Salt: A World History

Venice was not part of Roman history. Writing of Venice and its mixture of poor and rich in the 6th century, a high Roman official named Cassiodorus offered: “Although there may be someone who does not seek gold, there never yet lived the man who does not desire salt” (81). The area between Venice’s seven islands was called the Seven Seas. By the 7th century, the Seven Seas were gone, as landfill had been used to extend the islands. The Venetians then built salt ponds along the newly-formed land. Kurlansky calls this “the last great technical advance in salt manufacturing until the twentieth century” (82). The ponds allowed seawater to reach a specific level of salinity, so that it is moved from pond to pond at appropriate points to crystalize salt. In this way, a new batch of brine was always beginning in the first pond. By the 10th century, the pond technology was spreading across the Adriatic.

The Venetians discovered that “more money could be made buying and selling salt than producing it” (84). Venetian merchants were given a salt subsidy by the government, meaning that the public had to pay high prices for imported salt, but they didn’t mind if this meant that their fleets could spend their time dominating the spice trade. The salt administration helped pay for the public buildings and the hydraulic system required for maintaining the odd logistics of the city.

Kurlansky says that “Venice manipulated markets by controlling production” (86). Saltworks in Crete were destroyed by Venice in order to increase scarcity and ban local production of salt, forcing expensive imports and allowing the government to profit from the regulation. Venetian salt companies bought rivals and ruthlessly controlled the salt trade. Kurlansky states that Venice based its economy on salt to a degree that had never before been seen. 

Kurlansky next examines the ruins of a Roman city named Veleia. It fits none of the criteria that Romans used for the sites upon which they built cities. However, there was a salt source nearby: underground brine springs. Veleia was producing salt as early as the 2nd century B.C. The wheels used to pump brine were worked by chained slaves who walked in pairs—one pair above the wheel, and one pair on the bottom inside the wheel.

In the 7th and 8th centuries, sailors who brought salt to Parma could choose to be rewarded with money or goods, and the most prized good was salted ham, also known as prosciutto di Parma. Parma’s climate was perfectly suited for producing the salted meat, and the diet of native Parma pigs, who were supplied by the local cheese industry and thereby fed well, made the pork tastier than in other regions.

The origin of cheese is unknown, but Kurlansky presents the theory that people carrying milk in animal skins may have been the first to notice that it formed into something like cheese while curdling: “In Parma, the production of cheese, ham, butter, salt, and wheat evolved into a perfectly symbiotic relationship” (97).

Genoa was home to a tribe of people called the Ligurians in the 5th century B.C. Genoa imported salt after the 12th century from a region of salt flats called Hyeres. Genoese merchants built solar evaporation ponds at Heyeres, with great success. They repeated this process in Sardinia, which became a major salt producer.

This, however, caused some problems. In the mountainous interior of Catalonia, the dukes of Cardona were not happy to see the Genoese selling salt in Barcelona. They owned a mountain made of salt that enriched them, and did not want the Genoese cutting into their profits.

Venice continued to win the competition for the most profitable salt trade “because of a more cohesive political system and because of its system of salt subsidies” (104). Eventually, the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Giovanni Caboto would open up significant new trade routes that put an end to the Venetian salt empire.