Lane Publishes Colour of Paradise
Professor Kris Lane has published Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires with Yale University Press. This book is the third that Kris has authored--it follows Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1700, and Quito 1599: City & Colony in Transition.
Here is the decriptive blurb for Colour of Paradise:
"Among the magnificent gems and jewels left behind by the great Islamic empires, emeralds stand out for their size and prominence. For the Mughals, Ottomans, and Safavids green was—as it remains for all Muslims—the color of Paradise, reserved for the Prophet Muhammad and his descendants. Tapping a wide range of sources, Kris Lane traces the complex web of global trading networks that funneled emeralds from backland South America to populous Asian capitals between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Lane reveals the bloody conquest wars and forced labor regimes that accompanied their production. It is a story of trade, but also of transformations—how members of profoundly different societies at opposite ends of the globe assigned value to a few thousand pounds of imperfectly shiny green rocks."
