Cod

By Mark Kurlansky

Cod is one of those fishes that requires some skill to catch, bu tmostly labor, it was plenty in north Atlantic waters and was easy to preserve with mere salting. [1]

And therefore that made Cod a history changing fish, although the author calls it a world changing fish. None the less, the fish seemed to have played an important role in Viking explorations, and Spanish explorations, and later American colonies earlier to Boston Tea Party.

The Cod ushered in free trade and trade surpluses between colonies (Well before Adam Smith enunciated these principles) and played a key role in slowly setting up American colonies against the Crown, because of trade politics.

The book was written in mid 1990s and talks about Cod migrations, hatching, population declines, etc etc. before climate change became a buzz word. Its interesting to see how the argument becomes more compelling without using that phrase to explain the phenomenon.

The author offers a whole lot of information for the reader to digest. The trade discussions in increasing the territorial waters to 200 miles, and its impact on fishing in deep cold waters, or the wars stopped between UK and Iceland, because of the fish..its pretty fascinating.

Its a quick read, especially if you skip a whole lot of recipes, he keeps bringing every other page.

[1] A whole different tangent that kept me wondering was - have there been any vegetarian-only civilizations that were good at sea faring. It seems highly unlikely as vegetables and milk simply don't last that long without refrigeration. I mean - scurvy on sailors is partly that, right!

That made me wonder, if South India is more non-vegetarian than North, because south Indians were sea farers.