. Setúbal salt gained a reputation throughout Europe for its large, white, dry crystals, perfect for curing cheese or fish.
La Rochelle, a minor port not situated on a river, suddenly became Europe’s leading Newfoundland fishing port due to its proximity to the Ile de Ré saltworks. Between 1497 and 1550, La Rochelle accounted for more than half of the 128 documented fishing expeditions from Europe to Newfoundland. The Breton ports also benefited from a salt advantage. France had exempted the Celtic duchy of Brittany from the hated gabelle (French salt tax) to facilitate its entry into the kingdom. This exemption gave the Breton ports easy access to the untaxed saltworks of Bourgneuf, Noirmoutier, and Guérande.
English salt production methods were inferior and inadequate for curing fish. For curing the best herring, the English made a special high-quality salt called white on white, which involved re-evaporating French sea salt to remove impurities. William Brownrigg, a London physician, wrote in 1748 that English rock salt and white salt were inferior to “Bay salt” (solar-evaporated sea salt) imported from France for curing fish. This “Bay salt” referred to the Bay of Bourgneuf. This area became synonymous with solar-evaporated sea salt in northern Europe. French Bay salt was sometimes green, gray, or black, but it was inexpensive and large-grained. Affluent households used Bay salt for curing but bought more costly white salt for table use. Middle-class homes boiled down inexpensive Bay salt to create a finer table salt.
The Breton salt makers (paludiers) harvested the coarse salt and fleur de sel. When dry wind caused crystals to form on the water’s surface, women would skim the lighter, finer fleur de sel using long poles with a board on the end. This was considered women’s work, requiring a “delicate touch,” although the women carried baskets of the light salt weighing 90 pounds on their heads. The name Guérande is derived from the Breton name Gwenn-Rann, meaning “white country”.
The paludiers carved ponds out of the grassy swamps. The marsh was vast and easily confusing, but salt makers navigated by the distant black stone church steeples. The 180-foot Moorish-tipped steeple of Saint-Guénolé in Le Bourg de Batz was added in the 1600s to guide navigators entering the Loire from the marsh. In 1557, 1,200 salt ships from other European ports visited Le Croisic. Le Croisic became the second most important French Atlantic port, after Bordeaux, due to its trade in salt and traded goods. The Danish, Dutch, and British all purchased French Bay salt. Even the Spanish came to buy Bay salt for their northern Iberia fisheries like La Coruña.
Salted Meat and the Gabelle
Salted meat played a crucial provisioning role. Irish corned beef became a durable, cheap, high-protein food for slaves in the Caribbean sugar colonies. When cheaper New England salt cod later replaced it, Irish corned beef continued to travel widely as a provision for the British navy. The Irish tradition of corned beef (spiced beef) remains a festive dish for Christmas, Easter, and St. Patrick’s Day.
The name “corned beef” originated with the seventeenth-century English, who called small bits “corns,” in this case referring to salt crystals. The English later damaged the reputation of the dish by canning it in South America. A 1968 Irish recipe for spiced beef specified rubbing the meat with spices, brown sugar, and ground cloves. It was then simmered gently for 5 hours, with Guinness added during the last hour. The meat was often served cold, pressed between 2 dishes with a weight on top.
In France, the tax on salt, the gabelle, was arguably the greatest disaster of royal administration. This tax system became so despised that its eventual repeal helped launch the French Revolution. The gabelle created a massive black market in contraband salt. Acts designed to prevent evasion were called faux saunage. Shepherds in the Camargue who allowed their flocks to drink salty pond water could be charged with avoiding the tax. A 1670 revision of the criminal code utilized salt to enforce laws against suicide. The bodies of those who took their own lives were ordered salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Even those who died in prison were salted and put on trial. In 1784 in Cornouaille, Maurice LeCorre died in prison and was ordered salted for trial. Bureaucratic error meant the corpse was found 7 years later, salted and fermented in beer, and was then buried without trial.
Louis XIV placed the state’s commerce and finances under Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Colbert advocated mercantilism, the economic theory holding that state value was measured by exports and imported precious metals. Mercantilism viewed world trade as a limited sum, meaning one nation’s gain was another’s loss.
Colbert revised the gabelle in 1680, codifying the tax inequities into 6 unequal zones. The Pays de Grand Gabelle, the core of France, contained only one third of the French population but paid two-thirds of the state’s salt revenue. Residents of this zone were the most angered by the tax. Merchants there imported cheaper Setúbal salt from Portugal to lower local prices.
François I (sixteenth century) initially imposed a large tax on salt producers in southwestern France. After protests, he cut the tax in half, and it was entirely dropped in 1543. Instead, the rigid administration of the Grande Gabelle was planned for the region. This sparked an armed rebellion of 40,000 farmers under the slogan “Long live the king without the gabelle”. The French Crown, shocked by the ferocity and size of the revolt, backed down.
Brittany, like Basque country, maintained cheap, untaxed salt to trade across the Channel to England and up the coast to Holland. In the seventeenth century, the large number of English, Dutch, and Welsh ships visiting Le Croisic for salt caused the local Catholic church to worry about Protestant influence.
The price differences between the zones were enormous. In 1784, Jacques Necker, a Swiss banker advising the government, reported that a minot of salt (107.8 pounds) cost 31 sous in Brittany, 81 in Poitou, 591 in Anjou, and 611 in Berry. Necker recognized that these price disparities created fertile ground for smugglers.
Smugglers, known as faux sauniers, used hidden coves and islands on the Loire River. The legendary smugglers often used colorful pseudonyms, such as François Gantier, also known as Pot au Lait (milk pitcher). By 1773, 3,000 troops were stationed on the Loire to stop salt smuggling.
Smugglers devised complex ruses. Salt cod, shipped up the Loire, included a product called “green salt cod” (closer to its natural state, only salted, not dried). This required copious amounts of salt to prevent spoilage. Merchants shipped cod in thick salt layers. Inspectors at checkpoints examined the fish, shaking off excess salt. Too much excess salt resulted in a report, but merchants often expedited their journey with the gift of a few salt cod to the officials.
In 1789, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille, and the revolutionary legislature repealed the gabelle. The National Assembly, calling the salt tax “odious,” annulled all trials and set convicted violators free. Some members had proposed a low, universally applied salt tax, but the Assembly ultimately voted for no salt tax at all, neglecting to replace this key revenue source.
In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte, now Emperor, reinstated the gabelle, eliminating the exemption for Brittany. The paludiers of Guérande, deprived of their competitive advantage, became some of the poorest peasants. Visitors found their old-style three-cornered hats picturesque. Novelist Honoré de Balzac compared the impoverished Breton paludiers to Tuaregs, Arabs, and Asians. The village of Le Bourg de Batz changed its name to Batz-sur-Mer (Batz-by-the-sea) to sound more appealing for tourism.
Breton cuisine reflected the poverty, based on simple crops like onions and potatoes grown in their clay-bound soil, which absorbed a salty taste from seaweed. Potatoes boiled in brine (patate cuit au sel) acquired a fine salt powder on the skin. A Breton expression stated, “Everything that is not good asks to be salted”. Another proverb claimed, “Advice and salt are available to anyone who wants it”. Kig-sall, salted pig, used the tail, ears, and feet preserved with lard and salt for 2 to 3 months. Oing, rendered pork fat mixed with salt and pepper, was dried and smoked, used as a meat substitute in vegetable soup. The gabelle remained part of French administration until 1946.
The Nordic Salt Dream
In Sweden, one custom involved girls eating a heavily salted porridge or pancake in silence, then sleeping without drinking. Her future husband would appear in a dream to offer her water. Separately, the “Swedish dream” concerned salt, as Sweden had ample herring but lacked salt for curing it.
Preserving herring became a major commercial use of salt in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, second only to salt cod in the European Lenten diet. Herring became so dominant that twelfth-century saltwater fish dealers in Paris were called harengères (herring sellers). Herring, a Clupeidae (like sardines), is an oily fish. The Mediterranean people never embraced salted herring as they did cod, likely because they had their own local clupeiformes. The rise of herring trade coincided with Atlantic nations (Antwerp, Amsterdam) gaining economic power over Mediterranean ports (Venice, Genoa). Dutch ships were provisioned with salt-cured herring.
Herring hides in ocean depths in winter but swims thousands of miles to coastal spawning grounds from spring until fall. This phenomenon occurs from the Scandinavian and Russian Baltic across the North Sea to northern France and across the Atlantic. Jules Michelet, the nineteenth-century historian, wrote that a “whole living world has just risen from the depths to the surface, following the call of warmth, desire, and the light”.
In 1350, Wilhelm Beuckelzon, a Dutch fisherman, supposedly invented pickling herring in brine without drying. This method allowed curing without the fat turning rancid from air exposure. European powers paid homage to Beuckelzon, including Charles V, who visited his grave in 1506. Czar Alexander II of Russia erected a monument in 1856 to Benkels, a Flemish fisherman credited with inventing barrel-packed herring. In reality, Scandinavians, English, Flemish, and French had barreled herring in brine for centuries by Beuckelzon’s time.
The medieval salt fish market served the lower classes; 60 percent of all fish eaten by Europeans between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries was cod, with herring making up a significant portion of the rest. Cured herring had even lower social standing than salted cod. The French expression for inherited lower breeding is “the barrel always smells of herring”. Yet, fortunes were made supplying the poor with herring, limited only by salt access.
Northern cultures developed techniques to produce salt in rainy climates. In southern Denmark and northern Holland, peat salt was made by burning seawater-impregnated peat (zelle) dug from tidal flats. The process destroyed large amounts of forest for fuel. Norwegians improved this process by pumping saltier water from sea depths using hollowed tree trunks as piping. Sweden hoped to acquire a Caribbean island for salt production, but St.-Barthélemy yielded barely enough salt to cure the herring shipped there as slave food.
Smoking, a Northern solution to salt scarcity, requires less salt because the smoking process aids conservation. The Romans smoked cheeses and Westphalian ham. The practice became common in cold winters when food was enclosed in fire-warmed rooms. A Polish archaeologist found a fish smoking station dating from the eighth to tenth centuries. Red herring, a famous English export, is soaked in brine (salt and saltpeter) and smoked over turf and oak. A 1567 account claimed red herring was discovered by accident when a fisherman’s surplus catch hung over a smoky fire.
In the sixteenth century, the Swedes devised a light cure for Baltic herring, resulting in surströmming. The Baltic Sea is less salty than the North Sea, producing smaller, leaner herring. Surströmming was a basic ration for the Swedish army during the 50-year Thirty Years War. It must be made from herring caught just before spawning in April and May. The head and entrails are removed, but the roe remains. The fish is fermented in light brine for 10 to 12 weeks at 54 to 64 degrees Fahrenheit. Producers can release the fish to the market on the third Thursday in August. Modern production cans the fish in July, causing the cans to bulge by eating time in September. When opened, a white milky brine fizzes out, smelling like fermented cider and a blend of Parmesan cheese and ancient fishing vessel bilge water.
Like Roman garum, surströmming is chemically fermented, not rotten, because the brine prevents putrification. Swedes eat the fish (after removing the roe) mashed on a cracker (krisp) with mashed potatoes. The odor is notoriously difficult to remove from a house. The U.S. government once refused entry to surströmming on the grounds it was rotten.
Before the Hanseatics controlled the northern herring trade, rotten or inferior herring mixed with ashes-laced peat salt was common. The Hanseatics guaranteed quality throughout the barrel. Those caught putting bad herring in the bottom faced heavy fines and had to return payment. Inferior fish were burned to prevent tainting other fish.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Skanör and Fasterbö in southern Sweden became major herring producers. They imported salt from the Hanseatic German port of Lübeck and exported cured herring back to Lübeck for sale across Europe. At their fifteenth-century peak, the Hanseatics commanded 40,000 vessels and 300,000 men. They were known as Easterlings because they came from the east, giving rise to the word sterling, meaning “of assured value”.
Conclusion: Salt, Wealth, and Revolution
From ancient Chinese monopolies to the despised French gabelle, the fundamental power of salt to dictate wealth and political stability defined centuries of history. The debate between Legalism and Confucianism over state control in China mirrored later European conflicts over taxation and private industry. The technological innovation in brine drilling and natural gas use in Sichuan demonstrated China’s early leadership in industrial application. Similarly, the competition between Venice and Genoa for salt routes in the Adriatic proved decisive in shaping Mediterranean commerce. The constant need for salt in curing fish (cod, herring) and meat (ham, corned beef) fueled trans-Atlantic trade and drove coastal economies from the Basque Country to Brittany. The removal of the salt tax ultimately acted as a catalyst for profound political change in France.