For much of its early history, Ireland’s situation was not very different than that of many of the African societies we looked at in the end of the last chapter. It was a human economy perched uncomfortably on the fringe of an expanding commercial one. What’s more, at certain periods there was a very lively slave trade. As one historian put it, “Ireland has no mineral wealth, and foreign luxury goods could be bought by Irish kings mainly for two export goods, cattle and people.”14 Hardly surprising, perhaps, that cattle and people were the two major denominations of the currency. Still, by the
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