Fragrant Frontier

The editors of Fragrant Frontier have produced an impressively researched book on the contemporary growers, in northern Vietnam and Southwest China, of three spices—star anise, black cardamom, and cinnamon, each of which has local, regional, and international economic importance—as well as the human links in the global commodity chain of these spices. This is a nice touch that gives this volume about the recent situation of farmers, local traders, marketplace workers, street vendors (of both the spices and foods prepared with them), wholesalers, exporters, and state officials a very contemporary feel. These story maps are only the first of an extensive number of relevant, well-done, and well-used illustrations including photographs, maps, and tables inserted throughout the following chapters.The rest of the volume is divided into an introduction followed by three chapters concentrating on Indigenous minority producers of each spice in northern Vietnam, two chapters on southwest China, a chapter that concentrates on marketing—from hyperlocal traders to international exoticizers—of Vietnamese spices, and finally a chapter reflecting on the situation as a whole and an afterword on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.The introductory chapter by the editors does a solid job of introducing the contemporary situation in the area under study, the conceptual framework used to follow the trail of these spices from the experiences of upland frontier farmers through a truly diverse array of actors in the international commodity chains for each spice, and the authors' research methodology: mostly interviews and archival and web-based research. However, one of my few quibbles about this book is that the subject of spices and their production and trade has a recorded history of nearly two millennia. The introduction would have been the perfect place for a bit more of this deep history, including insights from classics in the field such as Edward H. Schafer's The Vermillion Bird: T'ang Images of the South (1967) and Wang Gungwu's The Nanhai Trade: A Study of the Early History of Chinese Trade in the South China Sea (1958). This would have provided readers of this volume with more historical context for the chapters that follow.These chapters start, in a geographic sense, in northern Vietnam with a chapter by Turner and Derks on the production of star anise and its movement through local and regional commodity chains. As found throughout the book, there is a concise overview of the various uses of the commodity discussed. In the case of star anise, this includes an examination of its role as “a key component in the industrial production of the anti-influenza pharmaceutical Tamiflu” (43).This is an excellent example of the diverse uses of all of the products discussed in the book, from traditional medicinal and culinary uses to more modern reinventions. The case of star anise itself—and the boom in its demand for the production of Tamiflu, followed by a bust when the pharmaceutical giant Roche, holders of the patent for Tamiflu, began making the active ingredient from star anise synthetically—is also an excellent example of what often happens to the Indigenous peoples who provide such ancient commodities to the modern world.In turn, this story is a good prelude to the following chapter on cardamom, by Patrick Slack, and the concerns of its cultivators amid myriad state programs designed to affect, in one way or another, what they do and how they do it. One of the stated objectives of this volume is to foreground the experiences of the Indigenous farmers who provide these spices to national, regional, and international markets, and this chapter, along with chapters 4, 6, and 7, makes it clear that commodity-based rural development projects are, about as often as not, a human-made disaster for the peoples they target.A segue to another subject dear to the hearts of all of those who would like to do “good” with their food choices is chapter 4, on cinnamon from northern Vietnam, by Derks, Turner, and Ngô Thúy Hạnh. I have long leaned toward cynicism about such labels as “organic” and “fair trade” or about products listed as being from a specific location in the global South. This chapter, along with chapter 7 by Michelle Kee and Celia Zuberec, put me over the line into being a full-fledged cynic. That being said, I learned a lot from the chapters mentioned, and from others in this book, about the various actors in international commodity chains and about “value creation tactics” (2).Chapter 5, by Jean-François Rousseau and Xu Yiqiang, moves into China and focuses on cardamom and extreme weather events, showing the chaos inflicted on upland producers of cardamom and the commodity chains dependent on them when weather events such as extreme cold spells hit. All agricultural production is, of course, affected by weather. However, this chapter and the following chapter make it abundantly clear how fragile the livelihoods of agricultural workers are in the twenty-first century. These two chapters, both concentrating on southwestern China, also demonstrate just how much social issues such as ethnic inequality play into natural disasters and create human-made exacerbating factors. Chapter 6, by Jennifer C. Langill and Zuo Zhenting, is particularly blunt regarding what it refers to as “busted promises” and the “environmental, economic, and political vulnerabilities” of cultivating spices (160).The authors of the chapters in this book deal with their subjects—botanical, ecological, and human—in incredible detail. This is one of the strengths of the book, but it is also a weakness in that the chapters can become a bit repetitive. However, for those readers with a serious interest in the peoples of northern Vietnam and Southwest China, and in the production and trade of spices, these repeated details build a very well-rounded picture of the current situation. Every chapter contains information from an impressive number of firsthand interviews. These interviews are also impressive in terms of the number of languages used and the effort on the part of the scholars involved to include members of a number of highly diverse ethnic groups. This volume should find a welcome place on the bookshelves of scholars of the region, of the spice trade, and of issues raised such as governmental and international programs aimed at the producers and sellers of specialty crops

Archaeology · Economic geography · Frontier · Geography · Linguistics · Spice · Vietnamese · Geology · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Oceanography · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies