If you want to understand capitalism and power, the best place to begin is with salt. That the following pages are rammed with politics, oppression and war is not coincidental. The fact that salt is essential for human survival (and that other more obscure salts have been essential for our sustenance) means it has been an instrument of power since its very earliest days. The reason salt earns its place as one of the six chief members of the Material World is not merely for its extraordinary properties – of which more later – but because of what it enabled us to do.
